As someone that has spent an embarrassing amout of time doing excel sheets with all of the weapons just to compare the refines at a glance. You should almost never +5 a weapon, it gives really marginal gains for an astronomical cost. You can +4 three weapons of the same type with the resources you need to +5 just one. The rules I follow are: - To +1 any weapon is almost always worth it, its the most bang for your buck you're gonna get. - Slim and Iron are the best at +3, +4 only if you need the hit boost. They will fall off as the game progresses and your characters gain Build though, so you might want to keep them at +1. - If you're gonna use Steel as your main get it to +4. Maxing it out is too expensive and the -1 weight is hardly worth it considering at best its gonna give you +1 speed. The resources are enough to +4 two other steel weapons from scratch. - Silver and Brave weapons are the best at +2, and still somewhat worth it at +3. From there they start facing heavy deminishing returns, especially Silver. But if you're at the endgame and swimming in silver ingots you can max out your Braves. - All of the above also applies to the heavy weapons such as blades, great lances and great axes. - Any weapon with effectiveness gets extra value from the might boost, as the might of the weapon is tripled when hitting the enemy they are effective against. Considering they are even cheaper to max out than the Steel, they are a great option to +4. - Hand Axes and Javelines are good to +4 if you need the lower weight to double. If not, a +1 tomahawk and spear are cheaper and better. - Killer weapons are the best at +2, as the 5 extra crit is not worth the cost. Wo Dao has less might, crit and weight but more hit, I think its weaker than the killer sword but if you want to use it the sweet spot is at +3. - Levin Sword, Flame Lance, Hurricane Axe and Radiant Bow are good to +1, +3 at best if you need the extra might for some reason. - Longbows are amazing at +1. - As for thomes Fire is good at +3 but you really should just upgrade it to Elfire, wich is the best at +2. +3 is justifiable if you really need the -1 weight for doubles. Also, if you can double with Bongalone, its worth to +1. - Thunder thomes wont let you double so upgrade to Elthunder as soon as you can, then to Thoron when you can use A Rank thomes. +1 the Thoron and engrave it with one of those emblems that gives it a ton of weight like Roy or Ike for the extra might. - +1 Wind is great, base Elwind is even better. If you need the low weight to double keep it at +4, if not, a +2 Excalibur is better and cheaper. - Surge is trash, never upgrade it. If you want to use it becouse you find if funny upgrade to Elsurge and never forge. Even +1 isn't worth it. - Nova is basically a brave thome so +2 is the best, but get it higher if you are rich. - Arts costs are Short-Iron-Steel-Silver, so the same applies: Initiate and Iron Body will fall off, +4 Steel Hand at best, +2 the Silver Spirit (You can make an argument for +3). Leave the Shielding at +1 as the Defense it gives tou doesn't scale. +4 the Flashing Fist for more damage. - For the knives, they are super light so theres no point in using short and iron. Just get a Steel Dagger to +4 and roll with it. A +3 Silver Dagger is only 1 might stronger and costs double. Same with the +4 Stiletto being almost as good and half the price as the +3 Pershkatz. - Finally the Liberatión is good to +1 but thats kinda where it ends. At +2 is just a lighter steel sword, at +4 it has the same might as a Steel +1, and at +5 it's a lighter base Silver Sword. With just 2 points of extra Build on your Alear through level ups you should be able to use a Steel +4 without losing speed, being stronger and cheaper than a maxed out Liberatión. For lighter alternatives the Wyrmslayer at +4 is also stronger and cheaper. (If you have them, Folkvangr, Fensalir and Noatun at +1 are lighter silver weapons. If you get them to +3 they are better and cheaper than a +2 Silver. They are the only weapons I would consider worth to +5 as they are a bit more expensive than a +5 Steel but stronger than +4 Silver.)
I'd argue killer weapons might be worth around +4 or +5. Every MT is tripled if you land the crit, so it's like the bane weapons in that regard that you gain more value with every refine.
After messing around with the Forge. I learn that its worth having a magic weapon for units that have high speed despite their weight. They are good against Armored units. Killer weapons are definitely worth getting early on for units that have average speed growth plus they can be upgraded from iron weapons. I find Brave weapons good for trying to proc a skill or for a unit with high strength but low speed. Also they are great for finishing off enemies.Steel weapons are the jack of trades for me they are neither bad or good and can surprisingly be use all the way to end game. Silver weapons are good if have when you have the resources to invest into them.
Agreed, Steel is always good, silver can be huge if upgraded/BLD for it, brave are low key CRACKED for ability proccing. Super fun to get 2-3 sandstorms on Timerra. Thank you for the tip! I greatly appreciate the support :)
Panette+killer axe+Ike with wrath is a crit machine once she's taken some damage. Don't have her yet on maddening but on my hard run she was incredible.
She's a monster, I could have killed sombron with just her and dancers in one turn if I'd thought to. The killer axe is what makes it work though, especially in maddening I imagine.
@The Smuggest One I made her a wolf knight since killer axe is so lite she didn't suffer the build loss. Less hp and attack but better defensive stats and the dmg loss seems negligible when she likely gonna crit anyway
@@Rohwen Honestly if you're going more for just crit one shots and nothing else you could probably get away with it, my panette was outright one shotting a lot of enemies even at the end of hard, though I have no idea how feasible that'll be in maddening. I think I'll have to rely on crits for that. Knife is also a really good weapon class to have for someone a bit frontliney if you're not using great aether a lot.
Definately switched her to Warrior and its been worth it, only 5% less STR growth, but way better everything else and a great passive for hard hitting crits
The only axe that doesn't need a accuracy engraving is Anna's axe from feh which you can get by linking the Nintendo account you play engage on and doing the tutorial until you can access the code by clicking an orb in the top right I think. You also get a good sword and lance too that's around the same amount I think to max out liberation as well as three bond rings that come with abilities that buff attk, defense, or nerf adjacent enemies attack.
I put the ike engrave on a brave axe +2. The damage is crazy. I tend to pair that up with a dancer. Since if panette gets double she can survive one encounter
The iron dagger is worth investing some points into in the early game. The first 2 ranks give +2 might each and are very cheap. Not every weapon needs to be taken to +5 to assess their value. Even if you're not going to use Yunaka forever, having her on your team early on to help soften targets is huge help given her high base speed and the low weight of daggers. She's also one of your most flexible units at the start because of 5 Mov. I understand dropping her eventually when Zelkov comes around because he has higher base strength and comes at a great starting level but not using her early seems like a mistake. Another piece of equipment worth upgrading a little bit early is the Iron Lance to +1. For just 10 Iron, you get 2 might. This puts it at 4 might over the Slim Lance Chloe starts with, letting her deal a massive 8 damage more to slow enemies that she doubles for only 2 less speed due to the weight penalty. The small might gains from forging matter way more early game than they do late game just because of how tightly the damage numbers are tuned early.
How is not using Yunaka early a mistake? What does she do that other units can't also do? Most early game units can reliably 1 round and iron dagger falls off so why invest in it at all?
@@IcedCoffeeGaming Fire Emblem units and items should be evaluated on the basis of availability as well as utility from time of joining and relative to investment. Because the resource count early game is so tight, a lot of might on a weapon that reliably doubles matters. Iron Dagger + 2 only costs 30 Iron while a Steel Sword + 1 costs 50. While the Steel Sword + 1 is a better investment long term, the upgraded Iron Dagger gives you iron left over to +1 2 other iron weapons to make your team more well-rounded overall. For characters, Yunaka is your only Knife user early game while having the highest effective speed (because Chloe has more speed but lances are slightly heavier).Knives are the highest accuracy weapon type in the game while giving everyone else hitting the same enemy a damage boost. This makes her one of the most reliable members of your team for applying chip damage so you can feed kills to the people who need investment. The advantages don't just end with raw offensive combat stats but with movement as well. She has 5 Mov with 1-2 range while your other foot-locked units have 4 Mov. The covert bonus also lets you use her more aggressively if you can get her into an avoid tile. Plus, even if there are mages, she has 7 resistance, she doesn't get doubled by them because of her high speed, making her a good enemy phase unit. Sure you can not use her, but the early game is a lot easier when you do use her. Overall, I think it's fine to put resources into smoothing the experience early game even if these end up as things you drop later on down the line. When it comes to the mid to late game, that 30 iron you used on the iron dagger and that chip exp that went to Yunaka instead of someone else early is going to be a drop in the bucket but you'll appreciate how much easier that stuff made the early game at that time.
Iron Dagger is a trap in the same way that Liberation is. If you're playing Maddening (I'm on C21 of my second maddening run right now), you want to invest in stuff that you'll still have with you by the end of the game, not to get you through the first (easy) ~15 chapters. Sure, you could invest into an Iron Dagger but you don't have to. Yunaka does fine with it until you get a Steel Dagger in chapter 10. She doesn't need more than that. I'd argue that the actual conversation should be in Steel vs Silver (and this only for Daggers), but I rather end up having 2 refined Steel Weapons than a Silver one, specially when most of the game the bottleneck is going to be Silver Ingots. As for Yunaka herself, she has consistently been among my top 3 units (along Anna and Chloe) from the moment I got her. By the time you get Zelkov, Yunaka should only be ~2 points behind in str, which is easily patched by an Energy Drop. Yunaka will be faster and have way more res, which makes her great for baiting mages and actually killing them. And this besides the obvious benefits of having dagger users.
Iron weapons only need +1 in very early game. It’s insanely cheap (10 iron) and gives a whopping 2 might. Then once the dogs start bringing in a trickle of silver you can move onto steel weapons and get them to +3 (although Yunaka appreciates +4 on daggers, with no real need to go to +5). You can move onto +5 on non-daggers once you get enough silver and get everyone their starting forged weapons. Silver weapons are simply way too expensive for what is a marginal mt upgrade over steel just for a probable speed penalty. At this point I think you’re better off expanding your weapon reportoire, like looking to levin sword, longbow, higher tomes, peshkatz, killer weapons, or really anything that makes your characters more flexible. Forging axes CAN work, but you need to have a clear plan in mind, like hit rate engravings (as you mentioned) or ranged axes for chain attacks. Diamant actually uses axes really well because of his personal and, unlike hero, can actually use tomahawk for chip before chain attacks. In terms of priority, I feel like lances and daggers are the most obvious before looking into other weapons. Chloé and Yunaka both scale well with reforges with the former appreciating the weight decrease and the latter abusing the honestly unbalanced forge upgrades daggers get. Even if you plan on dropping Yunaka you can just pass her dagger to Zelkov or Merrin.
All those silver heavy weapons are very good for engage attack. And if you don't have that many mage class, armorbreaker weapons are very good as there are so many armored units in this game. Using armorbreaker weapons usually result in higher damages than silver weapon.
Me hitting chapter 25 last night riding the struggle bus and hitting every curb imaginable. Sees coffees mid game guide. So now I see where I had fucked up and fucked up hard
Killer axe is amazing on Panette. She can get a "yes" crit rate removing uncertainty by adding an accuracy+crit engraving. Don't make the same mistake I did keeping her in Barbarian though. That ridiculously low dex cap will catch up to you eventually. Other than that... yeah they suck unfortunately.
I heard fist actually go off str and magic combined divide by 2 so mix’s builder like Jean and chole could be interesting. Only mentioning this because near the end you said a person needs to have high strength to make it work.
Level 3 donation for all nations EXCEPT Brodia does NOT increase the amount of ore you get after completing chapters. Unless it's a completely hidden bonus that the game lies about, only go to level 2 with most of them and maybe 3 with Brodia (it sucks because the only times you'll return there are for 2 paralogues and maybe a skirmish).
This is what I know. But having watched this, I am so tempted right now to upgrade Solm to level 3. What's stopping me is the history of ICG making mistakes in his guides before (that I have sadly followed). I'm currently about to start ch15 on maddening, and if it's true that I can get more silver ingots if I upgrade Solm to 3, then I'd gladly do just that.
I noticed this as well, the Brodia Donation is really bad and as far as I can tell DOES NOT SCALE the central island endgame region. I got 6 silver at donation level 4 Brodia. Brodia Donation needs patched. Other regions are worth it though
@@IcedCoffeeGaming No, Brodia is only one that should give extra minerals at level 3 donation. If you want extra silver from Solm, Firene, and Elusia you either stop at level 2, or go to level 4. Unless you're saying the game is glitched and displays the incorrect information.
I disagree on daggers, they are extremely cheap to upgrade and they tend to have +2 Mt per upgrade which is absolutely crazy for a weapon that doesn't have a lot of strength to start with and is usually equipped on faster units that can double. A steel dagger you can upgrade to +4, which more than doubles its Mt (7 to 15) and adds +10 hit and +5 crit for only 2800 Gold and 2 silver. That's a deal of the century. Compared to a Steel Axe+4 only goes from 13 Mt to 17 Mt and costs the same to upgrade. The best weapons to upgrade imo: Longbow All daggers Any Killer weapon / Wo Dao (every time it crits you are getting +3 damage per upgrade instead of +1 for a non-crit) Any Slim, Iron, or Steel weapon that you plan to be using for a while (cheap and useful) Tomahawk and Hand Axe Javelin and Spear Magical weapons like Radiant Bow, Levin Sword Light, ranged, and crit weapons are the best to upgrade. Heavy weapons / smash weapons are the worst. El-Tomes and higher are ok to just put +1 or +2 in if you have extra gold but not after it starts costing silver, because magic in this game is already super OP and doesn't need a buff. Special Swords/Lances/Axes that are effective against armor, cavalry or fliers are not as worth it to prioritize except maybe the hurricane axe.
I engraved Chrom on a second Levin sword. Why I did that is beyond me. All I know is that Chrom’s engraving is the same as Sigurd’s engraving, except that Chrom’s engraving increases DODGE by 20.
For tomes I only upgraded bolganone and thoron. For bows I swear by radiant bow. Fogado with radiant bow was a very decent damage dealer on my maddening run. I also really like the killing edge with kagetsu. He has over a 90% critrate in my maddening run, its crazy he just crits everything to oblivion and the best part is, he also always doubles, its insane.
So I pulled the trigger and got Louis a silver great Lance, he hits for like 50, it’s hilarious on enemy phase, especially if they try to hit him with a great weapon because he gets to attack first. I just got him over the threshold for starsphere too… I’m thinking about making him Halberdier because he doesn’t lose that much defense… it’s working well on Chloe. Anyway I’m excited for phase 3 of dlc now, I hope the gifts for phase 3 include second seals but we’ll see. The early game is spicy now I wonder if it’s viable to turn the free steel sword you get into a levin sword for the princess…
I’m not sure about Jade being able to catch up because she’s got an axe. If she was a Sword General instead maybe… Louis doesn’t miss much I liked Boucheron early but the only Axe I seem to use anymore is a Tomahawk on Diamant
Early game Silver Greatlance absolutely busted my run way more than almost any other upgrade until the crit really started kicking in mid to late game.
I agree with a lot in the video. Some I don't. Axes aren't inherently bad, you just have to put them on the right unit. You know who's an amazing axe user that nobody talks about? Chloe. You give her the Noatun (promotional weapon from FEH, which anyone has access to for free), refine it, and there's your second best unit all game long (2nd after Anna). Chole has the speed to mitigate the Wt during the early game, and as she grows and you refine the weapon, the penalty goes away. Right now on C21 maddening my Chloe has 161 hit, 38 speed and 45 PAtk while sporting that Noatun +5. Regarding Armors, I think this video won't age well because Quick Riposte made them actually absolute units, but I don't hold that against you as it's very new and not everyone has the DLC. I've seen Louis single handedly one round nearly every cavalier that Mauvier ported to him in C20 maddening just by standing there and doubling them all thanks to QR and his gargantuan 32 Str. Other than that, they've always been useful to me in soaking damage so my Ivy and Anna could disintegrate from behind. You can play around mages very easily. Yunaka and Chloe can easily dive the enemy backline if needed, and you can always soak damage with Diamant for a couple turns while you deal with the mages. Louis (specially) and Goldmary are absolute mainstays on my team. Also, you make up their lack of dex by using +hit refines which you probably wouldn't use on anyone else, so there's not even an opportunity cost there. As for the tomes... I don't like Bolganone. It's way too heavy. Anna can't use it and, unlike Chloe, Ivy doesn't have the speed to mitigate the Wt and still double, so I go with refined Elfires. They both still have 49 and 50 MAtk respectively, while being able to double everything that's not a Swordmaster. My only problem is I have to restrain myself from using them too much because they can pretty much one round most non-boss units. Brave weapons I personally find them to be a trap. The units that they're good for are units I wouldn't use, as speed is paramount on maddening. If you can consistently double enemies, you're life will be so much easier. Sure, you can double with a Brave weapon, but chances are you're gonna do little damage due to the low Mt, and will get doubled back, always at a high net loss. Killer weapons I haven't used. I'm sure they're fun, but when you're playing maddening on classic mode, you can't bank a kill or be killed situation on getting a crit. At least I don't. The few risks I take are super calculated, otherwise I play safe. Killer weapons also have low Mt, so unless you crit, you're gonna struggle to even scratch units into the late game. Now that's outta the way, I agree with the most important part of the video, which is that Steel weapons are the way to go. They give you the best bang for your buck for when you're actually progressing through the game, and I mention this because there's very heavy diminishing returns beyond the +3 mark. I've only +5'd steel weapons early for Yunaka and Alcryst, who I felt are the only ones that actually needed them, but everyone else's I upgrade beyond +3 once I had those 2 covered up, and I had +5'd the FEH weapons. I still have many to go, most of them actually, but really beyond +3 is a luxury you can get when you can, not something you necessarily need to rush. Another perk about those refined Steel over Silver weapons is that they give you respectable crit chance, which as you rightfully said yourself, getting a crit means you can often free up a unit to put somewhere else, which almost always is a boon. I find Effective weapons good, really, but I don't think your limited resources should go to them on maddening. Like you, I deal with Armor units with magic, and on the big Dragons you can use engages. Usually one engage + something else will do the trick. Worst case you can always use a fracture staff to avoid damage.
I think Diamant is probably the only decent axe unit if you keep in him his unique promotion, mostly because he has an actual build stat and has juuust enough speed that you can get him doubling with a lyn or stat boosters. I honestly think the REAL reason to get the dlc emblems is just to have more engravings for everyone. The lyn engrave is super-contested if you have more than one axe guy, tiki's engrave is fantastic on anyone who wants extra damage without compromising hit, and the avoid penalty isn't that big a deal depending on who you're using.
For the axes, I have anna and rosado with +constitution of leif and with that they always attack x2, for me the worst weapons are swords I also use all the killer wapons at +5 and they are amazing, they are cheap to upgrade and your pjs always have 50% crit when attacking My archer did not matter what he did, he always did little damage. What I did in the end was to use my archer with Eirika and honestly it was a brutal change, the damage increase is tremendous (Also the Selene ability activates a lot)
Brave axes make lief a good unit. Chuck him on someone with good speed and middling build and suddenly you have a warrior who is doubling on defence with silver axes and erasing literally anything from existence on player phase with brave axe.
I swear by Axe units man. Diamant was made to use axes particularly the brave axe. Alcryst and Fogado reclassed as Warriors are good as they retain B rank Bows (Silver) and you can trade strat their axes to longbows to activate more chain attacks which reclassing to Warrior allows. You are right about most axes being bad. The best IMO are Brave, Silver, Tomahawk, Killer. You could give it a +Hit engraving or give the wielder +HIT from Sigurd or Divine Pulse from Byleth if you have the skill slots available. I actually did a Panette crit build on 1st maddening run. It was probably the most fun I've ever had playing FE. Step 1, save the seraph robe from early game for her. give her the seraph robe from her join chapter and then hp tonics every chapter if you desire. From there, you have options depending on what emblem you want her to use. If you want to use her with Ike, then inherit Speedtaker from Lyn, for 2000SP (she starts with 1500 at base). Otherwise, inherit Wrath from Ike for 2000. Once she caps DEX as a berserker (a pitiful ~23), reclass to Warrior. If you don't want to use Ike+Panette, then inherit Wrath from Ike, and pair with Lyn for speedtaker and some very hard hitting astra storms. And also reclass into warrior for a higher DEX cap and access to bows. Engaging with Leif for the +10 crit sounds good on paper, but all it ends up doing is have Panette counterattack with the light brand for 0 damage or miss with the 55 hit rate master lance. Other ways to fix panette's speed are to reclass to halberdier for their class kill that lets you always double. think about it with slow base/growth units. You also said you don't like armor units. They are made for the Greatlance and Great Axes. In general, the great weapons have 2 main use cases, 1. enemy phasing when neither you nor the enemy would double anyways 2. When you want to get some engage meter for free for the unit and the healer. Greatweapons have giga synergy with Emblem Attacks. Early Steel Blade with Marth is pretty good. Same sword but with Roy if paired with Alear in the early game. Great Axe for Ike's Great Aether is good if you can upgrade it to be better than the Urvan. Hurricane axe + GA to punish flyer packs. Pole axe +GA to punish Wolf Knight packs. Ike comes with a 18 MT hammer, use his.
Great input on axes. I agree with the ones you outlined for being the best, Diamant on axes makes sense. Wouldn't Alcryst be better on a brave bow build with luna proc? His dex growth is 80% or something. I can see the upside of warrior, it gets longbows and axes and is a backup. Silver bow on warrior is also great, one huge downside of Saphir. Panette being a crit archetype also makes sense I had a hard time fitting her into my team on my first maddening run, I eventually just made her a wolf knight for some reason lmao.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming I tried the alcryst + brave/killer bow luna thing and he ended the game with 22 str. I dumped Energy Drop into Alear 1st go around, so tough luck on fixed growth, which makes maddening less frustrating. You can do Luna Alcryst on maddening, just give him at leasty one of your 3 early energy drops
Just use accuracy engravings and/or use axes on Panette or Diamont. Dia gets a natural accuracy buff and Panette wants a Killer axe with an accuracy boost. An accurate killer axe is great bc the higher Mt means more reliably killing in one hit.
My Yunaka fell off and is mostly a dragon hex and fog bot now. I didn't feed her any stat boosts but I imagine she would need a lot to make maddening trivial...enemy units just have such high hit. How are you getting enough avoid in the late game? My Yunaka typically has like 15-40% chance to be hit depending on what she's fighting and doesn't do a lot of damage/rarely doubles anything anymore
As somebody who used Boucheron i will say this acrrecy +build inheratanve was a nessity cause once he lvls build that axe weight ment nothing he v use urvan and tomahawks without loseing speed amd has been a nice "go into the middle of all these ebemys and lress great another woth resolve he just soaks damage with his Hp pool and half damage. Put acc+ on a killer weapon and he hits like a truck consistantly
When will you make a late game upgrade guide? if anything changes from this even I mean. Like for example is Caladbolg, Brionac, and the 2 weapons you get from the well worth upgrading?
Lategame upgrades tend to be less important than Midgame as most of your upgrading goes into midgame but I will be doing a guide soon, in the late game on 3 maddening runs simultaneously so that should help inform the guide :)
The best weapon in the game is Thunder with Olwen ring. More broken then any mage emblem. Give Alear Alphonse's ring, stand next to that buff bot, and watch everything die. Gets more funny after acquiring dances. Magic is everything
You should look into the 3 weapons you get as part of the free dlc unlocked by linking an FEH with the same nintendo account as your Engage save file. The axe is great and the spear may as well be Chloe signature weapon with a decent engraving, I think they're on par with silver but with less weight!
I didn't have the same exp with magic users. They all need speedtaker for me before they really get good. I usually give then evasion engravings. Also magic can be fairly inaccurate on dodgy enemies. Thoron esp wants an acc engraving.
Jean can have the build and speed to double with axes alongside the highest possible strength growth in the game as long as you're willing to invest in him. If you second seal him at level 1 into an axe fighter, then master seal into a Berserker at level 10, he should have 15 build and 25 speed by the time he hits level 20. With Tiki (or at least Starsphere), he has 19 build and max (28) speed at level 20. That said, if you give him Tiki, I think he would be more useful as a warrior because it's nice to have a bow user that doubles and hits really hard without relying on Luna. Assuming you don't use Tiki, who immediately turns him into a good unit, there's a time limit for him to become useful before you lose your chance to powerlevel him. To get around that, you can always corner Ivy and keep healing until he hits a decent level.
@@learnpolishangel2194 Micaiah gives C rank staves, and great sacrifice gives a lot of exp. Corner a unit in chapter 9 and 10, unequip the weapons of anyone that can counterattack, then keep healing the unit that gets hit. Edit: This doesn't work for 1-2 range units like mages and thieves. I have another strategy that works for Ivy below.
@@learnpolishangel2194 I just tested it myself. Before starting chapter 9, use a res tonic on Alear and make sure he equips Marth at bond level 7 for unyielding. Just to be safe, make sure you have a slim sword in the convoy. Then, use a magic tonic on Jean and give him 2 heals and a mend. Also, make sure you have four high res units with at least 10 speed and 14 mag atk or 12 atk in your group. Once the map is clear except for Ivy's group, bait Ivy out and box her in with the 4 units I mentioned earlier (don't unequip them) before killing the rest of the enemies, then put Alear within range of Ivy. If all goes well, Ivy should target Alear every turn. If she has a 1% or higher critical hit chance, equip Alear with a slim sword. After that, just keep healing. I'd also have a second healer ready in case you use a heal when you should have used a mend. You can also use Great Sacrifice to save on mends and then gain faster exp by AoE healing yourself.
@@War_On_Fats Can you tell me what your team comp. looked like for chapter 9? What level was Jean, too? Your method sounds good, but I want to make sure I do it correctly.
@@learnpolishangel2194 Jean (& Micaiah) was a level 1 axe fighter, reclassed from a level 1 martial monk. Alear (& Marth) was level 13 with 31 hp and 7 res. I used a level 10 Celine (& Celica) with 25 hp and 13 (base 10) res, level 3 (promoted at 12) Griffin Knight Chloe (& Sigurd) with 34 hp and 14 res, level 12 Yunaka (+1 res bond ring) with 28 hp and 11 (base 10) res, and a High Priest Anna (& Tiki) with 38 (base 28) hp and 16 res. I'm pretty sure that as long as they have at least 11 res, 10 speed, and enough HP to not get one rounded, Ivy will always target an Alear that can't counterattack. If whoever you're using doesn't have high enough stats, or you want to be extra sure it works, you can always buy tonics to fix the stats that need patching up. Aside from the important units, I used level 11 Diamant & Roy, level 11 Alcryst & Edelgard, level 8 Etie & Leif, and level 8 Framme with S rank Deidre.
17:01 I don't think Timerra having more defense than Louis and Jade has anything to do with "Just from being a Picket". She has the exact same base defense as Louis, but joins 12 levels higher than him, and his personal defense growth is the same as Timerra's personal + Picket class growth. If you instant promote her, she has the same defense as Jade when Jade joins. It sounds more like you just didn't use them and used Timerra Also: Arts/Punching is the average of the unit's Strength and Magic. Just having high strength isn't necessarily ideal since each strength is only worth half as much compared to other physical weapons
I deployed them on more chapters than Timerra, they just didn't consistently deal enough damage or get enough kills to level up fast. Other units like Chloe, Anna, Alear were my hard carries so I didn't need units to sit and take hits/counter attack.
Brave lance is guaranteed Quad with a Helbadier class. And they are a very decent backup unit to have if you have lots of flyers to get them the other side of the enemies.
3 things. Stiletto is probably largely useless because you can simply stay at Steel Dagger for crit since they come with crit which is lost when you go to Silver Dagger. Might get some extra Mt out of it but dunno if its worth losing the 1-2 Range and how much more costly the upgrades are. Maxing Thunder can be good if you run Dire Thunder and you can throw Ike's +3 MT +15 Wt on it and not give a damn about the speed penalty and make it hit like a truck. Lastly, the punchy Arts scale (Str/2+Mag/2)
For arts just use Eirika's ring. Ignore def and always quading is good. Also good for breaking mages. Admittedly I only ever use them on Alear to break mages.
Something I've noticed is how underwhelming the S rank weapons for swords, axes, and bows are. They have 3 more Mt than their silver counterpart, and roughly the same hit rate. At max forging, the sw/ax/ln/bw S ranks will have 2 more Mt and 10 more crit but could 50 silver ore to get there vs silver weapons costing 20 silver, 100 steel and 800 iron. TLDR; the only worthwhile S ranks are the 1-2 range lance, the 1-2 range dagger, and maybe the tome, the rest I'd say stick with the silver/steel counterparts due to the lower investment cost. There are also more specialized forging builds like wrath panette + killer axe, or a spear/tomahawk for your General.
Tanks are great in this game. Usually have at least one one on the team. Usually Great Knight > General though. Picket is def a great class but there is no way it should have more def than a Great Knight or General. Those classes will have something like an extra 30% def growth over Picket Timerra. That said, Timerra is great with Ike or Hector (if you have DLC). Great Knight with Sigurd, Ike, Roy, Hector is great. If going General would use Sigurd for sure.
Isn't arts damage calculated as (STR+MAG)/2? Thus units like Jean which have a balanced spread would be good, instead of units with single high stat growths.
Yeah Arts overall are just really bad and that's one of the reasons why. And for the unit types they can break (bows, tomes, and daggers), there is always a better way to take them out quickly than to start them with a weak Arts break
Ok. Axes hit the hardest by far but only really Tomahawks and Silver Axes I have found to be good on normal users and a crit engraved killer axe is also good with Flyers.
Forging axes is kinda bad because the units who naturally wield axes already have high strength so the marginal gain from each upgrade is pretty small. I would say the best axes to forge is the poleaxe or the killer ax, if you can fix the accuracy issues. Swords and daggers are probably the best forges because they're light and easy to double with (plus sword classes generally have lower strength). Lances are in a pretty good spot too. I feel the same way about Silver weapons. They're pretty expensive to upgrade for a marginal upgrade over Steel. I'd rather spend that extra money forging effective weapons for that situational triple forge value
@@jackmanleblanc2518 Boucheron is one of the few units who can wield heavy axes effectively. The main problem with this game is that the prepromotes have such high base stats that the opportunity cost of investing into Boucheron usually isn't worth it. He's not a bad unit though, it just so happens that Panette is just as strong and she comes pre-promoted.
@@willytan12 I'm running both this time and Boucheron as a hero works great with Panette as a warrior. It would probably be better though if I switched them so the Bouch could benefit from his personal skill more, that +2 damage he gets seems to be added for each chain attack. If his build/speed gets high enough he can quad with a brave axe then with a single hero brave assisting then that would be 16 more damage total. You probably are right though that he's not that great but now that I've said all that I think I want to try putting Lyn on Boucheron lol
I prepared a few engravements before chapter 11 and I'm wondering how I should refine these weapons later on: I gave the Micaiah one to a steel sword (for Hero Lapis to avoid tank), but I'm unsure whether I should make it +5 (makes it a good all-rounder), refine it into a silver sword (for extra power), or refine it to a levin sword (for countering ranged unit in enemy-phase + ranged assists). I gave the Roy engravement to a steel lance. I plan to make Boucheron a Halberdier and could either refine the steel lance to a silver lance (max power), or refine it to a brave lance (combine the Roy engravement with Boucheron's unique passive to maximise damage from quadding). I did also give the Lief engravement to a +3 dagger for Yunaka, and I'm pretty happy with the results. I'm just wondering if I should commit to a +5 iron dagger, or refine it to a steel dagger.
One thing to note, is that I believe arts scale off of the average between Strength and Magic. So add your unit's strength and magic, then divide by 2, and that is what you have to scale off of for arts. They are weird like that. Also, one thing I am not 100% sure about, is do Levin Sword, Flame Lance, Hurricane Axe, and Radiant Bow, do they scale off of just magic, or does strength still help?
I got Anna to 30 luck, so I felt like Mage Knight was limiting her since it has a 29 luck cap. I put her on Griffin Knight with a levin sword and she just trucks through everything.
High Priest does have higher base in both MAG and LCK, but honestly it's not that much so Griffin Knight actually seems not too bad. Might have to try that for my next play through!
@@IcedCoffeeGaming This is after i took the engraving off. And i just had alear on divine dragon so i dont think i got anything special for build. My skills are speed +5 and avoid +15. I had the engraving of rivals on it but i took that off cause i needed it for my Anna build. Right now its just normal +4 actual just made it +5 right before i ended my last play session. It one shots most things and what it doesn't it leaves on tiny health for Anna to clean. I also have levin sword which i use to turn Alearn into a dodge tank. I just switch from both depending of offense or defense.
A play i like is Move up just alear Armorslayer crush one guy, dance alear switch to levin sword then bonded shield and try to move up the other three spots to clean up whoever steps up. Most of my good units i focused on giving them high avoid and i tend to just get up close and aggro alot and then pull back and then melt the map down in waves.
It would, and you could run high speed to offset the weight in terms of speed while benefitting from the heavy attack damage increase to potentially QUAD as well as get +20 damage across all 4 hits.
Killer lance and bow suuuuuuucks. They have lower weight than they’re sword and axe counterpart, but shitty MT. If you want a great early axe that you can still use in the late game, pick up the Order of Heroes weapons you can get for free. When fully maxed, the Axe is the best one of the trio.
Feed her kills and she snowballs into a hard carry. Arguably her generating money is less important now that DLC owners were given 20k gold, a bunch of silver weapons and some other game breaking items :)
I do not, I've tried doing long form style videos to get a feel for what streaming would be like and I feel like there is too much dead air to try to do it.
Eh I still think Yunaka sweeps the thief debate just bc of her personal, she makes it too easy. Unless her avoid gets too high and enemies don’t target her I guess 😵💫
The game is balanced around the limited resources but I feel your pain, especially when it comes to SP. Just stick to the budget options early game and focus on "value" investments in mid to late game.
Honestly love there being limited resources and I’m glad IS went this route finally. As a strategy game, FE tend to just throw money at you, making the weapon system lacking in strategic value since you tend to have the resources to get the weapons you want. Now you at the very least sometimes have to think carefully and strategically when building your army and figure out what you can do better in future play throughs. Also, I might be in the minority, but I think the game being a bit punishing if you do experiment in the game to figure out what works and end up making mistakes is a good thing considering it is a a strategy game. Especially since you still get wiggle room to fix your mistakes even on maddening. I’ve certainly made a number of mistakes on my first play through on the hardest difficulty and was able to deal or fix them over time. If you do want to experiment a lot though, then it’s definitely better to be on hard or normal difficulty though since maddening is designed so you definitely have limited resources. At least you can grind on the easier difficulties.
I wish we could get refunds on SP. Made the terrible choice of getting Dual Assist on flyer mages. But you’ll still pull through, just a bit more difficult on maddening
Killer axe +5 on Panette is ridiculous. Run her with Lyn and she will double an enemy doing half hp every attack with a 65+ crit rate and more if she is hurt. Also takes 2 hp bars off bosses in 1 turn and 3 or 4 if you dance her multiple times.
As someone that has spent an embarrassing amout of time doing excel sheets with all of the weapons just to compare the refines at a glance. You should almost never +5 a weapon, it gives really marginal gains for an astronomical cost. You can +4 three weapons of the same type with the resources you need to +5 just one. The rules I follow are:
- To +1 any weapon is almost always worth it, its the most bang for your buck you're gonna get.
- Slim and Iron are the best at +3, +4 only if you need the hit boost. They will fall off as the game progresses and your characters gain Build though, so you might want to keep them at +1.
- If you're gonna use Steel as your main get it to +4. Maxing it out is too expensive and the -1 weight is hardly worth it considering at best its gonna give you +1 speed. The resources are enough to +4 two other steel weapons from scratch.
- Silver and Brave weapons are the best at +2, and still somewhat worth it at +3. From there they start facing heavy deminishing returns, especially Silver. But if you're at the endgame and swimming in silver ingots you can max out your Braves.
- All of the above also applies to the heavy weapons such as blades, great lances and great axes.
- Any weapon with effectiveness gets extra value from the might boost, as the might of the weapon is tripled when hitting the enemy they are effective against. Considering they are even cheaper to max out than the Steel, they are a great option to +4.
- Hand Axes and Javelines are good to +4 if you need the lower weight to double. If not, a +1 tomahawk and spear are cheaper and better.
- Killer weapons are the best at +2, as the 5 extra crit is not worth the cost. Wo Dao has less might, crit and weight but more hit, I think its weaker than the killer sword but if you want to use it the sweet spot is at +3.
- Levin Sword, Flame Lance, Hurricane Axe and Radiant Bow are good to +1, +3 at best if you need the extra might for some reason.
- Longbows are amazing at +1.
- As for thomes Fire is good at +3 but you really should just upgrade it to Elfire, wich is the best at +2. +3 is justifiable if you really need the -1 weight for doubles. Also, if you can double with Bongalone, its worth to +1.
- Thunder thomes wont let you double so upgrade to Elthunder as soon as you can, then to Thoron when you can use A Rank thomes. +1 the Thoron and engrave it with one of those emblems that gives it a ton of weight like Roy or Ike for the extra might.
- +1 Wind is great, base Elwind is even better. If you need the low weight to double keep it at +4, if not, a +2 Excalibur is better and cheaper.
- Surge is trash, never upgrade it. If you want to use it becouse you find if funny upgrade to Elsurge and never forge. Even +1 isn't worth it.
- Nova is basically a brave thome so +2 is the best, but get it higher if you are rich.
- Arts costs are Short-Iron-Steel-Silver, so the same applies: Initiate and Iron Body will fall off, +4 Steel Hand at best, +2 the Silver Spirit (You can make an argument for +3). Leave the Shielding at +1 as the Defense it gives tou doesn't scale. +4 the Flashing Fist for more damage.
- For the knives, they are super light so theres no point in using short and iron. Just get a Steel Dagger to +4 and roll with it. A +3 Silver Dagger is only 1 might stronger and costs double. Same with the +4 Stiletto being almost as good and half the price as the +3 Pershkatz.
- Finally the Liberatión is good to +1 but thats kinda where it ends. At +2 is just a lighter steel sword, at +4 it has the same might as a Steel +1, and at +5 it's a lighter base Silver Sword. With just 2 points of extra Build on your Alear through level ups you should be able to use a Steel +4 without losing speed, being stronger and cheaper than a maxed out Liberatión. For lighter alternatives the Wyrmslayer at +4 is also stronger and cheaper.
(If you have them, Folkvangr, Fensalir and Noatun at +1 are lighter silver weapons. If you get them to +3 they are better and cheaper than a +2 Silver. They are the only weapons I would consider worth to +5 as they are a bit more expensive than a +5 Steel but stronger than +4 Silver.)
Thank you for this. The only thing is, Thunder is worth to +5 because of Olwen S bond ring
That's very helpful sir, thanks a bunch! I second the comment where is worth to forge a thunder tome if you get a Olwen S ring, it is really helpful.
I'd argue killer weapons might be worth around +4 or +5.
Every MT is tripled if you land the crit, so it's like the bane weapons in that regard that you gain more value with every refine.
Thanks so much bro.
You are a Saint. This show be posted everywhere unironically
After messing around with the Forge. I learn that its worth having a magic weapon for units that have high speed despite their weight. They are good against Armored units. Killer weapons are definitely worth getting early on for units that have average speed growth plus they can be upgraded from iron weapons. I find Brave weapons good for trying to proc a skill or for a unit with high strength but low speed. Also they are great for finishing off enemies.Steel weapons are the jack of trades for me they are neither bad or good and can surprisingly be use all the way to end game. Silver weapons are good if have when you have the resources to invest into them.
Agreed, Steel is always good, silver can be huge if upgraded/BLD for it, brave are low key CRACKED for ability proccing. Super fun to get 2-3 sandstorms on Timerra.
Thank you for the tip! I greatly appreciate the support :)
Panette+killer axe+Ike with wrath is a crit machine once she's taken some damage. Don't have her yet on maddening but on my hard run she was incredible.
She's a monster, I could have killed sombron with just her and dancers in one turn if I'd thought to.
The killer axe is what makes it work though, especially in maddening I imagine.
@The Smuggest One I made her a wolf knight since killer axe is so lite she didn't suffer the build loss. Less hp and attack but better defensive stats and the dmg loss seems negligible when she likely gonna crit anyway
@@Rohwen Honestly if you're going more for just crit one shots and nothing else you could probably get away with it, my panette was outright one shotting a lot of enemies even at the end of hard, though I have no idea how feasible that'll be in maddening.
I think I'll have to rely on crits for that.
Knife is also a really good weapon class to have for someone a bit frontliney if you're not using great aether a lot.
Definately switched her to Warrior and its been worth it, only 5% less STR growth, but way better everything else and a great passive for hard hitting crits
@@vallum12100 Yeah, warrior is just better sadly. Unless you seriously need ukonvasara, but it seems better to throw that at Jade.
The only axe that doesn't need a accuracy engraving is Anna's axe from feh which you can get by linking the Nintendo account you play engage on and doing the tutorial until you can access the code by clicking an orb in the top right I think.
You also get a good sword and lance too that's around the same amount I think to max out liberation as well as three bond rings that come with abilities that buff attk, defense, or nerf adjacent enemies attack.
Forging a Levin sword for Griffon Knight Chloe before Ch. 10 was definitely a drug I didn't know I needed, especially on maddening.
Levin Sword can be nutty
I have her stuck with lances, I’m waiting for a flame lance. Céline has my levin sword rn 🥲
Why not craft Flame lance, as she has S lance in griffon
@@Random.n6942 Because flame lance is kinda trash
I just played chapter 19, killed like 9 enemies with Anna with like 30 luck and didn't get a single "$500".
I put the ike engrave on a brave axe +2. The damage is crazy. I tend to pair that up with a dancer. Since if panette gets double she can survive one encounter
Unlike sword and lance, Axe is not supposed to double. Instead, it is easier to build crit and try to one shot enemy.
The iron dagger is worth investing some points into in the early game. The first 2 ranks give +2 might each and are very cheap. Not every weapon needs to be taken to +5 to assess their value. Even if you're not going to use Yunaka forever, having her on your team early on to help soften targets is huge help given her high base speed and the low weight of daggers. She's also one of your most flexible units at the start because of 5 Mov. I understand dropping her eventually when Zelkov comes around because he has higher base strength and comes at a great starting level but not using her early seems like a mistake.
Another piece of equipment worth upgrading a little bit early is the Iron Lance to +1. For just 10 Iron, you get 2 might. This puts it at 4 might over the Slim Lance Chloe starts with, letting her deal a massive 8 damage more to slow enemies that she doubles for only 2 less speed due to the weight penalty.
The small might gains from forging matter way more early game than they do late game just because of how tightly the damage numbers are tuned early.
I mean.. zelkov is never gonna say zappy or hiya papaya so the choice seems pretty clear to me who the better unit is lol
How is not using Yunaka early a mistake? What does she do that other units can't also do? Most early game units can reliably 1 round and iron dagger falls off so why invest in it at all?
@@IcedCoffeeGaming Fire Emblem units and items should be evaluated on the basis of availability as well as utility from time of joining and relative to investment.
Because the resource count early game is so tight, a lot of might on a weapon that reliably doubles matters. Iron Dagger + 2 only costs 30 Iron while a Steel Sword + 1 costs 50. While the Steel Sword + 1 is a better investment long term, the upgraded Iron Dagger gives you iron left over to +1 2 other iron weapons to make your team more well-rounded overall.
For characters, Yunaka is your only Knife user early game while having the highest effective speed (because Chloe has more speed but lances are slightly heavier).Knives are the highest accuracy weapon type in the game while giving everyone else hitting the same enemy a damage boost. This makes her one of the most reliable members of your team for applying chip damage so you can feed kills to the people who need investment. The advantages don't just end with raw offensive combat stats but with movement as well. She has 5 Mov with 1-2 range while your other foot-locked units have 4 Mov. The covert bonus also lets you use her more aggressively if you can get her into an avoid tile. Plus, even if there are mages, she has 7 resistance, she doesn't get doubled by them because of her high speed, making her a good enemy phase unit. Sure you can not use her, but the early game is a lot easier when you do use her.
Overall, I think it's fine to put resources into smoothing the experience early game even if these end up as things you drop later on down the line. When it comes to the mid to late game, that 30 iron you used on the iron dagger and that chip exp that went to Yunaka instead of someone else early is going to be a drop in the bucket but you'll appreciate how much easier that stuff made the early game at that time.
Iron Dagger is a trap in the same way that Liberation is. If you're playing Maddening (I'm on C21 of my second maddening run right now), you want to invest in stuff that you'll still have with you by the end of the game, not to get you through the first (easy) ~15 chapters. Sure, you could invest into an Iron Dagger but you don't have to. Yunaka does fine with it until you get a Steel Dagger in chapter 10. She doesn't need more than that. I'd argue that the actual conversation should be in Steel vs Silver (and this only for Daggers), but I rather end up having 2 refined Steel Weapons than a Silver one, specially when most of the game the bottleneck is going to be Silver Ingots. As for Yunaka herself, she has consistently been among my top 3 units (along Anna and Chloe) from the moment I got her. By the time you get Zelkov, Yunaka should only be ~2 points behind in str, which is easily patched by an Energy Drop. Yunaka will be faster and have way more res, which makes her great for baiting mages and actually killing them. And this besides the obvious benefits of having dagger users.
Diamant fully upgraded killer axe, 60% or more grit every hit
I have my killer axe on Alear as a Wyvern and he just completely trolls with 75% crit chance and Vantage.
This is one of the strongest arguments I've been presented for using Diamant. His passive is perfect for axes.
Also blades are really good for when you put a ike engraving on them and you can get a for-sure kill with overdrive
Iron weapons only need +1 in very early game. It’s insanely cheap (10 iron) and gives a whopping 2 might. Then once the dogs start bringing in a trickle of silver you can move onto steel weapons and get them to +3 (although Yunaka appreciates +4 on daggers, with no real need to go to +5). You can move onto +5 on non-daggers once you get enough silver and get everyone their starting forged weapons.
Silver weapons are simply way too expensive for what is a marginal mt upgrade over steel just for a probable speed penalty. At this point I think you’re better off expanding your weapon reportoire, like looking to levin sword, longbow, higher tomes, peshkatz, killer weapons, or really anything that makes your characters more flexible.
Forging axes CAN work, but you need to have a clear plan in mind, like hit rate engravings (as you mentioned) or ranged axes for chain attacks. Diamant actually uses axes really well because of his personal and, unlike hero, can actually use tomahawk for chip before chain attacks.
In terms of priority, I feel like lances and daggers are the most obvious before looking into other weapons. Chloé and Yunaka both scale well with reforges with the former appreciating the weight decrease and the latter abusing the honestly unbalanced forge upgrades daggers get. Even if you plan on dropping Yunaka you can just pass her dagger to Zelkov or Merrin.
All those silver heavy weapons are very good for engage attack. And if you don't have that many mage class, armorbreaker weapons are very good as there are so many armored units in this game. Using armorbreaker weapons usually result in higher damages than silver weapon.
Me hitting chapter 25 last night riding the struggle bus and hitting every curb imaginable. Sees coffees mid game guide. So now I see where I had fucked up and fucked up hard
Killer axe is amazing on Panette. She can get a "yes" crit rate removing uncertainty by adding an accuracy+crit engraving. Don't make the same mistake I did keeping her in Barbarian though. That ridiculously low dex cap will catch up to you eventually. Other than that... yeah they suck unfortunately.
What class did you move panette to? I'm a bit torn between Hero, Wyvern and Warrior
@@iridiumessence2958 halberdier for me. Free brave effect for having another ally nearby, practically a delete key for bosses.
I heard fist actually go off str and magic combined divide by 2 so mix’s builder like Jean and chole could be interesting. Only mentioning this because near the end you said a person needs to have high strength to make it work.
you need both magic and strenght to effectively use a scroll so maybe a Celine, Chloe or Anna can put some good numbers in their damage output
Level 3 donation for all nations EXCEPT Brodia does NOT increase the amount of ore you get after completing chapters. Unless it's a completely hidden bonus that the game lies about, only go to level 2 with most of them and maybe 3 with Brodia (it sucks because the only times you'll return there are for 2 paralogues and maybe a skirmish).
This is what I know. But having watched this, I am so tempted right now to upgrade Solm to level 3. What's stopping me is the history of ICG making mistakes in his guides before (that I have sadly followed). I'm currently about to start ch15 on maddening, and if it's true that I can get more silver ingots if I upgrade Solm to 3, then I'd gladly do just that.
I noticed this as well, the Brodia Donation is really bad and as far as I can tell DOES NOT SCALE the central island endgame region. I got 6 silver at donation level 4 Brodia. Brodia Donation needs patched. Other regions are worth it though
@@IcedCoffeeGaming No, Brodia is only one that should give extra minerals at level 3 donation. If you want extra silver from Solm, Firene, and Elusia you either stop at level 2, or go to level 4.
Unless you're saying the game is glitched and displays the incorrect information.
I disagree on daggers, they are extremely cheap to upgrade and they tend to have +2 Mt per upgrade which is absolutely crazy for a weapon that doesn't have a lot of strength to start with and is usually equipped on faster units that can double. A steel dagger you can upgrade to +4, which more than doubles its Mt (7 to 15) and adds +10 hit and +5 crit for only 2800 Gold and 2 silver. That's a deal of the century. Compared to a Steel Axe+4 only goes from 13 Mt to 17 Mt and costs the same to upgrade.
The best weapons to upgrade imo:
Longbow
All daggers
Any Killer weapon / Wo Dao (every time it crits you are getting +3 damage per upgrade instead of +1 for a non-crit)
Any Slim, Iron, or Steel weapon that you plan to be using for a while (cheap and useful)
Tomahawk and Hand Axe
Javelin and Spear
Magical weapons like Radiant Bow, Levin Sword
Light, ranged, and crit weapons are the best to upgrade. Heavy weapons / smash weapons are the worst. El-Tomes and higher are ok to just put +1 or +2 in if you have extra gold but not after it starts costing silver, because magic in this game is already super OP and doesn't need a buff. Special Swords/Lances/Axes that are effective against armor, cavalry or fliers are not as worth it to prioritize except maybe the hurricane axe.
I engraved Chrom on a second Levin sword. Why I did that is beyond me. All I know is that Chrom’s engraving is the same as Sigurd’s engraving, except that Chrom’s engraving increases DODGE by 20.
Silver Smash weapons are actually supper important to maddening
Yes Louis always had a silver great lance once I could buy them in the shop
For tomes I only upgraded bolganone and thoron. For bows I swear by radiant bow. Fogado with radiant bow was a very decent damage dealer on my maddening run.
I also really like the killing edge with kagetsu. He has over a 90% critrate in my maddening run, its crazy he just crits everything to oblivion and the best part is, he also always doubles, its insane.
So I pulled the trigger and got Louis a silver great Lance, he hits for like 50, it’s hilarious on enemy phase, especially if they try to hit him with a great weapon because he gets to attack first.
I just got him over the threshold for starsphere too… I’m thinking about making him Halberdier because he doesn’t lose that much defense… it’s working well on Chloe.
Anyway I’m excited for phase 3 of dlc now, I hope the gifts for phase 3 include second seals but we’ll see.
The early game is spicy now
I wonder if it’s viable to turn the free steel sword you get into a levin sword for the princess…
I’m not sure about Jade being able to catch up because she’s got an axe. If she was a Sword General instead maybe… Louis doesn’t miss much
I liked Boucheron early but the only Axe I seem to use anymore is a Tomahawk on Diamant
Early game Silver Greatlance absolutely busted my run way more than almost any other upgrade until the crit really started kicking in mid to late game.
I agree with a lot in the video. Some I don't. Axes aren't inherently bad, you just have to put them on the right unit. You know who's an amazing axe user that nobody talks about? Chloe. You give her the Noatun (promotional weapon from FEH, which anyone has access to for free), refine it, and there's your second best unit all game long (2nd after Anna).
Chole has the speed to mitigate the Wt during the early game, and as she grows and you refine the weapon, the penalty goes away. Right now on C21 maddening my Chloe has 161 hit, 38 speed and 45 PAtk while sporting that Noatun +5.
Regarding Armors, I think this video won't age well because Quick Riposte made them actually absolute units, but I don't hold that against you as it's very new and not everyone has the DLC. I've seen Louis single handedly one round nearly every cavalier that Mauvier ported to him in C20 maddening just by standing there and doubling them all thanks to QR and his gargantuan 32 Str. Other than that, they've always been useful to me in soaking damage so my Ivy and Anna could disintegrate from behind. You can play around mages very easily. Yunaka and Chloe can easily dive the enemy backline if needed, and you can always soak damage with Diamant for a couple turns while you deal with the mages. Louis (specially) and Goldmary are absolute mainstays on my team. Also, you make up their lack of dex by using +hit refines which you probably wouldn't use on anyone else, so there's not even an opportunity cost there.
As for the tomes... I don't like Bolganone. It's way too heavy. Anna can't use it and, unlike Chloe, Ivy doesn't have the speed to mitigate the Wt and still double, so I go with refined Elfires. They both still have 49 and 50 MAtk respectively, while being able to double everything that's not a Swordmaster. My only problem is I have to restrain myself from using them too much because they can pretty much one round most non-boss units.
Brave weapons I personally find them to be a trap. The units that they're good for are units I wouldn't use, as speed is paramount on maddening. If you can consistently double enemies, you're life will be so much easier. Sure, you can double with a Brave weapon, but chances are you're gonna do little damage due to the low Mt, and will get doubled back, always at a high net loss.
Killer weapons I haven't used. I'm sure they're fun, but when you're playing maddening on classic mode, you can't bank a kill or be killed situation on getting a crit. At least I don't. The few risks I take are super calculated, otherwise I play safe. Killer weapons also have low Mt, so unless you crit, you're gonna struggle to even scratch units into the late game.
Now that's outta the way, I agree with the most important part of the video, which is that Steel weapons are the way to go. They give you the best bang for your buck for when you're actually progressing through the game, and I mention this because there's very heavy diminishing returns beyond the +3 mark. I've only +5'd steel weapons early for Yunaka and Alcryst, who I felt are the only ones that actually needed them, but everyone else's I upgrade beyond +3 once I had those 2 covered up, and I had +5'd the FEH weapons. I still have many to go, most of them actually, but really beyond +3 is a luxury you can get when you can, not something you necessarily need to rush.
Another perk about those refined Steel over Silver weapons is that they give you respectable crit chance, which as you rightfully said yourself, getting a crit means you can often free up a unit to put somewhere else, which almost always is a boon.
I find Effective weapons good, really, but I don't think your limited resources should go to them on maddening. Like you, I deal with Armor units with magic, and on the big Dragons you can use engages. Usually one engage + something else will do the trick. Worst case you can always use a fracture staff to avoid damage.
I think Diamant is probably the only decent axe unit if you keep in him his unique promotion, mostly because he has an actual build stat and has juuust enough speed that you can get him doubling with a lyn or stat boosters.
I honestly think the REAL reason to get the dlc emblems is just to have more engravings for everyone. The lyn engrave is super-contested if you have more than one axe guy, tiki's engrave is fantastic on anyone who wants extra damage without compromising hit, and the avoid penalty isn't that big a deal depending on who you're using.
Yeah it freaked me out too when I realized they made killing edge have more crit than wo dao like wtf IntSys it’s literally never been like that
For the axes, I have anna and rosado with +constitution of leif and with that they always attack x2, for me the worst weapons are swords
I also use all the killer wapons at +5 and they are amazing, they are cheap to upgrade and your pjs always have 50% crit when attacking
My archer did not matter what he did, he always did little damage. What I did in the end was to use my archer with Eirika and honestly it was a brutal change, the damage increase is tremendous (Also the Selene ability activates a lot)
gave speedtaker asap to my heavy hitters, feels nice
Any axe user with the +15 hit inherit from Sigurd I believe is OP.
Suddenly regrets not resetting for Ana death
Brave axes make lief a good unit. Chuck him on someone with good speed and middling build and suddenly you have a warrior who is doubling on defence with silver axes and erasing literally anything from existence on player phase with brave axe.
I swear by Axe units man. Diamant was made to use axes particularly the brave axe. Alcryst and Fogado reclassed as Warriors are good as they retain B rank Bows (Silver) and you can trade strat their axes to longbows to activate more chain attacks which reclassing to Warrior allows. You are right about most axes being bad. The best IMO are Brave, Silver, Tomahawk, Killer. You could give it a +Hit engraving or give the wielder +HIT from Sigurd or Divine Pulse from Byleth if you have the skill slots available. I actually did a Panette crit build on 1st maddening run. It was probably the most fun I've ever had playing FE. Step 1, save the seraph robe from early game for her. give her the seraph robe from her join chapter and then hp tonics every chapter if you desire. From there, you have options depending on what emblem you want her to use. If you want to use her with Ike, then inherit Speedtaker from Lyn, for 2000SP (she starts with 1500 at base). Otherwise, inherit Wrath from Ike for 2000. Once she caps DEX as a berserker (a pitiful ~23), reclass to Warrior. If you don't want to use Ike+Panette, then inherit Wrath from Ike, and pair with Lyn for speedtaker and some very hard hitting astra storms. And also reclass into warrior for a higher DEX cap and access to bows. Engaging with Leif for the +10 crit sounds good on paper, but all it ends up doing is have Panette counterattack with the light brand for 0 damage or miss with the 55 hit rate master lance. Other ways to fix panette's speed are to reclass to halberdier for their class kill that lets you always double. think about it with slow base/growth units.
You also said you don't like armor units. They are made for the Greatlance and Great Axes. In general, the great weapons have 2 main use cases, 1. enemy phasing when neither you nor the enemy would double anyways 2. When you want to get some engage meter for free for the unit and the healer. Greatweapons have giga synergy with Emblem Attacks. Early Steel Blade with Marth is pretty good. Same sword but with Roy if paired with Alear in the early game. Great Axe for Ike's Great Aether is good if you can upgrade it to be better than the Urvan. Hurricane axe + GA to punish flyer packs. Pole axe +GA to punish Wolf Knight packs. Ike comes with a 18 MT hammer, use his.
Great input on axes. I agree with the ones you outlined for being the best, Diamant on axes makes sense.
Wouldn't Alcryst be better on a brave bow build with luna proc? His dex growth is 80% or something. I can see the upside of warrior, it gets longbows and axes and is a backup. Silver bow on warrior is also great, one huge downside of Saphir. Panette being a crit archetype also makes sense I had a hard time fitting her into my team on my first maddening run, I eventually just made her a wolf knight for some reason lmao.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming I tried the alcryst + brave/killer bow luna thing and he ended the game with 22 str. I dumped Energy Drop into Alear 1st go around, so tough luck on fixed growth, which makes maddening less frustrating. You can do Luna Alcryst on maddening, just give him at leasty one of your 3 early energy drops
I thought the usual wisdom was to only donate a little, especially on Maddening?
Just use accuracy engravings and/or use axes on Panette or Diamont. Dia gets a natural accuracy buff and Panette wants a Killer axe with an accuracy boost. An accurate killer axe is great bc the higher Mt means more reliably killing in one hit.
Not run Yunaka? She can literally make maddening trivial if you feed her stat boosts, and then with corrin ring she is insane again.
My Yunaka fell off and is mostly a dragon hex and fog bot now. I didn't feed her any stat boosts but I imagine she would need a lot to make maddening trivial...enemy units just have such high hit. How are you getting enough avoid in the late game? My Yunaka typically has like 15-40% chance to be hit depending on what she's fighting and doesn't do a lot of damage/rarely doubles anything anymore
@@Peter-wb7he engraved her steel dagger with micaiah, gives her plus 40 avo
@@Peter-wb7he You can stack fog on terrain objest like wood to get 60 avoid? Still enemy in maddening would just ignore thing that they can't hit.
@@tqhung169 yes but you can startto pull enemies by attacking them with her, so still very useful, she give u some safe pulls
As somebody who used Boucheron i will say this acrrecy +build inheratanve was a nessity cause once he lvls build that axe weight ment nothing he v use urvan and tomahawks without loseing speed amd has been a nice "go into the middle of all these ebemys and lress great another woth resolve he just soaks damage with his Hp pool and half damage. Put acc+ on a killer weapon and he hits like a truck consistantly
Panette is one of my best units on my maddening run. Vantage+ and Wrath. Monster. Need to avoid breaks, ranged enemies and tanks though.
When will you make a late game upgrade guide? if anything changes from this even I mean. Like for example is Caladbolg, Brionac, and the 2 weapons you get from the well worth upgrading?
Lategame upgrades tend to be less important than Midgame as most of your upgrading goes into midgame but I will be doing a guide soon, in the late game on 3 maddening runs simultaneously so that should help inform the guide :)
The best weapon in the game is Thunder with Olwen ring. More broken then any mage emblem. Give Alear Alphonse's ring, stand next to that buff bot, and watch everything die. Gets more funny after acquiring dances. Magic is everything
Give the thunder ike engraving since you guaranteed doubles anyway
You should look into the 3 weapons you get as part of the free dlc unlocked by linking an FEH with the same nintendo account as your Engage save file. The axe is great and the spear may as well be Chloe signature weapon with a decent engraving, I think they're on par with silver but with less weight!
The only time you should upgrade atome is if it's for specific character you're trying to help the weight
I didn't have the same exp with magic users. They all need speedtaker for me before they really get good. I usually give then evasion engravings. Also magic can be fairly inaccurate on dodgy enemies. Thoron esp wants an acc engraving.
Jean can have the build and speed to double with axes alongside the highest possible strength growth in the game as long as you're willing to invest in him. If you second seal him at level 1 into an axe fighter, then master seal into a Berserker at level 10, he should have 15 build and 25 speed by the time he hits level 20. With Tiki (or at least Starsphere), he has 19 build and max (28) speed at level 20. That said, if you give him Tiki, I think he would be more useful as a warrior because it's nice to have a bow user that doubles and hits really hard without relying on Luna.
Assuming you don't use Tiki, who immediately turns him into a good unit, there's a time limit for him to become useful before you lose your chance to powerlevel him. To get around that, you can always corner Ivy and keep healing until he hits a decent level.
Where can I powerlevel him outside of his paralogue? I feel like it'd be difficult to do without him being in a healer class, too.
@@learnpolishangel2194 Micaiah gives C rank staves, and great sacrifice gives a lot of exp. Corner a unit in chapter 9 and 10, unequip the weapons of anyone that can counterattack, then keep healing the unit that gets hit.
Edit: This doesn't work for 1-2 range units like mages and thieves. I have another strategy that works for Ivy below.
@@learnpolishangel2194 I just tested it myself. Before starting chapter 9, use a res tonic on Alear and make sure he equips Marth at bond level 7 for unyielding. Just to be safe, make sure you have a slim sword in the convoy. Then, use a magic tonic on Jean and give him 2 heals and a mend. Also, make sure you have four high res units with at least 10 speed and 14 mag atk or 12 atk in your group.
Once the map is clear except for Ivy's group, bait Ivy out and box her in with the 4 units I mentioned earlier (don't unequip them) before killing the rest of the enemies, then put Alear within range of Ivy. If all goes well, Ivy should target Alear every turn. If she has a 1% or higher critical hit chance, equip Alear with a slim sword. After that, just keep healing. I'd also have a second healer ready in case you use a heal when you should have used a mend. You can also use Great Sacrifice to save on mends and then gain faster exp by AoE healing yourself.
@@War_On_Fats Can you tell me what your team comp. looked like for chapter 9? What level was Jean, too? Your method sounds good, but I want to make sure I do it correctly.
@@learnpolishangel2194 Jean (& Micaiah) was a level 1 axe fighter, reclassed from a level 1 martial monk. Alear (& Marth) was level 13 with 31 hp and 7 res. I used a level 10 Celine (& Celica) with 25 hp and 13 (base 10) res, level 3 (promoted at 12) Griffin Knight Chloe (& Sigurd) with 34 hp and 14 res, level 12 Yunaka (+1 res bond ring) with 28 hp and 11 (base 10) res, and a High Priest Anna (& Tiki) with 38 (base 28) hp and 16 res.
I'm pretty sure that as long as they have at least 11 res, 10 speed, and enough HP to not get one rounded, Ivy will always target an Alear that can't counterattack. If whoever you're using doesn't have high enough stats, or you want to be extra sure it works, you can always buy tonics to fix the stats that need patching up.
Aside from the important units, I used level 11 Diamant & Roy, level 11 Alcryst & Edelgard, level 8 Etie & Leif, and level 8 Framme with S rank Deidre.
Anna is very hard to make a sage from my experience since a level 1 mage gets its ass kicked early and late game
17:01 I don't think Timerra having more defense than Louis and Jade has anything to do with "Just from being a Picket". She has the exact same base defense as Louis, but joins 12 levels higher than him, and his personal defense growth is the same as Timerra's personal + Picket class growth. If you instant promote her, she has the same defense as Jade when Jade joins. It sounds more like you just didn't use them and used Timerra
Also: Arts/Punching is the average of the unit's Strength and Magic. Just having high strength isn't necessarily ideal since each strength is only worth half as much compared to other physical weapons
I deployed them on more chapters than Timerra, they just didn't consistently deal enough damage or get enough kills to level up fast. Other units like Chloe, Anna, Alear were my hard carries so I didn't need units to sit and take hits/counter attack.
Brave lance is guaranteed Quad with a Helbadier class. And they are a very decent backup unit to have if you have lots of flyers to get them the other side of the enemies.
Amber a good fit for this role? High str growth and decent speed and dex if I remember right.
Solid use case on Halberdier.
@@TheBlarg113 his speed has been pretty mediocre for me, I think Halberdier is a great class for him
Perhaps I should just go firene level 3 and then be done with it lol
3 things.
Stiletto is probably largely useless because you can simply stay at Steel Dagger for crit since they come with crit which is lost when you go to Silver Dagger. Might get some extra Mt out of it but dunno if its worth losing the 1-2 Range and how much more costly the upgrades are.
Maxing Thunder can be good if you run Dire Thunder and you can throw Ike's +3 MT +15 Wt on it and not give a damn about the speed penalty and make it hit like a truck.
Lastly, the punchy Arts scale (Str/2+Mag/2)
I made Alear a silver art recently, It’s not as good as Liberacion but it’s not bad for fighting magic guys.
It looks really cool tho
For arts just use Eirika's ring. Ignore def and always quading is good. Also good for breaking mages. Admittedly I only ever use them on Alear to break mages.
Did you look at the donation rewards? You dont get extra silver for firene or solm lvl 3 (unless the ingame and online info is wrong)
Jean warrior with lief emblem mid late game you can give him silver axe that does not reduce his speed and is fast
Me with 5 thieves hahahaha
Clanne
Yunaka
Zelkov
Alcrit
Pepsichan
Something I've noticed is how underwhelming the S rank weapons for swords, axes, and bows are. They have 3 more Mt than their silver counterpart, and roughly the same hit rate. At max forging, the sw/ax/ln/bw S ranks will have 2 more Mt and 10 more crit but could 50 silver ore to get there vs silver weapons costing 20 silver, 100 steel and 800 iron. TLDR; the only worthwhile S ranks are the 1-2 range lance, the 1-2 range dagger, and maybe the tome, the rest I'd say stick with the silver/steel counterparts due to the lower investment cost. There are also more specialized forging builds like wrath panette + killer axe, or a spear/tomahawk for your General.
Tanks are great in this game. Usually have at least one one on the team. Usually Great Knight > General though. Picket is def a great class but there is no way it should have more def than a Great Knight or General. Those classes will have something like an extra 30% def growth over Picket Timerra. That said, Timerra is great with Ike or Hector (if you have DLC). Great Knight with Sigurd, Ike, Roy, Hector is great. If going General would use Sigurd for sure.
Isn't arts damage calculated as (STR+MAG)/2? Thus units like Jean which have a balanced spread would be good, instead of units with single high stat growths.
It might be, I haven't had a chance to run Qi builds yet. Almost done with 2nd playthrough.
Yes,Jean destroys mages and archers as a Martial Master
I am pretty sure for Arts, it isn't based on your strength. Instead it is based on half your magic and strength.
yeah, it's the average of the two, which honestly is just such a questionable decision imho.
Yeah Arts overall are just really bad and that's one of the reasons why. And for the unit types they can break (bows, tomes, and daggers), there is always a better way to take them out quickly than to start them with a weak Arts break
So made Anna a mage knight and gave her Camilla. Broken
Ok. Axes hit the hardest by far but only really Tomahawks and Silver Axes I have found to be good on normal users and a crit engraved killer axe is also good with Flyers.
I had my anna as paladin, equiped with tiki, nothing extra for luck and she ran around with 41
Forging axes is kinda bad because the units who naturally wield axes already have high strength so the marginal gain from each upgrade is pretty small. I would say the best axes to forge is the poleaxe or the killer ax, if you can fix the accuracy issues.
Swords and daggers are probably the best forges because they're light and easy to double with (plus sword classes generally have lower strength). Lances are in a pretty good spot too.
I feel the same way about Silver weapons. They're pretty expensive to upgrade for a marginal upgrade over Steel. I'd rather spend that extra money forging effective weapons for that situational triple forge value
Silver axes should be great for Boucheron right? His build is perfect for it.
@@jackmanleblanc2518 Boucheron is one of the few units who can wield heavy axes effectively. The main problem with this game is that the prepromotes have such high base stats that the opportunity cost of investing into Boucheron usually isn't worth it. He's not a bad unit though, it just so happens that Panette is just as strong and she comes pre-promoted.
@@willytan12 I'm running both this time and Boucheron as a hero works great with Panette as a warrior. It would probably be better though if I switched them so the Bouch could benefit from his personal skill more, that +2 damage he gets seems to be added for each chain attack. If his build/speed gets high enough he can quad with a brave axe then with a single hero brave assisting then that would be 16 more damage total.
You probably are right though that he's not that great but now that I've said all that I think I want to try putting Lyn on Boucheron lol
For high str axe users, upgrading the brave axe is actually the best. Since they actually do some damage with them.
@@timm8998 Yeah brave axe+killer axe seem to be the way to go.
I prepared a few engravements before chapter 11 and I'm wondering how I should refine these weapons later on:
I gave the Micaiah one to a steel sword (for Hero Lapis to avoid tank), but I'm unsure whether I should make it +5 (makes it a good all-rounder), refine it into a silver sword (for extra power), or refine it to a levin sword (for countering ranged unit in enemy-phase + ranged assists).
I gave the Roy engravement to a steel lance. I plan to make Boucheron a Halberdier and could either refine the steel lance to a silver lance (max power), or refine it to a brave lance (combine the Roy engravement with Boucheron's unique passive to maximise damage from quadding).
I did also give the Lief engravement to a +3 dagger for Yunaka, and I'm pretty happy with the results. I'm just wondering if I should commit to a +5 iron dagger, or refine it to a steel dagger.
How many times you do the tempest trial in you maddening run?
0 on this current playthrough.
One thing to note, is that I believe arts scale off of the average between Strength and Magic. So add your unit's strength and magic, then divide by 2, and that is what you have to scale off of for arts. They are weird like that. Also, one thing I am not 100% sure about, is do Levin Sword, Flame Lance, Hurricane Axe, and Radiant Bow, do they scale off of just magic, or does strength still help?
Magical weapons, Levin Sword, Flame lance, etc. only scale with magic.
I got Anna to 30 luck, so I felt like Mage Knight was limiting her since it has a 29 luck cap. I put her on Griffin Knight with a levin sword and she just trucks through everything.
High Priest does have higher base in both MAG and LCK, but honestly it's not that much so Griffin Knight actually seems not too bad. Might have to try that for my next play through!
@@jlandejr yeah I just didn't snag the tome proficiency in time ;(
Armor slayer +4 still one shots at chapter 18 Maddening
and consistently doubles with Alear
Do you run -weight engraving on it or any BLD increase on Alear?
@@IcedCoffeeGaming This is after i took the engraving off. And i just had alear on divine dragon so i dont think i got anything special for build. My skills are speed +5 and avoid +15. I had the engraving of rivals on it but i took that off cause i needed it for my Anna build. Right now its just normal +4 actual just made it +5 right before i ended my last play session. It one shots most things and what it doesn't it leaves on tiny health for Anna to clean. I also have levin sword which i use to turn Alearn into a dodge tank. I just switch from both depending of offense or defense.
Oh and i use Lucina ring on Alear so that adds some speed as well
A play i like is Move up just alear Armorslayer crush one guy, dance alear switch to levin sword then bonded shield and try to move up the other three spots to clean up whoever steps up. Most of my good units i focused on giving them high avoid and i tend to just get up close and aggro alot and then pull back and then melt the map down in waves.
Would Hector ring on a unit with lower build make brave weapons completely insane with his Heavy Strike skill?
It would, and you could run high speed to offset the weight in terms of speed while benefitting from the heavy attack damage increase to potentially QUAD as well as get +20 damage across all 4 hits.
Killer lance and bow suuuuuuucks. They have lower weight than they’re sword and axe counterpart, but shitty MT.
If you want a great early axe that you can still use in the late game, pick up the Order of Heroes weapons you can get for free. When fully maxed, the Axe is the best one of the trio.
Heroes weapons requires that I link my nintendo account with FE Heroes right? If so I might skip that lmao
@@IcedCoffeeGaming yea. I downloaded that just for this reason so far… no spam or anything has flooded by inbox.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming
You can safely uninstall Heroes the moment you get the weapons. Thankfully there is no commitment required.
how did u get ur anna's stats to be so insane im on ch14 mine isnt anywhere near close i want to use her but she just dies
Feed her kills and she snowballs into a hard carry. Arguably her generating money is less important now that DLC owners were given 20k gold, a bunch of silver weapons and some other game breaking items :)
I love your videos do you stream?
I do not, I've tried doing long form style videos to get a feel for what streaming would be like and I feel like there is too much dead air to try to do it.
I already upgraded my steel axes 😡 At least kagestsu still gets 100% hit with them lol
Eh I still think Yunaka sweeps the thief debate just bc of her personal, she makes it too easy. Unless her avoid gets too high and enemies don’t target her I guess 😵💫
So are you mad about how busted Camilla is?
I have no idea how busted Camilla is, I don't have the DLC :)
neat
I am trying to like this game, but I find the limited resources to be a pain. Makes it punishing to experiment.
The DLC gives tons of resources
The game is balanced around the limited resources but I feel your pain, especially when it comes to SP. Just stick to the budget options early game and focus on "value" investments in mid to late game.
Honestly love there being limited resources and I’m glad IS went this route finally. As a strategy game, FE tend to just throw money at you, making the weapon system lacking in strategic value since you tend to have the resources to get the weapons you want. Now you at the very least sometimes have to think carefully and strategically when building your army and figure out what you can do better in future play throughs.
Also, I might be in the minority, but I think the game being a bit punishing if you do experiment in the game to figure out what works and end up making mistakes is a good thing considering it is a a strategy game. Especially since you still get wiggle room to fix your mistakes even on maddening. I’ve certainly made a number of mistakes on my first play through on the hardest difficulty and was able to deal or fix them over time.
If you do want to experiment a lot though, then it’s definitely better to be on hard or normal difficulty though since maddening is designed so you definitely have limited resources. At least you can grind on the easier difficulties.
I wish we could get refunds on SP. Made the terrible choice of getting Dual Assist on flyer mages. But you’ll still pull through, just a bit more difficult on maddening
Killer axe +5 on Panette is ridiculous. Run her with Lyn and she will double an enemy doing half hp every attack with a 65+ crit rate and more if she is hurt. Also takes 2 hp bars off bosses in 1 turn and 3 or 4 if you dance her multiple times.
I thnk Jade just sucks. She wasn't getting strength and obviously, was not doubling. Brave axe didn't save her.
Goldmary is the best tank in the game. Mine has 47 defence and doesn’t take physical damage, chapter 24 on maddening now.