This is because shop inventory is dependent on Professor level. If you buy yourself up to A or A+ then they're going to have endgame stuff in it.

 

Btw Felix x Bernie otp. They're so adorable. Bernie is just adorable with everyone in general, but those two specifically.

Also, before playing I always thought the spawn of Lyn and Reinhardt (FE Joke, talking about Linhardt) was a nothingburger of a character. Boring, androgynous design and all. His character is so great though, specifically his interactions with Flayn and Ferdinand. Very obviously the smartest person in the room - in the verge of trolling them - but doesn't rub it in people's faces (not overtly, anyway).

My second playthrough, I'm gonna focus super hard on trying to make a Wrath, Vantage Mortal Savant out of Byleth for the lols. Need to master Merc and Warrior on the way, but should be doable.

Another crazy combo is Quick Riposte from War Master (always counter twice regardless of spd) and the Dark Bishop skill which I think absorbs a huge amount of HP when you kill someone. It's a staple combo from FEH (QR3 and a healing special) given QR needs you to stay above a certain threshold. I've no idea how I'll manage this combo though, maybe it'll be a lot easier in NG+

Btw, what's the DLC look like? I dunno if I wanna rush all the playthrough now if we're getting new shit down the line that'll make them much more interesting (more classes/characters/story etc)

 

AFAIK Lifetaker only works with enemies you kill on Player Phase, so it's not exactly efficient to use for a character that you're planning to bait attacks towards on Enemy Phase. Byleth will pretty much always be doubling everything regardless, so Quick Riposte doesn't seem like it would be too useful for him. I found it mostly pointless to plan around doing much with mastery skills from the last tier of classes anyway, since you're not likely to get (m)any of them completed during the course of a normal run without a lot of grinding (my Byleth only mastered his most of the way into the final battle after sitting in it since its unlock and being deployed and participating in every skirmish in the game).

Not coincidentally, I think, most of that tier of mastery skills aren't very good and seem to require particular health thresholds to use at all.

Though, it might be possible to just outright buy skills with Renown in NG+. Haven't started a new run yet (still trying to decide between Lions or Deer, will probably never do the fourth route because reasons). Whichever path I do end up picking, I'm mostly ditching swords for brawling though.

 

Pretty much all of the best mastery skills come from the intermediate tier.

Pegasus Knight, Brigand, Archer, and Mage all have very good rewards for mastering the class.

 

I would mostly agree with this, and there are a couple of goodies in Advanced. I also like to grab HP +5 on everyone, since it's easy to get in the early game and the Beginner tier is useless and can be skipped altogether with nothing of value lost.

 

Quick Riposte seems to be the only good one in the Master tier. War Master in general just seems to be a busted class. Their unique combat art is an attack that's effective (effective meaning like armoursmashing weapons, or bows v flying).

The rest are pretty shit though yeah. Defiant skills could be good if the threshold was 50%, but at 25? Unlikely (Could set up a Defiant Magic>Fiendish Blow> Darting Strike> Desperation Lys for omeganuke...). Unsure about the Dark Bishop skill, it's still a pain to find information about this game from anywhere.

If you want another fun combo: Wrath and Vantage. Vantage comes from Merc, so easy to get. Wrath from Warrior. As soon as you drop below 50%, you'll always attack first on enemy phase, and will counter with +50 crit. This would godly rn on my Felix. Levin seems to be the only Sword I've seen so far with Distant Counter (3 range when you upgrade it I think ), but even if not, just bait out melee units and one-shot everything. My Felix crits for like 120+ atm, not much is surviving that...

I kinda hope reports of what the Mastery skill of the Master classes is is wrong... The most fun I had in FEH was building my insane units. It seems really limited here. Not having a skill like Fury also makes the Defiant skills (or any HP threshold skills) super hard to activate. The closest I've found so far is a Devil Axe, which takes 10hp with every attack.

 

From my experiences the best physical classes are Wyvern Lord and Bow Knight, and it's not particularly close. If you are able to, those two classes are miles better than any of the other physical options.

 

Great Knight was pretty good for the role I needed it to fill (tank who can actually keep up with the rest of the group). Most of the later maps wanted me to divide the team in some respect, and Edelgard couldn't be in both places at once. I had a few too many cavalry units in the end, though, and that made my final battle needlessly difficult because of its terrain issues. Should have just reclassed most of them back infantry or dismounted, but I didn't think to do it at the time and slogged through.

 

There's no real downside to mounted units to be honest. Wyverns are great because they completely ignore terrain penalties, but even regular horses can just dismount to turn into foot units if the terrain is too bad.

 

Need for cavaliers isn't that high for me (i still have 2, 3 when Bernie-bear promotes) given lys and lin's warp ability and lin's gambit which gives a bunch of units huge movement for a turn. + dance.


It was his first gambit. I've never replaced.

 

Most of the Master class mastery abilities are pretty shit, but that’s not the only thing to consider.

Each class also has bonuses to the growths of certain stats, and generally speaking the higher tier you go the more growths there are. The War Master class, for example, adds a whopping +40% to health growth, along with approximately 30-35% totaled up on other stats.

It’s a legit strat to class somebody with weak growths to something that boosts them, stick them as an adjutant and see if their luck improves enough to merit a main slot, and then switch them back to the actual class you want them on.

 

Aye. I dunno where i can find the numbers, but Caspar's stats, esp his HP, got a huge boost with the class.

I wonder if trying to get Petra wrath+vantage will gimp her stats a lot. I need to get Axes to A to get warrior...

Btw, what's the difference between Falcon Knight and Wyv Lord? Weapon preference? Does wyv fav str over speed?

If so, might be better to leave her wyv to balance out stats

 

https://serenesforest.net/three-houses/classes/growth-rates/

SerenesForest is a good resource for all things Fire Emblem. That page also includes a hyperlink to each character’s individual base growth rates.

Fun facts - Dimitri has the highest base STR growth at a jaw dropping 60% - mirrored by Lysithea’s MAG rate of also 60%.

The other two lords have the highest at 60% for Charm (Edelgard) and DEX (Claude) respectively...except for Lysithea, who matches Claude in DEX at 60 too.

The highest rate for anything goes to Raphael, at 65% for HP - as soon as he hits intermediate and grabs either Brawler or Brigand he should never drop a HP level again.

But all of this should be ignored in favor of the most important stat place, which belongs to Dedue, who is no less than 6 fucking 8 at 18 years old. There are plenty of students at Garreg Mach, but only one who can dunk on LeBron and Jordan.

 

Class growths are overrated, especially on master classes.

Unless you're grinding, then your units should end the game around level 40-45, and the earliest you can reclass into a master class is level 30. Often this will be even later, as your units still need to meet the strict skill ranks required for master classes. This means that the 10% difference in growths one way or another between your master class and your advanced class really only ends up as a 1 point stat difference at the end of the game.

The actual important things to judge advanced and especially master classes by are class abilities and stat bonuses.

 

190 hours and three playthroughs later, I might actually be ready to put this game down for a bit now.

 

Alright so I just beat Golden Deer, my first route. Thoughts to follow.

I reset like four times all told, and that was with Divine Pulses and not complete retreats. I might've been consistently overlevelled but every single of my units felt pretty powerful in their own right. I could've recruited people but I didn't because eh, I was satisfied with who I had.

Speaking of, shoutout to my main man Raphael, a mountain of muscles with 80 HP and a 40 HP heal on command, who easily reached 50% Crit with just Silver Gauntlets. I could have equipped him with Killer Gauntlets but I was legitimately afraid that he would reach through the screen and punch my brains out. Raph could and would basically solo the entire Empire, only stopping to take a break whenever he encountered a mage.
Other noteworthies: Lysithea, the supernuke who also gets Warp; Hilda, the best Wyvern Lord; Claude for being just an insanely useful unit throughout the game, especially so when he got his wyvern. Also Lorenz Hellman "Hellman" Gloucester for being a useful secondary mage, and also because he made me discover just how broken Stride really is, mostly by accident.
Less noteworthy: Ignatz, who I basically never used. Leonie for being a bit of a tit over Jeralt but who was grudgingly useful even so.

Spoiler: Spoilers for story

Having played only this route, I dunno. I don't get what Edelgard's deal is - presumably I'll need to play her route to find out, but she basically killed Jeralt with her idiotic schemes so she can go fuck herself. Dimitri seems tragic and not a complete twat in comparison so I'll go Blue Lions next.

In fact I kinda feel that I should've gone Blue Lions first. Claude and his insistence on finding out the truth means that I'm already wise to most of the twists - Edelgard is evil, check. Rhea is Seiros and also a dragon, check. The 10 Elites were dickbags, check. Seteth and Flayn are also dragonpeople, check. Those Who Slither in the Dark exist and are evil, check. I don't know what Dimitri's deal is yet or why he became an edgelord in the future, obsessed with killing everyone on Fodlan, but we'll see how that works out in Blue Lions.[/quote]

 

Just got to chapter 11 and HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK

I'm going Golden Deer Route, but did not expect that fucking twist. It literally took me 40 hours of playtime just to get to this point, so idk how the hell I'm gonna get around to playing all four possible routes.

Also, Ignatz got 6 criticals with less than 7% chance in a row. It may feel superfluous at times to have two snipers but hot damn.

Also also, Lysithea is the nuke to end all nukes (especially with the magic from 4 spaces away staff I gave her), and Hilda the Wyvern Rider has been laughing and slaughtering her way through anything that dares get in her way for the past there chapters. And while I sometimes regret not having him go full tank with Armored/Fortress Knight, the joy that is Raphael punching a Demonic Beast to death with his bare fists as a Grappler is not to be missed out on.

I'm having so much goddamn fun with this game, and my only regret is not playing on Maddening difficulty because Hard is honestly not hard enough.

 

@Nazgus doing a Maddening run currently. Even with New Game + it definitely makes combat much harder.

Also, lysithea is best mage fo sure.

Though I am using my byleth as a mage/priest this play through and he wrecks.

 

@Arthellion that's good to hear, because while I'm loving the characters I definitely feel like I'm having too easy a time with the story missions. Marianne's prologue was the first seriously challenging fight I've had in a long while.

 

I've used up all my divine pulses and lost Ashe in one battle. I can't even imagine playing maddening on regular game. It tough.

The DLC auxiliary battles are also decent and give great rewards.