Throwing it out there, Lifetaker has a fun niche with Ferdinand because it applies after the fight which means if he levels up and he gets a hit point he'll heal that one point and keep Confidence (assuming that the enemy has at least 2 HP).
@@Mrstormrider77 Sure but Ferdinands increased hit chance is what makes it at least worth considering using up a skill slot. Dimitri only gets higher avoid chance and since most people use BattalionVantage + Battalion Wrath there is hardly any use for Lifetaker on Dimitri. The only usecases I can see is if you don't use this combo or if Dimitri misses his attack but that's about it. Furthermore it takes up a limited skill slot and you need to train Dimitri in Reason magic AND use two dark seals on him for hardly any gain.
It's shocking how little subscribers you have for how detailed and thorough your content is. Your videos actually had me going back to three houses, a game that I considered to be oversaturated and relatively middle ground in terms of fire emblem games that I enjoy. Really good stuff. Keep it up
If I can make a case for move +1 your dancer really doesn't need anything for tutoring time so getting the +1 move on dancers to reach your Canto units further up has been quite useful
I think QR is a bit underrated here. The ability to completely ignore enemy speed stats alone and block doubles is crazy good especially for the late game. High investment, yes but also high reward. The boost to survivability is immense when paired with how strong low health builds are in this game. You have a very easy way to get yourself to vantage territory without needing to apply blessing. Also war master itself is a great class so it's not like a weird out of the way routing. P.S. while it doesn't work with QR desperation a ctually works on enemy phase since you technically still initiate the attack if you have vantage. It's an inferior option to wrath, but if for whatever reason you don't wanna use wrath it still works well-ish. Battalion desperation jeritza is pretty awesome on player phase as a pseudo swift strikes meme. Also I think pass is way to high in A Tier. It's niche at best for Bernadetta vengeance LTC shenans but there's no way most of the roster would benefit from pass over several other skills in this list. Maybe I'm misunderstand but could you please give some context as to why you rank pass so high? Thanks as always!
Thank you for the comment! My biggest issue with QR is that mastering a master class is just way too late in the game to play any serious impact, you probably aren't hitting this until chapter ~18 at best, since even with a knowledge gem you need 50 combats in the class, and for the time it comes, you will already have better options available. War Master also isn't bad, but it isn't the best option for the point in time either, and the fact that half of the cast is immediately locked out is also a hinderance. Being the mastery ability of a master class comes with the unavoidable caveat that your unit has already spent most of the game dealing with this problem in other ways, and if the problem was that significant, you probably wouldn't have opted for this path in the first place, which means that at best it is solving minor issues or providing an alternative solution - still valuable for sure, but decidedly less so than something that is build defining or solving a major issue. I don't think it helps that the pathing to it already allows you to go in to Warrior, so it's not like it's an alternative for units who struggle to get Wrath. On top of that, the prevalence of fliers means your guard adjutants are probably going to be up for grabs by anyone who needs them since a good portion of your cast will be unable to use them, so whilst it can help survivability to get set up, this is already quite a solvable problem - and you could argue the adjutant is better for things like Vengeance and Defiant abilities. Even if you do get it on your EP Unit, I'm not sure you even want to run it over over Wrath/Vantage/H20/Prowess/Weapon Crit, and for an ability that comes this late and for this much investment, that's just not really enough to push it in to B tier for me personally.
@@JonoabboFE I agree I love the skill but just to get too the dang skill is tedious unless you have time time to chill in a forest tile for about three hours
I highly recommend trying War Master male byleth. You usually get quick riposte at around chapter 14 without excessive grinding because byleth have his personal skill to level up fast (and use the knowledge gem) . I think it is so slept on since most people use female flyer byleth.
Speed +2 is so slept on. Byleth use it to aggro death knight in chapter 5 and tank a hit. Edelgard use it with darting blow and weight -3 to double absolutely everything mid game.
I also think sword avoid +20 is very useful on the dancer. Dancers are usually fast and physically frail and are just behind the front lines. So the main thing they need to watch out for is bows and sword avoid +20 helps with that a lot especially if you stack it with proficiency. The dancer doesn't really engage in combat so most skills don't do anything on them. You can also midmax for avoid with an avoid ring and a batalion that boosts avoid since again the dancer doesn't have to worry about combat. If I am using a dancer I pretty much keep sword avoid +20 on them at all times as it usually means they can't be hit by archers.
What makes assassin great? 2 of it's class abilities are Locktouch and Stealth, it's limited to 6 move, and has no canto or flight. Swordfaire is mostly just compensating for the lack of might swords already have compared to axes and lances, and things like the Rapier are much more limited than the Horseslayer.
@@JonoabboFE stealth is awesome when used with a dodge tank or a wrath/vantage unit. Dmitry can't do it himself because he could get hit by gambits and ballistas/fire orb. Having an assassin to help kill things and use retribution on dimitri when he runs out was really useful last time I played AM.
I always have Byleth using swords. It may be “suboptimal” but it just feels right. Yuri is another Sword user for me. Especially as a dancer. Sword Avo drops most hit chances below 20% against him, and quite a few under 10% (with Avo Ring)
But axs are the best weapon type in the game. Why cant I double fortress knights? Why cant I hit anything without hit +20? Why cant I keep up with maddening enemy stats? But no swords suck they do like 0 damage because I don't use them and give them a chance to do damage.
I always find your videos on this game so interesting, its crazy how different Maddening meta is compared to Hard meta... And yet it keeps reminding me why I generally dislike Maddening because of how optimisation is so important which imo takes away from the sandboxy aspect I love so much.
Thank you! I will say though, you don't have to play super optimally on maddening - my last playthrough (which was streamed on here) used a bunch of Off Meta builds and generally just played around with some fun concepts.
Personally I view the dynamic in the exact opposite way. Hard mode requires no effort for things to be good. Stuff like mortal savant Felix will work well on hard simply because it's hard mode, which makes it boring IMO. The real fun of 3h comes from screwing around on maddening, with stuff like battalion vantage sword war master ignatz. Coming up with a funny build that actually works because you utilized the tools the game gives you in a clever way feels way more rewarding than just "x build is good because it's hard mode"
I think Move+1 is a bit underrated. It's easy to grab on Bishop/Gremories as long as the character doesn't have a bane because these classes do not need high investment outside of Faith/Reason/Auth which they naturally work towards anyways. Magic units also have the most freedom with skill slots as they're relatively accurate (don't need hit20), can't benefit enough from darting blow, or use EP abilities like Bat wrath/vantage/alert stance.
6:28 I think one of the only units who’d really benefit from black magic crit +10 is Marianne (and other ice magic units) since all of her spells are high crit. I guess Constance too but she only gets fimbulvetr
Yuri with Sword Avoid, Fetters of Dromi, and Avo Ring depending on the situation is my pick for best dancer in the game. He can dance anyone and not worry about being in the fray because of his naturally high Avo. It gives him a great chance to dodge tank and a decent chance to crit on Enemy phase with Sword Crit.
@@Sines314 definitely. My last Dancer Yuri’s chance of being hit was usually around 20-30% when being attacked, And against axes it was almost always 0%. I gave him Fetters and an avoid ring in case I needed some extra avoid. Imo it makes up for his lackluster combat, and fits my play style for a dancer perfectly
Great vid, always love hearing your opinions. One ability I don't really understand your placement that you just kinda breezed over was pass. I used to use pass on Bernie, but when I started putting her in a flying class, I noticed it stopped being useful for me. Fliers tend to approach from different directions than land bound units, so there's not often an enemy for me to move through. I found pass useful on indoor maps or when I put Bernie or Claude on a horse, but it just didn't come up when they're flying. I swapped it out for bow prowess in Bernie's case.
Offensive tactics is only good in NG+, but it is really nice there. You are probably doing a different build than the previous run, but you always get your Authority ranks. Having Byleth with Authority Lv. 5 + Offensive Tactics is a nice "in case of emergency break glass" solution for one shotting a problematic unit in the early game.
I never once thought to use battalion desperation. I'd say that I'll give it a shot since I'm currently playing through the blue lios route but, well... Three Hopes came out today so maybe later lol
23:54 I am actually REALLY curious about that video about Battalion Desperation. I like Ingrid more than most people do, so I'd like to hear something that makes her good.
Offensive Tactics can be viable in some maps on Lysithea(mastermind makes S+ less implausible-ish) with Authority level 5, fiendish blow and Defiant Magic to try and get secondary hits of Macuil aoe blast to leave on 1hp so they slay themselves into generic bishops/mages(1-3 thoron and/or caduceus) with Impregnable wall on them. You can chip finisher the ones that don't drop to 1hp leisurely since they're locked down at a range already. edit: If it _is_ working to 1hp a majority, emphasis on "is", you can play to pull enemies into a massive blob using the same imp wall as set up.
Wait a second, Pomp & Circumstance is pretty good on the actual lords because they get the Lord class as well with it, I mean like Prewar Lord not the war arc Classes. It's not the best in other classes but for those three I'd put it up a few tiers personally +4 Charisma and Luck during that last bit is pretty useful on harder paralogues. I'd argue C tier not D a little anyway. I think it's not great on anybody else but I think early game it's got a decent benefit on the Lord Class
I gave Lindhart poison strike in one of my playthroughs, and he just ate up every enemy's hp bar every time he attacked.💀 He was definitely a menace on the offensive and a great support unit.
I've never used offensive tactics none do I think it's that good. But a use case I could think of is final map in sliver snow to help hit gambit against the monster boss with really high charm.
Sword avoid +20 though can be useful specifically for the dancer. With it and sword proficiency they could become quite hard to hit and with the dancer not really engaging in combat you don't really need many of the normal standard abilities.
I love this game but I really hate the whole "if it's not mounted with super canto then it's not a good class" meta. It's not any of the players faults obviously. The devs are to blame for making this way. It just sucks that I know I'm probably playing suboptimally with my warmasters and trickster Marianne because I enjoy variety.
I agree to a point, but honestly you can make anything work, and things like Grapplers, War Masters, Snipers etc are still absolutely good. "It just sucks that I know I'm probably playing suboptimally with my warmasters and trickster Marianne because I enjoy variety." Nah, honestly that's the best way to play. Figuring out what you wanna use because you think it will be fun, and then finding how to make it work and how to set up that specific build is some of the most fun in the game.
At the end of the day you can really make most any class work even in maddening, so while I wish the balance gap was less you can certainly be successful with “bad” classes. Trickster Constance was actually pretty good in my ng VW run since having stealth meant she could Rescue in Balthus or just engage for some meaningful chip damage with no fear of retaliation. Would Dark Flier have been better? Probably, but trickster was fun and dark flier doesn’t have finger gun spell attack animations.
@@SparkBlazeWarriors if only trickster didn't have halved spell uses - whyyyy IS, whyyyy? such a needless con for all the guys that wanna use dlc classes
I have made heat use of Lethality on my main character, Felix, Petra and Shamir. Felix is great in the sniper role. I would have liked to have gotten him to Bow Knight for more movement but I didn't put any points into riding. Also Close Counter was a must with my main character as far as positioning I cam bait both mages and melee weapons enemies and take them out if they get too close.
I think sword crit +10 belongs in B. Not only does vanwrathing with Hero work really well for it’s I hereby vantage, but you can use the cursed Aisha sword to reach 100% crit on player phase and dual phase with batallion vantage. But the setup requires sword crit +10
Sword avoid dancer Yuri is his best build since it makes a dancer who can go into dangerous parts of the map without nearly so much fear given his naturally high speed and charm. Don't give up your dancer for sword avoid but dont just throw sword avoid away. Use it to its full potential people.
May I ask why you never did a Breaking Down Dedue video? It seems to be one of the only ones you didn’t do 😢 or are you still working on the series? I don’t see one for Sylvain either
I do think Sword crit +10 is at least as good as Lance Crit +10, if not better. It enables a dual phase crit stacking build usable by any male unit with Battalion Vantage (mbyleth, Yuri, Felix, and ignatz). These builds don’t use wrath, instead relying on the high in and crit from the Wo Dao and Cursed Aisha Sword, and therefore need all the crit they can get.
Not putting speed +2 in A tier :I. You can benchmark prot tanks to not get doubled by lance/axe/magics as well as help those mid+ speed bow users like Bernie to double. It really lets you fight those atrocious early game barely-doubled scenarios on nearly any unit you want. In myrm(e+/d sword~) you have +3 total speed at level 6. Not to mention most units won't see a kill/chip benchmark from strength+2 in the early game yet anyways, it's just single-hits for a long while with t-lance curved shot. I'd put defense+2 over strength+2 for the hardest earlygames, and speed+2 for that same reason.
Defiant magic helps Thyrsus Dorothea, which is like, sure but why There is 0 other use case for it too it could be okay on Hubert if Hubert's egg finally cracked but alas
A big pet peeve with the tierlists is judging things based on classes they're in like crit+20 in war master. I am looking to see if crit+20 is good, not to rewatch the class tier list all over again
@@JonoabboFE maybe eventually, but I would like to see some room for good abilities in bad/suboptimal classes to be recognized as good abilities so I can see that and then try to make it work (or not). The classes do matter due to when the ability becomes available, and due to it limiting your class choices (for class abilities) or not (for skill abilities), but in my opinion just there being a better class out there shouldn't impact the placement of an ability. The same goes for some other abilities that you dismiss with "you should do other things", like sword avoid. The fact that other things are better should make those things rank higher and not make sword avoid rank lower. Like most of your content btw and even most tierlists, just this one for some reason really irked me
@@ilyaterk110 I get what you are saying - and completely understand why you want what you are requesting, but it feels fundamentally impossible. I can't really judge something like Crit+20 in a vacuum, because it is inherently tied to war master. It would require me to experience the ability in a way that is not possible within the game. Similarly, I can't judge Swordfaire and Axefaire independent of the classes they are based on, because they are directly tied to those classes (outside of the S+ ranks obviously). At least within the context of this list, the class an ability is tied too does directly affect how good it is - although maybe there is room for a separate piece of content relating to out of the way or classlocked abilities that can hold more merit.
@@JonoabboFE I don't think that's what I am asking. You can pretty much always tell there are abilities that feel good to use / make a big impact when you use them. I guess for an example Black Mag Range +1 that Valkyrie gives is a good ability, because it lets you chip from beyond reach of ranged enemies. Even though Dark Flier is a superior class choice, I don't think that should matter when evaluating Black Mag Range +1? If the class it's tied to makes you unable to use the ability, I would maybe understand your point of view. Like how you mentioned with Stealth that you want your Assassins to get hit and that's why you rank it lower - I think that's perfectly valid! But if you'd say I rank it lower, because Assassin is bad, I think that defeats the purpose of the ability tier list. Going back to Crit+20, I agree with your placement and I agree with part of your reasoning, but I strongly disagree with another part. "Crit+20 is not that good, because it's locked to Warmaster which means you're not flexible in your class choices, it's only available to males as a result of that and it comes in late, because Warmaster is a master class." - I think those are perfectly valid. "Crit+20 is not that good, because it's locked to Warmaster and pretty much all of your units would rather go Wyvern Lord over Warmaster" - I think is a bad justification for an ability tierlist. Hope I cleared things up
@@ilyaterk110 That definitely makes sense, I understand what you are saying there. I'll be honest and say that I don't entirely remember my justification for it's placing, this tier list is rather old, but I think being locked to a sub-optimal class probably would hinder an abilities placement quite justifiably - if you are having to make sacrifices in your class choice in order to make use of something, that is worse than, well... not having to do that.
6:15 whats tragic is that felix doesnt even get the high crit ice spells so there is no optimal user of this skill, garbage distribution 36:40 thank you bro i loooooved having thunder when i was going through mage changing classes on lysithea and losing it kinda hurt 😂
Okay wyvern lord is good, yes. But classes like War Master is still good because you don't want a whole team of flyers, every new flyer is a diminishing return to the team.
Only in terms of battalions imo. You end up sticking mediocre battalions on your flyers, but the movement and Canto definitely make up for it in my opinion. That being said, I do prefer to use infantry classes mixed in with flyers just for the added dimensions to combat. Master Warmaster with Felix for Quick Reopst, then set him back in Grappler for Fierce Iron Fists, and watch him work.
Disagree. I played the same route in NG+ by trying to diversify my classes used and then in NG by using only optimal combinations (and therefore having so many flyers) and the NG was actually easier than the NG+. That's insane, NG+ should be way easier. Flying trivializes NG and it doesn't have much of a diminishing return at all imo.
Coming back 2 weeks later to say White Tomefaire should be in a tier below everything else because it's taking up a slot that could have been Lancefaire on Holy Kinight.
Hit +20 is overrated, I’ve never used it and still don’t have accuracy problems so that time is best spent somewhere else Strength and magic +2 is negligible bonuses and are not worth it at all unless you have unspent slots
I'm surprised you don't have any accuracy problems, especially when using gambits or attacking from multiple tiles away with bows considering the -30 penalty after 2. And thats kind of the point, for a massive portion of Strength & Magic +2, you will have unspent slots, since they come so early, although I also don't think an additional 4 damage so early in the game is particularly negligible.
@@JonoabboFE hit +20 is really good on archers but I don’t think you should go out of your way to give it to units who aren’t using bows frequently Btw I didn’t expect you react to my comment, good on you for engaging with your fanbase
Ok first of all I need to state that I am not really that into maddening (kinda above my skill level if I am going to be honest) however from what I have played and seen in similar videos to this and the class vid of yours I am kinda confused. The reason for this is from my knowledge anything to do with axe is considered bad by most people when it comes to maddening due to its hit and especially wyvern lord is bad due to the high investment it takes to get any character especially ones with any banes in it into it. Same goes with swords as in this video you state that sword units are bad which I find odd as I have always found swordmaster to be one of the better classes. Of course given I have not been playing in this difficulty I am not exactly as well acquainted with it as others are so I thought I would state my idea and maybe someone would be able to tell me why so many videos have so many different opinions on such things.... also I will state that speed +2 is pretty good on units that just need that little bit of speed to not get doubled early game but that is just me.
Wyvern and Axes are *definitely* not considered bad - The game is often referred to as "Wyvern Emblem" and one of the biggest criticisms of the game is that you can just throw everyone in to Wyvern and it will easily be one of their best classes
@@JonoabboFE I am aware that wyvern lord is good however my confusion is that axes are considered impossible by many to use in maddening especially wyvern lord as in order to fix the ac of the weapon you would have to go out of your way to get aim +20 which makes the long road to getting flying, lance, and axe harder by adding both authority and bow in order to get them. Basically if feels like too much work when you could use something like swordmaster or sniper which are much easier to get into and while sword master is not as strong as even I would like it does have a few things I feel are worth it. Astra tho taking so many uses feels bad to me tho.
Throwing it out there, Lifetaker has a fun niche with Ferdinand because it applies after the fight which means if he levels up and he gets a hit point he'll heal that one point and keep Confidence (assuming that the enemy has at least 2 HP).
Also with dimitri
@@Mrstormrider77 Sure but Ferdinands increased hit chance is what makes it at least worth considering using up a skill slot. Dimitri only gets higher avoid chance and since most people use BattalionVantage + Battalion Wrath there is hardly any use for Lifetaker on Dimitri. The only usecases I can see is if you don't use this combo or if Dimitri misses his attack but that's about it. Furthermore it takes up a limited skill slot and you need to train Dimitri in Reason magic AND use two dark seals on him for hardly any gain.
Seal Speed *crawling* into frame was an amazing touch you really didn't need to add an hour into the video. But you did.
It's shocking how little subscribers you have for how detailed and thorough your content is. Your videos actually had me going back to three houses, a game that I considered to be oversaturated and relatively middle ground in terms of fire emblem games that I enjoy. Really good stuff. Keep it up
Thank you so much, I really appreciate it!
If I can make a case for move +1 your dancer really doesn't need anything for tutoring time so getting the +1 move on dancers to reach your Canto units further up has been quite useful
Also, seal speed coming in super slow is pretty funny no lie
I think QR is a bit underrated here. The ability to completely ignore enemy speed stats alone and block doubles is crazy good especially for the late game. High investment, yes but also high reward. The boost to survivability is immense when paired with how strong low health builds are in this game. You have a very easy way to get yourself to vantage territory without needing to apply blessing. Also war master itself is a great class so it's not like a weird out of the way routing.
P.S. while it doesn't work with QR desperation a ctually works on enemy phase since you technically still initiate the attack if you have vantage. It's an inferior option to wrath, but if for whatever reason you don't wanna use wrath it still works well-ish. Battalion desperation jeritza is pretty awesome on player phase as a pseudo swift strikes meme.
Also I think pass is way to high in A Tier. It's niche at best for Bernadetta vengeance LTC shenans but there's no way most of the roster would benefit from pass over several other skills in this list. Maybe I'm misunderstand but could you please give some context as to why you rank pass so high?
Thanks as always!
Thank you for the comment!
My biggest issue with QR is that mastering a master class is just way too late in the game to play any serious impact, you probably aren't hitting this until chapter ~18 at best, since even with a knowledge gem you need 50 combats in the class, and for the time it comes, you will already have better options available. War Master also isn't bad, but it isn't the best option for the point in time either, and the fact that half of the cast is immediately locked out is also a hinderance.
Being the mastery ability of a master class comes with the unavoidable caveat that your unit has already spent most of the game dealing with this problem in other ways, and if the problem was that significant, you probably wouldn't have opted for this path in the first place, which means that at best it is solving minor issues or providing an alternative solution - still valuable for sure, but decidedly less so than something that is build defining or solving a major issue.
I don't think it helps that the pathing to it already allows you to go in to Warrior, so it's not like it's an alternative for units who struggle to get Wrath. On top of that, the prevalence of fliers means your guard adjutants are probably going to be up for grabs by anyone who needs them since a good portion of your cast will be unable to use them, so whilst it can help survivability to get set up, this is already quite a solvable problem - and you could argue the adjutant is better for things like Vengeance and Defiant abilities.
Even if you do get it on your EP Unit, I'm not sure you even want to run it over over Wrath/Vantage/H20/Prowess/Weapon Crit, and for an ability that comes this late and for this much investment, that's just not really enough to push it in to B tier for me personally.
@@JonoabboFE I agree I love the skill but just to get too the dang skill is tedious unless you have time time to chill in a forest tile for about three hours
I highly recommend trying War Master male byleth. You usually get quick riposte at around chapter 14 without excessive grinding because byleth have his personal skill to level up fast (and use the knowledge gem) . I think it is so slept on since most people use female flyer byleth.
@@llptg1016 actually female is still better if you give her QR via NG+ with her female skills
@@llptg1016 Byleth's personal skill doesn't increase weapon exp gains unfortunately.
Speed +2 is so slept on. Byleth use it to aggro death knight in chapter 5 and tank a hit. Edelgard use it with darting blow and weight -3 to double absolutely everything mid game.
Death Knight is just gonna Crit you anyways
I also think sword avoid +20 is very useful on the dancer. Dancers are usually fast and physically frail and are just behind the front lines. So the main thing they need to watch out for is bows and sword avoid +20 helps with that a lot especially if you stack it with proficiency. The dancer doesn't really engage in combat so most skills don't do anything on them. You can also midmax for avoid with an avoid ring and a batalion that boosts avoid since again the dancer doesn't have to worry about combat.
If I am using a dancer I pretty much keep sword avoid +20 on them at all times as it usually means they can't be hit by archers.
Sword is now underrated by the community. Assassin is great and swordfaire gives it stable damage output
What makes assassin great? 2 of it's class abilities are Locktouch and Stealth, it's limited to 6 move, and has no canto or flight. Swordfaire is mostly just compensating for the lack of might swords already have compared to axes and lances, and things like the Rapier are much more limited than the Horseslayer.
@@JonoabboFE stealth is awesome when used with a dodge tank or a wrath/vantage unit. Dmitry can't do it himself because he could get hit by gambits and ballistas/fire orb. Having an assassin to help kill things and use retribution on dimitri when he runs out was really useful last time I played AM.
Units like Catherine and byleth can do some real damage as assassin (specially with darting blow).
I always have Byleth using swords. It may be “suboptimal” but it just feels right. Yuri is another Sword user for me. Especially as a dancer. Sword Avo drops most hit chances below 20% against him, and quite a few under 10% (with Avo Ring)
But axs are the best weapon type in the game.
Why cant I double fortress knights? Why cant I hit anything without hit +20? Why cant I keep up with maddening enemy stats? But no swords suck they do like 0 damage because I don't use them and give them a chance to do damage.
I always find your videos on this game so interesting, its crazy how different Maddening meta is compared to Hard meta...
And yet it keeps reminding me why I generally dislike Maddening because of how optimisation is so important which imo takes away from the sandboxy aspect I love so much.
Thank you! I will say though, you don't have to play super optimally on maddening - my last playthrough (which was streamed on here) used a bunch of Off Meta builds and generally just played around with some fun concepts.
Personally I view the dynamic in the exact opposite way. Hard mode requires no effort for things to be good. Stuff like mortal savant Felix will work well on hard simply because it's hard mode, which makes it boring IMO. The real fun of 3h comes from screwing around on maddening, with stuff like battalion vantage sword war master ignatz. Coming up with a funny build that actually works because you utilized the tools the game gives you in a clever way feels way more rewarding than just "x build is good because it's hard mode"
The problem with you undervaluing healing is healing is great.
Free exp, free class mastery.
Now, if only it healed for 0 hp.
I think Move+1 is a bit underrated. It's easy to grab on Bishop/Gremories as long as the character doesn't have a bane because these classes do not need high investment outside of Faith/Reason/Auth which they naturally work towards anyways. Magic units also have the most freedom with skill slots as they're relatively accurate (don't need hit20), can't benefit enough from darting blow, or use EP abilities like Bat wrath/vantage/alert stance.
6:28 I think one of the only units who’d really benefit from black magic crit +10 is Marianne (and other ice magic units) since all of her spells are high crit. I guess Constance too but she only gets fimbulvetr
Yuri with Sword Avoid, Fetters of Dromi, and Avo Ring depending on the situation is my pick for best dancer in the game. He can dance anyone and not worry about being in the fray because of his naturally high Avo. It gives him a great chance to dodge tank and a decent chance to crit on Enemy phase with Sword Crit.
@@Sines314 definitely. My last Dancer Yuri’s chance of being hit was usually around 20-30% when being attacked, And against axes it was almost always 0%. I gave him Fetters and an avoid ring in case I needed some extra avoid. Imo it makes up for his lackluster combat, and fits my play style for a dancer perfectly
Great vid, always love hearing your opinions.
One ability I don't really understand your placement that you just kinda breezed over was pass. I used to use pass on Bernie, but when I started putting her in a flying class, I noticed it stopped being useful for me. Fliers tend to approach from different directions than land bound units, so there's not often an enemy for me to move through. I found pass useful on indoor maps or when I put Bernie or Claude on a horse, but it just didn't come up when they're flying. I swapped it out for bow prowess in Bernie's case.
Thanks! Was waiting for this!!
Now I really want the mortal savant video xD
Offensive tactics is only good in NG+, but it is really nice there. You are probably doing a different build than the previous run, but you always get your Authority ranks. Having Byleth with Authority Lv. 5 + Offensive Tactics is a nice "in case of emergency break glass" solution for one shotting a problematic unit in the early game.
I never once thought to use battalion desperation. I'd say that I'll give it a shot since I'm currently playing through the blue lios route but, well... Three Hopes came out today so maybe later lol
Battalion Desperation video, now that would be fancy 👀
Yes! I’ve never used Bat Desperation but I’m contemplating it for Leonie for my next GD run.
Jeritza can use counter attack to deal with those bolting mages in CF end game.
Or you can also tank them with Constance’s bolting. They’re a nice team
Lifetaker is so slept on
Dark Mage Sylvain with Lifetaker was one of my most dependable units in my latest run.
23:54 I am actually REALLY curious about that video about Battalion Desperation. I like Ingrid more than most people do, so I'd like to hear something that makes her good.
10/10 video to zone out to in math class
Grappler Byleth with brawl avoid got me through my Maddening Silver Snow run.
Offensive Tactics can be viable in some maps on Lysithea(mastermind makes S+ less implausible-ish) with Authority level 5, fiendish blow and Defiant Magic to try and get secondary hits of Macuil aoe blast to leave on 1hp so they slay themselves into generic bishops/mages(1-3 thoron and/or caduceus) with Impregnable wall on them. You can chip finisher the ones that don't drop to 1hp leisurely since they're locked down at a range already. edit: If it _is_ working to 1hp a majority, emphasis on "is", you can play to pull enemies into a massive blob using the same imp wall as set up.
Wait a second, Pomp & Circumstance is pretty good on the actual lords because they get the Lord class as well with it, I mean like Prewar Lord not the war arc Classes. It's not the best in other classes but for those three I'd put it up a few tiers personally +4 Charisma and Luck during that last bit is pretty useful on harder paralogues. I'd argue C tier not D a little anyway. I think it's not great on anybody else but I think early game it's got a decent benefit on the Lord Class
I gave Lindhart poison strike in one of my playthroughs, and he just ate up every enemy's hp bar every time he attacked.💀
He was definitely a menace on the offensive and a great support unit.
I've never used offensive tactics none do I think it's that good. But a use case I could think of is final map in sliver snow to help hit gambit against the monster boss with really high charm.
Sword avoid +20 though can be useful specifically for the dancer. With it and sword proficiency they could become quite hard to hit and with the dancer not really engaging in combat you don't really need many of the normal standard abilities.
I love this game but I really hate the whole "if it's not mounted with super canto then it's not a good class" meta. It's not any of the players faults obviously. The devs are to blame for making this way. It just sucks that I know I'm probably playing suboptimally with my warmasters and trickster Marianne because I enjoy variety.
I agree to a point, but honestly you can make anything work, and things like Grapplers, War Masters, Snipers etc are still absolutely good.
"It just sucks that I know I'm probably playing suboptimally with my warmasters and trickster Marianne because I enjoy variety." Nah, honestly that's the best way to play. Figuring out what you wanna use because you think it will be fun, and then finding how to make it work and how to set up that specific build is some of the most fun in the game.
At the end of the day you can really make most any class work even in maddening, so while I wish the balance gap was less you can certainly be successful with “bad” classes.
Trickster Constance was actually pretty good in my ng VW run since having stealth meant she could Rescue in Balthus or just engage for some meaningful chip damage with no fear of retaliation. Would Dark Flier have been better? Probably, but trickster was fun and dark flier doesn’t have finger gun spell attack animations.
@@SparkBlazeWarriors if only trickster didn't have halved spell uses - whyyyy IS, whyyyy? such a needless con for all the guys that wanna use dlc classes
I have made heat use of Lethality on my main character, Felix, Petra and Shamir. Felix is great in the sniper role. I would have liked to have gotten him to Bow Knight for more movement but I didn't put any points into riding. Also Close Counter was a must with my main character as far as positioning I cam bait both mages and melee weapons enemies and take them out if they get too close.
1:12:06 Sealed
I think sword crit +10 belongs in B. Not only does vanwrathing with Hero work really well for it’s I hereby vantage, but you can use the cursed Aisha sword to reach 100% crit on player phase and dual phase with batallion vantage. But the setup requires sword crit +10
Sword avoid dancer Yuri is his best build since it makes a dancer who can go into dangerous parts of the map without nearly so much fear given his naturally high speed and charm.
Don't give up your dancer for sword avoid but dont just throw sword avoid away. Use it to its full potential people.
I have made so many game crushing builds with sword avoid and sword crit. Stop the cap lol
May I ask why you never did a Breaking Down Dedue video? It seems to be one of the only ones you didn’t do 😢 or are you still working on the series? I don’t see one for Sylvain either
I do think Sword crit +10 is at least as good as Lance Crit +10, if not better. It enables a dual phase crit stacking build usable by any male unit with Battalion Vantage (mbyleth, Yuri, Felix, and ignatz). These builds don’t use wrath, instead relying on the high in and crit from the Wo Dao and Cursed Aisha Sword, and therefore need all the crit they can get.
Not putting speed +2 in A tier :I. You can benchmark prot tanks to not get doubled by lance/axe/magics as well as help those mid+ speed bow users like Bernie to double. It really lets you fight those atrocious early game barely-doubled scenarios on nearly any unit you want. In myrm(e+/d sword~) you have +3 total speed at level 6. Not to mention most units won't see a kill/chip benchmark from strength+2 in the early game yet anyways, it's just single-hits for a long while with t-lance curved shot. I'd put defense+2 over strength+2 for the hardest earlygames, and speed+2 for that same reason.
Killer bow Shamir with double bowfaire and bowcrit + 10 went ccrazy
If annette got black tome crit I still wouldn't used cause I doubt she could get enough crit on Excalibur to make it worth
Annette crit on 2 percent tons of times for me
Defiant magic helps Thyrsus Dorothea, which is like, sure but why
There is 0 other use case for it too it could be okay on Hubert if Hubert's egg finally cracked but alas
26:00 I thought offensive tactics was just an enemy ability lmaoooooo I’ve obviously never gotten anyone to S+ authority either
Love steal is 'initiate a trade with an enemy' haha
You think offensive tactics stacks with Ingrids personal skill?
Also love your vids especially the tier list ones
I would imagine so but I genuinely have no idea hahaha
A big pet peeve with the tierlists is judging things based on classes they're in like crit+20 in war master. I am looking to see if crit+20 is good, not to rewatch the class tier list all over again
Whether or not crit+20 is good is directly related to the classes you can access it in, though?
@@JonoabboFE maybe eventually, but I would like to see some room for good abilities in bad/suboptimal classes to be recognized as good abilities so I can see that and then try to make it work (or not). The classes do matter due to when the ability becomes available, and due to it limiting your class choices (for class abilities) or not (for skill abilities), but in my opinion just there being a better class out there shouldn't impact the placement of an ability.
The same goes for some other abilities that you dismiss with "you should do other things", like sword avoid. The fact that other things are better should make those things rank higher and not make sword avoid rank lower.
Like most of your content btw and even most tierlists, just this one for some reason really irked me
@@ilyaterk110 I get what you are saying - and completely understand why you want what you are requesting, but it feels fundamentally impossible.
I can't really judge something like Crit+20 in a vacuum, because it is inherently tied to war master. It would require me to experience the ability in a way that is not possible within the game. Similarly, I can't judge Swordfaire and Axefaire independent of the classes they are based on, because they are directly tied to those classes (outside of the S+ ranks obviously).
At least within the context of this list, the class an ability is tied too does directly affect how good it is - although maybe there is room for a separate piece of content relating to out of the way or classlocked abilities that can hold more merit.
@@JonoabboFE I don't think that's what I am asking. You can pretty much always tell there are abilities that feel good to use / make a big impact when you use them. I guess for an example Black Mag Range +1 that Valkyrie gives is a good ability, because it lets you chip from beyond reach of ranged enemies. Even though Dark Flier is a superior class choice, I don't think that should matter when evaluating Black Mag Range +1?
If the class it's tied to makes you unable to use the ability, I would maybe understand your point of view. Like how you mentioned with Stealth that you want your Assassins to get hit and that's why you rank it lower - I think that's perfectly valid! But if you'd say I rank it lower, because Assassin is bad, I think that defeats the purpose of the ability tier list.
Going back to Crit+20, I agree with your placement and I agree with part of your reasoning, but I strongly disagree with another part.
"Crit+20 is not that good, because it's locked to Warmaster which means you're not flexible in your class choices, it's only available to males as a result of that and it comes in late, because Warmaster is a master class." - I think those are perfectly valid.
"Crit+20 is not that good, because it's locked to Warmaster and pretty much all of your units would rather go Wyvern Lord over Warmaster" - I think is a bad justification for an ability tierlist.
Hope I cleared things up
@@ilyaterk110 That definitely makes sense, I understand what you are saying there. I'll be honest and say that I don't entirely remember my justification for it's placing, this tier list is rather old, but I think being locked to a sub-optimal class probably would hinder an abilities placement quite justifiably - if you are having to make sacrifices in your class choice in order to make use of something, that is worse than, well... not having to do that.
6:15 whats tragic is that felix doesnt even get the high crit ice spells so there is no optimal user of this skill, garbage distribution
36:40 thank you bro i loooooved having thunder when i was going through mage changing classes on lysithea and losing it kinda hurt 😂
The slow reveal card on right made me laugh at 1:12:05
Also, these are just selectable abilities? There was no Dance even though Dance+ was there (Gregory class skills are used, so confused here)
1:21:12 but we LOVE arguing about Constance
Okay wyvern lord is good, yes. But classes like War Master is still good because you don't want a whole team of flyers, every new flyer is a diminishing return to the team.
Only in terms of battalions imo. You end up sticking mediocre battalions on your flyers, but the movement and Canto definitely make up for it in my opinion.
That being said, I do prefer to use infantry classes mixed in with flyers just for the added dimensions to combat. Master Warmaster with Felix for Quick Reopst, then set him back in Grappler for Fierce Iron Fists, and watch him work.
Disagree. I played the same route in NG+ by trying to diversify my classes used and then in NG by using only optimal combinations (and therefore having so many flyers) and the NG was actually easier than the NG+. That's insane, NG+ should be way easier. Flying trivializes NG and it doesn't have much of a diminishing return at all imo.
I use alert stance plus on byleth and leonie all the time.
14:20 yeah I’m still mad Dorothea got white magic avoid
Coming back 2 weeks later to say White Tomefaire should be in a tier below everything else because it's taking up a slot that could have been Lancefaire on Holy Kinight.
Assassin Ignatz can cripple bosses and monsters.
Why are all the components for VanWrath strats so low? Theyre considered as the best strategy in the game
Hit +20 is overrated, I’ve never used it and still don’t have accuracy problems so that time is best spent somewhere else
Strength and magic +2 is negligible bonuses and are not worth it at all unless you have unspent slots
I'm surprised you don't have any accuracy problems, especially when using gambits or attacking from multiple tiles away with bows considering the -30 penalty after 2.
And thats kind of the point, for a massive portion of Strength & Magic +2, you will have unspent slots, since they come so early, although I also don't think an additional 4 damage so early in the game is particularly negligible.
@@JonoabboFE hit +20 is really good on archers but I don’t think you should go out of your way to give it to units who aren’t using bows frequently
Btw I didn’t expect you react to my comment, good on you for engaging with your fanbase
@@pizzapersona9320 No problem, I appreciate you taking the time to comment!
Ok first of all I need to state that I am not really that into maddening (kinda above my skill level if I am going to be honest) however from what I have played and seen in similar videos to this and the class vid of yours I am kinda confused. The reason for this is from my knowledge anything to do with axe is considered bad by most people when it comes to maddening due to its hit and especially wyvern lord is bad due to the high investment it takes to get any character especially ones with any banes in it into it. Same goes with swords as in this video you state that sword units are bad which I find odd as I have always found swordmaster to be one of the better classes. Of course given I have not been playing in this difficulty I am not exactly as well acquainted with it as others are so I thought I would state my idea and maybe someone would be able to tell me why so many videos have so many different opinions on such things.... also I will state that speed +2 is pretty good on units that just need that little bit of speed to not get doubled early game but that is just me.
Wyvern and Axes are *definitely* not considered bad - The game is often referred to as "Wyvern Emblem" and one of the biggest criticisms of the game is that you can just throw everyone in to Wyvern and it will easily be one of their best classes
@@JonoabboFE I am aware that wyvern lord is good however my confusion is that axes are considered impossible by many to use in maddening especially wyvern lord as in order to fix the ac of the weapon you would have to go out of your way to get aim +20 which makes the long road to getting flying, lance, and axe harder by adding both authority and bow in order to get them. Basically if feels like too much work when you could use something like swordmaster or sniper which are much easier to get into and while sword master is not as strong as even I would like it does have a few things I feel are worth it. Astra tho taking so many uses feels bad to me tho.
Bruh why u hate mages /j Dark and Reason +1 is broken with Thyrus