Current Events > Playing Fire Emblem 3 Houses for the 1st time. Any tips? Part 2

(+) Yeah! (+)

I would love to actually play fire emblem games on the hard difficulties where they aren't piss easy.

I just can't deal with same-turn reinforcements. Not because of the difficulty they add, it just fundamentally goes against what I want in a turn-based strategy game. Even with the dragon pulse, I just fucking hate it too much.
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DeadBankerDream posted...

I would love to actually play fire emblem games on the hard difficulties where they aren't piss easy.

I just can't deal with same-turn reinforcements. Not because of the difficulty they add, it just fundamentally goes against what I want in a turn-based strategy game. Even with the dragon pulse, I just fucking hate it too much.

That gives my negative flash backs of Fire Emblem Binding Blade

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At least certain reinforcements don't move the turn they appear... Not like it matters if there's 6 of them appearing right by you and that's just on normal. :l But they're also the exception, not the rule.

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I have no issue with reinforcements, I don't even mind same turn ones so long as you are given ample warning.

If there was a "Heheheh, soon our backup will be arriving from the South" and then two turns later reinforcements pop-out from the bottom of the map, then it kinda is your fault if Lindhart is still there chilling.

But if they only way you know reinforcements are gonna happen is because they surprise you can cause you to have to restart the map/Divine Pulse/Mila's Turnwheel, then it isn't great.

Honestly, I wouldn't hate a scouting feature of some sort, where if you send a unit out ahead they will note that it looks like there are signs of enemies or something. The Defend Garreg Mach chapter in CF almost does something like that where Hubert warns of suspicious terrain and to be alert, but that is part of the normal chapter script not because of any player actions.

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The gameplay in Fire Emblem is all about exact positioning to manipulate the enemy AI or to keep exactly out of range. The mad panic scramble of a vague "in undeterminate turns unnamed reinforcements will arrive in a non-specified portion of this side of the map and immediately punch you" is not conducive to a gameplay experience I particularly care about. The charge up arrival turn is exactly what makes stuff like that acceptable.
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Gheb posted...

Honestly, I wouldn't hate a scouting feature of some sort, where if you send a unit out ahead they will note that it looks like there are signs of enemies or something. The Defend Garreg Mach chapter in CF almost does something like that where Hubert warns of suspicious terrain and to be alert, but that is part of the normal chapter script not because of any player actions.

I would honestly love this. Im think FE7 did something similar. I think Florina said let her take point to scout over the mountains or something but it was pointless since she gained zero information from doing it.

A true scouting mechanic would be awesome. Imagine having someone fast scout a handful of reinforcement fortresses and the game tells you how many units will come out? Imagine if that was a skill that can be leveled up? Now you go from how many units to what unit types to what turns they will appear.

Would be amazing and it would enhance the tactical aspect of the game.

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Rough estimate of how I'd place the characters into tiers so far. Almost at the skip in silver snow.

Not in any specific order except Lysithea>all, if you only train her for black magic she'll absolutely wreck everything in the game that doesn't have a temporary immunity to magic damage. :l Plus her magic and speed growths are just absurd.

Other stand out people are "everyone who can learn warp" and "everyone who can get A supports with several people in every house".

Ignatz probably has the worst ability in the game that I can think of off the top of my head, not just because his default classing to sniper gives him the same skill, but because he doesn't have the bulk to use it to make up for the accuracy shortcomings of say, fists and axes. If he was a good mage it might be useful early game but by mid game mages basically always should be at 100 accuracy on everything in range.

S means either they're just death incarnate period, or at least that their default classes will let them crush stuff without effort. Most A characters are either good at multiple roles, or great at one to the point you'd want them on your team as a filler slot to round out your house. B less so. C even less. D is sad.

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Cyril is underrated. Bow brave art on wyvern lord is amazeballs, even if it's locked to 1 range, cause canto exists.
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DepreceV2 posted...

Im think FE7 did something similar.

FE7 had a fortune teller. I loved that feature.

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That's a pretty reasonable tier list, but I'd say that the church members are pretty underrated for the most part.

Seteth is very good out of the box and comes in the best classline in the game. He'd be a really good candidate for top tier if he had better availability, but he's always good when he's around.

Hanneman is a shockingly good nuke. His magic growth is almost as good as Lysithea's. Speed is irrelevant on maddening unless you're like, Petra or Yuri anyway, so he ends up being really similar to Lys in practice.

(I'd also probably lower Lys a bit, she hits hard, but I usually find Constance to be a better nuke in practice. Good magic + Warp is really good though, so I still find Lys to be very good overall)

I haven't used Alois or Shamir, but I hear that they're decent. I also had good luck with Cyril, but I never bothered with him on maddening, so he might not hold up on tougher modes.

I'd also probably bump Edel up a bit. Her personal class sucks really hard, but Raging Storm is busted, and she ends up being really strong in a flying class. She can trivialize the final boss of CF just by abusing RS.

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Makes sense. A few characters definitely would be up or down at least within their tiers because of paralogue items.

In GD, I realized Catherine has A support with more than a few strong paladin type units, so she's got some really good use at least being a backpack after grabbing her oh so sweet weapon.

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Why is Ignaz so low on the tier list when apparently he is really good in Maddening with Hunter Volley and +20 Hit by default?

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DepreceV2 posted...

Why is Ignaz so low on the tier list when apparently he is really good in Maddening with Hunter Volley and +20 Hit by default?

:l I mean I'm sure on higher difficulties plenty of the characters would move around, I'm playing on normal the first time through all the story routes.

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gunplagirl posted...

:l I mean I'm sure on higher difficulties plenty of the characters would move around, I'm playing on normal the first time through all the story routes.

Oh. My bad. I didnt realize that

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DepreceV2 posted...

Oh. My bad. I didnt realize that

From what I gather though, Felix and Lysithea are still shredding basically everything in their way. And Byleth, Dimitri, and Claude excel in their core areas as usual.

Oh. Are there any battalions better than the ones the house leaders get, Dimitri's bulk, attack, and crit one is amazing and Claude's has range and evade.

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gunplagirl posted...

From what I gather though, Felix and Lysithea are still shredding basically everything in their way. And Byleth, Dimitri, and Claude excel in their core areas as usual.

Oh. Are there any battalions better than the ones the house leaders get, Dimitri's bulk, attack, and crit one is amazing and Claude's has range and evade.

Im pretty sure Stride is top tier for the insane movement buff for multiple units


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DepreceV2 posted...

Im pretty sure Stride is top tier for the insane movement buff for multiple units

I just remembered that there's the blue lions exclusive dancer one. Throw it on a flyer and well. :l

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Flying units can't equip non-flying battalions.
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Ah. Mounted ones then. That plus some warp and normal dancer hijinks could probably get you all the important chests and a one round clear of any boss rush map.

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gunplagirl posted...

From what I gather though, Felix and Lysithea are still shredding basically everything in their way. And Byleth, Dimitri, and Claude excel in their core areas as usual.

Oh. Are there any battalions better than the ones the house leaders get, Dimitri's bulk, attack, and crit one is amazing and Claude's has range and evade.

It's hard to beat those two as far as offensive battalions go. Their gambits are the best combat gambits in the game and their stats are very high, especially given their really low Authority Ranks. They are amazing for folks like Hilda or Felix.

But Gonerial Vikings, Leister Mercenaries, Aegir Astral Knights, Frauldus Knights are all B - Rank champions for giving stat boosts. You can't go wrong with any decent battalion that has Stride/Retribution/Impregnable Wall.

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Gheb posted...

It's hard to beat those two as far as offensive battalions go. Their gambits are the best combat gambits in the game and their stats are very high, especially given their really low Authority Ranks. They are amazing for folks like Hilda or Felix.

But Gonerial Vikings, Leister Mercenaries, Aegir Astral Knights, Frauldus Knights are all B - Rank champions for giving stat boosts. You can't go wrong with any decent battalion that has Stride/Retribution/Impregnable Wall.

I haven't used impregnable wall yet but it carries through the enemy phase, right? Like, if I just used it then warped a squishy mage into the middle of like 8 melee fighters and archers, they could in theory solo them all?

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gunplagirl posted...

I haven't used impregnable wall yet but it carries through the enemy phase, right? Like, if I just used it then warped a squishy mage into the middle of like 8 melee fighters and archers, they could in theory solo them all?

It does carry through enemy phase, but your mage won't solo everything because they are also capped at doing 1 damage per attack just like the enemy.

Impregnable Wall is the grand "Oh shit" gambit. It's all but guarantees all the effective units will survive the turn allowing you a chance to reposition to a better situation.

Or you can do it to safely bait an enemy formation into range.

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Gheb posted...

It does carry through enemy phase, but your mage won't solo everything because they are also capped at doing 1 damage per attack just like the enemy.

Impregnable Wall is the grand "Oh shit" gambit. It's all but guarantees all the effective units will survive the turn allowing you a chance to reposition to a better situation.

Or you can do it to safely bait an enemy formation into range.

Oh, I forgot about that. Makes sense. Guess I'll have to just experiment. Will be helpful for sure in the dubstep level.

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Mberer posted...

Nice. I think you should at least try Maddening at least once to get the full experience but it's probably best to play it once you already know how things work on the route you choose.

Im going to try it once I finish all the routes first. Ill chose my favorite route and go from there

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DepreceV2 posted...

Im going to try it once I finish all the routes first. Ill chose my favorite route and go from there

Basically this, but I also want to bank some extra renown as well as a+ and s rank skills plus class mastery for certain characters. +1 move from riding ranks for a character I'll level as an armored unit until it's time to swap them to dancer would just be ever so helpful. And I've heard maddening throws around a ton of lance wielding pegasus knights or whatever the final tier is. So lance breaker, axe faire, and axe crit are a given for 3 slots on a bunch of characters.

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Mberer posted...

Which one do you think you'll go for?

Probably Golden Deer. Not sure yet. Maybe Ill do the hardest mode and do the Church Route

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Bumo

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Dont know why you ranked both Male and Fem Byleth when there the same character just with gender select lol.

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spikethedevil posted...

Dont know why you ranked both Male and Fem Byleth when there the same character just with gender select lol.

Female can instantly recruit a unit with a really early hero's relic paralogue. That but itself makes her better in general.

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Which unit? And fair enough.

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Sylvain.

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Ah cool will have to remember that.

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Also female Byleth gets access to early game Darting Blow through pegasus knight, which means they have a much better early/mid game than male Byleth, whose unique strengths don't appear until getting access to Grappler and Warmaster in the late game.

Though even then, I generally don't think warmaster Byleth is considered particularly good and that generally the consensus is that you'd want to make them a wyvern lord. Which you have an easier time with if you had them be a pegasus knight earlier.
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I have my current fem Byleth as a sword/magic user and she can basically solo everything lol.

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This is more theory crafting than anything. Her default class is pretty good, that much is true.

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How good would Mortal Servant Byeth be? Seems like a class that would fit like a glove but the class may just suck in general

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DepreceV2 posted...

How good would Mortal Servant Byeth be? Seems like a class that would fit like a glove but the class may just suck in general

She could pretty much solo for me on Normal if I let her.

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Mortal Savant is a joke class. Probably the third worst endgame (advanced+master+special) class in the game after Fortress Knight and Holy Knight.
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DeadBankerDream posted...

Mortal Savant is a joke class. Probably the third worst endgame (advanced+master+special) class in the game after Fortress Knight and Holy Knight.

How? Its been unstoppable for me.

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DeadBankerDream posted...

Mortal Savant is a joke class. Probably the third worst endgame (advanced+master+special) class in the game after Fortress Knight and Holy Knight.

Why is that? Is it simply because of the movement? This abilities learned should let you just nuke every enemy. Especially on Byleth specifically with the great growths. +5 Magic and +5 Strength when using swords at all times seems pretty strong. Especially on the harder difficulties. Also, mastering the class gives you +6 resilience? Im not sure why its bad.

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Well Byleth is overpowered and you're playing on normal. Byleth would probably be fine just in their starting class in that mode. And probably hard mode too. Anything works there.

Mortal Savant offers nothing for units approaching it from a sword user standpoint other than an extra movement (depending on other sword class) and the ability to use healing magic, which Byleth already has in Enlightened One, and everyone else in Trickster, though at the cost of Swordfaire. For magic damage, it's much better for a sword unit to just rely on the Levin Sword which when upgraded has 1-3 range. Mortal Savant hugely reduces their speed stat and growth, which tends to be the strong point of units you would train in sword usage. For magic users the speed penalty is not so severe since they already tend to be low on that stat, but there is almost never anything to be gained from gaining swordfaire. Only one I can think of right now that could possibly see potential in it is Manuela, but she has a reason bane and a terrible dark magic spelllist and is much more suited for either trickster, a healing and support focused role, or a sword role that foregoes magic entirely. While Tomefaire is nice for magic users, the class offers no other benefits they'd prefer. Gremory has double spell casts and a high magic modifier that nearly makes up for the loss of tomefaire. Warlock has both double dark casts and tomefaire, though less movement than Gremory even. However, that is easier to make up than mortal savant's lack of utility. And of course, mounted magic units like dark knight, valkyrie and dark flier outperforms mortal savant in various ways related to movement, utility, damage or range.

Like, I'm not saying you can't do anything if you use mortal savant, except you can't see cause the ugliness of male mortal savant has blinded you. Comparatively to other classes in the game, by the game's own mechanics that heavily makes dual physical and magical attacking a fairly pointless endeavor, Mortal Savant is one of the worst things.
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Note: The following post is about optimal gameplay. Three Houses on Normal/Hard mode in no way requires optimal gameplay. So use who you want in whatever class you want them. *Looks at my War Cleric Magic Punch Girl Constance*

Mortal Savant's first issue is that it is a hybrid-offense class. Hybrid-offense classes in general don't fit well with 3H's skill system. Each unit gets 5 skill slots. This typically means you can't fit on Death Blow and Fiendish Blow, and both weapon proficiencies. Which means one of your two attack types is seriously gimped. Now if your thought is, "that's fine I didn't plan on using one of the types anyway", then great but there is a better class available for dedicated Swords or Magic.

For Byleth the three main Sword focused classes are Enlighted One, Assassin, and Sword Master. Enlighted One is the easiest of the bunch as it is free. It has 6 move, a plus 2 strength bonus, and spell access, not that Byleth's spells are anything to write home about). It has a +3 Magic Bonus giving it the strongest Levin Sword in the game (1 stronger than even Mortal Savant). Assassin hits the least hard of the Sword Classes offering no strength modifier, but its 5 speed modifier is unmatched, it is easy to certify into and while I normally don't give a shit about class growths its 20% speed growth can sorta make a difference. Probably most notably, it also has 6 move that isn't impacted by terrain so it can actually keep up with your mounted units. Swordmaster hits as hard as Enlighted One, but trades out magic usage, a free certification, one more move for 3 more speed and Sword Crit 10 (and Astra but you should never be using Astra). Which honestly isn't worth it.

All of the above 3 are better for doing sword damage than Mortal Savant. Particularly Enlighted One which basically completely outclasses it. I mean technically MS is hitting for 1 more Sword damage than Assassin, but Assassin is a lot less work to get, doubles more, and is less likely to fall behind your other units.

Now if you want to have a real fun chat both Warmaster and Wyvern Lord are still probably better classes for units that want to use Swords because those classes are busted. Warmaster does 2 less damage with a sword than Swordmaster even though Swordmaster has Swordfaire. But with better overall stats, more move and Criti +20 instead of Sword Crit +10. Wyvern Lord does 3 less damage than Swordmaster/EO, but can fly and has better stats across the board. I still wouldn't necessarily recommend these builds as that's a lot of skills to focus on instructing, but like don't feel like you are forgoing Byleth using the SotC just because you went into WL/WM, you'll still hit plenty hard with it.

Mortal Savant actually has more upside when viewed as a primarily magic using offensive class, because it actually offers something to mages that they have trouble otherwise finding. An unmounted, 6 move, Tomefaire class. It still isn't optimal. Most mages don't want to bother raising swords, it still wildly loses out as an offensive magic class to Dark Knight, and Gremory provides a lot more utility at the cost of one move and 2 damage. But most mages learn either Hexblade or Soulblade as a combat art which Mortal Savant boost to provide for spell conserving wallop of an attack. It does require less overall skill training than Dark Knight, particularly for DLCless playthroughs. It actually might be Dorothea's best end game class given her bane in riding makes Dark Knight an absolute pain and a faith spell list that doesn't necessarily care about Gremory's double spelling. This only applies to DLCless playthroughs as Dorothea would rather be a Dark Flyer if you have access to that class, because even though Dorothea has a bane in flying, Dark Flyer's comically low certification requirements for an endgame class make it not matter.

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So my thoughts on Dimitri so far during part 2.

SPOILERS.

STFU you annoying edge lord douche bag. So glad Felix has gotten fed up with him and is now getting pissed off as well.

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spikethedevil posted...

STFU you annoying edge lord douche bag. So glad Felix has gotten fed up with him and is now getting pissed off as well.

See you in the eternal flames!
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Is he really popular? /facepalm.

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