Fire Emblem

[Deathhappens]

Clanne has 10% magic growth
Anna comes with 15% str growth and you need foreknowledge or galaxy brain to reclass her into mage/cleric early on
Etie has no stats except STR
First proper mage you get is Citrinne and she's magic Etie

I was gonna make Anna a Myrmidon because Anna must always use swords. But yeah, all previous incarnations of her had decent magic stats, iirc.

Clanne has low Mag but (apparently) very good Speed, or at least mine definitely does. So what you lose in magic you make up for doubling more dudes.

[Kador]

It's a troll about legacy knowledge, anna has been historically better in mag than str, except in 3H but her Meteor makes up for it. It's like what happens in Sigurd and Leif's paralogues, the difficulty is way lower when the player has legacy knowledge.

Corrin can freeze up to 10 units with 100% hit rate, and Engage throws swarms of units, so Corrin is an answer when the map is too open to create a 0%hit rate wall with yunaka+alear+merrin or Lucina.

I found draconic aura better inherited on a Celica user, spreading the debuff with echo thoron, or on goldmary because as a hero she has to attack the boss first.

[Ratman]

looking at datamine now, holy shit some characters are timebombs planted by devs
what they were thinking

Is the meta in this game actually early promotion? Levels go up infinitely anyway and second classes have much better growths.

Rather, you shouldn't rely on a character's personal growths at all, I guess.

[GDB]

Corrin can freeze up to 10 units with 100% hit rate, and Engage throws swarms of units, so Corrin is an answer when the map is too open to create a 0%hit rate wall with yunaka+alear+merrin or Lucina.

How's she do this? Is this a bond 11+ thing?

[Aozaki-desu]

Is the meta in this game actually early promotion? Levels go up infinitely anyway and second classes have much better growths.

Rather, you shouldn't rely on a character's personal growths at all, I guess.

Promoted classes do not offer radically better growths, its 30% at most in str/mag for Berserker and Sage. Oh, and Berserker is a complete shit of a class in this game, no bonus crit and completely useless skill.
You still want good growths, but many physical characters will struggle to go above 50% growth because their bases are 20-30% and class bonuses are 15-20%. Royal classes have a bit more bonus stats, but even so, Diamant - who is overall on the better side fo stat gain - has only 55% in STR/SPD/DEF. And thats really high, other characters will be below 50. And you will feel that because enemies have absurd defences.

Also, Maddening is locked into fixed growth on your first playthrough, and it feels really miserable to play because of low overall growths. Starting from midgame, Alear is literally incapable of doing damage until very late game and is relegated to sharing passive and throwing around Lucina's shield.

- - - Updated - - -

How's she do this? Is this a bond 11+ thing?

you really should read skill descriptions. Corrin has Dreadful Aura - any unit you attack, and all adjacent units are frozen in place after combat. If you do torrent attack, you get
XXX
XXX
XXX
_X
= 10 units frozen, or 13 if you use Corrin on Dragon-type unit for bonus 1 range (was it Dragon? not sure who gives bonus range). But the obvious strategy is using Yunaka to spam Dragon Vein - Fog, which is difficult terrain and gives Yunaka 60 avoid via her Covert passive. She is basically untouchable for physical that way.

[GDB]

I figured that only counted the targeted unit, not any hit by the attack. Good to know.

[Deathhappens]

It's a troll about legacy knowledge, anna has been historically better in mag than str, except in 3H but her Meteor makes up for it. It's like what happens in Sigurd and Leif's paralogues, the difficulty is way lower when the player has legacy knowledge.

Corrin can freeze up to 10 units with 100% hit rate, and Engage throws swarms of units, so Corrin is an answer when the map is too open to create a 0%hit rate wall with yunaka+alear+merrin or Lucina.

I found draconic aura better inherited on a Celica user, spreading the debuff with echo thoron, or on goldmary because as a hero she has to attack the boss first.

Anna was originally a Trickster (Sword/Staff/Bow) holding a Levin Sword in Awakening, Outlaw (Bow) in Fates, and Myrmidon (Sword) in 3H. Clearly, she is a sword unit!

[Kador]

Levin Sword, sounds like MAGIC sword. Outlaw in Nohr designed to become adventurer(no canto=horse bad), a class using staves where most scales with MAGIC. A starting class does not mean much in 3H. I dont see her sword in her paralogue in Engage, but I see her MAGIC growth. Clearly, she is a MAGIC user!

Starting from midgame, Alear is literally incapable of doing damage until very late game

Did you use engage+ in maddening? A lucina shieldbot with 200avoid(so redirecting aggro) was too valuable to me to spend the engage meter on something else, even against a fell dragon, or to give lucina to somebody else.

[Aozaki-desu]

Did you use engage+ in maddening? A lucina shieldbot with 200avoid(so redirecting aggro) was too valuable to me to spend the engage meter on something else, even against a fell dragon, or to give lucina to somebody else.

I did not really do the Lucina formation meme since Alear is a piece of shit and i would rather zone people with fog / jade / obstructs
I did blast Sombron with the beam of frienship, but as i said, its basically endgame chapters.

Spoiler:

[Kador]

I did not really do the Lucina formation meme since Alear is a piece of shit and i would rather zone people with fog / jade / obstructs
I did blast Sombron with the beam of frienship, but as i said, its basically endgame chapters.

Spoiler:

In chapter 26, you prefered to rely on jade rather than lucina? impressive. Your builds must have been smarter than mine. Even with a clean approach, I had to bonded shield.

Spoiler:

Alcryst and staffholder#2 dead because i was freaking stupid.
I tried to imply previously engage+ was meh because sombron's shield protects from effectiveness, but you had way more control over the map/shield

[Aozaki-desu]

26 is easy as fuck though, just go round kill some dudes and nuke the boss once shield is down, there is nothing difficult about it

[Bloble]

Just beat map 17.

Fun game. Love how increasingly bullshit the maps are.

[Deathhappens]

Ok, having gotten a bit further with the story Aozaki was right, everyone is reusing the same animation set for cutscenes and it's beyond retarded.

[GDB]

Just beat map 17.

Fun game. Love how increasingly bullshit the maps are.

Just beat Chapter 17 as well. Corrin Emblem came in clutch, as did Jean using Freeze staff (not sure how I hit 2/3 with that 47% hit rate though). Somehow managed to clear it without engaging either Byleth or Ike, and only engaging Eirika to deal with a single Fell Wyrm.

Also, before this chapter I had a skirmish pop up on the map where you get Seadoll. I don't think I'll ever be able to clear that with the palty exp gains Maddening gives. AdvLv3 recommended, miasma everywhere, party is split into three groups (if I recall the brief look at the map)... yeah, yikes.

[Kador]

Oh, so the skirmishes arent fixed like the growths in maddening.
Got a skirmish in chapter's 11 map, fog of war full of advanced wyvern, every deployable unit is 3 tiles far from the next one. The only way i found to clear was to only use merrin yunaka goldmary alear in bushes, because everyone else couldnt survive this mess.

[GDB]

Yeah, not sure if they're fixed once they spawn (ie: don't respawn elsewhere if left alone), but where they spawn initially is seemingly random.

[Kador]

I did a troll run as solo Louis in hard, and the skirmishes were renewed from time to time, with the uncleared ones getting erased, but is the reset based on clock time or gametime? idk.
Once chapter 26 is cleared in maddening, it appears the behaviour of skirmishes gets synced with hard, because at this moment a bunch of skirmishes spawn and the uncleared one(s) disappear.

[Deathhappens]

Jesus Christ on the hood of a Mercedes Benz, even going forewarned for how deeply stupid Ch.10 was meant to be, I could literally feel my IQ dropping watching these scenes.

Spoiler:

I've never actively rooted for a hammy villain to just completely rub their retardation in the player character's face so hard in my life. All Hail Evil Vayle.

[Spinach]

Ok, having gotten a bit further with the story Aozaki was right, everyone is reusing the same animation set for cutscenes and it's beyond retarded.

Tbh in those dialogue scenes that aren't really cutscenes those animations are basically standins for dialogue sprites like in a VN or whatever. They tend to get old and look silly, but it'd be kinda nutty if they animated a gorillion animations for all of these dialogue bits. Not that it wouldn't be an IMPROVEMENT to have some variety, fuck's sake I've seen my MC lean forward and bow 3,000 times already, but it doesn't hurt me to see it. I can almost find some humor in Timerra reusing the same arms spread animation over and over in every single scene she appears.

Also man part of me does want to replay with randomized growths, but I really don't want to ever replay 22-25. Those were incredibly unfun maps where good level design was substituted with extremely powerful infinite reinforcements that don't even yield XP. Awful unfun slogs, each and every one of them. 21 was the last good map. Endgame was ok, but it didn't escape the curse of reinforcements coming at me in greater numbers than Genghis Khan could have mustered.

[Deathhappens]

Tbh in those dialogue scenes that aren't really cutscenes those animations are basically standins for dialogue sprites like in a VN or whatever. They tend to get old and look silly, but it'd be kinda nutty if they animated a gorillion animations for all of these dialogue bits. Not that it wouldn't be an IMPROVEMENT to have some variety, fuck's sake I've seen my MC lean forward and bow 3,000 times already, but it doesn't hurt me to see it. I can almost find some humor in Timerra reusing the same arms spread animation over and over in every single scene she appears.

Also man part of me does want to replay with randomized growths, but I really don't want to ever replay 22-25. Those were incredibly unfun maps where good level design was substituted with extremely powerful infinite reinforcements that don't even yield XP. Awful unfun slogs, each and every one of them. 21 was the last good map. Endgame was ok, but it didn't escape the curse of reinforcements coming at me in greater numbers than Genghis Khan could have mustered.

They didn't need a gorillion animations. They just needed more than 3 animations per gender. In fact, it's barely noticeable with the guys because they just don't move as much, so they could've gotten away with the SAME number of animations if they didn't make them so obviously exaggerated.