You’ve earned yourself a new subscriber for your extreme consideration into protecting people from spoilers. I clicked this video just to learn about the starting characters and clicked away spoiler free thank you
Absolutely, I hate spoilers with a passion myself so I always spoiler tag my content and make sure people know exactly what they're getting into! Welcome to the family and I hope to see you around more!
1:43:10 Reverse Space-Time doesn't affect units that are dead. So if during the turn prior using it you kill a bunch of enemies they wouldn't come back. This could give you huge advantages over the enemy due to getting back resources/ repositioning
Julio is actually a great flanker. His damage is serviceable, but if his follow-up attack is part of a kill, he gets the bonus TP. This also makes him more survivable thanks to his TP shield, so you don't have to park him in the back line. On top of that, he can donate 2 TP to Benedict so that he can activate Now! more often.
i like keeping julio between my mages and front line for that reason, pumping out the damage against armors is sometimes preferable to giving TP to someone who might not need it that turn.
One thing I’ve loved about this game is how almost every battle seems to be tailored to highlight the strengths of one or more characters. It makes every character seem useful or at least useable. I think the fact that there’s no permadeath and you keep experience gained if you lose also really encouraged me to experiment with my less used characters and figure out how to use them more.
Another note in Lionel's favor: If you an enrage an enemy that can't reach him, the enemy will move as close as they can to him and just end their turn, without attacking at all. It can make it really easy to neutralize healers entirely, it's really good
As someone who uses decimal basically every time since i got him, even tho hes unreliable, hes great at chipping away at the battlefield, constantly dealing damage to multiple enemies, even got a like 8 hit in the twinsgate map where you start at the bottom while all enemies starts on top, and that makes him incredibly valuable imo.
I value consistency of output over things like randomly clutch moments because let's be real, he's definitely had those for me on some maps. It's just frustrating at the times when I need him and the numbers aren't adding up or the height advantage isn't there so it's really hard to rank him high up
@@LinkKing7 like a couple of other units in the game I feel like hes only valuable on certain maps such as those with massive height gaps such as whiteholm bridge where decimal trivializes it because he stands at the bottom of a ladder and just spams the "height 5+" attack dealing a fair amount of dmg to a lot of units. On utility chapter 14 you can block Thalas and Erika from leaving the barricades and just have decimal spam the attack hitting almost every unit except an archer who is outside the 10 range he has.
6:24 Just a note, the buff is in a plus shape that affects 5 people max. It’s just that the place where you can put the plus is any square within 8 range 14:58 Also that doesn’t cure stop. The only thing that cures stop is turning back time with small child 17:00 Okay, Roland is fine. He’s pretty close to Frederica. Double thrust is super good damage in the earlygame, he’s always flanking things, and opportune attack is literally free damage. His mastery skill is also really good for dealing with certain tanky bosses. Flash of steel is hawk dive but more map dependent 24:30 Hard disagree. I have never found myself wanting for damage in this game, only for survivability, and Anna has that in spades. Her damage is low, but consistent. Anna will almost never die due to her skill set, and she can provide vital support to the team with stealthed items and the like 33:00 Alright, I just need to throw this out there. I know Hughette is mega-busted, and I’ve used her for most of the game, but for me, she had near constant accuracy issues. I think she’s great, but reliable is not a word I would use to describe her 40:00 I believe luck also boosts status chance 48:00 This sorta stumped me. Hossabarra is not a good attacker. She is at least worst than Roland, who you already said was bad. Hossabarra has some niche uses as a follow up attack bot, but her lackluster healing makes her sorta bad 55:12 Not to nitpick, but pretty sure it increases the range where he can set the trap, not how far the trap flings them 56:42 An additional thing to note is that the turret destroys itself after taking 5 shots, regardless of how many of those shots it hits 57:50 Disagree. Jens is super good, but also relies heavily on the map to be in his favor. If there are chokepoints and big height differentials, sure, he’s S tier. But there are a fair few flat maps in this game (think the cavalry maps in 2 of the endings) where he just has almost nothing to do. Compare to Benedict, who, as a supporter, is good on every map 58:50 It’s good on bosses, but yeah, it’s bad overall 1:03:30 Charm is Lionel’s defense debuff, not his tempt 1:05:20 It can throw balls, actually 1:08:00 Hard hard hard disagree. She’s honestly worse then Lionel, but has all his problems (except worse). She is incredibly expensive to use in the early game, and tp physick is a later game skill. She’s really cool in the lategame, but that’s pretty much it. A or B tier maybe, but not S. 1:13:30 I’ve never seen an enemy archer miss with or without tempest. 1:17:00 Arrow Spray is bad until you get the insta-kill, and it’s godly afterward 1:19:00 It’s actually great. Archie is good at dealing damage, but killing things from half is hard for him. This can save you a lot of turns, and it can also save you from having to commit other resources to killing fleeing enemies 1:21:00 I think Lionel counts as a tank 1:24:00 Yeah, Flanagan low-key sucks. My issue with him is that he has worse damage potential then like Piccoletta, which is just pathetic. At least Erador can dish out some damage while he’s tanking 1:33:50 Disagree. Decimal is incredible. He’s the only mage that doesn’t require a tp battery, and the game constantly throws enemies at you with the same exact hp. On several maps, Decimal can take half off the shieldbearers on the first turn, then follow up with a 4 to decrease the movement of a few enemies. Also, 7 targets the entire battlefield, meaning he can super easily chip on the other side of the map. He requires a different playstyle, but I would consider him easily the best dps mage. Attacking 3 enemies every other turn consistently for 100-200 damage is insane 1:40:00 Disagree. Quahaug is really good, but saying he is a tier above everyone else is just not true. He’s a great support unit, but he requires a ton of investment too. I would throw him with Lionel and Medina. Being recruited so late hurts a lot
Another great point in favor of Anna is that she *does* have great damage potential, because she can trigger a follow-up from a hard hitting ally like Julio *twice per turn*
Huh, that's odd that your Hughette had accuracy issues, I've missed the odd 90% here or there and it definitely screwed me over but mine did ok for the most part. I'm not too fond of Hossa, but Desperate Defense is fairly decent and her damage at high TP is relatively respectable, especially with the Cleave skill. I agree, her healing is inconvenient, but Catapult is HILARIOUS, especially in combination with Erador who she has story relevant history with! In terms of Medina. I tend to use a LOT of mages and ranged units the way I play this game, and so having a constant TP battery and keeping them in the plus formation was incredible in terms of the damage output. It is probably very play style based, but her potential to constantly keep people topped up is insane. This isn't a tier list, it's more of an overview with my unscripted thoughts, if I ever do make a tier list I'll need to study the game a bit more in detail and proooobably remove NG+ from the equation as well. Decimal's down time is a killer to me. His range is very nice, but he DOES need a TP battery otherwise you have a turn where he can't even move out of harms way and that hurts him a lot for me. I need to be constantly moving, repositioning and pushing forward so he ends up either lagging behind or stuck in the front in an attempt to recharge his TP to get him to do something again. Quahaug breaks the game in two. His ability to swap with bosses and just bring them into the middle of your units and let you take them out immediately is insane. His ability to turn back time is insane. His ability to infinite loop stop with another unit and completely cheese any map is insane as well. His only downside is he is pretty much NG+ exclusive unless you grind a LOT. Thanks for the detailed comment, I enjoyed reading your opinions!
Hard disagree with you saying Medina is worse than Lionel, she is like a mix of Julio, Gleena and Benedict in one when you abuse items and by the time you reach end game item expense is a non issue, she is one of if not the best support in the game
GamingSage Correct, at the end of the game, she’s a monster. However, whereas Julio is constantly buffing and just gets better at it over time, and Lionel performs a pseudo tank-debuffer role (which is still pretty useful), and Geela still heals excellently, and Benedict still buffs excellently, Medina starts out as easily the worst character in your army, is an expensive hassle to use, and has very little utility. She remains this way for over half the game, then suddenly becomes great. As a numerical example of my point, let’s say that you rank each unit from 1-10 for every map, with 10 being the best. For pretty much every earlygame map, Lionel is around a 5, and Medina is sitting at 1 with Flanagan. When Medina gets quick salve (or whatever it’s called) she goes up to like 3, and when she gets tp physick, let’s say she becomes a ten. When Lionel gets his two incredible abilities, he shoots up to a nine. If you’re comparing Medina and Lionel at their primes, it’s a no brainer. However, over the course of an entire playthrough, I would say Lionel is better
Picolletta is an interesting unit, she is basically a Summoner from FE8. Her item reliance is good at first, but she doesnt seem to scale all that well, but her decoy was so good for cheesing the AI, and baiting stuff. Causing enemies to overextend without putting my own units at risk.
I only use her to bait with her decoy. I'll only use items if she has nothing else to do or if i can get a strong character to do a followup on it, but that decoy is so useful and if she has someone to charge her up she can have it up so often.
For Anna, when you use Take Cover, the enemies actually could know your position. They just do not know how to reveal you. So if you use her with some Pillars of Ice or have a Rain Weather, she can split the enemy formation in half in mid game, seperating healer/mage/archer and their frontline. After that, you can nuke their frontlines with a mage comp. S+ tier.
Also, I use throw poison a fair amount. It can hit at an angle and status effects like poison is a good counter when a healer is nearby (their heal won't remove the poison status effect).
Also I noticed if she’s in cover and an ally attacks the enemy she will do the follow up attack and it won’t break her take cover. You can also use her throw poison to trigger a follow up attack as long as you are angled right. I love Anna .
I still think attacking with Benedict is useful a lot of the time since follow up attacks are a thing and he needs to save TP for his abilities sometimes. So getting those upgrades would be useful even though they are low priority.
I also find it hallarious that Benedict is one of the tankiest units in the game on both ends with his defense not to far under erador and has res in the high 40s on level 46. This makes him fairly viable when facing a wide variety of opponents, I usually have him paired with erador to choke point a spot where you might need 2 units. I just did chapter 14 for Benedicts route and had them at the vanguard while having hughette at the top of a bridge, and decimal underneath using DMG all 5+ I took my time but it was a very controlled environment which I had a lot of fun playing.
For Decimal the Target HP abilities also have bonus effect for HP4 and HP5 HP4 also decreases their movement and HP5 has a chance of instant death, thats why it cost 3 TP
Corentin has a really easy time keeping his TP. Tp+ on ice means you spend 1 turn setting ice on the ground and now you have ice wall every turn, glacial moon every other turn, frosty fetters every turn regardless of if you're killing. It's so strong on pretty much every map that doesn't involve you permanently moving. Also I don't think you're giving silence enough credit. Blindness has a chance for an enemy to get no value on their turn, silence always prevents mages from doing anything. They're essentially dead while they're silenced. Still I really like this video. Loved a lot of your 3h content too so I'm looking forwards to more TS videos
It's just less consistent to have him stay on ice, and also a relatively late acquirement he gets that requires a decent chunk of investment. It's convenient when the ice is already there in your path while moving forward but having to set up for it and sit there on it is fairly annoying. Unless you're defending a certain choke point for a while, it's hard to make a case for that being better than Frederica's TP+ on kill for example.
He also has a pretty nice synergy with giovanna who can spread the ice tiles around with gelid barrage giving her at least one of her strong skills on every map while allowing corentin to be more mobile. One of my favorite duos on the game
@LinkKing7 I personally disagree. I've had good use out of it even when I'm not defending one spot since he can just spread ice during any downtime and every time he gets a kill he's throwing down a new ice tile at the same time. Also frederica isn't going to be 1 shotting from full health. It is definitely a late game skill and I just threw medina on my team after this video so in hindsight I would agree that its less valuable when you have a broken tp battery like medina
@@LinkKing7 You can cast the spell into a tile without any unit on it or only allies on it. So, instead of 'having him staying on ice', just cast it under his feet when you end his turn. He gains 1 extra TP on his next turn if he is already standing on ice, so a self-cast Icy Breath will always cost 1 TP. If there is no choke point, then he is the choke point.
I think Trish is pretty good. Her regular attacks can give you some pretty good items back (only 20%ish rate). Act again is a key skill which allows her to use two two moves and actions so you could leap to a safe place and attack or find something creative to do. Flaming arrow is pretty strong and since it is elemental you can maintain a strong attack on almost all enemies. She’s really fast and has good mobility with leap. If you give Fred the gold pinkie ring and have Trish pick up spoils she can fight without a TP battery. I think of the 4 archers she is up there with Hughette for me. I should say I didn’t get the guy from aesfrost the first run and I found archibald too slow and only really good when he starts at elevation.
Love the guide! Medina is SS tier to me personally, but I play a turtle mage lineup which is why I also value Serenoa's TP granting to allies. I played my first run on hard and it's very punishing to get melee units up. I basically spammed the invincibility from benedict, double ranged pellet from medina making sure to include her for 100% uptime. You forgot to mention that Narve whirlwind AOE becomes insane when you get his passive extending reach. from 1-3-3 in front of you, it becomes 1-3-3-5.
Seranoa's Weapon Skill is actually absurdly good. If you get your whole team in range, you're essentially trading 4 TP to give 8+ people 1 TP, so the efficiency is there because you get more TP in total across your team to use. Also, I found Seranoa more tanky than you let on. Shielding stance is actually very good to use on another tank like Erador, because if he's taking even less damage, it's easier to keep your tank topped off with a weaker heal, or even heal both the tank and Seranoa with an aoe heal/item. So that's the usage for it. Benedict's Dragon Shield doesn't give a 1 use Shield to everyone within 8 squares - that's just the cast range. The area from the space you select and units adjacent to it are the only units to be invincible, so you can max get 5 units with this move. Still good, but thought I should clarify. I find Corentin actually much more useful than Frederica. Having to play around the delay on Sunfall is a bit irritating, and it's just damage besides - damage that only hits it's max potential when you consume all 5 tp with it (I actually think using a 1 TP sunfall just to ignite a large area might actually be a good use for it), it's obviously good sometimes though. Being able to instantly plop a big blob of ice is INCREDIBLY valuable, especially for someone so TP efficient. He doesn't have Frederica's raw damage, but I'd argue he's the best mage this game has to offer. Also, Ice Shields counter attack damage is calculated based on a percent of the enemies max HP - so if a boss when 900+ HP hits Shield of Ice, they're taking about 200 damage, which is pretty damn good. Also, you were actually just wrong about him not maintaining his TP as well as Frederica - he's literally better at it because he gets 2 TP per turn just for standing on Ice, of which he makes plenty. Frederica can get 2 TP as well but it's conditional on killing an enemy which you might not always do every turn. Rudolph Rain of Arrows is really good, most archers don't hit aoe, but he can, and it costs only 3 rather than the average 4. It also can hit much higher up than his normal auto, so it's good for that too. Using Rite of Rain on Ezana is super important since she can increase her lightning damage in the rain - don’t know why you were so quick to write it off especially when she has a skill that decreases the TP cost. Thunderstorms accuracy is inconsistent, but it’s not a deal breaker if you boost her accuracy and give her accuracy items - it actually can make a difference, but overall yeah Thunderstorms kinda dookie. Groma I found to be incredibly potent, actually. You can lower enemies accuracy or outright blind them to give Groma confirmed counters, and boost her evasion with spices or Cordelia. I usually had her off by herself countering multiple physical attackers and just straight up surviving on her own, it was pretty nutty. I have the complete opposite opinion on Giovanna - at first I thought she was also too limited, but then I warmed up to her - especially when you slap a movement bangle on her, she’s very self sufficient on TP, and she can get to squares she needs to be more easily. Rock throw is mostly a low cost move to finish off low health enemies. Her best option is her ice attack and weapon skill for their pure range and damage, and there’s lots of ways to create ice. She combos well with corentin because they can create and extend ice for each other in that way. Her weapon skill is global range and has no requirement for terrain, so it’s very strong. Quahaug is absolutely OP no doubt about that LMAO they were not thinking clearly with him. Stop time is great obviously, but you’re writing off Distorted Space a bit - you can cheese basically any map that requires only the boss be defeated rather than routing enemies. You just switch places with the boss and have your team go to town on them, it’s pretty great lmao. His weapon skill is more than just a panic button. The real optimal purpose for it is to make a large borderline suicidal push with your team to kill a handful of enemies, and then reverse the entire map to avoid the enemies potential counter attack and restore all the TP you used killing those enemies, mitigating any risk or cost of a strong push while keeping the benefit of the enemy taking a bunch of damage - dead enemies won’t be revived with his weapon skill. Yes Milo is amazing my god her design is so good. Not just because ‘wow hot’ but it’s such a good expression of her character. On everything I didn’t mention I agree with you :P I played the game for a lot longer before coming to these conclusions and I see this video came out much sooner to the release so I don’t blame you for some of these preliminary judgements too much (if you asked me on March 11 what I thought of Giovanna for instance I’d probably say she’s ass too lol)
Whether he falls off a cliff in the end or not, Julio being a jack-of-all-TP-trades is truly a boon when you need a character to switch roles on the fly. He can easily set up Narve or Frederica for a big attack or go in for a kill and restore his own TP while lowering the enemies'. He's not OP by any means, but he's so flexible that it really makes him a favorite to bring on every encounter.
A few notes I have since I'm playing NG Hard. Geela is amazing on NG Hard, unless you really want to farm for money you'll be spamming her heals every turn earlygame. Erador is even better on NG Hard, he can tank bosses with Flame Shield on to kill them quickly (that's the main point of that ability, free boss damage). Most of the player characters will do crap for damage to bosses. Also his provoke is the easiest and most consistent way to deal with early maps. Anna's actually fairly useless earlygame. Until you get Take Cover she doesn't really do anything, she can't throw poison from behind Erador and her stats are pretty rough. Even then it takes a long time for her to get Slumber Stab so her main point is leading enemies away from your army so they don't get overwhelmed. I agree that Roland is probably the most useless early unit. The only good thing is that he can get decently beefy with Benedict's defense buff, although that doesn't last. I hate how a lot of maps end if he dies too so he can't really put himself in danger. He does so little damage that he was always my first character to bench.
I don't know if NG Hard is the same as NG+ Hard or just a clean new game, but having just started the game for the first time on Hard, Anna is 100% the early game carry that he claimed. More than one map so far (only 5 or so hours in) has ended in Anna cleaning up with double follow up attacks.
Just bought the game yesterday and I’m glad to hear that a lot of the starter units remain consistent in power scaling and don’t fall off in strength. I felt hesitant to upgrade them in case a better comes along, but im glad to see every character has their own identity so far.
I love how so many characters have synergy with others. Cordelia's evasion buff works well with Groma's evasion tanking. Ezana's calling of tempests works well with Archibald getting buffs during tempests. Characters that can give TP (Julio's skills, Medina using healing items) work well with characters that have high TP cost skills. Characters who get buffs on flaming squares work well with characters that set fires.
@@teecee1827 Archibald has a weapon skill that ups his attack during a tempest, and he has great accuracy to begin with. The times I've used him with Ezana, the accuracy debuff hasn't been noticeable with him.
oh hell yes this is the kind of content i wanna see more of from tri strat, turns the game from a just an awesome game i play to an obsession where i can talk to other people like with fe its so nice
Distorted space lets you switch with enemies, which means you can pull in bosses, this is even more busted when used with twofold turn and now and in tandem in and lightwave in order to move bosses across the entire map into your units making boss kill maps trivial
Neat video. I am currently about halfway in my 1st normal playthrough. This is interesting, so my thoughts might change. So far, my favorite characters to use are Hughette and Anna. I honestly like inflicting status effects as my playstyle when i can. I actually use poison dagger a lot. I find that positioning her a space between 2 enemies and poisoning them helps a lot as it lets her trickle health without staying in a spot too long. I always want anna on the move. Poison to cover also makes it so she isnt spotted. I barely got slumber blade so will see how good that it. And it already sounds good. Anna is just great imo. Hughette is amazing. Blinding melee enemies from range, stopping movement, high move, grabbing spoils, decebt damage. As someone who plays Fire Emblem, pegasus knights are my favorite class in general, so Hughette fills the role uniquely well. I didnt find erador too useful early on, but he definitely is starting to shine the more you progress and upgrade him. Same goes for Benedict, until he got his utility dance skill. I see where your coming from regarding healers but idk atm. Considering that items from the shop are limited, and i dont want to spend turns using a character to heal themselves over their utility, i like using Geela enough, but im using a lot of mages atm, so maybe thats just me. I think Roland is good. Definitely wish he was tankier and had a damage buff. But, I find high move just too useful in games like this, and he gets a lot of opportunities to back stab and nab items.
Yeah, the interesting thing about first playthroughs is that you see the usefulness of the early cast a lot more. I myself got too into a comfort zone of using only them through to the end game, so I actually want to revisit a regular "New Game" playthrough and see how I can weave in all the new characters with the information I have now. The items WERE limited, but I actually rarely needed to buy many, and when I do, I found myself excessively hoarding them and letting my units die instead 😂
I also really value Serenoa's ultimate skill. With help from Julio and a Vanguard scarf, essentially that 1 TP from Julio turns into all your units starting with 4TP instead of 3. This is huge and everyone has access to ults right away and Julio gets the 1 TP back anyway.
I found that Cordelia is really great for when turtling up, as she gets 2tp over Geela's 1. Which means in the long she can use her aoe heal more often than Geela (as long as she doesn't move). You can also use above and beyond as a bank if you cast it on Cordelia herself and then give the hp away as needed with self sacrifice. Incidentally, she also is a great spark/thunderbird eater. She's still not amazing, but does bring stuff to the table. I really feel the late recruit hamstringed her potential
She's a damn great healer though, only outshined by Medina imo. having a 1TP heal skill is super great so she can heal every turn, and she has fantastic range.
Flanagan really reminds me of dva play style wise from over watch. In basketball there’s two types of defense with zoning and man-man. Erador/Gyoma would be a zoner who can control a lot of space on the frontlines while Flanagan is a man-man tank where he can tank one unit or bodyguard one unit. Having Erador and Flanagan on a team feels like Reinhardt and Dva together from over watch. It’s such a strong front line and they work really well together at protecting everyone else.
I found myself using Geela a lot just because I don't want to grind money too much. Save money from using health potions less often and put that money into character upgrades and other items and equipment. Then once I have a good amount I use the item based characters.
This. Plus I don't have the item-based healer so...yeah. I'm going to use the healer and I LIKE her haste abilities, especially on slow units (like herself or the mages).
I think picolettes item launcher I a niche piece of her kit that still is pretty useful. I tended to chuck stones with her once I dropped the decoy and it made her a consistent dps. Also her weapon skill came clutch for me, allowing me to copy some of the nutty boss abilities and turn the fight. Her time pausing minister Lyra with her copied skill was one of the most satisfying moments in my run
Yeah that does sound pretty hilarious actually, but feels too situational and is very deep investment as well as late game, so hard to really justify her thaaaat much
@@LinkKing7 ehh I understand, for me she actually became a very good tank. Mainly because if dodge which I understand your gripe, I also so far feel groma needs a tipping point to make dodge more reliable for her. For me though picolette actually worked fine as a dodge tank, only really worrying about archers who hugette always prioritized blinding as soon as possible.
Knew it was gonna be a great video when I started by watching the section of one of my favorite characters, Archibald, and literally everything you said was how I felt about him too. Great great video!
Nice! I’ll have to give this a watch in the morning. I finished my first route on Friday, and am just taking a small break before jumping in to the next ones.
Just to confirm, ‘weapon damage’ upgrades absolutely do affect magic damage. Took Narve (lvl5), had him hit a ‘fair fight’ archer for 26 with whirlwind, left, same Narve (still lvl5) did 31 damage with weapon lvl 1 upgrade
IMO Spoiler 4 is a fairly good unit, at least in the damage and positioning department. Being able to move twice in a single turn after setting up the weapon skill is fantastic. While the stealing is kinda eh, it's always nice to have more items. Great video.
Nice video :D I've personally had great sucess with Giovanna in my second playthrough where i used Correntin in tandem with her. She was a great tank and she spread ice everywhere or she bursted a group of units with her weapon's skill thanks to Hossabara or Quahaug warps and ran away. I've had alot of fun with her. Milo is by far the character i enjoyed playing the most. Travis was the character i enjoyed the least.(I only liked in chapter 7 were there is alot of fire archer and mages while he was equipped with a fire resist accesory)
I agree with you regarding lionel. Especially regarding Golden Opportinity, since thats my experince with him so far. A note though, his increaae charm effect is not tempt effect, its an increase in the stat debuff of his first skill, Charm. Regarding Picoletta, I found her to be very effective when the situation is right. Her low bulk is so that her clone gets prioritized by enemies. She was MVP in all final battles in Roland ending due to her aoe every turn on the first battle, and decoy basically saved units from being one shot by the boss in the second battle (hard mode, ng) and invited him into the midst of my formation which killed him shortly after, and wasted the tp on the third boss with decoy by giving her a viable target for her ult whenever its up, making the boss basically useless. Otherwise, I used her as a long range mage with very useful decoy utility.
One thing nice about Flanagan is that he has shielding stance. Throw it on Groma, have her taunt a bunch of enemies, watch them surround her, and watch as she literally just won't die. On hard I found her taunt, despite its smaller range compared to Erador's, to be much more useful due to higher success rate.
That's a neat combo I haven't tried yet. Will definitely give it a go in future runs unlocking every characters. A lot of these "bad" units are actually some of my faves. Decimal being not only underrated, but seriously powerful. Also it's adorable.
You might not think to do this right away, but you can throw archers up onto buildings with Hossabara. Piccoletta's clone is actually a great no-risk decoy/bait - getting enemies to commit to going somewhere (like water) so you can fry them with Narve/Ezana - On Archibald, it may be worth noting that Edged arrow is a straight shot, so you need clear line of sight, as opposed to other skills. Same thing with Rudy's straight shot.
"You never want to attack with Benedict unless you can't buff anyone." Ah, but that's the thing. _As long as Benedict lives he can always buff someone. HIMSELF._ Unless you gave him the black anklet or he got hit with TP drain. Also Dragon shield sadly isn't... that good? It's still got the range of sanctuary which is up to 5 units but it's not ALL allies within 8 squares of him unfortunately. also the one use I can see of Fire Eater is so that way you can use her final passive without actually taking damage.
Quahaug is so broken he can reposition your unit, displace enemy, loop stop time, pseudo heal, deheal etc. Not only that his Turn Back Time can refresh Erador's invincibility (King's Shield)!!! Holy
This game is a gem I found much later, grew up with FFT, very easy to fall in love with. I'm on my first new game plus playthrough, went with Benedict first time, golden route this time. I love this breakdown of the characters. Anna and Archibald are my favorite, Archibald is satisfying archer in my opinion. As I'm diving deeper into the units and listening to this, I kind of wish Trish was a battery archer, to make the most of the TP pick up. Great video!
Amazing work, even a lot of the wikis don't even have all the information yet. Thanks for this! I benched Medina immediately because of how little money I was getting on Hard Mode, I didn't really wanna rely on items. I may try to invest in her on my 2nd run.
Yeah I felt like the info wasn't out there when I was looking for it myself, but also that there were a loooot of units people were sleeping on (LIONEL) that deserved a bit more praise haha so I put this together. Glad you found it helpful!
I like Roland but I keep the rez accessory on him because does die easily, but I like him because of his mobility and his ability to hit multiple units in a line with his rush and flash of steel. Four Dragons is also AMAZING in the end game when everything is so beefy.
Any time friend! It was a lot of work, but as someone who couldn't find this information when I was looking for it, and since I was playing the game so much I had access to it, I figured I'd create a resource FOR THE PEOPLE!
Nice video - love that you're just talking characters and not trying to rank or tell people too much what to play/not play, etc. This is like "this is what they do, this how to get the most out of what they do", and some personal flavor with your opinion. I'm glad I'm not the only one that's not a Roland fan. I thought I was doing something wrong but I just never clicked with him. I love using funky units like the story spoiler dancer and Picoletta so ideas on how to maximize them are always welcome. I had forgotten about Frederica's TP+ passive, I guess because I mostly use her to soften things up (so she doesn't get kills but does a lot of the "initial damage" on tough enemies). She'd get a ton of assists but not many kills and I hated "wasting" 180+ damage on someone with 15 HP unless that target wouldn't be killed by anyone else before an enemy healer or that target could go again. Maybe I should try changing up how I use Frederica because getting resets is very appealing.
Yeah, I try not to tell people how to play because for one, I'm definitely not the best player of this game out there, despite having sunk a ton of hours into it, and two, everyone has fun playing their own way and we're all different! I'd hate to rob someone of their own experience by trying to make them do something the way I do it haha! I totally hear you about the fun utility based units in this game. Their quirks are nice to try and incorporate into teams and the uniqueness makes them a blast to play around with! Frederica is a MONSTER if you can just get her rolling with her TP recovery, it's basically an infinite loop self sustain if she kills something each turn!
Whirlwind's extended range on Narve came in really clutch in my playthroughs. I found myself using that a lot more than the lightning. I also had a pretty good experience whenever I use Groma, but I almost always had regen on her.
The RuneScape reference 👏🏼 I found this super helpful for the spoilers with regards to the resources needed so I could have them fully upgraded upon unlocking on subsequent NG+ playthroughs.
I love this analysis. In my own experience ( Normal, NG/NG+), accuracy has been a significant issue, especially with archers, and the accuracy boons have helped somewhat but it still stings sometimes. I think the reason is that for a variety of reasons they end up parked in a specific highground location for much of the battle, which leads to more front attacks than characters in the fray dish out.
The fire resistant +50% on spoiler 1 is probably to take less damage from burn. That's way trial by fire doesn't mess things up too hard. Unless the ablaze is a set damage regardless
Honestly Corentine competes with Frederica for best mage IMO. His TP on ice skill is crazy good. His ult can be spammed a lot with some support and shield of ice is ridiculously good and can also be spammed literally every turn with Julio giving him 1 TP each turn and him being on ice. TP on ice is easy to setup and makes him able to spam magic every turn more reliably than even Frederica. The other mages are great too but need more support than these two to function.
It's easy to set up and spam if he's constantly standing in one place while you're chokepointing or tanking or something like that. But if you're trying to move or push forward it hinders your units and requires him to set up to be on in at the end of his turn and it's a bit inconvenient.
@@LinkKing7 leap frog with the aoe ice skill. First turn if no enemies are near ice your feet/ where you want corentin next turn. Then when enemies aprouch aoe them. Whrn they die corentin can then leap frog to the new ice patch. Pairs great if anouther character has a free turn to put an ice crystal under corentin. Since tp gained start of turn
Personally I found that high mobility/low damage units such as Roland and Anna are really effective at neutering the nuisances on the battlefields. Nuisances are those scattered enemy forces like archers or healers that are in hard to reach or far away spots that aren't a threat but will still overall deal significant damage to your priority damage dealers over the course of the fight. Sending Anna to Slumber stab them or Roland to rapidly kill them by getting there and back is usually really effective because you force those units to target Roland, or with Anna you can just slumber stab, recover, slumber stab them again. In the meantime your other 8-9 units can move the fight where it's most convenient without getting flanked.
Groma looks great with blind arrow with Hughette. Maybe some evasion items and accuracy drop items to enemies? Or what ever is out there for more evasion and accuracy drops? Like if there are archers, then Groma will have fun as there is Tempest Rites from Ezana. She would stay there all day and not worry. She does look cool. But Erador is my main dude. I like him more. Edit: There is also Cordelia for Groma with evasion buff. Also frozen tiles help with lowering accuracy and also mobility. So more dodge for Groma.
I put red scarf and resurrection ring on my serenoa and he just never died. His shielding ability became a lot more useful. I'd send him out with Benedict and Roland and even in hard difficulty they were no match. Halfway through my first playthrough I had to check that there wasn't another difficulty bc he was that OP with those items.
In defence of Piccoletta, item launcher is more helpful than you give it credit for. Sure it might be an extra cost to make her good, but like you said with Lionel, money isn't a problem late game so buying stones does help out late game. Additionally, she's the best user of these items, other than maybe Medina, so you might as well use them with her. These stones might not do a lot of damage, but you have so much range with them that it's primarily used to chip or finish off enemies. You can also exploit enemies' weaknesses depending on the type of stone you throw. These also don't cost TP, which helps her save up TP for cloning. Speaking of cloning, I think it still holds up late game? You can put her clone on higher terrain to help them with ball toss, or just acting as a meat shield for the tougher enemies will certainly provide utility. Obviously her damage output could be better, even with racquet damage up 3 times it's not entirely solved, but just having her move around the map providing utility to damage dealers like Anna to and granting flanking means she still somewhat holds up late game, especially with the +1 movement forge. Minimum B tier, but solid A for me personally. S tier voice acting though
I did actually use her through to the end game in my first run but when the maps are open, it was a little hard to find openings with the big ranged items that would really do much damage so she kind of felt like a bit of dead weight. The decoy was AMAZING though, it definitely clutched out a few maps like the Avlora fight for example by keeping her busy!
Wow, you must have been BUSY playing this game. Fantastic guide, and it seems well thought-out. You convinced me to finally stop using Geela. I'm in chapter 13, and for a while I'd been considering it, since she can't deal damage and often just wastes a turn. I liked Medina already, but after getting her +ally turn skill, she's become incredible.
106 hours and 4 playthroughs since launch, so yeah, I've been kinda busy haha! It's time to take a break from playing now though and work on videos for a bit since I've pretty much done evrything there is to do!
@@LinkKing7 106 on 4 playthroughs? I'm on my first playthrough, my characters are on level 24 average and Im already on 40 hours! How do you get 4 runs with 106 hours? Even if you put battle on fast mode and skip through every dialog and every cutscene I can't fathom how you can stretch 4 playthroughs in that short amount of time
started watching this last night, finished today - really appreciated this! i'm nearing the end of my second playthrough but this was really great and helped me understand how to use some units who i never really invested much into. i really hope you do a video (or more than one) in the future with your thoughts on story, character, and all that good spoiler stuff - what route splits & endings did you go down the first playthrough?
I will of course be making more videos about the game. Just need to finish up my last route and then I'll have the full picture and be ready to crank out some proper analysis and commentary vids on story and characters! I decided to be an antagonist and gave up Roland and the Roselle and sided with Benedict on my first route! Turned out less evil than I thought but it was fun!
I basically always did the opposite of what Benedict wanted except one time when I failed the vote, and the more than 2 split choices. And chose hyzante. Going to start my second side with Benedict/ausfrosti play through tonight
The way that i found roland usable was by giving him a critical braclet. He already has a critical damage buff skill on his weapone tree. With Rolands mobilty he can flank enemies and first they great chunk of crit damage with his move 5 attack skill and then double thrust crit the enemy or his weapone skill if you have the TP. This gives him ok damage at least on normal mode but it stil doesn't solve his lack of bulk and takes an accessory slot.
I lucked into Golden Route first playthrough. In the battle in Aesfrost I only had 8 characters. The only way I managed to keep the enemies divided to not get swamped, was Jens and Corentin. Ice Wall and Spring Trap made this happen. Rudolph/Jens/Corentin seem like a really good choke point team.
Just found this video. Talking about Travis. I think his set up is more used for when YOU as a player uses Fire Magic. Travis would be the unit that can move through the burning squares that you set on fire. That's really the only scenario I can see him shining since as you said fire magic isn't really used towards the end of the game.
I love that this game has units that are overall well-rounded, units that stands a bit are not gamebreaker maybe just quahaug, but I really like that. That said I'm a huge simp for Flanagan, Maxwell, Medina and Frederica, and I love how people here in the comments defend their own favorites
Piccoletta appears so underwhelming because you still have her at Tier2, as seen by her max TP only being 4. Upon promotion, she learns Switch Places, which does exactly what it says on the tin, but only with the decoy, and even then, only if it's within 6 spaces. As for her decoy, I think of it as a sacrificial kamikaze character, as its high squishiness draws enemy aggro like moths to a flame.
HEALERS UNDERWHELMING? My healer/support heart can't take such slander good sir! Geela can auto revive and can heal a TON from low health Medina can grant TP when healing and can heal the FULL map Cordelia can regen and can grant hp BEYOND the max and Quahaug is not technically a healer but can bring you back to your hp and status before hand and so I count him as one
Healers end up getting their squishy asses in trouble for me when I'm trying to push forward, so I sub them out for a support unit that can instead immobilize an enemy or distract them for a turn. Don't need to heal if you can mitigate the damage in some other way! Quahaug is BROKEN because of all the other stuff he does so yeah, I agree there. I love the myriad of support units in this game, but yeah healers here just have not been my style, like the reply to your comment said, I have a pretty aggressive play style haha!
I am on NG+ Hard mode, and since I mainly used long-range comp, here are my extra thoughts about the units I mainly play (compared to this guide) - Serenoa: if you build a heavy mage comp like me, Serenoa will act like a semi-tank. Shielding Stance will be extremely useful since the only problem you have with this comp is the mages/archers/healers from the enemy teams. Since you will likely not Erador (because you will likely need TP support like Medina and Julio), this skill is extremely useful. Good damage, front-line, mid-lines with Hawk, supportive with Shield Stance. S tier - Frederica: she is the weakest mages out there because the only thing she can do is damage. At first, I like the Ablaze terrain but 90% of the terrains is not burnable, making half of her abilities useless. So, you only have 1 way to use her: dealing damage. That's why in my mage comp, I throw her out. Of course, her single target damage is still pretty good, but if that's the case I will use Archibald, not her. - Roland: decent unit because of the MAJOR SPOILER 1 guy. Calvary unit has 6 movement (he has 7) with good defensive stat so they are weak to spear is OK to me. Compared to the SPOILER 1 guy, he is more like an assassin instead of a brawler, and this is where the weapon upgrade screws up: it offers defensive stats instead of offensive! Why? Anyway, he is strong when paired up with Anna and you can sacrifice both of them for the enemies' mage/healers. His ultimate deals tons of damage and even when he cannot use it, he still can deal a lot of damage with Double Thrust (if you can manage his movement speed and take down 1 unit in 1 turn). - Hughette: In early/mid game, she is a CC Bot. In late game, she deals chip damage whenever the enemies stay nearby. Sight Sets activate even when the enemies attack your team and not moving, so she is very poweful when you have your team cover around her as well. However, in late game, due to TP starvation, I did not use her much and her damage is not that great compared to other Archer units (and her Blind is around 50%). - Corenttin: is the reason why I stop using Fred. Ice can be used on almost every tiles, so for every 3 frozen tiles the enemies pass, they will lose 1 movement. Normal units have 4-5 movements so by using 1 Icy Tomb, you reduce 1 movement for every single enemies that trying to get to your team. If you play offensively, you will think him suck but if you pair him with a defensive team like my heavy mage comp, he easily become the best unit. Also, with TP on Ice, you never have to care about his TP anymore after 1 Icy Tomb (unlike Fred who always left enemies around 5 HP every time I try to use her Chains). Also, if you use Corren, you will not likely use Fetter, but Icy Breath instead to make the AI running around. S Tier.
- Rudolph: Hugehette + Archibald budget version, and that makes him suck. He is supposed to be the 'my abilities are strong so I do not need Weapon Upgrade' but he actually trash in NG+. Rain of Arrow is too weak and high-cost compared to Sniper + Arrow Spray of Archibald and his Slumber Shot only has around 30% for the sleep. Straight Shot is also a worse version of Edged Arrow and why do you ever bother to use Steel Trap with him when Hugehette can deal melee damage or you use Jean to set the traps instead? (and that guy even a tank, more suitable than Rudolph). So, for me, he is just clunky to play and it is hard to pair him with any team. Just use Archibald if you need a DPS, or Hugehette if you need a DPS support, or Trish if you need an assassin. - Geela: budget healer. Her main point is healing every turns consistantly and remove debuffs. She also has a free revive if you makes some mistakes in positioning. If you have a defensive comp like me, she is extremely useful, but if not, just use Hossabara instead. She works in every kind of team, so she does not not do much like other healers, but this versality is her strong point. - Julio: S+ for me (obviously). He is a cover for every single units on your team, and in this guide, you missed his strength: he can give 1 TP and buff damage for just 1 TP because of weapon upgrades. Your Benedict can only buff 1 unit, but this guy can give TP and buff at the same turn. What you want to do with him is pairing him up to your main DPS, and he will buff your whole back lines up. In opposite to Benedict, he is not a tanker, but a DPS as well, so even when the enemies slip past through your frontline, Julio can actually kill them (his Strength is pretty good)! If you position right, he can even has tons of TP and can act like a Semi Tank as well, unlike Benedict who cannot even deal damage. For him, just throw a HP Amulet and Defense Bracelet and he can be your jack of all trades while still hit like a truck and buff your whole team (also, why do you need Raging Beast from Benedict when you can just use items?) - Narve: when you unlock his Spark, just bench Fred forever. The only downside is he cannot regain TP but with Julio as TP battery, he is a beast. He is the unit setting up the terrains to support the team. He can spread the fires to many tiles for the damage when pairing with Fred, or makes Puddle with Corrin for Ezana to spam her stuns. No matter which team you pair him up, he will always be useful. (but to be honest, if you play a physical damage team, or a melee team, just bring oil instead of Fred). - Jeans: S+ since he is the only one who can stun bosses with his traps. He is extremely tanky as well, making him an annoying frontline to deal with. Just use a Bulwalk on him and he can tank like 4-5 hits. LinkKing has said everything about him so I don't think I need to elaborate more. - Ezana: you use this unit because of the ability Spark only. The Rite of Tempest is useless since it only reduces Accuracy of Bow users like 10% or something. However, her ratio to Paralize enemies are around 60% to normal enemies and 30-35% for boss enemies. Also, just do not take the 'deal damage in weather' too much, it only does additional 10% damage (in this case, 10% more damage in Rain). Weather in this game is useless, so you do not need to care about them much. - Groma: I cannot make use of her, tbh. It is so hard to lower the enemy's accuracy to below 50% for her to be useful, even with Ice setup from Corrin (Ice reduces accuracy by 10%). So she is a pass. - Trish: A good unit, actually. Her abilities are trashes except for that one ability from weapon upgrade. Think about it, why do you need to waste a slot for Blessing of Fire? Steal only has 20% chance to drop something without debuff (it does not even work with her TP passive). Flaming Arrow is just 25% more damage than normal arrow, with 2 TP cost. The only reason why you play her is that she gets to act twice for her next 2 turns (Anna, ehem). Also, since she is mobile with Leap, she can easily get the loot for her first turn. So her fighting will be Act Twice - Attack - Attack - Attack - Act Twice - etc. Since her 2nd Act Twice attack turn is not considered as a turn, all buffs on her lasts x2 and you only need to collect at least one spoil for your next Act Twice. Is she better than Anna? Well, worse actually since Anna has great abilities. Trish only has good follow up attacks and some mobility that she doesn't even need as an archer. Also, do not care about the loot, you only get healing/buff items from it.
Luck increases your crit chance when not attacking from behind. I do not know the specific number but 1 luck does not increase the chance much, to be honest. Crit damage is 300% of your normal damage but if it is the case, just attack them from behind.
Throw Poison can be very useful on Anna, even on bosses who are immune to poison. Not only does it do decent damage just on its own, you can use it to set up flanking at a distance just like an archer can for a melee character. It can also be used on the diagonal, unlike Slumber Stab. Regarding other characters with terrain abilities relating to fire and those never being useful, there are instances where it can be really useful. Erika is a pyromaniac who throws oil everywhere, just saying. :) Distorted Space on Quahaug (who I used a lot) is great for grouping up your strong damage units and having Quahaug swap a boss into them, so they can't get away. Also handy if the boss is up at inconvenient elevation or something like that. You may sometimes sacrifice him doing this, but it can be worth it.
Yeah, I literally JUST made a video about Quahaug with some updated thoughts on how broken he is haha! Erika is a fantastic pyromaniac, but unfortunately she fails to execute her plans. She's gonna need some better planning before I can completely approve of her methods
Jens is best boi (after Rudolph his trapper friend). Correction though, ensnaring doesn't increase pushback distance but the range that Jens can place the traps, raising it from 4 to 6 tiles away. Pushing Rufus down the stairs was key to achieving my no death clear in telliore. And the turret only has about 5 or 6 hits before expiring. Sticky arrow and focus are really useful when facing assassin type units that have very high evasion especially in that certain map where an assassination was taking place. As I usually fought battles with 1-2 level disadvantage, even archibald had hit rates in the low 80s and rudolph in the mid 70s which don't inspire confidence at all. sticky arrow lifted that to 90s to 100 for all units allowing me to put them all to sleep. But I gotta say that as one who dislikes grinding and farming, I have to disagree about Medina and Lionel. They are only S-tier for people who like to farm or already in NG+. I have to admit though that Medina does have to take the field in certain maps when i have to do an early map nuke (especially fun in the final map of liberty route with units that have HPs which are multiples of 3 and almost everyone is above you and ch2 NG+ Hard where EVERYONE has a multiple of 4hp - decimal cleared the mobs in record time by playing around with accessories such that dmg is a multiple of 3/4, too).
Oh I definitely have some choice words about freaking Quahaug... I'll get to it at some point, for now I have a LOT of ideas that I kind of need to start putting down on paper haha!
Is it confirmed that increasing weapon damage by 5 translates into abilities/skills, specially magic ones? If weapon attacks deal physical damage, I wouldn’t think that increasing weapon damage would increase a magic based skill
I avoided weapon upgrades for my mages, until I read the white mage one, her weapon upgrade specifies that it increases healing, so I assume they also increase magic damage
I'm on my first playthrough started with hard mode 🙈 it took me like 3 tries with that chapter 7 fight🙈😩. Yens really was a life saver with those traps. Piccoletta was running around tossing out decoys and oil with some fire stones to help out and kept me from getting flanked. I'm looking forward to the rest of the game. 🥳
You’ve earned yourself a new subscriber for your extreme consideration into protecting people from spoilers. I clicked this video just to learn about the starting characters and clicked away spoiler free thank you
Absolutely, I hate spoilers with a passion myself so I always spoiler tag my content and make sure people know exactly what they're getting into! Welcome to the family and I hope to see you around more!
1:43:10 Reverse Space-Time doesn't affect units that are dead. So if during the turn prior using it you kill a bunch of enemies they wouldn't come back. This could give you huge advantages over the enemy due to getting back resources/ repositioning
That's actually a very interesting way to use it that I didn't think of!
Julio is actually a great flanker. His damage is serviceable, but if his follow-up attack is part of a kill, he gets the bonus TP. This also makes him more survivable thanks to his TP shield, so you don't have to park him in the back line. On top of that, he can donate 2 TP to Benedict so that he can activate Now! more often.
Yeah he's pretty great, and his magic damage skill is decent to take down armors as well if you're in a pinch!
Support chars in this game are great, they are frontline supports not squishy
i like keeping julio between my mages and front line for that reason, pumping out the damage against armors is sometimes preferable to giving TP to someone who might not need it that turn.
He’s good because he’s a tp battery, but sadly medina outclasses him in every way
I at one point despite him being so useful stopped using him for a few battles. Now he is underlevelled and always dies ;-;
One thing I’ve loved about this game is how almost every battle seems to be tailored to highlight the strengths of one or more characters. It makes every character seem useful or at least useable.
I think the fact that there’s no permadeath and you keep experience gained if you lose also really encouraged me to experiment with my less used characters and figure out how to use them more.
I found your channel when looking for info on this game, and it’s quickly become my favorite! Great job on this! Thanks!
Glad you're enjoying the content and I'm happy to keep providing it!
Same exactly the content we need for this game
I think Geela works as a money saving unit. Instead of bying healing items you can sell them for materials to upgrade weapons and bying accessories.
Absolutely. Money is scarce in this game, her healing is great. I’d rather use my money for upgrades and my few free items for emergencies.
Another note in Lionel's favor: If you an enrage an enemy that can't reach him, the enemy will move as close as they can to him and just end their turn, without attacking at all. It can make it really easy to neutralize healers entirely, it's really good
As someone who uses decimal basically every time since i got him, even tho hes unreliable, hes great at chipping away at the battlefield, constantly dealing damage to multiple enemies, even got a like 8 hit in the twinsgate map where you start at the bottom while all enemies starts on top, and that makes him incredibly valuable imo.
I value consistency of output over things like randomly clutch moments because let's be real, he's definitely had those for me on some maps. It's just frustrating at the times when I need him and the numbers aren't adding up or the height advantage isn't there so it's really hard to rank him high up
@@LinkKing7 like a couple of other units in the game I feel like hes only valuable on certain maps such as those with massive height gaps such as whiteholm bridge where decimal trivializes it because he stands at the bottom of a ladder and just spams the "height 5+" attack dealing a fair amount of dmg to a lot of units. On utility chapter 14 you can block Thalas and Erika from leaving the barricades and just have decimal spam the attack hitting almost every unit except an archer who is outside the 10 range he has.
6:24 Just a note, the buff is in a plus shape that affects 5 people max. It’s just that the place where you can put the plus is any square within 8 range
14:58 Also that doesn’t cure stop. The only thing that cures stop is turning back time with small child
17:00 Okay, Roland is fine. He’s pretty close to Frederica. Double thrust is super good damage in the earlygame, he’s always flanking things, and opportune attack is literally free damage. His mastery skill is also really good for dealing with certain tanky bosses. Flash of steel is hawk dive but more map dependent
24:30 Hard disagree. I have never found myself wanting for damage in this game, only for survivability, and Anna has that in spades. Her damage is low, but consistent. Anna will almost never die due to her skill set, and she can provide vital support to the team with stealthed items and the like
33:00 Alright, I just need to throw this out there. I know Hughette is mega-busted, and I’ve used her for most of the game, but for me, she had near constant accuracy issues. I think she’s great, but reliable is not a word I would use to describe her
40:00 I believe luck also boosts status chance
48:00 This sorta stumped me. Hossabarra is not a good attacker. She is at least worst than Roland, who you already said was bad. Hossabarra has some niche uses as a follow up attack bot, but her lackluster healing makes her sorta bad
55:12 Not to nitpick, but pretty sure it increases the range where he can set the trap, not how far the trap flings them
56:42 An additional thing to note is that the turret destroys itself after taking 5 shots, regardless of how many of those shots it hits
57:50 Disagree. Jens is super good, but also relies heavily on the map to be in his favor. If there are chokepoints and big height differentials, sure, he’s S tier. But there are a fair few flat maps in this game (think the cavalry maps in 2 of the endings) where he just has almost nothing to do. Compare to Benedict, who, as a supporter, is good on every map
58:50 It’s good on bosses, but yeah, it’s bad overall
1:03:30 Charm is Lionel’s defense debuff, not his tempt
1:05:20 It can throw balls, actually
1:08:00 Hard hard hard disagree. She’s honestly worse then Lionel, but has all his problems (except worse). She is incredibly expensive to use in the early game, and tp physick is a later game skill. She’s really cool in the lategame, but that’s pretty much it. A or B tier maybe, but not S.
1:13:30 I’ve never seen an enemy archer miss with or without tempest.
1:17:00 Arrow Spray is bad until you get the insta-kill, and it’s godly afterward
1:19:00 It’s actually great. Archie is good at dealing damage, but killing things from half is hard for him. This can save you a lot of turns, and it can also save you from having to commit other resources to killing fleeing enemies
1:21:00 I think Lionel counts as a tank
1:24:00 Yeah, Flanagan low-key sucks. My issue with him is that he has worse damage potential then like Piccoletta, which is just pathetic. At least Erador can dish out some damage while he’s tanking
1:33:50 Disagree. Decimal is incredible. He’s the only mage that doesn’t require a tp battery, and the game constantly throws enemies at you with the same exact hp. On several maps, Decimal can take half off the shieldbearers on the first turn, then follow up with a 4 to decrease the movement of a few enemies. Also, 7 targets the entire battlefield, meaning he can super easily chip on the other side of the map. He requires a different playstyle, but I would consider him easily the best dps mage. Attacking 3 enemies every other turn consistently for 100-200 damage is insane
1:40:00 Disagree. Quahaug is really good, but saying he is a tier above everyone else is just not true. He’s a great support unit, but he requires a ton of investment too. I would throw him with Lionel and Medina. Being recruited so late hurts a lot
Another great point in favor of Anna is that she *does* have great damage potential, because she can trigger a follow-up from a hard hitting ally like Julio *twice per turn*
Huh, that's odd that your Hughette had accuracy issues, I've missed the odd 90% here or there and it definitely screwed me over but mine did ok for the most part.
I'm not too fond of Hossa, but Desperate Defense is fairly decent and her damage at high TP is relatively respectable, especially with the Cleave skill. I agree, her healing is inconvenient, but Catapult is HILARIOUS, especially in combination with Erador who she has story relevant history with!
In terms of Medina. I tend to use a LOT of mages and ranged units the way I play this game, and so having a constant TP battery and keeping them in the plus formation was incredible in terms of the damage output. It is probably very play style based, but her potential to constantly keep people topped up is insane. This isn't a tier list, it's more of an overview with my unscripted thoughts, if I ever do make a tier list I'll need to study the game a bit more in detail and proooobably remove NG+ from the equation as well.
Decimal's down time is a killer to me. His range is very nice, but he DOES need a TP battery otherwise you have a turn where he can't even move out of harms way and that hurts him a lot for me. I need to be constantly moving, repositioning and pushing forward so he ends up either lagging behind or stuck in the front in an attempt to recharge his TP to get him to do something again.
Quahaug breaks the game in two. His ability to swap with bosses and just bring them into the middle of your units and let you take them out immediately is insane. His ability to turn back time is insane. His ability to infinite loop stop with another unit and completely cheese any map is insane as well. His only downside is he is pretty much NG+ exclusive unless you grind a LOT.
Thanks for the detailed comment, I enjoyed reading your opinions!
The cavalry map in the Liberty ending is just one massive chokepoint though
Hard disagree with you saying Medina is worse than Lionel, she is like a mix of Julio, Gleena and Benedict in one when you abuse items and by the time you reach end game item expense is a non issue, she is one of if not the best support in the game
GamingSage Correct, at the end of the game, she’s a monster. However, whereas Julio is constantly buffing and just gets better at it over time, and Lionel performs a pseudo tank-debuffer role (which is still pretty useful), and Geela still heals excellently, and Benedict still buffs excellently, Medina starts out as easily the worst character in your army, is an expensive hassle to use, and has very little utility. She remains this way for over half the game, then suddenly becomes great.
As a numerical example of my point, let’s say that you rank each unit from 1-10 for every map, with 10 being the best. For pretty much every earlygame map, Lionel is around a 5, and Medina is sitting at 1 with Flanagan. When Medina gets quick salve (or whatever it’s called) she goes up to like 3, and when she gets tp physick, let’s say she becomes a ten. When Lionel gets his two incredible abilities, he shoots up to a nine.
If you’re comparing Medina and Lionel at their primes, it’s a no brainer. However, over the course of an entire playthrough, I would say Lionel is better
Picolletta is an interesting unit, she is basically a Summoner from FE8. Her item reliance is good at first, but she doesnt seem to scale all that well, but her decoy was so good for cheesing the AI, and baiting stuff. Causing enemies to overextend without putting my own units at risk.
I only use her to bait with her decoy. I'll only use items if she has nothing else to do or if i can get a strong character to do a followup on it, but that decoy is so useful and if she has someone to charge her up she can have it up so often.
For Anna, when you use Take Cover, the enemies actually could know your position. They just do not know how to reveal you. So if you use her with some Pillars of Ice or have a Rain Weather, she can split the enemy formation in half in mid game, seperating healer/mage/archer and their frontline. After that, you can nuke their frontlines with a mage comp. S+ tier.
I already love using Anna, but now I have to try this out
Also, I use throw poison a fair amount. It can hit at an angle and status effects like poison is a good counter when a healer is nearby (their heal won't remove the poison status effect).
yeah she's basically like terrain to enemies when she's stealthed though I never really found a good time to use that aspect.
Also I noticed if she’s in cover and an ally attacks the enemy she will do the follow up attack and it won’t break her take cover.
You can also use her throw poison to trigger a follow up attack as long as you are angled right. I love Anna .
I still think attacking with Benedict is useful a lot of the time since follow up attacks are a thing and he needs to save TP for his abilities sometimes. So getting those upgrades would be useful even though they are low priority.
I also find it hallarious that Benedict is one of the tankiest units in the game on both ends with his defense not to far under erador and has res in the high 40s on level 46.
This makes him fairly viable when facing a wide variety of opponents, I usually have him paired with erador to choke point a spot where you might need 2 units. I just did chapter 14 for Benedicts route and had them at the vanguard while having hughette at the top of a bridge, and decimal underneath using DMG all 5+ I took my time but it was a very controlled environment which I had a lot of fun playing.
For Decimal the Target HP abilities also have bonus effect for HP4 and HP5
HP4 also decreases their movement and HP5 has a chance of instant death, thats why it cost 3 TP
Corentin has a really easy time keeping his TP. Tp+ on ice means you spend 1 turn setting ice on the ground and now you have ice wall every turn, glacial moon every other turn, frosty fetters every turn regardless of if you're killing. It's so strong on pretty much every map that doesn't involve you permanently moving. Also I don't think you're giving silence enough credit. Blindness has a chance for an enemy to get no value on their turn, silence always prevents mages from doing anything. They're essentially dead while they're silenced. Still I really like this video. Loved a lot of your 3h content too so I'm looking forwards to more TS videos
It's just less consistent to have him stay on ice, and also a relatively late acquirement he gets that requires a decent chunk of investment. It's convenient when the ice is already there in your path while moving forward but having to set up for it and sit there on it is fairly annoying.
Unless you're defending a certain choke point for a while, it's hard to make a case for that being better than Frederica's TP+ on kill for example.
He also has a pretty nice synergy with giovanna who can spread the ice tiles around with gelid barrage giving her at least one of her strong skills on every map while allowing corentin to be more mobile. One of my favorite duos on the game
@LinkKing7 I personally disagree. I've had good use out of it even when I'm not defending one spot since he can just spread ice during any downtime and every time he gets a kill he's throwing down a new ice tile at the same time. Also frederica isn't going to be 1 shotting from full health. It is definitely a late game skill and I just threw medina on my team after this video so in hindsight I would agree that its less valuable when you have a broken tp battery like medina
@@LinkKing7 You can cast the spell into a tile without any unit on it or only allies on it. So, instead of 'having him staying on ice', just cast it under his feet when you end his turn. He gains 1 extra TP on his next turn if he is already standing on ice, so a self-cast Icy Breath will always cost 1 TP.
If there is no choke point, then he is the choke point.
I think Trish is pretty good. Her regular attacks can give you some pretty good items back (only 20%ish rate). Act again is a key skill which allows her to use two two moves and actions so you could leap to a safe place and attack or find something creative to do. Flaming arrow is pretty strong and since it is elemental you can maintain a strong attack on almost all enemies. She’s really fast and has good mobility with leap. If you give Fred the gold pinkie ring and have Trish pick up spoils she can fight without a TP battery. I think of the 4 archers she is up there with Hughette for me. I should say I didn’t get the guy from aesfrost the first run and I found archibald too slow and only really good when he starts at elevation.
Trish is underrated for sure
Love the guide! Medina is SS tier to me personally, but I play a turtle mage lineup which is why I also value Serenoa's TP granting to allies. I played my first run on hard and it's very punishing to get melee units up. I basically spammed the invincibility from benedict, double ranged pellet from medina making sure to include her for 100% uptime.
You forgot to mention that Narve whirlwind AOE becomes insane when you get his passive extending reach. from 1-3-3 in front of you, it becomes 1-3-3-5.
Decimal is awesome on maps where ennemies attack from above, he basically weakens the whole map making the cleaning process so smooth.
15:00 Geela's status heal does not cure Stop, which was disappointing to find out in one of the late game fights where it's relevant.
Thanks for the spoiler tags. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the units as I unlock them.
Of course, I try to avoid spoilers as much as possible myself so it's only second nature to tag them!
Seranoa's Weapon Skill is actually absurdly good. If you get your whole team in range, you're essentially trading 4 TP to give 8+ people 1 TP, so the efficiency is there because you get more TP in total across your team to use. Also, I found Seranoa more tanky than you let on. Shielding stance is actually very good to use on another tank like Erador, because if he's taking even less damage, it's easier to keep your tank topped off with a weaker heal, or even heal both the tank and Seranoa with an aoe heal/item. So that's the usage for it.
Benedict's Dragon Shield doesn't give a 1 use Shield to everyone within 8 squares - that's just the cast range. The area from the space you select and units adjacent to it are the only units to be invincible, so you can max get 5 units with this move. Still good, but thought I should clarify.
I find Corentin actually much more useful than Frederica. Having to play around the delay on Sunfall is a bit irritating, and it's just damage besides - damage that only hits it's max potential when you consume all 5 tp with it (I actually think using a 1 TP sunfall just to ignite a large area might actually be a good use for it), it's obviously good sometimes though. Being able to instantly plop a big blob of ice is INCREDIBLY valuable, especially for someone so TP efficient. He doesn't have Frederica's raw damage, but I'd argue he's the best mage this game has to offer. Also, Ice Shields counter attack damage is calculated based on a percent of the enemies max HP - so if a boss when 900+ HP hits Shield of Ice, they're taking about 200 damage, which is pretty damn good. Also, you were actually just wrong about him not maintaining his TP as well as Frederica - he's literally better at it because he gets 2 TP per turn just for standing on Ice, of which he makes plenty. Frederica can get 2 TP as well but it's conditional on killing an enemy which you might not always do every turn.
Rudolph Rain of Arrows is really good, most archers don't hit aoe, but he can, and it costs only 3 rather than the average 4. It also can hit much higher up than his normal auto, so it's good for that too.
Using Rite of Rain on Ezana is super important since she can increase her lightning damage in the rain - don’t know why you were so quick to write it off especially when she has a skill that decreases the TP cost. Thunderstorms accuracy is inconsistent, but it’s not a deal breaker if you boost her accuracy and give her accuracy items - it actually can make a difference, but overall yeah Thunderstorms kinda dookie.
Groma I found to be incredibly potent, actually. You can lower enemies accuracy or outright blind them to give Groma confirmed counters, and boost her evasion with spices or Cordelia. I usually had her off by herself countering multiple physical attackers and just straight up surviving on her own, it was pretty nutty.
I have the complete opposite opinion on Giovanna - at first I thought she was also too limited, but then I warmed up to her - especially when you slap a movement bangle on her, she’s very self sufficient on TP, and she can get to squares she needs to be more easily. Rock throw is mostly a low cost move to finish off low health enemies. Her best option is her ice attack and weapon skill for their pure range and damage, and there’s lots of ways to create ice. She combos well with corentin because they can create and extend ice for each other in that way. Her weapon skill is global range and has no requirement for terrain, so it’s very strong.
Quahaug is absolutely OP no doubt about that LMAO they were not thinking clearly with him. Stop time is great obviously, but you’re writing off Distorted Space a bit - you can cheese basically any map that requires only the boss be defeated rather than routing enemies. You just switch places with the boss and have your team go to town on them, it’s pretty great lmao. His weapon skill is more than just a panic button. The real optimal purpose for it is to make a large borderline suicidal push with your team to kill a handful of enemies, and then reverse the entire map to avoid the enemies potential counter attack and restore all the TP you used killing those enemies, mitigating any risk or cost of a strong push while keeping the benefit of the enemy taking a bunch of damage - dead enemies won’t be revived with his weapon skill.
Yes Milo is amazing my god her design is so good. Not just because ‘wow hot’ but it’s such a good expression of her character.
On everything I didn’t mention I agree with you :P I played the game for a lot longer before coming to these conclusions and I see this video came out much sooner to the release so I don’t blame you for some of these preliminary judgements too much (if you asked me on March 11 what I thought of Giovanna for instance I’d probably say she’s ass too lol)
Whether he falls off a cliff in the end or not, Julio being a jack-of-all-TP-trades is truly a boon when you need a character to switch roles on the fly. He can easily set up Narve or Frederica for a big attack or go in for a kill and restore his own TP while lowering the enemies'. He's not OP by any means, but he's so flexible that it really makes him a favorite to bring on every encounter.
A few notes I have since I'm playing NG Hard.
Geela is amazing on NG Hard, unless you really want to farm for money you'll be spamming her heals every turn earlygame.
Erador is even better on NG Hard, he can tank bosses with Flame Shield on to kill them quickly (that's the main point of that ability, free boss damage). Most of the player characters will do crap for damage to bosses. Also his provoke is the easiest and most consistent way to deal with early maps.
Anna's actually fairly useless earlygame. Until you get Take Cover she doesn't really do anything, she can't throw poison from behind Erador and her stats are pretty rough. Even then it takes a long time for her to get Slumber Stab so her main point is leading enemies away from your army so they don't get overwhelmed.
I agree that Roland is probably the most useless early unit. The only good thing is that he can get decently beefy with Benedict's defense buff, although that doesn't last. I hate how a lot of maps end if he dies too so he can't really put himself in danger. He does so little damage that he was always my first character to bench.
I don't know if NG Hard is the same as NG+ Hard or just a clean new game, but having just started the game for the first time on Hard, Anna is 100% the early game carry that he claimed. More than one map so far (only 5 or so hours in) has ended in Anna cleaning up with double follow up attacks.
Just bought the game yesterday and I’m glad to hear that a lot of the starter units remain consistent in power scaling and don’t fall off in strength. I felt hesitant to upgrade them in case a better comes along, but im glad to see every character has their own identity so far.
I love how so many characters have synergy with others.
Cordelia's evasion buff works well with Groma's evasion tanking.
Ezana's calling of tempests works well with Archibald getting buffs during tempests.
Characters that can give TP (Julio's skills, Medina using healing items) work well with characters that have high TP cost skills.
Characters who get buffs on flaming squares work well with characters that set fires.
But doesn't Ezana's skill actually debuff Archibald, since it debuffs all archers?
@@teecee1827 Archibald has a weapon skill that ups his attack during a tempest, and he has great accuracy to begin with. The times I've used him with Ezana, the accuracy debuff hasn't been noticeable with him.
oh hell yes this is the kind of content i wanna see more of from tri strat, turns the game from a just an awesome game i play to an obsession where i can talk to other people like with fe its so nice
You knew what the people needed! Thanks for being upfront about the spoilers. I'm taking my time and enjoying the experience, thank you!
No problem! Glad to help! I hate spoilers myself personally so I always make sure to warn and tag them when possible!
Distorted space lets you switch with enemies, which means you can pull in bosses, this is even more busted when used with twofold turn and now and in tandem in and lightwave in order to move bosses across the entire map into your units making boss kill maps trivial
Indeed, I totally forgot to mention that in the video. It's gonna be interesting seeing some of the speedrun strats with some of that stuff!
Neat video. I am currently about halfway in my 1st normal playthrough. This is interesting, so my thoughts might change.
So far, my favorite characters to use are Hughette and Anna. I honestly like inflicting status effects as my playstyle when i can. I actually use poison dagger a lot. I find that positioning her a space between 2 enemies and poisoning them helps a lot as it lets her trickle health without staying in a spot too long. I always want anna on the move. Poison to cover also makes it so she isnt spotted. I barely got slumber blade so will see how good that it. And it already sounds good. Anna is just great imo.
Hughette is amazing. Blinding melee enemies from range, stopping movement, high move, grabbing spoils, decebt damage. As someone who plays Fire Emblem, pegasus knights are my favorite class in general, so Hughette fills the role uniquely well.
I didnt find erador too useful early on, but he definitely is starting to shine the more you progress and upgrade him. Same goes for Benedict, until he got his utility dance skill.
I see where your coming from regarding healers but idk atm. Considering that items from the shop are limited, and i dont want to spend turns using a character to heal themselves over their utility, i like using Geela enough, but im using a lot of mages atm, so maybe thats just me.
I think Roland is good. Definitely wish he was tankier and had a damage buff. But, I find high move just too useful in games like this, and he gets a lot of opportunities to back stab and nab items.
Yeah, the interesting thing about first playthroughs is that you see the usefulness of the early cast a lot more. I myself got too into a comfort zone of using only them through to the end game, so I actually want to revisit a regular "New Game" playthrough and see how I can weave in all the new characters with the information I have now.
The items WERE limited, but I actually rarely needed to buy many, and when I do, I found myself excessively hoarding them and letting my units die instead 😂
I also really value Serenoa's ultimate skill. With help from Julio and a Vanguard scarf, essentially that 1 TP from Julio turns into all your units starting with 4TP instead of 3. This is huge and everyone has access to ults right away and Julio gets the 1 TP back anyway.
It's ok, but I'm personally more of a fan of having him do damage with Hawk Dive instead of using TP on that
I found that Cordelia is really great for when turtling up, as she gets 2tp over Geela's 1. Which means in the long she can use her aoe heal more often than Geela (as long as she doesn't move). You can also use above and beyond as a bank if you cast it on Cordelia herself and then give the hp away as needed with self sacrifice. Incidentally, she also is a great spark/thunderbird eater. She's still not amazing, but does bring stuff to the table. I really feel the late recruit hamstringed her potential
YOU CAN RECRUIT HER?
I'm pretty sad that geela never got any offensive skills, I really like her and I had hoped she would have a better use other than healing
She's a damn great healer though, only outshined by Medina imo. having a 1TP heal skill is super great so she can heal every turn, and she has fantastic range.
@@CosmicToad5000 Not to mention her ability to cast auto revive on a unit
Flanagan really reminds me of dva play style wise from over watch. In basketball there’s two types of defense with zoning and man-man. Erador/Gyoma would be a zoner who can control a lot of space on the frontlines while Flanagan is a man-man tank where he can tank one unit or bodyguard one unit. Having Erador and Flanagan on a team feels like Reinhardt and Dva together from over watch. It’s such a strong front line and they work really well together at protecting everyone else.
Overwatch is ass
I found myself using Geela a lot just because I don't want to grind money too much. Save money from using health potions less often and put that money into character upgrades and other items and equipment. Then once I have a good amount I use the item based characters.
This. Plus I don't have the item-based healer so...yeah. I'm going to use the healer and I LIKE her haste abilities, especially on slow units (like herself or the mages).
I think picolettes item launcher I a niche piece of her kit that still is pretty useful. I tended to chuck stones with her once I dropped the decoy and it made her a consistent dps. Also her weapon skill came clutch for me, allowing me to copy some of the nutty boss abilities and turn the fight. Her time pausing minister Lyra with her copied skill was one of the most satisfying moments in my run
Yeah that does sound pretty hilarious actually, but feels too situational and is very deep investment as well as late game, so hard to really justify her thaaaat much
@@LinkKing7 ehh I understand, for me she actually became a very good tank. Mainly because if dodge which I understand your gripe, I also so far feel groma needs a tipping point to make dodge more reliable for her. For me though picolette actually worked fine as a dodge tank, only really worrying about archers who hugette always prioritized blinding as soon as possible.
I think she's atleast middle of the pack because her decoys absorb so much damage. She may fall off late game though
You can also chuck cheaper ice stones at the Ice mage and give them their TP plus.
I've been committed to finishing this game in it's entirely. But also using every character to it's fullest. Really appreciate this vid, thank you
Absolutely, glad you enjoyed it!
Knew it was gonna be a great video when I started by watching the section of one of my favorite characters, Archibald, and literally everything you said was how I felt about him too. Great great video!
Haha yessss I loved using Archibald, had to do the OLD MAN some justice!
Nice! I’ll have to give this a watch in the morning. I finished my first route on Friday, and am just taking a small break before jumping in to the next ones.
Meanwhile I'm over here about to start my 3rd route just going crazyyyyyy
Just to confirm, ‘weapon damage’ upgrades absolutely do affect magic damage. Took Narve (lvl5), had him hit a ‘fair fight’ archer for 26 with whirlwind, left, same Narve (still lvl5) did 31 damage with weapon lvl 1 upgrade
Yeah I've seen the damage formulas, weapon potency does take effect I was almost 100% sure haha
@@LinkKing7 where can you find DMG formulas?
I recently got Triangle Strategy and have watched a few videos; it is interesting to see how many different opinions there are on these characters.
IMO Spoiler 4 is a fairly good unit, at least in the damage and positioning department. Being able to move twice in a single turn after setting up the weapon skill is fantastic. While the stealing is kinda eh, it's always nice to have more items. Great video.
I feel the same a regular in my main battles
Nice video :D
I've personally had great sucess with Giovanna in my second playthrough where i used Correntin in tandem with her.
She was a great tank and she spread ice everywhere or she bursted a group of units with her weapon's skill thanks to Hossabara or Quahaug warps and ran away.
I've had alot of fun with her.
Milo is by far the character i enjoyed playing the most. Travis was the character i enjoyed the least.(I only liked in chapter 7 were there is alot of fire archer and mages while he was equipped with a fire resist accesory)
I agree with you regarding lionel. Especially regarding Golden Opportinity, since thats my experince with him so far. A note though, his increaae charm effect is not tempt effect, its an increase in the stat debuff of his first skill, Charm.
Regarding Picoletta, I found her to be very effective when the situation is right. Her low bulk is so that her clone gets prioritized by enemies. She was MVP in all final battles in Roland ending due to her aoe every turn on the first battle, and decoy basically saved units from being one shot by the boss in the second battle (hard mode, ng) and invited him into the midst of my formation which killed him shortly after, and wasted the tp on the third boss with decoy by giving her a viable target for her ult whenever its up, making the boss basically useless. Otherwise, I used her as a long range mage with very useful decoy utility.
One thing nice about Flanagan is that he has shielding stance. Throw it on Groma, have her taunt a bunch of enemies, watch them surround her, and watch as she literally just won't die. On hard I found her taunt, despite its smaller range compared to Erador's, to be much more useful due to higher success rate.
That's a neat combo I haven't tried yet. Will definitely give it a go in future runs unlocking every characters.
A lot of these "bad" units are actually some of my faves. Decimal being not only underrated, but seriously powerful. Also it's adorable.
You might not think to do this right away, but you can throw archers up onto buildings with Hossabara. Piccoletta's clone is actually a great no-risk decoy/bait - getting enemies to commit to going somewhere (like water) so you can fry them with Narve/Ezana - On Archibald, it may be worth noting that Edged arrow is a straight shot, so you need clear line of sight, as opposed to other skills. Same thing with Rudy's straight shot.
This is so helpful, it is nice to know the maximum potential of a unit and what they can do, before leveling them. Thanks a lot
Glad it was helpful!
"You never want to attack with Benedict unless you can't buff anyone."
Ah, but that's the thing. _As long as Benedict lives he can always buff someone. HIMSELF._ Unless you gave him the black anklet or he got hit with TP drain. Also Dragon shield sadly isn't... that good? It's still got the range of sanctuary which is up to 5 units but it's not ALL allies within 8 squares of him unfortunately.
also the one use I can see of Fire Eater is so that way you can use her final passive without actually taking damage.
It can also be used on Giovanna to allow her to use Scorched Earth when she's on a square that's in flames without taking damage.
Quahaug is so broken he can reposition your unit, displace enemy, loop stop time, pseudo heal, deheal etc. Not only that his Turn Back Time can refresh Erador's invincibility (King's Shield)!!! Holy
This game is a gem I found much later, grew up with FFT, very easy to fall in love with. I'm on my first new game plus playthrough, went with Benedict first time, golden route this time. I love this breakdown of the characters. Anna and Archibald are my favorite, Archibald is satisfying archer in my opinion. As I'm diving deeper into the units and listening to this, I kind of wish Trish was a battery archer, to make the most of the TP pick up. Great video!
Amazing work, even a lot of the wikis don't even have all the information yet. Thanks for this! I benched Medina immediately because of how little money I was getting on Hard Mode, I didn't really wanna rely on items. I may try to invest in her on my 2nd run.
Yeah I felt like the info wasn't out there when I was looking for it myself, but also that there were a loooot of units people were sleeping on (LIONEL) that deserved a bit more praise haha so I put this together. Glad you found it helpful!
I like Roland but I keep the rez accessory on him because does die easily, but I like him because of his mobility and his ability to hit multiple units in a line with his rush and flash of steel. Four Dragons is also AMAZING in the end game when everything is so beefy.
Just wanted to say thank you for this indepth review! I know this had to take alot of work. Pat on the back my good sir
Any time friend! It was a lot of work, but as someone who couldn't find this information when I was looking for it, and since I was playing the game so much I had access to it, I figured I'd create a resource FOR THE PEOPLE!
So detailed. Brilliant guide! Thanks for the tremendous effort you put into this. 👍
I like videos with words like "guide" or "explained" in the title. Music to my ears. And man I must say you deliver : very good advices and tips.
I try to produce the best quality I can so I'm glad to hear you found it useful!
@@LinkKing7 very good quality content indeed. I watch your videos several times.
Nice video - love that you're just talking characters and not trying to rank or tell people too much what to play/not play, etc. This is like "this is what they do, this how to get the most out of what they do", and some personal flavor with your opinion.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that's not a Roland fan. I thought I was doing something wrong but I just never clicked with him.
I love using funky units like the story spoiler dancer and Picoletta so ideas on how to maximize them are always welcome. I had forgotten about Frederica's TP+ passive, I guess because I mostly use her to soften things up (so she doesn't get kills but does a lot of the "initial damage" on tough enemies). She'd get a ton of assists but not many kills and I hated "wasting" 180+ damage on someone with 15 HP unless that target wouldn't be killed by anyone else before an enemy healer or that target could go again.
Maybe I should try changing up how I use Frederica because getting resets is very appealing.
Yeah, I try not to tell people how to play because for one, I'm definitely not the best player of this game out there, despite having sunk a ton of hours into it, and two, everyone has fun playing their own way and we're all different! I'd hate to rob someone of their own experience by trying to make them do something the way I do it haha!
I totally hear you about the fun utility based units in this game. Their quirks are nice to try and incorporate into teams and the uniqueness makes them a blast to play around with!
Frederica is a MONSTER if you can just get her rolling with her TP recovery, it's basically an infinite loop self sustain if she kills something each turn!
Whirlwind's extended range on Narve came in really clutch in my playthroughs. I found myself using that a lot more than the lightning.
I also had a pretty good experience whenever I use Groma, but I almost always had regen on her.
The RuneScape reference 👏🏼 I found this super helpful for the spoilers with regards to the resources needed so I could have them fully upgraded upon unlocking on subsequent NG+ playthroughs.
Thanks I was waiting for a complete roster list. Awesome video 👌
No problem 👍
Anna is perfect for follow up attacks. Her two attacks combined with a strong flanker like Serenoa really plays to her double attacks.
I love this analysis. In my own experience ( Normal, NG/NG+), accuracy has been a significant issue, especially with archers, and the accuracy boons have helped somewhat but it still stings sometimes. I think the reason is that for a variety of reasons they end up parked in a specific highground location for much of the battle, which leads to more front attacks than characters in the fray dish out.
Great explanation on the individual units, I had to spoil myself but I believe I’m just about finished with my 1st run. Thanks again.
The fire resistant +50% on spoiler 1 is probably to take less damage from burn. That's way trial by fire doesn't mess things up too hard. Unless the ablaze is a set damage regardless
Fired tiles deal fire dmg, so it is reduced by fire resistance and can be absorbed by Frederica's absorb fire spell
Honestly Corentine competes with Frederica for best mage IMO. His TP on ice skill is crazy good. His ult can be spammed a lot with some support and shield of ice is ridiculously good and can also be spammed literally every turn with Julio giving him 1 TP each turn and him being on ice. TP on ice is easy to setup and makes him able to spam magic every turn more reliably than even Frederica. The other mages are great too but need more support than these two to function.
It's easy to set up and spam if he's constantly standing in one place while you're chokepointing or tanking or something like that. But if you're trying to move or push forward it hinders your units and requires him to set up to be on in at the end of his turn and it's a bit inconvenient.
@@LinkKing7 leap frog with the aoe ice skill. First turn if no enemies are near ice your feet/ where you want corentin next turn.
Then when enemies aprouch aoe them. Whrn they die corentin can then leap frog to the new ice patch.
Pairs great if anouther character has a free turn to put an ice crystal under corentin. Since tp gained start of turn
Amazing work as always LK!
Thanks! Glad you liked it!
Thanks You very much for taking the time to make this video!
It's very useful
You are welcome, glad you found it helpful!
Great video. Gives me a better view of characters I'm currently using.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it and found it helpful!
Awww I wanted to see every single recruit spread out in the encampment
Personally I found that high mobility/low damage units such as Roland and Anna are really effective at neutering the nuisances on the battlefields.
Nuisances are those scattered enemy forces like archers or healers that are in hard to reach or far away spots that aren't a threat but will still overall deal significant damage to your priority damage dealers over the course of the fight.
Sending Anna to Slumber stab them or Roland to rapidly kill them by getting there and back is usually really effective because you force those units to target Roland, or with Anna you can just slumber stab, recover, slumber stab them again.
In the meantime your other 8-9 units can move the fight where it's most convenient without getting flanked.
Groma looks great with blind arrow with Hughette. Maybe some evasion items and accuracy drop items to enemies? Or what ever is out there for more evasion and accuracy drops? Like if there are archers, then Groma will have fun as there is Tempest Rites from Ezana. She would stay there all day and not worry. She does look cool. But Erador is my main dude. I like him more.
Edit: There is also Cordelia for Groma with evasion buff. Also frozen tiles help with lowering accuracy and also mobility. So more dodge for Groma.
I put red scarf and resurrection ring on my serenoa and he just never died. His shielding ability became a lot more useful. I'd send him out with Benedict and Roland and even in hard difficulty they were no match. Halfway through my first playthrough I had to check that there wasn't another difficulty bc he was that OP with those items.
In defence of Piccoletta, item launcher is more helpful than you give it credit for. Sure it might be an extra cost to make her good, but like you said with Lionel, money isn't a problem late game so buying stones does help out late game. Additionally, she's the best user of these items, other than maybe Medina, so you might as well use them with her. These stones might not do a lot of damage, but you have so much range with them that it's primarily used to chip or finish off enemies. You can also exploit enemies' weaknesses depending on the type of stone you throw. These also don't cost TP, which helps her save up TP for cloning. Speaking of cloning, I think it still holds up late game? You can put her clone on higher terrain to help them with ball toss, or just acting as a meat shield for the tougher enemies will certainly provide utility. Obviously her damage output could be better, even with racquet damage up 3 times it's not entirely solved, but just having her move around the map providing utility to damage dealers like Anna to and granting flanking means she still somewhat holds up late game, especially with the +1 movement forge. Minimum B tier, but solid A for me personally. S tier voice acting though
I did actually use her through to the end game in my first run but when the maps are open, it was a little hard to find openings with the big ranged items that would really do much damage so she kind of felt like a bit of dead weight. The decoy was AMAZING though, it definitely clutched out a few maps like the Avlora fight for example by keeping her busy!
Wow, you must have been BUSY playing this game. Fantastic guide, and it seems well thought-out. You convinced me to finally stop using Geela. I'm in chapter 13, and for a while I'd been considering it, since she can't deal damage and often just wastes a turn. I liked Medina already, but after getting her +ally turn skill, she's become incredible.
106 hours and 4 playthroughs since launch, so yeah, I've been kinda busy haha! It's time to take a break from playing now though and work on videos for a bit since I've pretty much done evrything there is to do!
@@LinkKing7 106 on 4 playthroughs? I'm on my first playthrough, my characters are on level 24 average and Im already on 40 hours! How do you get 4 runs with 106 hours? Even if you put battle on fast mode and skip through every dialog and every cutscene I can't fathom how you can stretch 4 playthroughs in that short amount of time
started watching this last night, finished today - really appreciated this! i'm nearing the end of my second playthrough but this was really great and helped me understand how to use some units who i never really invested much into. i really hope you do a video (or more than one) in the future with your thoughts on story, character, and all that good spoiler stuff - what route splits & endings did you go down the first playthrough?
I will of course be making more videos about the game. Just need to finish up my last route and then I'll have the full picture and be ready to crank out some proper analysis and commentary vids on story and characters!
I decided to be an antagonist and gave up Roland and the Roselle and sided with Benedict on my first route! Turned out less evil than I thought but it was fun!
I basically always did the opposite of what Benedict wanted except one time when I failed the vote, and the more than 2 split choices. And chose hyzante. Going to start my second side with Benedict/ausfrosti play through tonight
thank you so much for this been looking everywhere for a video like this!!
Absolutely, glad I could help!
The way that i found roland usable was by giving him a critical braclet. He already has a critical damage buff skill on his weapone tree. With Rolands mobilty he can flank enemies and first they great chunk of crit damage with his move 5 attack skill and then double thrust crit the enemy or his weapone skill if you have the TP. This gives him ok damage at least on normal mode but it stil doesn't solve his lack of bulk and takes an accessory slot.
You know, I never actually bought that accessory haha so maybe you're on to something here!
I lucked into Golden Route first playthrough. In the battle in Aesfrost I only had 8 characters. The only way I managed to keep the enemies divided to not get swamped, was Jens and Corentin. Ice Wall and Spring Trap made this happen. Rudolph/Jens/Corentin seem like a really good choke point team.
Dropping a like and comment, but not watching this in full until I finish my first run, in fear of spoilers.
have fun mate!
Piccoletta’s Decoy CAN Ball Toss! Surprised me the first time I saw it happen.
Just found this video. Talking about Travis. I think his set up is more used for when YOU as a player uses Fire Magic. Travis would be the unit that can move through the burning squares that you set on fire. That's really the only scenario I can see him shining since as you said fire magic isn't really used towards the end of the game.
Thanks for all your effort mate!
No problem, any time!
Thank you for all your work in this video!
Really got me thinking of the characters in different ways.
Excellent work 🙇♂️🙏
Glad you liked it, I definitely wanted people to see a lot of them for what they really are so I'm happy it got you thinking!
i love lionel! i spammed inciting whispers, and when it does work it turns the tide!
and yes his voice actor is the best!
I love that this game has units that are overall well-rounded, units that stands a bit are not gamebreaker maybe just quahaug, but I really like that. That said I'm a huge simp for Flanagan, Maxwell, Medina and Frederica, and I love how people here in the comments defend their own favorites
Piccoletta appears so underwhelming because you still have her at Tier2, as seen by her max TP only being 4. Upon promotion, she learns Switch Places, which does exactly what it says on the tin, but only with the decoy, and even then, only if it's within 6 spaces. As for her decoy, I think of it as a sacrificial kamikaze character, as its high squishiness draws enemy aggro like moths to a flame.
Thanks for that, really put things in perspective for me.
Using Medina that way is big brain
HEALERS UNDERWHELMING? My healer/support heart can't take such slander good sir!
Geela can auto revive and can heal a TON from low health
Medina can grant TP when healing and can heal the FULL map
Cordelia can regen and can grant hp BEYOND the max
and Quahaug is not technically a healer but can bring you back to your hp and status before hand and so I count him as one
It doesn’t fit his playstyle. He’s too aggressive to use healers.
Healers end up getting their squishy asses in trouble for me when I'm trying to push forward, so I sub them out for a support unit that can instead immobilize an enemy or distract them for a turn. Don't need to heal if you can mitigate the damage in some other way!
Quahaug is BROKEN because of all the other stuff he does so yeah, I agree there. I love the myriad of support units in this game, but yeah healers here just have not been my style, like the reply to your comment said, I have a pretty aggressive play style haha!
I am on NG+ Hard mode, and since I mainly used long-range comp, here are my extra thoughts about the units I mainly play (compared to this guide)
- Serenoa: if you build a heavy mage comp like me, Serenoa will act like a semi-tank. Shielding Stance will be extremely useful since the only problem you have with this comp is the mages/archers/healers from the enemy teams. Since you will likely not Erador (because you will likely need TP support like Medina and Julio), this skill is extremely useful. Good damage, front-line, mid-lines with Hawk, supportive with Shield Stance. S tier
- Frederica: she is the weakest mages out there because the only thing she can do is damage. At first, I like the Ablaze terrain but 90% of the terrains is not burnable, making half of her abilities useless. So, you only have 1 way to use her: dealing damage. That's why in my mage comp, I throw her out. Of course, her single target damage is still pretty good, but if that's the case I will use Archibald, not her.
- Roland: decent unit because of the MAJOR SPOILER 1 guy. Calvary unit has 6 movement (he has 7) with good defensive stat so they are weak to spear is OK to me. Compared to the SPOILER 1 guy, he is more like an assassin instead of a brawler, and this is where the weapon upgrade screws up: it offers defensive stats instead of offensive! Why? Anyway, he is strong when paired up with Anna and you can sacrifice both of them for the enemies' mage/healers. His ultimate deals tons of damage and even when he cannot use it, he still can deal a lot of damage with Double Thrust (if you can manage his movement speed and take down 1 unit in 1 turn).
- Hughette: In early/mid game, she is a CC Bot. In late game, she deals chip damage whenever the enemies stay nearby. Sight Sets activate even when the enemies attack your team and not moving, so she is very poweful when you have your team cover around her as well. However, in late game, due to TP starvation, I did not use her much and her damage is not that great compared to other Archer units (and her Blind is around 50%).
- Corenttin: is the reason why I stop using Fred. Ice can be used on almost every tiles, so for every 3 frozen tiles the enemies pass, they will lose 1 movement. Normal units have 4-5 movements so by using 1 Icy Tomb, you reduce 1 movement for every single enemies that trying to get to your team. If you play offensively, you will think him suck but if you pair him with a defensive team like my heavy mage comp, he easily become the best unit. Also, with TP on Ice, you never have to care about his TP anymore after 1 Icy Tomb (unlike Fred who always left enemies around 5 HP every time I try to use her Chains). Also, if you use Corren, you will not likely use Fetter, but Icy Breath instead to make the AI running around. S Tier.
- Rudolph: Hugehette + Archibald budget version, and that makes him suck. He is supposed to be the 'my abilities are strong so I do not need Weapon Upgrade' but he actually trash in NG+. Rain of Arrow is too weak and high-cost compared to Sniper + Arrow Spray of Archibald and his Slumber Shot only has around 30% for the sleep. Straight Shot is also a worse version of Edged Arrow and why do you ever bother to use Steel Trap with him when Hugehette can deal melee damage or you use Jean to set the traps instead? (and that guy even a tank, more suitable than Rudolph). So, for me, he is just clunky to play and it is hard to pair him with any team. Just use Archibald if you need a DPS, or Hugehette if you need a DPS support, or Trish if you need an assassin.
- Geela: budget healer. Her main point is healing every turns consistantly and remove debuffs. She also has a free revive if you makes some mistakes in positioning. If you have a defensive comp like me, she is extremely useful, but if not, just use Hossabara instead. She works in every kind of team, so she does not not do much like other healers, but this versality is her strong point.
- Julio: S+ for me (obviously). He is a cover for every single units on your team, and in this guide, you missed his strength: he can give 1 TP and buff damage for just 1 TP because of weapon upgrades. Your Benedict can only buff 1 unit, but this guy can give TP and buff at the same turn. What you want to do with him is pairing him up to your main DPS, and he will buff your whole back lines up. In opposite to Benedict, he is not a tanker, but a DPS as well, so even when the enemies slip past through your frontline, Julio can actually kill them (his Strength is pretty good)! If you position right, he can even has tons of TP and can act like a Semi Tank as well, unlike Benedict who cannot even deal damage. For him, just throw a HP Amulet and Defense Bracelet and he can be your jack of all trades while still hit like a truck and buff your whole team (also, why do you need Raging Beast from Benedict when you can just use items?)
- Narve: when you unlock his Spark, just bench Fred forever. The only downside is he cannot regain TP but with Julio as TP battery, he is a beast. He is the unit setting up the terrains to support the team. He can spread the fires to many tiles for the damage when pairing with Fred, or makes Puddle with Corrin for Ezana to spam her stuns. No matter which team you pair him up, he will always be useful. (but to be honest, if you play a physical damage team, or a melee team, just bring oil instead of Fred).
- Jeans: S+ since he is the only one who can stun bosses with his traps. He is extremely tanky as well, making him an annoying frontline to deal with. Just use a Bulwalk on him and he can tank like 4-5 hits. LinkKing has said everything about him so I don't think I need to elaborate more.
- Ezana: you use this unit because of the ability Spark only. The Rite of Tempest is useless since it only reduces Accuracy of Bow users like 10% or something. However, her ratio to Paralize enemies are around 60% to normal enemies and 30-35% for boss enemies. Also, just do not take the 'deal damage in weather' too much, it only does additional 10% damage (in this case, 10% more damage in Rain). Weather in this game is useless, so you do not need to care about them much.
- Groma: I cannot make use of her, tbh. It is so hard to lower the enemy's accuracy to below 50% for her to be useful, even with Ice setup from Corrin (Ice reduces accuracy by 10%). So she is a pass.
- Trish: A good unit, actually. Her abilities are trashes except for that one ability from weapon upgrade. Think about it, why do you need to waste a slot for Blessing of Fire? Steal only has 20% chance to drop something without debuff (it does not even work with her TP passive). Flaming Arrow is just 25% more damage than normal arrow, with 2 TP cost. The only reason why you play her is that she gets to act twice for her next 2 turns (Anna, ehem). Also, since she is mobile with Leap, she can easily get the loot for her first turn. So her fighting will be Act Twice - Attack - Attack - Attack - Act Twice - etc. Since her 2nd Act Twice attack turn is not considered as a turn, all buffs on her lasts x2 and you only need to collect at least one spoil for your next Act Twice. Is she better than Anna? Well, worse actually since Anna has great abilities. Trish only has good follow up attacks and some mobility that she doesn't even need as an archer. Also, do not care about the loot, you only get healing/buff items from it.
Luck increases your crit chance when not attacking from behind. I do not know the specific number but 1 luck does not increase the chance much, to be honest. Crit damage is 300% of your normal damage but if it is the case, just attack them from behind.
Really enjoyed reading your detailed thoughts here, thanks for the very long response!
Throw Poison can be very useful on Anna, even on bosses who are immune to poison. Not only does it do decent damage just on its own, you can use it to set up flanking at a distance just like an archer can for a melee character. It can also be used on the diagonal, unlike Slumber Stab.
Regarding other characters with terrain abilities relating to fire and those never being useful, there are instances where it can be really useful. Erika is a pyromaniac who throws oil everywhere, just saying. :)
Distorted Space on Quahaug (who I used a lot) is great for grouping up your strong damage units and having Quahaug swap a boss into them, so they can't get away. Also handy if the boss is up at inconvenient elevation or something like that. You may sometimes sacrifice him doing this, but it can be worth it.
Yeah, I literally JUST made a video about Quahaug with some updated thoughts on how broken he is haha!
Erika is a fantastic pyromaniac, but unfortunately she fails to execute her plans. She's gonna need some better planning before I can completely approve of her methods
Fire resistance is for him to be in blaze And so he can use trial by combat if not also immediately be in trial by fire mode for travis
I sucked at the demo, but I’ve always wanted to play this game.
Jens is best boi (after Rudolph his trapper friend). Correction though, ensnaring doesn't increase pushback distance but the range that Jens can place the traps, raising it from 4 to 6 tiles away. Pushing Rufus down the stairs was key to achieving my no death clear in telliore. And the turret only has about 5 or 6 hits before expiring.
Sticky arrow and focus are really useful when facing assassin type units that have very high evasion especially in that certain map where an assassination was taking place. As I usually fought battles with 1-2 level disadvantage, even archibald had hit rates in the low 80s and rudolph in the mid 70s which don't inspire confidence at all. sticky arrow lifted that to 90s to 100 for all units allowing me to put them all to sleep.
But I gotta say that as one who dislikes grinding and farming, I have to disagree about Medina and Lionel. They are only S-tier for people who like to farm or already in NG+. I have to admit though that Medina does have to take the field in certain maps when i have to do an early map nuke (especially fun in the final map of liberty route with units that have HPs which are multiples of 3 and almost everyone is above you and ch2 NG+ Hard where EVERYONE has a multiple of 4hp - decimal cleared the mobs in record time by playing around with accessories such that dmg is a multiple of 3/4, too).
Ah ok, thanks for clarifying! Yeah the spring traps are so much fun to use against bosses!
I've watched this twice already! I want that Quahaug video.
Oh I definitely have some choice words about freaking Quahaug... I'll get to it at some point, for now I have a LOT of ideas that I kind of need to start putting down on paper haha!
Is it confirmed that increasing weapon damage by 5 translates into abilities/skills, specially magic ones? If weapon attacks deal physical damage, I wouldn’t think that increasing weapon damage would increase a magic based skill
Yes, it's confirmed!
I certainly did not know that. I need to make some upgrades immediately
I avoided weapon upgrades for my mages, until I read the white mage one, her weapon upgrade specifies that it increases healing, so I assume they also increase magic damage
You really changed my mind about a lot of these characters. Thank you! This is gold.
Fantastic, glad to do so!
This is wonderful. Thank you so much for this!
Absolutely, glad you enjoyed it and found it helpful!
Had such a blast playing the game. I'm going to NG plus it and get "another" ending if you get me haha
Haha yesssss
Skyward fist hits pretty hard, and can be used even if the enemy is on the same height as you. I'd recommend it.
This was really helpful, thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
I'm on my first playthrough started with hard mode 🙈 it took me like 3 tries with that chapter 7 fight🙈😩. Yens really was a life saver with those traps. Piccoletta was running around tossing out decoys and oil with some fire stones to help out and kept me from getting flanked. I'm looking forward to the rest of the game. 🥳
I like Roland as a unit, you just have to be careful with him. His damage is great.