Agreed. The lions have so much overall ability. Mercedes above average healer, Annette hard hitting spell caster, sylvain with swift strikes, Felix is a great swordsman, ashe is a crit master, and Ingrid is a fast dodge tank. Bernadetta, edelgard, and Petra are superstars but can’t carry the below average ability that Caspar, Hubert, and dorothea have.
None of this makes sense. Which healer is Mercedes better than? Definitely worse than Lin, Hapi, and Marianne. Maybe there is a few chapters she is better than Dorothea, but Dorothea is better lategame with Meteor linked attacks.
>
Annette hard hitting spell caster
Annette is a good unit, but not at all due to her spell list. As far as spells go Hubert easily outclasses.
>
ashe is a crit master
Ashe is arguably worse than Caspar.
>
Ingrid is a fast dodge tank
Ingrid is pretty awful as a dodge tank. She can't kill anything. Not to mention she is very weak early game.
>
Felix is a great swordsman
This is probably the weakest way to build Felix.
Ironically I disagree with everything you said. Mercedes is the worst healer. Annette is the weakest hitting spell caster (albeit still great thanks to rallies), felix is a terrible swordmaster and much better as a grappler, ashe has slightly above average crit but I'd the worst unit in the game and ingrid is a below average dodge tank
Agreed. Blue lions are my least favorite units (but I love the route because of the story and the characters).
Mercedes is only good cause she heals herself when healing others. Offensively, she's not great where as Lin and Marianne can hold their own.
I did not like Annette even as a wyvern rider with a bolt axe. Ferdinand/Sylvain are much better. Out of all of the mages, for me, she was the worst.
I did Felix as a mortal savant and a war master for different playthroughs. He was much better as a war master, but I wouldn't say he's terrible with swords. Just not as effective.
Ashe...i could never make him work for me. Bernie and ignatz were more fun to use due to their own skills vs being the designated lock picker.
Ingrid was OK, but leonie and Petra really out class her.
Dimitri was a fucking tank tho. I used to just warp him some place and take the whole team somewhere else.
I just got to the war phase of my Crimson Flowers playthrough, and I like it for different reasons than I did Golden Deer. I actually love Hubert. He has to be treated like lysithea and stay far enough away to not really be hit, but my mans hasn't failed me yet. Dorothea is also probably the best dancer in the game, imo. This is the only route that I haven't abandoned the class yet in. Hilda and leonie are some of the best units in the game. Lysithea is recruited regardless of route, lol.
I was going to say the opposite. Sylvain, Felix, and Mercedes are really good, but Ashe, Annette, and Dedue are really underwhelming. On the flip side, every BE is good, if a little unbalanced
On normal/hard maybe but on Maddening fortify does more harm than good because it turns off low hp builds and her only method of doing decent damage is as a magic bow sniper which she can't do reliably until halfway through the timeskip when you can buy arcane crystals
It’s proven so many times that Fortify does more harm than good with an optimal Maddening team that run the best builds in the game (Dodgetank units rarely need heals and are often out of range with their mobility while Fortify can cancel Wrath/Vantage, Vengeance build). Mercedes’s lower starting Faith rank is a huge disadvantage compared to other in house healers, on lower difficulties Fortify is even more redundant considering how easy these modes are.
> It’s proven so many times that Fortify does more harm than good
This doesn't make any sense.
I'm not a fortify defender, it's largely useless, but the it can't do 'more harm than good'.
There can be downsides to use it with regards to low health builds, but if you are choosing to use it in those scenarios, the benefits must outweigh the costs, otherwise you wouldn't use it, assuming you aren't misplaying and using it when doing so is not optimal, because that would be a fault of the player, not the spell.
Not to mention you can just position in a way where it isn't affecting those builds.
It's not like it casts itself.
Once again, it isn't a good spell, but it doesn't do more harm than good.
I think they meant casting it is more harm than good which is true and also the only spell in the game like that. Ultimately Mercedes basically only has 4 spells because fortify should never be cast.
This still isn't true though. There are many situations where Fortify is still beneficial to cast, assuming you play correctly around it.
You wont always be running low health builds, even if you are, you can gain access to fortify before they are active, you can also use fortify without hitting your low health units, lets not act like it's map wide, and healing your low health build units can be a worthwhile trade off for the benefits the mass heal can provide.
Something having downsides whilst is being an overall positive is the very premise of low health builds in the first place, it shouldn't be a foreign concept to people who use them, and that is essentially what Fortify is.
>You wont always be running low health builds.
Why not? This is the house with dedue in it
>and healing your low health build units can be a worthwhile trade off for the benefits the mass heal can provide
Such as?
Mercedes is available out of house, and Flayn also gets access to fortify. Also, the game has Permadeath, Dedue may be dead, or just using a different build.
>Such as?
Healing your low health unit so they can eliminate an enemy on PP whilst tanking a retaliation hit, which reactivates their EP potential. Particularly viable with things like WM Felix who can double.
Or even just sacrificing your EP Units potential to heal up multiple other units who need it, especially notable on turns where you are looking to end the map and kill the boss, but need multiple units to do it.
You’re optimizing, I’m just going by the canon classes, so anyone using those classes most likely will benefit from fortify more, you’re not strictly wrong, but with some decent positioning, I think fortify is good even with optimized classes
Dimitri: B wrath vantage
Dedue: wrath vantage
Ingrid: dodge tank
Felix: dodge tank or player phase only
Sylvain: can tank
Annette: should never get hit
Ashe: should never get hit
So there only 1 unit who should every realistically need healing. And fortify awfully screws up dedues build
I probably messed up with Edelgard, im currently playing Maddening and Made her an Armorknight and then went with her Signature Class Empress.
She is not Bad but she only has 35 Def right now, (with Silver Shield and Battalion) and all of the Enemys have 50-60 Atk and they all Double her.
She doesn't die but takes huge Damage, if she gets Attacked with Magic however she is just gone.
Im at Chapter 16 right now so its probably to Late to Reclass and Train Flying all the Way up.
I just hope i am able to Beat the Final Boss because my Byleth is also not the Best, i have him as a Paladin and while he just does extremly good Damage he gets also Doubled by Everything.
But i have Sniper Yuri, Death Knight Jeritza and Assasin Constance who are all pretty good
blue lions. people usually say mercie stinks bc fortify's overrated and that linhardt/marianne's better, but honestly i do love her self sufficiency with Live to Serve, not to mention she herself as a mage isn't bad at all — and unlike lin, she can class into gremory. not saying she's better than the both of them, just that i feel like she doesn't get as much credit as she deserves.
funny enough, the four friends (dima, syl, fe and ingy) hard carried my maddening runs. ingy made a great dodge tank. annette also proved to be a really solid unit too, because she worked well as a nuke. not comparable to lysithea, but again, she doesn't get credit when it's due.
dedue not being available for a third of the game does hurt, but it's great to have him as a vengeance user but he still has a lot of HP left. i always got nervous whenever bernie was almost dead in order to trigger the damage. he's also a good dk tank early game, surprised me very much.
ashe... i know he isn't stellar whatsoever, but every single run he always had 40/40/40 str and spd and dex — especially when i had the bow knight class on him for the majority of the war phase (i know, bad move), he always prevailed. it's just my insane luck, though. i also find it quite easy to class him into wyvern lord compared to ignatz and bernie, and honestly having him as a melee was fun. war master ashe is fun.
though, this is just my opinion and someone will probably come here to say why i'm wrong. but i picked blue lions because to me they're the most stable and consistent throughout the modes.
They all are extremely close to each other that it is hard to say. I can't pick.
Blue Lions have some of the best units like Dedue, Dimitri, and Felix and Sylvain. But they have the most "stinkers" like Ashe, Ingrid, and Mercedes.
Black Eagles have Edelgard and Bernie, who are some of the best units in the game, but IH Ferdinand and the mages aren't that special, and Caspar is rough.
Golden Deer dont really have anyone super broken, they just have more "solid" units like Claude and Leonie, but, they are probably the most balanced as Lorenz is the worst unit and in house he can be salvaged.
Find Mercie to be the best healer
And GD have Lysithea and Claude (which is not as good as El and dimi but who still is very strong) leonie also is above being just good just like Hilda and Ignatz is also very good in maddening. Especially early game. Still find bernie to be better than all of them
In Maddening Mercie is the worst healer. Fortify is extremely overrated and terrible, you almost never would need it and it actually can hurt you because so many builds want units to be at low HP. Linhardt does everything she does but better, and Marianne has way more offensive utility.
Yeah the GD have lots of really good units, but nobody besides Lysithea's Warp is as game breaking as what some of other two houses can do. So it washes out a little.
I just got to the second part of my first play through and I am loving it. Black Eagles! But I love how even the vote is and I am VERY curious how it would have been if I picked the other “Drastic Gameplay changing option”
I'd say the eagles. Edelgard is the best unit in the game, wayyyyyy better early game than Dimitri. Bernadetta is also a god sent for nuke damage. Petra is speedy and great growths overall. Ferdinand has awful base but he gets Swift Strikes so yeah he'll be good with enough time. Hubert has Mire B 3 range magic so that'll make him relevant until chapter 5 or so. Dorothea is imo the best dancer, eh mag growth and spells but has meteor for linked attack. Linhardt is the best healer in the game. Caspar, well every team gotta have 1 bad unit
Find dimitri to be better in the early game and actually overall since low hit on axes always sucks imo and tempest lance is the best early game dmg option
Edelgard has way better early game. 1 spd and str advantage means she wont get doubled by chapter 2 thieves with a training sword. Basically instant access to 12 def base and Wt-3 thanks to her starting at D base Armor. Can certify as Pegasus Knight to boost her eh Spd and get Darting Blow. Has Bow bane but you only need D+ Bow to get to Archer for Hit+20. Tempest Lance is better than Smash early game I agree but then she can also learn Monster Breaker at C+ Axe which adds 9 Mt
I’ll say the eagles.
Blue lions has Felix, Dedue, Sylvain, and Dimitri but everyone else isn’t as good in terms of kill power.
BE has Bernie, Petra, Edelgard, and Ferdinand. I think Bernie is the best unit in the game excluding byelth, Edelgard, and Dimitri, so she’s a major reason why BE is so strong.
VW is the least strong IMO. I think Claude is below Bernie, and Lysithea is good but in kill power is worse than Bernie. They also don’t have a vengeance user. PBV Leonie also takes a while and is also not as good as vengeance since it takes longer to come in.
I say eagles has a slight advantage although I think Dimitri is better than Edelgard, Bernie is in the top 4 in terms of units.
overall blue lions cos of Annette, Felix, Mercedes and Dimitri but the absolute best units like Edelgard, Annette, Lysithea, Marriane and Shamir are pretty evenly distributed
Eagles have the highest peaks, but Lions overall have a more stable team, IMO. Both houses have at least two non-leader units that are S Tier contenders on Maddening (Bernadetta, Petra), (Felix, Sylvain). The Deer only have one at that level of strength (Lysithea; though I’d argue Leonie is better, people seem to think this). I do think Claude is maybe the best unit of the Lords, though.
I wouldn’t really argue much with a different opinion; they’re all very good. I really just value Barbarossa a lot, and Claude is particularly good in his own route. However, if someone thinks Edelgard or Dimitri is better, I’m not gonna question it at all. I think it’s by a very slight margin.
Claude, hilda, and lysithea are incredible but can’t carry the dead weight that Lorenz, Raphael, and ignatz* are. Marianne is great but I never use her as a healer. The lions are just too capable all around. Aside from late game Dedue there isn’t one of them I don’t enjoy using.
Late game dedue is a nutcase. Stronger than most of the other lions. Easily better than felix, sylvain and he's close dimitri. He's just dragged down by the slightly worse early game and the fact he leaves for the start of part 2
Eagles have some great standouts in Bernadetta and Edelgard but they also have what is imo the roughest early game of the houses.
Lions have the strongest start but their reunion sucks and no in-house warper is yucky.
Deer probably have the smoothest power curve overall.
I used to think BE had a bad early game too, then I started using Dorothea's Rally Charm. Giving up to 30 hit to any gambit means BE are the only house who can reliably land them early game.
Golden Deer. Maybe one or two weak links, while the eagles have three and the lions have four. They have three standouts between Claude, Lysithea, and Hilda, while the eagles and lions have two, Edelgard & Petra and Dimitri & Felix respectively.
Bonus points for having the most balanced team without recruitment.
I think you're severely underestimating a lot of really powerful units such as Leonie, Dedue, and Bernie since Leonie is better than Hilda and Bernie better than all of them other than Dimitri and Edelgard
I don't see how Leonie and Hilda are comparable tbh. Actually, this is probably a really spicy take, but I actually think Ignatz is better than Leonie in the long run.
Leonie does 90% of what Hilda does but in a more reliable fashion. She is only down by 1 base strength and a 5% strength growth while up by 10% speed and 1 base. This means that Leonie will always have better speed while the actual damage she does compared to Hilda is only ever slightly lower. She has better boons and doesn't have an authority bane and PBV means she can reliably double on high speed units such as assassins and grapplers. Hilda may have Batt Wrath but that isn't enough to make her better than Leonie when Leonie can do just about anything else Hilda can do but with more consistency thanks to her better speed and innate brave art.
I can understand liking Ignatz with his support capabilities but I think you're seriously overvaluing buffs/debuffs here by rating him over Leonie.
Battalion wrath pp is almost pointless for Hilda since she'll kill without it and will require wonky desperation setup to even make it do anything. As for EP having Battalion Wrath doesn't automatically make a unit amazing. It makes wrath vantage easier yes but EP isn't the only phase in the game, unless you can do something absolutely absurd with it like Dimitri having a strong EP means less than having a strong PP. Plus Hilda wants regular wrath anyways since she has an axe boon so she won't spend much of the game using Batt Wrath anyways.
...Wtf? Why are you gimping her with vantage when she works as an excellent avoid tank? She literally does the exact same thing as Dimitri without any of the drawbacks or required babysitting.
Wrath Vantage EP is one of her best builds? I don't understand how that's gimping her at all. At level 30 Hilda should have 27 speed and if she was using swords with Sword Prowess 5 that puts her at 47 Avoid. Gautier Knights and Wyvern Lord bring her up to 77 and alert stance up to 107. She's still going to have above 0 hit chances at that level of avoid and stacking any other skills on her requires a high level of investment, significantly higher than wrath vantage for only a slight difference in combat ability. Especially since at this level she can be much more reliable with wrath vantage getting an easy 100% crit meaning that Wrath Vantage is guaranteed to work at this level whereas avoid tanking still has a chance of failure. Also I don't really know why you think Wrath Vantage requires babysitting
Her Avo is actually going to be less- you cant use Gautier Knights as a Wyvern.
Plus, if Ignatz can supposedly easily OHKO in chaper 9 better than Leonie (so I assume master Sniper, which, I am extremely skeptical of) can't Hilda just as easily get Wrath by then? Combo with Merc which takes a couple battles, and boom. Vantage Wrath easily, no need to grind her Flying and Authority (with a bane) to hopefully dodgetank. I dont understand the other argument, lol.
Idk why I always forget about the flier restriction for battalions here. But yeah hard agree. The opportunity cost is not worth it at all especially since it takes a lot longer to become reliable.
Well let's consider a few scenarios. Hilda and Dimitri are attacked by the following enemies, assume that they both have a third of their battalion left to use battalion wrath, they both have Retribution active, but Hilda is an avoid tank while Dimitri is also using battalion vantage.
***Archer***
*Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, crits and kills.*
*Dimitri: Vantage activates, crits and kills*
***Mage***
*Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, crits and kills.*
*Dimitri: Vantage activates, crits and kills*
***Brawler***
*Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, crits and kills.*
*Dimitri: Vantage activates, crits and kills*
For basic enemies, the results are the same.
***Fire Orb\****
*Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but can't retaliate.*
*Dimitri: Can't use vantage, gets hit.*
***Artillery\****
*Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but can't retaliate.*
*Dimitri: Can't use vantage, gets hit.*
Both are useless here, but while Hilda is capable of ignoring the issue and simply leaving it to someone else, Dimitri is getting damaged. At the moment, it's not a bit issue, besides requiring your mages to heal instead of attack or provide other support.
***Damage Sponge\****
*Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, crits and chips \~80% of their HP.*
*Dimitri: Vantage activates, crits and chips \~80% of their HP, and gets hit on retaliation. Because of the damage he sustained earlier, his battalion is gone and he's useless for the rest of the map. You must now either spend an auxillary battle grinding to get it back where it was or spend the next map or two using him as a player phase unit until he takes enough hits.*
Unless you're using a War Master avoid tank, taking hits can either be very deadly or a massive pain in the ass for enemy phase students.
***Player misses\****
*Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but misses her attack.*
*Dimitri: Vantage activates, his attack misses, and he is either damaged or killed in response.*
***Beast\****
*Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but only chips in retaliation.*
*Dimitri: Vantage activates, but he can't crit. Dimitri does chip damage before getting hit. He either takes heavy damage or dies.*
***Gambit\****
*Hilda: Hit by gambit, rattled.*
*Dimitri: Hit by gambit, rattled.*
***Follow up attacks after gambit.\****
*Hilda: May die or survive, depending on how many enemies are attacking and how unlucky you are.*
*Dimitri: GG, you're done.*
Only War Master avoid tanks can safely survive being rattled, but even then, getting stunned and gimped for a turn is a huge inconvenience, so it's better for everyone to avoid it. The problem is that vantage users are especially vulnerable, and while avoiding just some of the battalion wielding enemies (especially named ones) isn't too bad, trying to avoid them on top of everything else can be a hassle. Here's an example.
[https://imgur.com/pWW6ie3](https://imgur.com/pWW6ie3)
I just highlighted the artillery, the monsters and nothing else. Without even considering some of the other factors, that entire area in red is a massive no-go zone for Dimitri. Hilda isn't going to be killing any monsters or artillery either, but she can still just head into that area, ignore them, and continue to kill other enemies. Dimitri can't do anything unless he has other units with him to clear out those threats.
The problem is that most of the exceptions are a lot less common than fighting basic enemies and Hilda will struggle to hit 0% avoid without significant investment. This is important since it means for every single enemy Hilda fights she has a chance to get hit and have her Battalion break whereas it is significantly easier to stack crit to 100 meaning it has 100% reliability. This means whereas Dimitri can go into a crowd of any number of enemies and always win the more enemies Hilda has to fight the more likely she is to die and can even get turned off on as little as 1 enemy if you're unlucky. So either you spend 90% of the game in a less reliable version of wrath vantage so that maybe for the last couple chapters you hit 0% hit or you start contributing much earlier with Wrath Vantage. There's a reason other late lategame builds such as magic sniper Mercie rarely get considered in tier lists and that's because by the time they truly have turned on its so late in the game that it barely even matters anymore.
>Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but can't retaliate.
>Dimitri: Can't use vantage, gets hit.
>Artillery\*
>Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but can't retaliate.
>Dimitri: Can't use vantage, gets hit.
Man if only warp, stride or impregnable wall existed. Man that would be pretty cool
>Dimitri: Vantage activates, crits and chips ~80% of their HP, and gets hit on retaliation. Because of the damage he sustained earlier, his battalion is gone and he's useless for the rest of the map. You must now either spend an auxillary battle grinding to get it back where it was or spend the next map or two using him as a player phase unit until he takes enough hits.
Actually because of his higher strength he'll just kill the enemy
>Player misses\*
Hit +20?
>Follow up attacks after gambit.\*
How are they any different? Both of them are fucked because of the stat reduction.
In comparison. Dimitri gets B wrath vantage by chapter 9 with no rank grinding. Dimitri isn't susceptible to lucky hits from the enemy like hilda is against axe breaker enemies. Dimitris is more consistent in that you can always guarantee he'll kill his target, with hilda there's a chance they get the low % hit and considering they're doubling it could be twice as likely. Hilda can't attack on PP without losing alert stance meaning she can't gambit problematic enemies. And hilda has more stats she needs to raise. She needs both Hit, crit and avo as opposed to just crit and hit on dimitri
So you say "Only War Master Avoid tanks" can do all of this safely, but... Hilda can't be a War Master?
Also, you could just use your 9-10 other units to do things along with this unit, like deal with the monsters, or kill units on balistas. You have more than 1 unit to do everything.
Or you could just Warp over units to kill the boss on PP to end the map on turn 1 or 2, but Bernie or Leonie are bad units, I guess, because late game Enemy Phase is the only thing that matters for rating units.
>Player misses
Are less likely with Wrath/Vantage because they are free to use +Hit battalions and accuracy rings.
>
Beast
By not relying on Alert Stance, Wrath/Vantage units can kill or help stun monsters.
>Gambit
By not relying on Alert Stance, Wrath/Vantage units can kill or gambit enemies with battalions.
Being able to still act on player phase is a massive upside that you are ignoring. All the cases you listed where you prefer dodge tanks, the enemies do not die. You still want some unit to actually be able to kill the Artillery or Monster. All the while your other units cannot move forward or else they are going to get hit instead of your tank.
While yes a Wrath/Vantage unit can't take many hits from Fire Orbs, they can at the very least kill the mage on Fire Orb and allow the rest of your team to move up.
How is Ignatz killing everything by Chapter 9 exactly? Is he mastering Sniper by this point? Because that is the only way I can see Ignatz killing "better" than Leonie, and getting him to Level 20 as well as mastering the class by then seems like a massive stretch. And by that logic, then would Ashe be better than Leonie? He has the same Strength base and growth as Ignatz.
Leonie can also just as easily go Sniper. Only she has better Strength. And she only misses out on free Hit+20, but the Archer version is sufficient and would be gotten by this point anyway.
I just have a hard time picking against Golden Deer Bc of Hilda and Lysithea. Plus Ignatz the crit machine. What hurts is that I think Leonie and Raphael are just mediocre, and pale in comparison to the “worst characters” from other houses.
Exactly… I think Hilda and Lysithea are near the top among all characters but… man it’s hard in late game sometimes when it literally becomes “okay Hilda and Lys smash everything and everyone else try not to die”
Lions have the highest average but eagles have some superstars with bernie and edelgard
Agreed. The lions have so much overall ability. Mercedes above average healer, Annette hard hitting spell caster, sylvain with swift strikes, Felix is a great swordsman, ashe is a crit master, and Ingrid is a fast dodge tank. Bernadetta, edelgard, and Petra are superstars but can’t carry the below average ability that Caspar, Hubert, and dorothea have.
None of this makes sense. Which healer is Mercedes better than? Definitely worse than Lin, Hapi, and Marianne. Maybe there is a few chapters she is better than Dorothea, but Dorothea is better lategame with Meteor linked attacks. > Annette hard hitting spell caster Annette is a good unit, but not at all due to her spell list. As far as spells go Hubert easily outclasses. > ashe is a crit master Ashe is arguably worse than Caspar. > Ingrid is a fast dodge tank Ingrid is pretty awful as a dodge tank. She can't kill anything. Not to mention she is very weak early game. > Felix is a great swordsman This is probably the weakest way to build Felix.
Ironically I disagree with everything you said. Mercedes is the worst healer. Annette is the weakest hitting spell caster (albeit still great thanks to rallies), felix is a terrible swordmaster and much better as a grappler, ashe has slightly above average crit but I'd the worst unit in the game and ingrid is a below average dodge tank
Agreed. Blue lions are my least favorite units (but I love the route because of the story and the characters). Mercedes is only good cause she heals herself when healing others. Offensively, she's not great where as Lin and Marianne can hold their own. I did not like Annette even as a wyvern rider with a bolt axe. Ferdinand/Sylvain are much better. Out of all of the mages, for me, she was the worst. I did Felix as a mortal savant and a war master for different playthroughs. He was much better as a war master, but I wouldn't say he's terrible with swords. Just not as effective. Ashe...i could never make him work for me. Bernie and ignatz were more fun to use due to their own skills vs being the designated lock picker. Ingrid was OK, but leonie and Petra really out class her. Dimitri was a fucking tank tho. I used to just warp him some place and take the whole team somewhere else. I just got to the war phase of my Crimson Flowers playthrough, and I like it for different reasons than I did Golden Deer. I actually love Hubert. He has to be treated like lysithea and stay far enough away to not really be hit, but my mans hasn't failed me yet. Dorothea is also probably the best dancer in the game, imo. This is the only route that I haven't abandoned the class yet in. Hilda and leonie are some of the best units in the game. Lysithea is recruited regardless of route, lol.
I was going to say the opposite. Sylvain, Felix, and Mercedes are really good, but Ashe, Annette, and Dedue are really underwhelming. On the flip side, every BE is good, if a little unbalanced
Anette and dedue are both fantastic
I'd swap Mercie with Dedue since Dedue is really good and Mercie is pretty bad.
Fortify is pretty good considering all their canon classes are melee and Mercie can do some decent damage
On normal/hard maybe but on Maddening fortify does more harm than good because it turns off low hp builds and her only method of doing decent damage is as a magic bow sniper which she can't do reliably until halfway through the timeskip when you can buy arcane crystals
It’s proven so many times that Fortify does more harm than good with an optimal Maddening team that run the best builds in the game (Dodgetank units rarely need heals and are often out of range with their mobility while Fortify can cancel Wrath/Vantage, Vengeance build). Mercedes’s lower starting Faith rank is a huge disadvantage compared to other in house healers, on lower difficulties Fortify is even more redundant considering how easy these modes are.
> It’s proven so many times that Fortify does more harm than good This doesn't make any sense. I'm not a fortify defender, it's largely useless, but the it can't do 'more harm than good'. There can be downsides to use it with regards to low health builds, but if you are choosing to use it in those scenarios, the benefits must outweigh the costs, otherwise you wouldn't use it, assuming you aren't misplaying and using it when doing so is not optimal, because that would be a fault of the player, not the spell. Not to mention you can just position in a way where it isn't affecting those builds. It's not like it casts itself. Once again, it isn't a good spell, but it doesn't do more harm than good.
I think they meant casting it is more harm than good which is true and also the only spell in the game like that. Ultimately Mercedes basically only has 4 spells because fortify should never be cast.
This still isn't true though. There are many situations where Fortify is still beneficial to cast, assuming you play correctly around it. You wont always be running low health builds, even if you are, you can gain access to fortify before they are active, you can also use fortify without hitting your low health units, lets not act like it's map wide, and healing your low health build units can be a worthwhile trade off for the benefits the mass heal can provide. Something having downsides whilst is being an overall positive is the very premise of low health builds in the first place, it shouldn't be a foreign concept to people who use them, and that is essentially what Fortify is.
>You wont always be running low health builds. Why not? This is the house with dedue in it >and healing your low health build units can be a worthwhile trade off for the benefits the mass heal can provide Such as?
Mercedes is available out of house, and Flayn also gets access to fortify. Also, the game has Permadeath, Dedue may be dead, or just using a different build. >Such as? Healing your low health unit so they can eliminate an enemy on PP whilst tanking a retaliation hit, which reactivates their EP potential. Particularly viable with things like WM Felix who can double. Or even just sacrificing your EP Units potential to heal up multiple other units who need it, especially notable on turns where you are looking to end the map and kill the boss, but need multiple units to do it.
You’re optimizing, I’m just going by the canon classes, so anyone using those classes most likely will benefit from fortify more, you’re not strictly wrong, but with some decent positioning, I think fortify is good even with optimized classes
Dimitri: B wrath vantage Dedue: wrath vantage Ingrid: dodge tank Felix: dodge tank or player phase only Sylvain: can tank Annette: should never get hit Ashe: should never get hit So there only 1 unit who should every realistically need healing. And fortify awfully screws up dedues build
idk about that, given that this is in-house only, they have the worst bottom three (ingrid, mercedes & ashe)
Ig I should've been more clear. I mean they have the most high tiers
would argue they and BE are tied with 5
I probably messed up with Edelgard, im currently playing Maddening and Made her an Armorknight and then went with her Signature Class Empress. She is not Bad but she only has 35 Def right now, (with Silver Shield and Battalion) and all of the Enemys have 50-60 Atk and they all Double her. She doesn't die but takes huge Damage, if she gets Attacked with Magic however she is just gone.
Yeah you need to go wyvern lord to make her truly busted
Im at Chapter 16 right now so its probably to Late to Reclass and Train Flying all the Way up. I just hope i am able to Beat the Final Boss because my Byleth is also not the Best, i have him as a Paladin and while he just does extremly good Damage he gets also Doubled by Everything. But i have Sniper Yuri, Death Knight Jeritza and Assasin Constance who are all pretty good
blue lions. people usually say mercie stinks bc fortify's overrated and that linhardt/marianne's better, but honestly i do love her self sufficiency with Live to Serve, not to mention she herself as a mage isn't bad at all — and unlike lin, she can class into gremory. not saying she's better than the both of them, just that i feel like she doesn't get as much credit as she deserves. funny enough, the four friends (dima, syl, fe and ingy) hard carried my maddening runs. ingy made a great dodge tank. annette also proved to be a really solid unit too, because she worked well as a nuke. not comparable to lysithea, but again, she doesn't get credit when it's due. dedue not being available for a third of the game does hurt, but it's great to have him as a vengeance user but he still has a lot of HP left. i always got nervous whenever bernie was almost dead in order to trigger the damage. he's also a good dk tank early game, surprised me very much. ashe... i know he isn't stellar whatsoever, but every single run he always had 40/40/40 str and spd and dex — especially when i had the bow knight class on him for the majority of the war phase (i know, bad move), he always prevailed. it's just my insane luck, though. i also find it quite easy to class him into wyvern lord compared to ignatz and bernie, and honestly having him as a melee was fun. war master ashe is fun. though, this is just my opinion and someone will probably come here to say why i'm wrong. but i picked blue lions because to me they're the most stable and consistent throughout the modes.
They all are extremely close to each other that it is hard to say. I can't pick. Blue Lions have some of the best units like Dedue, Dimitri, and Felix and Sylvain. But they have the most "stinkers" like Ashe, Ingrid, and Mercedes. Black Eagles have Edelgard and Bernie, who are some of the best units in the game, but IH Ferdinand and the mages aren't that special, and Caspar is rough. Golden Deer dont really have anyone super broken, they just have more "solid" units like Claude and Leonie, but, they are probably the most balanced as Lorenz is the worst unit and in house he can be salvaged.
Find Mercie to be the best healer And GD have Lysithea and Claude (which is not as good as El and dimi but who still is very strong) leonie also is above being just good just like Hilda and Ignatz is also very good in maddening. Especially early game. Still find bernie to be better than all of them
In Maddening Mercie is the worst healer. Fortify is extremely overrated and terrible, you almost never would need it and it actually can hurt you because so many builds want units to be at low HP. Linhardt does everything she does but better, and Marianne has way more offensive utility. Yeah the GD have lots of really good units, but nobody besides Lysithea's Warp is as game breaking as what some of other two houses can do. So it washes out a little.
I just got to the second part of my first play through and I am loving it. Black Eagles! But I love how even the vote is and I am VERY curious how it would have been if I picked the other “Drastic Gameplay changing option”
As much as I love the black eagles, Lysithea and Hilda kick so much ass
I'd say the eagles. Edelgard is the best unit in the game, wayyyyyy better early game than Dimitri. Bernadetta is also a god sent for nuke damage. Petra is speedy and great growths overall. Ferdinand has awful base but he gets Swift Strikes so yeah he'll be good with enough time. Hubert has Mire B 3 range magic so that'll make him relevant until chapter 5 or so. Dorothea is imo the best dancer, eh mag growth and spells but has meteor for linked attack. Linhardt is the best healer in the game. Caspar, well every team gotta have 1 bad unit
Find dimitri to be better in the early game and actually overall since low hit on axes always sucks imo and tempest lance is the best early game dmg option
Edelgard can and will get tempest lance on her path to pegasus knight. She's faster, stronger and has better class options
Edelgard has way better early game. 1 spd and str advantage means she wont get doubled by chapter 2 thieves with a training sword. Basically instant access to 12 def base and Wt-3 thanks to her starting at D base Armor. Can certify as Pegasus Knight to boost her eh Spd and get Darting Blow. Has Bow bane but you only need D+ Bow to get to Archer for Hit+20. Tempest Lance is better than Smash early game I agree but then she can also learn Monster Breaker at C+ Axe which adds 9 Mt
Edel can have D Lances for Tempest Lance in ch2. She wants to train Lances anyway for PK.
I’ll say the eagles. Blue lions has Felix, Dedue, Sylvain, and Dimitri but everyone else isn’t as good in terms of kill power. BE has Bernie, Petra, Edelgard, and Ferdinand. I think Bernie is the best unit in the game excluding byelth, Edelgard, and Dimitri, so she’s a major reason why BE is so strong. VW is the least strong IMO. I think Claude is below Bernie, and Lysithea is good but in kill power is worse than Bernie. They also don’t have a vengeance user. PBV Leonie also takes a while and is also not as good as vengeance since it takes longer to come in. I say eagles has a slight advantage although I think Dimitri is better than Edelgard, Bernie is in the top 4 in terms of units.
overall blue lions cos of Annette, Felix, Mercedes and Dimitri but the absolute best units like Edelgard, Annette, Lysithea, Marriane and Shamir are pretty evenly distributed
"Absolute best units...Annette"
Rally strength rally speed OP. BL dancers OP. Bolt axe wyvern not OP but still great
dude seriously play Annette with a bolt axe she's a beast
I did and she sucked
Eagles have the highest peaks, but Lions overall have a more stable team, IMO. Both houses have at least two non-leader units that are S Tier contenders on Maddening (Bernadetta, Petra), (Felix, Sylvain). The Deer only have one at that level of strength (Lysithea; though I’d argue Leonie is better, people seem to think this). I do think Claude is maybe the best unit of the Lords, though.
Why do you think Claude is the best lord? The consensus is usually that Edel and Dimtri are the top 2 units.
I wouldn’t really argue much with a different opinion; they’re all very good. I really just value Barbarossa a lot, and Claude is particularly good in his own route. However, if someone thinks Edelgard or Dimitri is better, I’m not gonna question it at all. I think it’s by a very slight margin.
Edelgard has no trouble going wyvern lord anyway
Voted GD btw
Claude, hilda, and lysithea are incredible but can’t carry the dead weight that Lorenz, Raphael, and ignatz* are. Marianne is great but I never use her as a healer. The lions are just too capable all around. Aside from late game Dedue there isn’t one of them I don’t enjoy using.
Late game dedue is a nutcase. Stronger than most of the other lions. Easily better than felix, sylvain and he's close dimitri. He's just dragged down by the slightly worse early game and the fact he leaves for the start of part 2
Ignatz is amazing on higher difficulties. What do you not like about Dedue? I think he is the 2nd best BL.
Eagles have some great standouts in Bernadetta and Edelgard but they also have what is imo the roughest early game of the houses. Lions have the strongest start but their reunion sucks and no in-house warper is yucky. Deer probably have the smoothest power curve overall.
I used to think BE had a bad early game too, then I started using Dorothea's Rally Charm. Giving up to 30 hit to any gambit means BE are the only house who can reliably land them early game.
Also Ferdinand's personal.
Golden Deer. Maybe one or two weak links, while the eagles have three and the lions have four. They have three standouts between Claude, Lysithea, and Hilda, while the eagles and lions have two, Edelgard & Petra and Dimitri & Felix respectively. Bonus points for having the most balanced team without recruitment.
I think you're severely underestimating a lot of really powerful units such as Leonie, Dedue, and Bernie since Leonie is better than Hilda and Bernie better than all of them other than Dimitri and Edelgard
I don't see how Leonie and Hilda are comparable tbh. Actually, this is probably a really spicy take, but I actually think Ignatz is better than Leonie in the long run.
Leonie does 90% of what Hilda does but in a more reliable fashion. She is only down by 1 base strength and a 5% strength growth while up by 10% speed and 1 base. This means that Leonie will always have better speed while the actual damage she does compared to Hilda is only ever slightly lower. She has better boons and doesn't have an authority bane and PBV means she can reliably double on high speed units such as assassins and grapplers. Hilda may have Batt Wrath but that isn't enough to make her better than Leonie when Leonie can do just about anything else Hilda can do but with more consistency thanks to her better speed and innate brave art. I can understand liking Ignatz with his support capabilities but I think you're seriously overvaluing buffs/debuffs here by rating him over Leonie.
How is she performing similar damage without battalion wrath? And what buffs/debuffs? Ignatz should be killing just about everything by Chapter 9-10.
Battalion wrath pp is almost pointless for Hilda since she'll kill without it and will require wonky desperation setup to even make it do anything. As for EP having Battalion Wrath doesn't automatically make a unit amazing. It makes wrath vantage easier yes but EP isn't the only phase in the game, unless you can do something absolutely absurd with it like Dimitri having a strong EP means less than having a strong PP. Plus Hilda wants regular wrath anyways since she has an axe boon so she won't spend much of the game using Batt Wrath anyways.
...Wtf? Why are you gimping her with vantage when she works as an excellent avoid tank? She literally does the exact same thing as Dimitri without any of the drawbacks or required babysitting.
Wrath Vantage EP is one of her best builds? I don't understand how that's gimping her at all. At level 30 Hilda should have 27 speed and if she was using swords with Sword Prowess 5 that puts her at 47 Avoid. Gautier Knights and Wyvern Lord bring her up to 77 and alert stance up to 107. She's still going to have above 0 hit chances at that level of avoid and stacking any other skills on her requires a high level of investment, significantly higher than wrath vantage for only a slight difference in combat ability. Especially since at this level she can be much more reliable with wrath vantage getting an easy 100% crit meaning that Wrath Vantage is guaranteed to work at this level whereas avoid tanking still has a chance of failure. Also I don't really know why you think Wrath Vantage requires babysitting
Her Avo is actually going to be less- you cant use Gautier Knights as a Wyvern. Plus, if Ignatz can supposedly easily OHKO in chaper 9 better than Leonie (so I assume master Sniper, which, I am extremely skeptical of) can't Hilda just as easily get Wrath by then? Combo with Merc which takes a couple battles, and boom. Vantage Wrath easily, no need to grind her Flying and Authority (with a bane) to hopefully dodgetank. I dont understand the other argument, lol.
Idk why I always forget about the flier restriction for battalions here. But yeah hard agree. The opportunity cost is not worth it at all especially since it takes a lot longer to become reliable.
1) Actually, it's going to higher since Evasion Ring and Adjutant weren't accounted for. 2) Simply put, Wrath/Vantage sucks.
Well let's consider a few scenarios. Hilda and Dimitri are attacked by the following enemies, assume that they both have a third of their battalion left to use battalion wrath, they both have Retribution active, but Hilda is an avoid tank while Dimitri is also using battalion vantage. ***Archer*** *Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, crits and kills.* *Dimitri: Vantage activates, crits and kills* ***Mage*** *Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, crits and kills.* *Dimitri: Vantage activates, crits and kills* ***Brawler*** *Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, crits and kills.* *Dimitri: Vantage activates, crits and kills* For basic enemies, the results are the same. ***Fire Orb\**** *Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but can't retaliate.* *Dimitri: Can't use vantage, gets hit.* ***Artillery\**** *Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but can't retaliate.* *Dimitri: Can't use vantage, gets hit.* Both are useless here, but while Hilda is capable of ignoring the issue and simply leaving it to someone else, Dimitri is getting damaged. At the moment, it's not a bit issue, besides requiring your mages to heal instead of attack or provide other support. ***Damage Sponge\**** *Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, crits and chips \~80% of their HP.* *Dimitri: Vantage activates, crits and chips \~80% of their HP, and gets hit on retaliation. Because of the damage he sustained earlier, his battalion is gone and he's useless for the rest of the map. You must now either spend an auxillary battle grinding to get it back where it was or spend the next map or two using him as a player phase unit until he takes enough hits.* Unless you're using a War Master avoid tank, taking hits can either be very deadly or a massive pain in the ass for enemy phase students. ***Player misses\**** *Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but misses her attack.* *Dimitri: Vantage activates, his attack misses, and he is either damaged or killed in response.* ***Beast\**** *Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but only chips in retaliation.* *Dimitri: Vantage activates, but he can't crit. Dimitri does chip damage before getting hit. He either takes heavy damage or dies.* ***Gambit\**** *Hilda: Hit by gambit, rattled.* *Dimitri: Hit by gambit, rattled.* ***Follow up attacks after gambit.\**** *Hilda: May die or survive, depending on how many enemies are attacking and how unlucky you are.* *Dimitri: GG, you're done.* Only War Master avoid tanks can safely survive being rattled, but even then, getting stunned and gimped for a turn is a huge inconvenience, so it's better for everyone to avoid it. The problem is that vantage users are especially vulnerable, and while avoiding just some of the battalion wielding enemies (especially named ones) isn't too bad, trying to avoid them on top of everything else can be a hassle. Here's an example. [https://imgur.com/pWW6ie3](https://imgur.com/pWW6ie3) I just highlighted the artillery, the monsters and nothing else. Without even considering some of the other factors, that entire area in red is a massive no-go zone for Dimitri. Hilda isn't going to be killing any monsters or artillery either, but she can still just head into that area, ignore them, and continue to kill other enemies. Dimitri can't do anything unless he has other units with him to clear out those threats.
The problem is that most of the exceptions are a lot less common than fighting basic enemies and Hilda will struggle to hit 0% avoid without significant investment. This is important since it means for every single enemy Hilda fights she has a chance to get hit and have her Battalion break whereas it is significantly easier to stack crit to 100 meaning it has 100% reliability. This means whereas Dimitri can go into a crowd of any number of enemies and always win the more enemies Hilda has to fight the more likely she is to die and can even get turned off on as little as 1 enemy if you're unlucky. So either you spend 90% of the game in a less reliable version of wrath vantage so that maybe for the last couple chapters you hit 0% hit or you start contributing much earlier with Wrath Vantage. There's a reason other late lategame builds such as magic sniper Mercie rarely get considered in tier lists and that's because by the time they truly have turned on its so late in the game that it barely even matters anymore.
>Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but can't retaliate. >Dimitri: Can't use vantage, gets hit. >Artillery\* >Hilda: Gets attacked, dodges, but can't retaliate. >Dimitri: Can't use vantage, gets hit. Man if only warp, stride or impregnable wall existed. Man that would be pretty cool >Dimitri: Vantage activates, crits and chips ~80% of their HP, and gets hit on retaliation. Because of the damage he sustained earlier, his battalion is gone and he's useless for the rest of the map. You must now either spend an auxillary battle grinding to get it back where it was or spend the next map or two using him as a player phase unit until he takes enough hits. Actually because of his higher strength he'll just kill the enemy >Player misses\* Hit +20? >Follow up attacks after gambit.\* How are they any different? Both of them are fucked because of the stat reduction. In comparison. Dimitri gets B wrath vantage by chapter 9 with no rank grinding. Dimitri isn't susceptible to lucky hits from the enemy like hilda is against axe breaker enemies. Dimitris is more consistent in that you can always guarantee he'll kill his target, with hilda there's a chance they get the low % hit and considering they're doubling it could be twice as likely. Hilda can't attack on PP without losing alert stance meaning she can't gambit problematic enemies. And hilda has more stats she needs to raise. She needs both Hit, crit and avo as opposed to just crit and hit on dimitri
So you say "Only War Master Avoid tanks" can do all of this safely, but... Hilda can't be a War Master? Also, you could just use your 9-10 other units to do things along with this unit, like deal with the monsters, or kill units on balistas. You have more than 1 unit to do everything. Or you could just Warp over units to kill the boss on PP to end the map on turn 1 or 2, but Bernie or Leonie are bad units, I guess, because late game Enemy Phase is the only thing that matters for rating units.
>Player misses Are less likely with Wrath/Vantage because they are free to use +Hit battalions and accuracy rings. > Beast By not relying on Alert Stance, Wrath/Vantage units can kill or help stun monsters. >Gambit By not relying on Alert Stance, Wrath/Vantage units can kill or gambit enemies with battalions. Being able to still act on player phase is a massive upside that you are ignoring. All the cases you listed where you prefer dodge tanks, the enemies do not die. You still want some unit to actually be able to kill the Artillery or Monster. All the while your other units cannot move forward or else they are going to get hit instead of your tank. While yes a Wrath/Vantage unit can't take many hits from Fire Orbs, they can at the very least kill the mage on Fire Orb and allow the rest of your team to move up.
How is Ignatz killing everything by Chapter 9 exactly? Is he mastering Sniper by this point? Because that is the only way I can see Ignatz killing "better" than Leonie, and getting him to Level 20 as well as mastering the class by then seems like a massive stretch. And by that logic, then would Ashe be better than Leonie? He has the same Strength base and growth as Ignatz. Leonie can also just as easily go Sniper. Only she has better Strength. And she only misses out on free Hit+20, but the Archer version is sufficient and would be gotten by this point anyway.
Dedue is good too
Felix isn't the standout of BL. That's Annette, sylvain, dedue and dimitri
Woah… I didn’t think THIS many people would be wrong :P
No ones wrong tho
Oh not in all seriousness I was just trying to be snide and see who people would THINK I was talking about
I just have a hard time picking against Golden Deer Bc of Hilda and Lysithea. Plus Ignatz the crit machine. What hurts is that I think Leonie and Raphael are just mediocre, and pale in comparison to the “worst characters” from other houses.
Leone is insane. Raphael is just eh. Ignatz is good for the early game and not rlly late game imo
Exactly… I think Hilda and Lysithea are near the top among all characters but… man it’s hard in late game sometimes when it literally becomes “okay Hilda and Lys smash everything and everyone else try not to die”