FE3H - Maddening Blue Lions Wrap Up

Maddening difficulty was a fun experience. As a result of Divine Pulse greatly mitigating the consequences of screwing up late in a map, the game is challenging but in a surprisingly fair way. FE3H gives you a LOT of different tools to use when it comes to playing through and defeating maps, and I feel like Maddening does a very nice job in testing a player's ability to understand and utilize these tools.

My final count on resets/pulses was that of a couple Resets, and just north of 50 uses of Divine Pulse. For the most part, I never got put into a situation dire enough for me to burn through much more than 3 Pulses in a single map playthrough, which I feel was pretty solid on my part. I think overall, I feel like the game's difficulty feels about around the level of FE12's Maniac Mode, though probably a bit higher in difficulty.

10 Tips for Maddening

Here's a few thoughts for what I felt was important for me during my run, or aspects that I felt worked well.

1. Accuracy is Very Important

With a combination of enemies having a lot more speed, and often Weapon Prowess Lv 4 or Lv 5, enemy units often have a good 20-30 points more evade compared to enemies in Hard mode, even in the early game. Enemies also having a real Charm stat makes it a lot harder to land Gambits reliably, especially in the early game.

The enemies in Maddening are often strong enough that you need all hands on deck to keep on top of the situation, so the higher evasion adds an extra layer of danger to combat. By emphasizing the use of Accuracy boosting tools, such as Acc Ring, Acc buffing Battalions, Linked Attacks, and Acc boosting Combat Arts, it is still possible to eliminate the dangers of missing attacks.

Curved Shot and Hit +20 were very valuable skills to have. The Macuil Evil Repelling Battalion was extremely good once a Magic user hit A rank Authority due to its +30 Acc bonus. Having most of your units equipped with ranged attack options and micromanaging held weapons to set up linked attacks can go a long way to changing a 70% accurate risk to a more reliable 90%+.

2. Range Superiority is Very Important

The game gets a LOT easier once you have units that can properly contest enemy Archers, so that you can reduce exposure to being bullied by pokes from Poison Strike Archers. By about the end of Part 1, a lot of enemy units start to become too fast to keep up with, and a lot of your middling speed units will be at risk of a 2x hit to often fatal results. As a result, it becomes increasingly important to be able to attack at range and without risk of counter attacks in order to weaken enemies to be taken out.

Having a good range game also plays a role in later maps where you will be able to take out enemies from a safe distance without being able to keep yourself clear from the enemy attacking range. Range is also needed in order to provide more avenues of attack when mobbing a Beast to throw attacks at it to break barriers then deplete HP bars. Ranged attack options are also helpful for the aforementioned benefit of stacking up linked attack accuracy bonuses.

3. Battalions are Very Important

Battalion stat bonuses are extremely valuable in Maddening. Battalions and Gambits are useful at just about all levels of Authority, though for the most part the goal is to get characters up to B in order to utilize Battalions obtained from Paralogues.

As mentioned previously, accuracy bonuses are highly valuable boosts in Maddening, and there are a handful of Battalions at all rank levels that can provide some boosts to accuracy. Some Gambits such as Fusillade are also extremely useful as an option of ranged crowd control and enemy suppression mid game, while the wide AoE and damage output from Resonant Flames/Resonant Lightning Gambits sets up very nicely to spread damage to a large group of enemies in order to easily take them out.

I found it effective for Byleth to get pushed ahead in terms of Authority skill level, then utilize the bonus skill exp from teaching when Byleth's skill level is higher than the student in order to power level other characters in Authority in order to reach B rank as quick as possible. For cases such as Hilda, who is weak on Authority, reaching at least D rank was good enough.

4. Use Combat Arts Liberally

Combat Arts are used liberally throughout the entire game. Early game, the best ones to use tend to be Curved Shot and Tempest Lance. Curved Shot for the +30 Acc, Tempest Lance due to the +8 Mt. Later on you will be using skills like Hunter's Volley and Swift Strikes a lot as well. Basically, since it is hard to actually be fast enough to 2x hit enemy units, and the costs to repair common weaponry is not too taxing, there is nothing stoping you from throwing out Combat Arts as much as possible to help defeat enemy units.

The Positioning Combat Arts, Reposition, Draw Back, Shove, and Swap are also useful tools in Maddening, doubly so with Mounted units. There are a lot of situations where things are solved by simply being able to move units a bit closer to the enemy, or to pull units a few spaces away to get them out of danger. Reposition with a flying unit can also be used to help units scale walls. The instances of using the skills is not life or death usually, but since you acquire them early in the game and will use them regularly, their utility adds up over the course of the run.

5. Bows are the Truth

This is a bit of a combination of the necessity for high accuracy and range superiority. I cannot stress enough how valuable of a skill Curved Shot is throughout the game, providing units both a reliable high-accuracy attack along with a Range 3 attack option. This alone makes it valuable to make as many physical attackers on your team have at least D rank Bow to learn the Combat Art.

Dedicated Bow users are also extremely valuable, as they are able to combat enemy Archers on counter attack and that they have the ability to outrange on initiation with Curved Shot and some other Combat Arts. Accuracy +20 is also tied to Archer mastery making it even more worthwhile to train on using Bows. Having Death Blow + Hunter's Volley allows for a Bow user to become a primary damage dealer for a team, and they are the most reliable way to be taking out end game enemies in one attacking round.

6. Magic is 75% of Things

Similar situation to Bows. Magic tends to be an equal or greater offense option than Bows for about 75% of the game. They are slow to get started at the very beginning of the game, and starts to fall off a bit near the end. Both cases are when the game can be most challenging, which can be a bit rough.

Magic is hard to use at the beginning due to limited spell uses and low-ish damage output as this is before acquiring various tools to boost up damage output. In Lysithea's case, she also has the additional issue of shaky accuracy for a while until her Prowess level grows, and she is able to get Battalions that boost up her accuracy.

Magic really starts to take off once you get access to Magic based Battalions, Fiendish Blow, and the Caduceus Staff/Thyrsus. Magic users will then start to be able to challenge Archers more reliably, as well as be able to OHKO enemies. I had Annette and Lysithea be powerful and reliable damage dealers for most of the game, and they were able to OHKO various enemies up until around the last 3 or 4 chapters in the game.

7. Rescue / Warp are Strong Tools

Rescue is extremely valuable in Maddening as late game tends to be heavily initiation focused, as opposed to enemy phase. So hit and run tactics to provoke groups of enemies into mobilization proves to be very valuable to help progress through in a map. Similarly, hit and runs are crucial for giving an option to safely take out enemies manning siege weapons such as the Onager or Ballista.

Warp is still busted in the various occasions where using it can help facilitate a quick kill on a map. It's not something that will be used on every map, but it's definitely something that is useful when it counts.

8. Have at least one Tank

Having at least one unit that can withstand some hits reliably is valuable for keeping your options open in battle. Despite how player phase oriented the game becomes by the end of Maddening, it is still important to have at least some way to help build on defensive positioning. Some maps make it very difficult to keep your party safe if all your units are glass cannons.

9. Forging Weapons is Vital

It goes without saying that having better weaponry makes for a better combat experience. I stuck to Training+ Weapons and Iron+ Weapons for a large amount of the game, due to the importance of accuracy, and the need for lighter weapons in order to barely keep up with enemy AS. I feel I rarely bought any weapons from the armory after about half-way into Part 1.

In any case, because you will be using a lot of Combat Arts and the like, weapons do get worn out pretty quickly, so it's important to always be maintaining your weaponry as you play maps. Iron+ are still basically the go-to weapons up until about half-way into Part 2 when the enemy bulk will really require the use of Braves, Silvers or Relics.

10. Chapter 13 (non Crimson Flower) is the worst map in Maddening

One thing to always remember in a Maddening run is that you NEED to play with preparation to handle Chapter 13 in mind, due to how nasty the forced nature of the map plays out in Maddening. There's obviously a handful of ways to solve the map and survive, but it can be something that can be a hard wall, even if you make a safety save in Chapter 12 to try to change preparations.

Character Review

Now let's go talk about the characters that I used. I gave each of the characters a rating based on my personal experience in the run. Rating is not a tiering system, so please put away those pitchforks.

Rikka (Byleth)

Classes:
Commoner > Fighter/Monk > Thief/Brigand > Assassin/Enlightened One
+Swordmaster, Mortal Savant

Rikka was one of the main offense units for early game due to having high strength in early game, but kind of drops off as an attacker by the time we reach Part 2. At some point Rikka's role was as a utility player behind the front lines. She was the kind of character that could play a lot of roles but was never one to excel at any of them. Early game I tried to take advantage of the Professor personal skill in order to accelerate exp gain in the early parts of Part 1 where exp gain is scarce, but doing so usually positioned her in a spot that is not the most ideal to be attacking, especially when the goal was to let other characters take the kills for exp. Later on the fact that she had A Authority led her to play a more supportive role with using Blue Lion Dancers, or Indech Sword Fighters for the support gambits, along with passive buffs with Sacred Power. Rikka was often my designated Lockpicker which meant she was usually sent around to pick up treasure boxes on maps that had them.

By the end of the game, the one main niche that Rikka had is that she had access to Windsweep, which was useful to safely chip some of the bosses in late game that have Distant Counter.

Through playing the game, I felt that staying as Assassin worked out best for her, given that my skill levels were mostly focused on Sword and Bow. Assassin class gave her some extra speed to make sure she could avoid a 2x from some of the slow/mid speed enemies, and had extra utility in opening up boxes and being able to run freely through forests/thickets. Stealth was also a skill that had surprising utility whenever I remembered about it. Stealth actually let Rikka act as an invisible wall at times to try to direct enemies into attacking Dimitri instead.

Rating: A+

Dimitri

Classes:
Noble > Soldier > Cavalier > Paladin > High Lord > Great Lord
+Archer Mastery

Dimitri was the GOAT. High strength, high charm, high defense, and access to both Battalion Vantage and Battalion Wrath. Early game Dimitri was a character who could reliably do a lot of damage to enemies to ensure that they can be taken down quickly. High Charm growth allowed him to quickly be able to use Gambits against grunt units reliably, further increasing his combat options and ability to support the army.

Fun started for real once he got access to the Duscur Heavy Soldiers. From then on Dimitri was pretty much untouchable from physical attacks by enemy units for the rest of Part 1, and a few chapters going into Part 2. Once enemy strength started to catch up, Dimitri got Battalion Vantage and was able to change from a tank unit to one that effectively erased enemies for ever daring to challenge him to a fight.

Dimitri was pretty much the only unit I had that could engage enemies by enemy phase action, and was extremely valuable in late game as a way to completely neuter enemy mages with Bolting or Meteor by Vantage killing them before they could act. It kind of says something to how busted Dimitri gets when it feels like it was the optimal action to just Warp Dimitri into the Enbarr Throne Room in the final chapter and have him fight Edelgard solo for a few turns until I had a good time to warp a second unit over to assist.

Rating: S+

Dedue

Classes:
Commoner > Soldier > Brigand > Armor Knight > Fortress Knight > War Master

Dedue was a character I tried to make work with so-so results. His personal skill works pretty nicely in helping make it so his defense can keep enemies at bay, but he has the issue that his accuracy is a bit shaky a lot of the times and his strength ends up feeling surprisingly low for the kind of character he is. He had a moment to shine around the back half of Part 1 due to One-Two Punch being a surprisingly good Combat Art, as it greatly patched up his issues with damage output, however Dedue being completely absent for the first few chapters of Part 2 completely killed his viability. By the time he came back, it was hard for him to be utilized as enemies had gotten to a point of far breaking past defensive stacking, they had a lot more bulk making his damage output issues even worse, and there were far more mages to deal with that force him to stay away from the frontlines.

Rating: C+

Felix

Classes:
Noble > Fighter > Archer > Assassin

Felix is extremely good as a unit in the early game of Maddening due to his Personal ability simply giving him a free +5 Atk and Fraldarius Crest potentially giving him an additional +5 Atk during combat. Unfortunately for me, Felix's level ups were simply not good in this run as he constantly gained 2 stat levels, making him extremely frail, and not even particularly fast or strong. His disadvantage on Authority also did not help much for his situation as he was stuck using weaker Battalions by the time my other characters hit B. I probably could have continued using Felix right to the end of the game, but in the end I decided to shelf him about halfway through the game because his level ups were just not good.

Rating: C+

Ashe

Classes:
Commoner > Fighter > Archer/Brigand > Sniper

Ashe starts off pretty weak as a unit on Maddening, so it takes a fair bit of effort to start to get him to become a respectable attacker. The slow levelling of early game hurts a lot for him, but he starts to show his worth once he can class change into an Archer, and can then outrange them through Range 4 Curved Shot. High Dex makes for fairly reliable hit rates even when shooting at Range 4, and having Deadeye, while not the most accurate, is a good low risk high reward option throughout the back half of Part 1. Having proficiency in Bows and Axes is a strong asset towards setting up to become a Hunter's Volley spamming Sniper though, and ultimately efforts towards training Ashe paid off big once I reached Part 2.

I had Ashe master Brigand then master Sniper, once he gained access to Hunter's Volley, he became my best offensive unit on my team. While his attack stat itself wasn't amazing, Death Blow and the King of Lions Corps provided a sizable boost to his damage output. Iron Bow+ Hunter's Volley was often a clean kill on Mages and enemy Snipers while use of Killer Bow+ Hunter's Volley often had 70-80% Crit allowing him to reliably down even bulky enemies such as Fortress Knights or War Masters, and could quickly erase HP bars from enemy beast units once their barriers were down. Ashe was a MVP of late game Part 2, but it took a lot of effort to make him into such a strong attacking unit.

Rating: A

Sylvain

Classes:
Noble > Soldier > Cavalier > Paladin

It's a bit difficult to pin what exactly I thought about using Sylvain on this run. A lot of times it just kind of felt like he was just there, though that isn't to say he didn't pull his weight on the team. Somehow he just kind of ended up as a bit of a Support unit for my team being my only actual Cavalry unit, as he was the only one who could utilize Stride on a group units while still retaining movement. He also had Reposition, which also proved to be pretty useful.

For most of the game, Sylvain just felt like he was kind of the back up unit in terms of roles. Sort of like Rikka's situation, except with different tools and was stuck to this role for the whole game. He was a good, but not great, attacking unit in early game, though in Part 2 he got access to Swift Strikes. Swift Strikes allowed him to keep up with damage dealing against enemy units, but other characters like Ashe and Annette could still attack better than he could while keeping a safer distance. As such he was used more to help clean up enemies once they had already moved towards my team. Lance of Ruin often felt a bit too inaccurate to rely on, so I didn't feel like I utilized it as much as I should have with Sylvain. I think he could have been utilized a bit better by being reclassed into a Wyvern, even if it meant losing Lancefaire's boost to Swift Strikes.

Rating: B+

Ingrid

Classes:
Noble > Soldier > Pegasus Knight/Paladin > Falcon Knight

Ingrid is another character that is a bit tough to place. Her mediocre strength growth is of serious concern for the entire game, but somehow it always felt like she was able to manage to find a way to have just enough for what she needed to do. As one of my dedicated Fliers on my team, she had a lot of freedom of movement around the map. Having Reposition as well led to an extremely valuable combination that let her throw characters over one-space gaps and walls that can be flown over.

Early game Ingrid is pretty dreadful, but she can make it work due to the high Mt bonus of Tempest Lance mitigating her lower strength. Being a flier with decently high speed once she became a Pegasus Knight, one of her key roles was to fly around and take out enemy Archers and Mages. For the most part, she almost always ended up with just the right amount of speed and strength to allow her to take out these ranged enemies. She also had access to Curved Shot, allowing her to chip opponents at ranged, or shoot enemies from over a cliff then fly back to safety. While her damage output was fairly lacking in late game, it was still enough for her key roles, and having Frozen Lance was usually an effective way to finish off weakened enemies as it usually was able to hit for about 20-30 damage.

One unique thing Ingrid had going for her was that she was a character who could safely stand in front of enemy Sword users because she just had enough evade stacking to reduce their accuracy to about 15% or less, and could also easily dodge archer shots from their Reduced range 3 accuracy. This was also a pretty useful trait that found some use in various maps.

Overall, Ingrid's utility is carried as a result of fliers being busted.

Rating: B+

Annette

Classes:
Noble > Monk > Mage > Warlock > Gremory

Annette was a bit surprising to me on this run. Every run of the game before this, she had awful level ups and was quickly benched for other magic users. However, for this Maddening run, she really decided to turn up. Early game, Annette is limited by spell usages and takes a bit of time for her to build up her damage output. However, even in that situation her personal skill being an innate Rally Str, and her spell library only having high accuracy spells makes her very useful to either boost up Dimitri or Felix's attack, or to ensure a KO with an accurate spell.

By the time Rally Str's utility runs its course, she got to be set up to be an offensive powerhouse. Having a strength in Authority was helpful to allow Annette to reach A rank Authority quickly in order to utilize the Macuil Evil Repelling Corps. It didn't really quite get to me just how hard she was hitting with her attacks until late into Part 1 where I just noticed that she was easily OHKOing Advanced Class enemies at 100% accuracy. Basically her offense capabilities rivaled Lysithea's, often being slightly harder hitting and a lot more accurate. So her and Lysithea were basically running around with Range 4 magic nukes to help deal with the enemy forces. Annette was basically able to cleanly KO enemies for most of the game up until the final few chapters. And even in those cases, she was still a very strong attacker with a reliably accurate weapon.

Rating: S

Mercedes

Classes:
Noble > Monk > Mage > Bishop

Mercedes's level ups were not too hot this run. While a healer doesn't really need stats too much, it did restrict her level of utility. Given as she was my only real healer at the start of the game, she was naturally important in early game as having Physic was critical to have for Chapters 3 to 5, but as the game progressed eventually she shared her role with other healer units and eventually was phased out as the game shifted towards a more "kill or be killed" kind of game where having multiple dedicated healers wasn't quite as useful.

Rating: B

Lysithea

Classes
Monk > Mage/Priest > Warlock > Gremory
+Noble Mastery

The classic magic nuke character. While it may require more use of Luna or Dark Spikes to get the job done, Lysithea was still able to often drop enemies in a single hit. Her spell accuracy being lower than Annette's makes for a bit more risk in early game maps when using Lysithea, but utilization of linked attacks and supports were often enough to keep her accuracy respectable. Mastermind and having strengths in Reason and Authority allow for her to quickly improve her prowess rating and also to reach A rank Authority for Macuil Evil Repelling Corps. Once she got herself settled down, accuracy was often no longer an issue for her.

I feel like Annette was a better mage for my team during the earlier parts of the game, but Lysithea exceled more in the later parts of Part 2. This is largely due to access to Warp, and access to Luna. Luna gave Lysithea a way to cleanly KO enemy mages, that Annette could not do as easily. Warp, while not used too often, was also staple for completing a few chapters. Oh, and I guess she was my resident killer of Death Knights, because Dark Spikes is a thing.

Rating: S

Hilda

Classes:
Brigand > Fighter/Pegasus Knight > Wyvern Rider > Wyvern Lord
+Noble Mastery

When I recruited Hilda, I was not entirely sure what to expect from her. Low Dex Axe main with Authority weakness sounds like a bad combination in Maddening, and yet somehow she turned out to be one of my better units at the end of the day.

During Part 1, I made her a Pegasus Knight, and also found the time to master the Brigand class for Death Blow. I made it an effort to try to get her to D rank Authority as soon as she could so that she can use a Battalion while on a Pegasus. The work paid off well as she did a lot of work in the back half of Part 1. I mostly stuck to using Lances at the time due to her being generally more accurate with them and not being weighed down as much.

By Part 2, I kind of noticed that she was suprisingly fast and that she had sky high attack. Since her Axe rank was higher now, I could rely on Prowess effects and Accuracy Rings to help augment her lower accuracy. Kingdom Wyverns Battalion was also a big help, as it provided her an additional +15 acc, even if the Gambit tied to it is completely useless (lol Recovery Roar). So basically, Hilda was able to fly around the map and slam a Brave Axe into people for easy KOs, with a respectible 80%ish accuracy. She could also use Curved Shot for ranged pokes as well. I would say that her offense abilities were only second to my primary Ranged attackers, and Dimitri.

Rank: A

Marianne

Classes:
Priest > Monk/Mage > Bishop
+Noble Mastery

Marianne was one of those characters that I picked up and wanted to use mostly out of preference. However, she ended up a character who quickly felt like she had no real role on the team, as Mercedes and Flayn were better at being healers, and Annette and Lysithea were much better at being offensive mages. In the end, she felt like she was mostly being carried along to ensure that her own Paralogue went smoothly. At least she did get to have that one moment where she hit Hubert with Silence during Bernie/Petra's Paralogue.

Rating: C

Flayn

Classes
Priest > Bishop > Gremory

For a while I wasn't entirely sure if I was even going to be using Flayn on my party. I had a lot of different healers to choose from so my party space ended up fairly limited, but since training healers was fairly low commitment during the back half of Part 1, I was able to just cycle through my various healers without too much worry. While she's stuck with Range 1 healing until she learns Fortify, she joins at a time of a bit of a lull in difficulty during the back half of Part 1. And at worse, she can just throw around Rescues to gain free exp during maps.

Flayn quickly distinguishes herself from the rest of the pack in Part 2 though. Rescue became an invaluable asset to the team on a large number of occasions, facilitating hit and run tactics, and also to provide extra movement to some units in certain cases. By this point, she also has access to Fortify solving her issues of lack of healing range. Due to the nature of how Maddening is, having 4 uses of Fortify per map is plenty as units seldom take damage due to most enemies attacking for lethal amounts of damage.

Flayn having very high Charm was also nice to make for reliable usage of Resonant Flames Gambits.

Rating: A

Dorothea

Classes:
Mage > Dancer

I recruited Dorothea and tried her out for a few level ups, but her level ups fell a bit flat. So I decided to instead use her as my Dancer. There's not too much to say about it. As the team's dancer, she was deployed for every battle once she gained the class. The main selling point of her being Dancer is that by equipping Meteor she can easily provide Link Attack bonuses to characters due to her gigantic Range 3-10 attacking range. She also has Physic in case of needing ranged healing.

Dorothea basically just played the dancer role and stuck to Dance, but having high Charm also helped in instances where she could drop down a Resonant Flame on a group of enemies for crowd control.

Rating: D (for Dancer)

Petra

Classes:
Thief > Assassin

I picked up Petra late in Part 1 and decided to use her a bit in Part 2. The main reason for this is simply because I needed a character who could steal stuff, and Petra was the best choice for it. She could do some fighting, but for the most part she was just there to swipe various items and accessories off of enemies, and I guess contribute to dealing finishing blows to enemies to get some kills to maintain level. I did get a few nice items from this investment, like a few stat boosters, a few good shields, and a few master seals, so I guess it was kind of worth it.

Rating: B

Catherine

Classes:
Swordmaster

Catherine was added back onto my roster near the start of Part 2 because I realized that her stats were actually fairly comparable to the units I was already using, except that she was a good 5 levels down, so she had some room to grow. She didn't see all that much combat though, since she was basically the unit on reserves for instances where a map would allow me to deploy a larger number of units. Her damage output was decently solid, though her accuracy ended up being a bit shaky, especially when trying to swing the Thunderbrand at things. Also being a melee focused unit wasn't always the greatest of utility in Maddening. She's a unit that probably needed a bit more diversity on roles, and needed to be trained and worked on a bit earlier in the game for her to really be a established player on my team roster.

Rating: C

Thanks for reading through to the end of this playthrough. That is all the time we have. Tomorrow is a dawn of a new generation with Pokemon Sword and Shield. I hope that I can get back into playing VGC for real with this new generation and continue to use this blog to post about my adventures in Gen 8 VGC.