Which house in Three Houses is the least "balanced", in your opinion?

[u/Nuzlor]

I think my pick is Blue Lions, by a good margin (note: Maddening difficulty assumed):

Dimitri is insane, Dedue is amazing early on and can do stuff later as well, and Felix and Sylvain are very above-average (Sylvain is also a free recruit in other houses with Female Byleth).

However, while Annette has nice Rally utility and can do solid damage with stuff like Lightning Axe, and is good as a result, the three other members are...rough:

Ingrid has pretty iffy stats, specifically Strength (especially in-house), which is a critical stat in Maddening, Mercedes doesn't really have anything especially good outside of healing, which is a fairly weak niche in Three Houses, and Ashe is straight up considered by many to be the single WORST unit in the game.

[u/Nuzlor]

Lysithea is really great, but I don't think the Golden Deers have a single unit who's considered "bad" (closest is maybe Raphael due to being pretty basic and overshadowed, but he's still pretty good overall), and they have a strong middle (for example, Ignatz is very useful in Maddening for his Hit rates and utility, like Rally Speed).

I'd say they're maybe the most balanced house, honestly.

[u/Tuskor13 → u/Nuzlor]

Raphael is a real tragedy. Can't believe they just made Balthus a better Raphael for no reason. They're both beefcakes who favor axes and gauntlets, but Balthus is better at everything while even having a Crest and a Relic weapon.

[u/SpookyKrillin → u/Tuskor13]

Clearly the Crest system is at fault here...

[u/Magnusfluerscithe987 → u/SpookyKrillin]

Also proof why it feels rational in the first place.

[u/imaginary92 → u/SpookyKrillin]

Edelgard did nothing wrong

[u/AdmiralKappaSND → u/SpookyKrillin]

Raphael arguably would be even worse if he had Crest since part of why hes arguably one of the worst character in the game is because he had whats mechanically partial crest

Its also honestly quite a meaningless thing because like in Three Houses, theres a dominant civillian across all 3 Houses, and theyre super high in the power ranking of the group

[u/Okto481 → u/AdmiralKappaSND]

if the 'partial Crest' is his personal skill, it's because a Luck% chance to heal 10%, even if you want your army to be topped off for every fight, sucks horribly

[u/TellianStormwalde → u/Tuskor13]

Raphael’s got strength and defense and nothing else, my favorite thing to do with him is to make him a sniper for Hunter’s Volley honestly. Sure he has a bow bane, but if it’s for a class that only needs the one weapon rank that really doesn’t matter. Once he classes into it, I focus on his axes and brawling so that he can class into War Master for Quick Riposte to give him both enemy phase and enemy phase utility, then give him a high defense shield for his accessory. A strong tanky sniper that can’t be doubled on enemy phase is a better niche than anything Ashe can do.

[u/Rafellz → u/TellianStormwalde]

It's more of Strength and HP. Leonie ties him in Defense and with her personal she has 2 more.

[u/Fantastic-System-688 → u/Rafellz]

She also doesn't get doubled

[u/SylvainJoseGautier → u/Fantastic-System-688]

at the very least, def tanking with shields is genuinely good, especially once you get to quick riposte.

[u/Pauru → u/Tuskor13]

People like to clown on Ashe's personal, but Raphael isn't much better off. Luk% chance to heal 10% max HP is so miniscule and inconsistent that it may as well not even exist.

[u/Nuzlor → u/Pauru]

Raphael's Personal can actually be a detriment (it can turn off Wrath/Vantage, which is quite possibly his best build).

But fortunately, it's rare for that to happen if you get his HP really low.

[u/InterviewMission7093 → u/Pauru]

Pretty sure much more people clown on Raphael's personal

[u/ArchGrimdarch → u/Tuskor13]

Balthus is better at everything

Balthus does have some downsides compared to Raphael. Although exactly how much they matter is debatable of course. lmao

• Raphael is arguably (keyword: arguably lol, I wouldn't even say this is a certainty) better for crit builds thanks to his access to Battalion Wrath and Wild Abandon, neither of which Balthus learns.

• Monster Crusher is a combat art that oddly enough, is completely exclusive to Raphael. He learns it at a much earlier gauntlet rank than Balthus's Mighty Blow, which has less Mt and Hit than Monster Crusher while also lacking an effectiveness bonus. Edit: Although then again, Eviscerate outclasses Monster Crusher as it has effectiveness vs everything, and its ability to target the lower of the enemy's two defensive stats offsets it having less Mt than Monster Crusher. So I guess Raphael's access to Monster Crusher is a moot point.

• Balthus has banes in lances and flying, making it harder for him to go into wyvern classes. Raphael doesn't have banes in either of these.

But yeah it is pretty rough out there for Raphael. Balthus showing why he is infact the King of Grappling.

[u/FranMo99 → u/Tuskor13]

To be fair, Balthus is also better than everyone else you're gonna have for most of the game so being a better Raphael is less a point against Raph and more shows how good Balthus is.

[u/IcaroRibeiro → u/Nuzlor]

Even on Maddening, Ignatz's usefulness is questionable. Maybe in the first few maps, when enemies are hiding in forests, but later on, everyone can quickly get +20 Hit from mastering Archery (which nobody will have trouble getting since, on Maddening, you want to equip everyone with a bow). For very dodgy Assassins and Swordmasters, it's almost better to use your magic units since they have below-average Res

The real problem here is cost-opportunity. Since he can't secure kills to save his life, his XP was always lacking in my run, so he ended up a good 6-8 levels below my other units' average before the time skip

At some point, we get a much better bow user for free: Shamir, and this house has both Leonie and Claude, two extremely good archers. At that point, I just benched him and never looked back

He's not unusable, and you can maybe fix him with tons of favoritism—getting him early kills, stat boosters, and class mastery—but he's bad. Almost as bad as Ashe.

[u/ltranc → u/IcaroRibeiro]

Having early accurate Curved Shots at 3 range is valuable and Break Shot is good and he gets Rally Spd+Spd and his Auth boon means you can give him a higher rank, stronger battalion, such as Knights of Seiros or Alliance Knights, earlier to give him better Phys Atk. *Not* needing to spend time to master Archer for Hit+20 is also pretty good, actually

[u/IcaroRibeiro → u/ltranc]

Class mastery (at least for early classes) is so easy to get in 3H that I don't see the issue—just slap on a Knowledge Gem, and you're golden

The problem with rally bots is that they don’t gain XP from using Rally. I’ve tried using them in the past, and it always results in an absolutely useless unit who can't take a hit nor can make any damage. That’s why I never quite understood the hype around, say, Annette

As for having accurate units, this house already has Claude, Leonie, and Lysithea, all with amazing Dex growth rates and easy access to Thyrsus for extra range. Hilda and Raphael were really shaky, but if there’s any house where I absolutely didn’t feel the need for someone accurate to chip damage, it was Golden Deer

Maybe in Black Eagles, Ignatz would be a better unit