You don't need new content to talk about stuff unless you've already completely mastered all the existing games, which I haven't.
I started a fe12 h4 ironman. This is the last one before I take a break from fire emblem, for real this time. Haven't been playing that much so I'm only on chapter 11.
I've also taken a look at the character roster to assess who is viable. Here are some ramblings about characters:
>Marth
A decent unit throughout the game. He should get some exp early on but not be the main focus, as it's more valuable to get units like Kris and Catria to level 20. It's useful to have 17 luck in chapter 10x. Eventually he will hit his level cap and may need some stat boosters to reach str and spd caps, then he can use the brave sword in the final stretch.
Marth is a good option for killing the final boss. He deals 24 damage with maxed strength and should have 100 accuracy after factoring in Merric support. Four hits leave Medeus with 3HP, then you can deliver the final hit with someone else (e.g. Catria w/ gradivus)
>Kris
He's incredibly important as an earlygame juggernaut and can fill the axe-wielding niche as the game goes on. Knight in prologue is ideal because of the class' high defense growth, which lets you save dracoshields for your other juggernaut. Also, if he gains most levels as knight or pirate he will likely cap HP without needing to pick a HP bonus in character creation (though you could choose extra HP anyway to make him more tanky in the earlygame). Otherwise he benefits from increased starting speed+skill, as much def growth as possible, and maybe some extra strength. The luck+res bonus is another possibility but berserker luck cap is 22 so it's wasteful with this build. I reclass him to pirate, feed him early exp, and try to promote him before chapter 6, use him as a general for a bit, then switch to berserker. You have access to male mixed class sets on H4 so you can reclass him to dracoknight for some lategame maps e.g. if you want a high movement unit that kills sorcerers with the brave axe.
>Marisha
Her stats are great, especially magic. She's a perfect staffbot (plus you need her to use the repair staff) and an effective magic attacker after promoting. A great way to kill Gharnef. While her low skill stat is concerning for nosferatanking, support bonuses push her to 100% accuracy. Reclassing to levin swordmaster is another useful option (e.g. in chapter 20). Probably worthwhile to use stat boosters to improve mag/hp/skl.
>Catria
Immediately useful and has great growths all around, making her the best candidate to get ahead of the level curve and become your second juggernaut. I like to reclass her to general in a few midgame maps, which also helps her defense growth. Eventually she should switch to paladin (and sometimes dracoknight) and eat dracoshields. In lategame maps she can kill some enemies with the brave lance and can deal heavy damage on enemy phase with gradivus, while still not pushing enemy dragons below the half-HP threshold that triggers healing.
If you're using someone else as paladin you could make Catria into a sniper instead but that's such a waste. Using her primarially as a mage is also possible, but H4 has extra buyable stat boosters so you power up her magic even if you don't train her as a mage. This can be relevant if you want to kill Medeus with magical triangle attacks. You can use a levin sword or make her a sage. On H4 you can even weaken Medeus with nosferatu, as the healing occurs between Medeus' attacks.
>Feena
Dancer. Essential.
>Xane
Mimic. Almost always worthwhile to use him over a generic team member because Xane duplicates whichever unit you need in a given situation and costs zero exp or other resources to train.
>Merric
He joins relatively late for an unpromoted unit but eventually will be able to survive a hit from lategame enemies that the other sages (other than Marisha) can't. He can use excalibur or starlight with accuracy, except at the start where he needs support and star shards to guarantee hits on wyverns. If you don't want to feed him kills you can even reclass him and spam heal before promotion, though that will reduce his magic growth. Also provides support to Marth. Ultimately I don't see a good reason not to use him on your team.
>Yumina
A lesser version of Marisha but still good. She's a staffbot with high magic. Speed and luck are also good, but be careful as she might die in one hit. She can get C rank tomes with an arms scroll or get some wexp through combat. Might be worthwhile to promote her with the chapter 11 elysian whip if your other units need the early master seals. While I always use her you could easily swap her with one the the other possible sages.
>Etzel/Katarina/Wrys/Linde
Pick one more to serve as a staffbot. Etzel and Katarina can use high level offensive tomes, Wrys has the highest magic but is extra frail and needs extra training+promotion, and Linde functions a bit differently. Linde has very high speed/skill/luck so if you're using her you can give her HP and magic stat boosters and make her your primary nosferatank / levin swordmaster while Marisha focuses on healing. But overall I don't think she's worth it.
>Rody
In H4 one of your early units will pick up a sizable amount of experience because you'll be killing enemies with bows to avoid counterattacks. Rody is the best of the bunch as he has high growths all around, and in H4 he can reclass to hunter/horseman. The horseman class has a speed cap of 30, like swordmaster, but the class base is 5 lower so you need high personal speed to take advantage of it and you ideally want even more speed so you reach the cap well before level 20/20. Likewise you want your unit to have a lot of skill. If your horseman has the stats for it you essentially get a swordmaster that also has bows and higher movement. Rody also has high luck so he can face high-crit enemies and has good accuracy, will cap strength, and has decent hp and def. His only real flaw is his lack of sword rank. C swords is sufficient for wyrmslayers but I don't know the best route to get there. One option is to ignore sword rank until promotion, then reclass to swordmaster and arms scroll for 60wexp, then get the remaining 15wexp through combat. Or maybe he can simply reach C rank through combat.
>Caeda
She can use the wing spear effectively in a few places but there are a lot of chapters where it's useless, so I prefer to use Caeda mainly as a sniper after she promotes. Even with the availability of horsemen in H4 it's still advisable to have a sniper for longbow use and snipers have higher accuracy. I typically reclass Caeda to archer shortly before promotion to get some extra personal speed. Afterwards she will double wyverns in the midgame and she has very high hit rate due to her incredible skill and luck growths, which may save you from needing to forge the longbow and brave bow. It's also useful to have someone with super high luck in order to fight enemies that have killer weapons. She will hit A rank bows without needing an arms scroll thanks to the sniper class's high base bow rank. Unfortunately she will need energy drops to compensate for her low strength. Or you could replace her, but it's probably not worth training a new unit just to save a couple energy drops.
>Palla
I think it's best to promote her before chapter 7 because a strong dracoknight is helpful there (although you could use Kris). For me she was level 16 this time. Eventually she may need a speed booster to keep up and she will need luck boosters to avoid getting crit, or you can replace her. If you use her in the final stretch she can work as a swordmaster, as she will be able to use lady swords and wyrmslayers immediately after reclassing. She likely won't benefit from supports aside from Kris. Ultimately she's probably fine, but if you can train a horseman (or a different swordmaster) you might swap her out.
>Frey/Navarre/Cain
These units are similar to Rody except they join later. They likely won't contribute very much towards clearing the next few chapters, since you should have a super-juggernaut Kris at this point, but they are viable candidates to feed exp to get a good horseman or swordmaster in the long run. Personally I'm using Frey; he joins the earliest and he receives a support bonus from Catria in addition to the typical Kris and Marth. I expect this to be relevant in killing the chapter 22 boss, for example.
(side note: if a wyrmslayer has +2 might and +10 hit and two units are providing support you should be able to kill the chapter 22 boss reliably. A swordmaster with A swords and max str/skl/lck can kill other mage dragons with an unforged wyrmslayer and no support, otherwise a slight forge is useful)
Frey will also get higher defense than his peers, although his luck will end up slightly lower. He comes with D rank swords whereas Navarre and Cain have C rank.
If you want to use one of these units then chapter 10x is a great opportunity to gain levels. By turn 2 you can move all of your units into the center area where Horace starts except for one strong unit that will move to the top middle. As long as the unit you use to block the central entrance is a more desirable target than the unit you send to the top mid, the enemy berserkers will crowd around the entrance and you can freely shoot them for exp. Just make sure you're not in danger when a berserker appears with a hand axe and you end the map immediately afterwards.
Otherwise they can still get exp the normal way but won't catch up until later. You might even forego horseman as his endgame class and aim for the lower spd/skl benchmarks of swordmaster instead. In that case the fact that Navarre caps strength earlier might be relevant.
>Est
On H3 she's a strong candidate for your endgame party. Although she joins late you can easily level her up in her join map thanks to triangle attack. Then make her a falcoknight so you have a faster flying unit, and eventually switch to swordmaster. She receives support bonuses from Kris/Catria/Palla. She caps out her offensive stats at a super early level and it's nice to have access to triangle attack. The downside is that she can't reclass to horseman, so training her is arguably less rewarding than training a male set B unit.
On H4 she's a lot harder to train as she gets OHKOd by a lot of things before she can attack. She'll probably need some stat boosters. Plus she has stronger competition, as the other units that were competing to be swordmasters on H3 can now switch to horseman as needed. She's probably still a reasonable choice but I don't plan to use her this time.
>Roger/Ogma/Barst
Similar but worse than Frey/Navarre/Cain except they are in class set B by default. On H3 this means they are your horseman candidates, but on H4 the class sets are merged so their niche disappears.
Roger has the highest speed and luck but will need skill boosters. Ogma starts with C swords and has higher HP but low defense and speed.
>Sirius
He's useful as a dracoknight early on and can be a competent swordmaster if you want to keep using him. But probably worse than Palla unless you promoted her super early.
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>Arran
Arran is way better on H4 than on H3; he can now reclass to general, which gives him enough defense and HP to survive a critical from chapter 1 enemies.
>Minerva
I try to deploy her a few times so she provides support to Catria.
>Leiden
Could be a competent filler unit but there's no space for him.
>>1575024
For rebalance hacks I don't trust the random guy who made the hack to make arbitrary changes for the better and I especially don't trust the evil cultists that make modern romhacks to understand the first thing about level design.
I also have a bit of a mental block with romhacks in general. Even the good ones (e.g. Sword of Heaven and Earth) I feel hesitant to put as much effort into optimizing compa