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I'm not entirely sure what you're askin for, other than "What are some good ways to develop my heroes?". For some words on that: (note that if you're playing with the DLC, this gives more options to play with)
Also, these two guides might give you some ideas:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1866575410
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1743246899
you can do the above "for free" via a NG+ "don't keep levels" setting, although doesn't quite work on story characters, not hard to edit save file otherwise... unless using 10% randomness on level gains.
farming ap can be done with mixed levels too, as long as the average level of the "team" you send out is within the level range of the area. this is possibly why you read somewhere else to reset levels so you can stay in first zone... which works but only because the foes are limited to the same crappy items you have because you didn't advance through story.
don't be afraid to bench... vicarious learning is pretty nice, sure just 10% or so but everyone gets it based on the primary classes sent on the battle. benched people don't get exp, which is important if you're min/max'ing stats... but they're still getting ap from battles although less, the vicarious is where things get fun.
as conan said, the DLC gives a way for missions to give ap (or exp or gold, ect) as well, story characters get 15% of gains due to not being able to go on missions. so have extra units isn't so bad.
ultimately, you don't really need to prevent progress in order to get optimal gains in class advancement. what's more important is likely your stat gains for the general types of builds: caster, hybrid, raw attack, or speed. just gonna add here that raw attack is easiest for Anadine (once you've gotten her class) and Werewolves that are leveled purely, other than Reaver, no one else gets highest attack values. suggest getting Anadine to learn One-For-All from Knight as she'd end up with the lowest speed values. You can monopolize on that till you get her version of cleave build going. (boring as everyone is doing it now but its very effective)
check some of the links conan gave for build ideas, or some of the other guides
Units can earn AP in 4 ways.
1: Participate actively in a deployment (patrol or story/event battle)
2: Participate actively in a mission
3: Be on the bench while others are in a deployment
4: "Vicarious" AP
Vicarious AP from battles is awarded to all units in your roster. It gives a small bit of AP for each class that participated in the battle. This can overlap, so if you have 6 Druids on the field at once, everyone will get 6* the Vicarious AP amount added to Druid, even if they don't have Druid unlocked yet (you won't be able to spend it until you do, though).
Story characters also get Vicarious AP from missions. It's 15% of the mission AP total added for each class, so if 4 Mercenaries deploy on a mission, all story characters will get 4/6 of the mission AP added to the Mercenary class.
Mastering a class gives a small bonus to stats.
Each class has a different set of stat growths. These stats roughly correspond to the "strengths" of the class. Some classes have growths that are bad. Others are very good. You should avoid gaining level-ups in bad classes and emphasize gaining levels in good ones. Many of the "good" classes are hybrid or generalist though, while specialists tend to be worse (there are exceptions).
Classes you should avoid gaining levels in: Assassin, Duelist, Gambler, Gunner, Mender, Mercenary, Ranger, Reaver (the worst), Samurai, Scoundrel, Wizard.
For pure SPD growth, the best overall class is Alchemystic. If you're not interested in magical stats, Wrangler is probably the best "fast" physical fighter to level in.
For overall good stats with no downsides, consider Druid, Gadgeteer, Fellblade, and Warmage.
For a strong defensive character, Plague Doctor is excellent.
The badge classes aside from Werewolf are amazingly good and better than the best non-badge classes. Werewolf is bad, avoid leveling in it. Lord and Princess are the best classes in the game for leveling (and also in general).
For storyline characters, Reiner's story class is very very good and the others are about as good as the best non-badge classes. Anadine's is the only exception; Fell Seal seems to hate ATK-focused specialist classes and as a result her specialist class is quite bad to level in. Unfortunately, her specialist class is also VERY good to use as your base class as it has powerful abilities and a good equipment set. My recommendation is to use it in moderation on difficult boss fights and level her in Fellblade, Warmage, Druid, or Wrangler otherwise.
Other classes are also fine but you should avoid gaining levels in the "avoid" list at all costs. This does not mean you cannot gain AP in them, but you should do so by leveling them on the bench or in missions that do not grant EXP. Since many of the "avoid" classes have useful skillsets, I highly advise switching to these classes while on the bench and picking a good leveling class while on the field.
Regardless of difficulty, Fell Seal scales with you, though only up to a point on the default "Veteran" difficulty and below. For this reason, maximizing benched AP is ideal. Enemies have class skills based on the level of your 6 highest-level characters, so minimizing the level of our highest-level characters is ideal.
Now that we've understood the basic ideas, let's talk about how to minmax.
Spend a bunch of money and hire new recruits. Name them useful things like the class they joined in because you'll be kicking ones with less maximum potential.
Do a patrol with your lower-leveled recruits while you soak up benched AP. Run missions if you have them available and enough bodies to throw at them.
After finishing your patrol, go back to the guild and hire more recruits. Try to prioritize hiring them in good classes like alchemystic, plague doctor, warmage, etc.
Repeat until you unlock good classes on your story characters. You can level reset them now or wait until they get their story classes.
As you grind you may notice you are close to the unit cap (66 units I think?) If that's the case, fire everyone who was hired in a bad class and recruit new people and continue (or don't).
Of course you can do as little or as much of this as you want. I recommend having a large roster of human reservists (6 or more) so I can patrol without overleveling and have some bodies to throw at missions.
temporarily off-topic of the thread... but i have many questions.
1) why are Assassin and Werewolf bad to level in?
Werewolf's weakness is low defense and mind stats, defense isn't going to help anyways in lategame and its not going to be a spellcaster, so there's no true downsides.
Assassin's weakness is average attack strength (better than Scoundrel) and low defenses and mind. it gains THE highest speed gains, higher than a story character that performs better (and has better other stats).
yes i know "in the end" (lv 99, which isn't reasonable) speed differences are 200 on most classes vs 250 (period, not yet counting mastery bonus) of assassin. but the differences are very clear and pay off early.
2) Wrangler is actually not that great to level up in, lower than average attack and mind stats for average defense stats. lv 99 vs Assassin: 50 less attack and 30 less speed for 80 more def, 50 more mdef, and 160 hp. so Wrangler falls in the hybrid class or a defensive version of Warmage. for the OP's info Vampire (badge class) is strictly better to level in, 200 ish less hp to have better gains in ALL other stats (including speed).
3) Lich (badge class) should be added to the "avoid leveling" list because of the abyssmal speed and defenses. want max mnd? level on Vessel, both reach max mnd but Vessel is far more defenses for cost of having lowest hp growth... lowest hp in fact can be useful for blood magic (from Lich)... not that anyone would bother doing that >.>;
4) not a question but more of a clarification for OP's reading. Plauge Doctor doesn't actually have that good of mnd stat for a caster class. it' has really high hp and below average speed paired with slightly above average defenses. its a tiny bit faster Vessel (badge class) that trades mnd for hp and has less att.
5) How does Fell Seal hate physical classes when Anadine is the best one? the only class to reach stat cap of att on its own, has Cleave, the leader passive of physical builds, and has high multiplier attacks. the only downsides are: dark element, the worst speed and magic defense, and below average defense. the class uses heavy armor and just slap on magic evade counter, she's fixed.
back on topic:
this person has your perfect suggestions on how to progress (or not) while enjoying the juicy AP (and stat) gains.
Having tissue paper defense is a huge problem. For a character that closes with the enemy and attempts to one-shot them, being one-shottable in return is not really a good tradeoff. With good hp/defense, enemies can't really one-shot you outside of nukes, and enemy nukes are pretty preventable with mana drain/damage and don't typically come online until turn 3 or later (though some enemies rush it). With high defense you can take a 2.4 to the face and be ok, and the enemy will need to devote more attacks in addition to blowing 20+ mp. One of the biggest reasons why people complain about lategame rocket tag is because they spec into clases like Reaver or Werewolf or Demon Knight that are highly vulnerable to dying early. If you level with even moderate (3.5ish) defense all the way, you can prevent a lot of it. You'll still die to big nukes, but my lategame party can eat 4-buff Cleansing Blades and not die from the side, which is kinda saying a lot. Maybe at level 99 that's different but the game ends at or before level 50.
Also yes, I agree, Lich is a bad class, my bad. You don't just have infinite badges if you have a massive roster though, so leveling as Vessel isn't such a viable strategy unless you want to blow 3 badges on one person (because you're getting Princess too right?) Also in that case I'd probaly prefer leveling in Princess as she's insane.
Also, Werewolf not being a spellcaster might not necessarily be true. While it is true that you're unlikely to be a pure spellcaster, Leap is an awesome gap closer for anyone using AoE bursts and all of them are hybrid scaling or MND scaling. I didn't use Leap per se, but I've been using similar abilities on monsters to gapclose and drop magic AoE (and they actually have item space to wear the Locket so them dying isn't a big deal)
yeah lv 50 is more reasonable to expect. but i did things via level 40's, including the final optional zones.
not dieing to 4 buff cleansing blade is actually impressive...
imo i'd never spec into Reaver... i don't think i suggested that one.
yes princess is indeed fantastic.
leap is att, howl is mnd, breath is mnd. i can understand hybrid but i wouldn't honestly use those skills for dmg but via a 100% build to mass CC as original intent. again see my appology on start of this response. yeah even the samarui has great utility for casters.
So, theoretically, I could get to Centina to open up the guild "buildings" and missions, then just cycle alts through the low-level patrols until I've accumulated enough AP to unlock the classes/abilities planned for my actual team? Then I'd reset my core group to level 1 and level them (outside story missions) in classes that target desired stats and put them in their combat build for storyline battles? Am I getting the gist correct here? I'd pretty much get my team fleshed out at Centina and then make adjustments if/when I picked up other main characters and/or badge units.
Honestly there's no downside to having a big reserve roster, as they help keep your levels low while allowing you to do patrols whenever you want. Also, if you want to catch 'em all, you'll end up with a disproportionately large roster of monsters (18 I think, plus there are 4 pektite and 4 bulldrake variations)
Actually with regard to level reset, it's best if your people are in their desired class WHEN you level reset, as your base stats are a huge (like 25-30% of endgame stats and much larger early) percentage of your stats. Honestly I wouldn't even bother level resetting generics, just recruit people as good classes and kick the people that started as wizard and mender out.
I just used Reaver as an example since it's basically Demon Knight but without the cool awesome skillset (and slightly worse statwise). IMHO Anadine is best leveled as fellblade or warmage, which is still not fast or tanky but it's a lot less slow and a lot less squishy.
The thing about Leap is that you can do some pretty cool things with it, especially if you quicken your leaper, like leap in and burst spells or holy chant (whatever it's called). Sure Howl and Poison Burst and other similar things cause status effects (and with monsters you can Leap and Howl and cause poison or bleed or both) but they still deal damage and hitting 3+ targets twice a battle is a good enough reason to have good MND.
In other news, Bzzerk with Leap (and 4 sets of spiked boots) is freaking insane.
Recruit a bunch to have at least 9 slots.
Have low-level alts run patrols and/or missions
If I'm looking to progress no further than Centina or at most the first temple, I would have to dismiss some recruits periodically as they level out of the patrol areas and recruit low-level replacements? Keep this up until I've unlock all classes/skills desired for my actual storyline group, level reset, then proceed with campaign? Is that viable? My main characters would only be participating in a couple of battles, just enough to open up some patrol areas and Centina. Then it'd be a large grind of recruits. This is what I want to do. Get all the heavy lifting out of the way early.
Lastly, when referring to keeping the average level of fighters within the bounds of the patrol, are we talking about the literal average? Example: Crossroads (lvls 1-4 I think) 6 person team. So the sum of the character levels divided by 6 should fall withing the 1-4 for best results both battle and vicarious-wise? I just want to be crystal clear so I don't waste effort.
Thanks for being some informative and responsive!
Be advised that scaling does have minimum levels and the game will eventually upgrade based on your story progression, so I recommend sticking to the minimum level until at least temple 3 or so (enemies start getting all their class skills sometime in the early 20s).
As far as kicking people goes, you only need to dump people who started out in bad classes. If they started in a good class, they'll be fine as long as they continue to level only in good classes.
Truck: I personally recommend balanced stat growth except for MP; once you're level 20 or so (and usually a lot earlier) you'll have more MP than you reasonably need. The most MP you can realistically use is around 90 or so (and even this is only with a specific trick) and anyone who gains levels in a mage class (and warmage and fellblade are effectively mages) will reach stupidly high amounts of MP. For most characters, the difference between 50 MP and 2000 MP is basically zero.
As for other stats, the game does lean in favor of offense but defense isn't actually that bad, like I've had a reasonably durable character survive a 2.5 (4-buff Cleansing Blade) to the side with enough HP left to survive the aftermath and get healed up. If you use healing abilities like Life Font, Counter Renew, Mass Renew, Side Effects, the Therva beastmaster pet etc you can maintain offense pretty well while keeping healthy. Also I tend to run lots of boots so it's easier for damaged characters to disengage and chug potions.
If you want to level a tank, plague doctor and gadgeteer are probably the best classes as they trade the least amount of stuff for durability. Templar's not bad either, iirc (not looking at the numbers atm) but it's not quite as good as either of those two. Plague Doctor is insane if you want to level MND, but I would also beware and carefully ration my leveling in classes with SPD below 1.0. A balance between plague doctor and gadgeteer, plus mixing in a few levels of alchemystic or some other fast class to offset plague doctor's lower speed growth is probably a good idea. You could also just start as plague doctor and level in whatever good fast classes normally.
Keep in mind that making a "tank" actually isn't ideal, the enemy AI tries to be as efficient as possible with its actions and if a character has a ton of DEF/RES the enemy will just avoid attacking it in favor of people it can do more damage to. It's more ideal imho to have enough DEF to survive the worst stuff the enemy can throw at you if it does decide to throw it at you.
If you have an unbreakable frontline with 20-30+ def higher than your backline and No Flank or some other tanky passive the AI will seriously ignore your frontline. If that's your strategy and you want to have a super durable Plague Doctor type character run into the enemy and bomb them with AoE or status effects then watch the enemy overreach and give up back flanks everywhere trying to get at your squishier backline, then go for it I suppose -- but the purpose of a tanky character isn't to soak hits, it's to encourage the enemy to ignore it so you can get work done.
like, plauge doctor is actually the lowest mnd growth of all the caster classes but it DOES gain very high both defense growths. of course there IS infinite badges because the drop like candy from patroling, so Vessel is somewhat better option than plauge doctor. excuse typos.
Also, all badge classes (except werewolf and lich) are top tier, better than the story classes. Lord, Vessel, and Vampire are toppest of top tier. Do be advised that Princess, Vampire, and Vessel have somewhat low HP growth so you shouldn't level exclusively in them, but they are all so good. It's sort of sad story characters don't have this kind of ridiculous stat growth -- save for Kyrie whose flat stat boosts are pretty insane by the end of the story.
Also, yes, this is really not required to beat the game on veteran. The OP suggested he wanted to minmax so I obliged. If you want to play the game in any other way (except pirating, don't do that), do what you want. I personally advise avoiding the classes I mentioned if nothing else but you don't have to and you'll be fine.
As it is, being that I'm sort of a minmaxery numbers guy myself, I can make ridiculous tactical bungles (I recently ended the turn of a non-swimming unit next to water while directly adjacent to an enemy with Mercenary subclass today) and still lollerskate over the enemy. I have done fights where I dealt a maximum of 1 HP of direct damage to each enemy and otherwise did all my damage with on-hit bleed and poison procs from non-damaging skills. As mentioned earlier, a lot of my characters can take 2.5x hits on the chin and live (from equal-leveled enemies).
I find this fun because doing absurd stuff is fun for me but if you want challenge, uh... don't do the things I suggest. Having mastered assassin before second temple (while at the minimum recommended level) is probably enough to coast to the end of the game on its own.
It's not required on Very Hard either (I didn't really pay any attention to growths and didn't reset anyone's level).
I don't have any issue with what you're saying - you're giving good advice for min-maxxing (which is exactly what was requested), I just want to set the expectation that it isn't necessary to beat the game on any of the pre-set difficulties.
I generally play on veteran settings but with enemies who use items and revive more aggressively, but I'll turn on elite for bosses if I remember. I don't have an issue with the level max because I try to stay low-ish relative to whatever content is current so I don't raise it, as again it makes patrols annoying when I'm just trying to mindlessly get some AP and don't want to think too hard.
If you're running +30% enemy stats or more, then yeah having stat advantage really helps probably. You'll still likely die in one shot to big nukes and enemies are still vulnerable to slow/sleep/root/berserk/charm except when they're not and you cry.