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.

Thank you so much, I really appreciate it!

Also, seal speed coming in super slow is pretty funny no lie

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.

Death Knight is just gonna Crit you anyways

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.

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"

@@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

Yes! I’ve never used Bat Desperation but I’m contemplating it for Leonie for my next GD run.

Or you can also tank them with Constance’s bolting. They’re a nice team

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.

I would imagine so but I genuinely have no idea hahaha

Annette crit on 2 percent tons of times for me

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.

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.

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.

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!