Classes

A class in Three Hopes is not a stat package, it is a job description plus a list of things that kill you. That is why the useful order to think in is job first, then class, then character, rather than opening a roster and assigning the highest number to whoever is standing nearest.

This guide starts with the matchup web, then sorts our thirty character recommendations by what they are for on the battlefield, and only gets to the per route rosters in the back half. If you want the roster straight away, it is down there waiting.

The three classes we have full builds for

All three Buster abilities work the same way and it is worth understanding once: a level 2 Buster gives you a one tier advantage against the weapon it names and raises the damage those enemies take by 85 percent. That is a large enough swing that a class with the right Buster equipped beats a stronger unit carrying the wrong weapon.

Pick by the job you need filling

Hold the front line

The Armored Lord is the purest version of this and it is Edelgard's alone. Great defence, great HP, and mobility bad enough that you should think of it as a position rather than a unit. Its Charm ability restores HP to nearby allies whenever an enemy commander goes down, so parking it in the middle of a fight pays the whole squad. Send it at lances specifically. Outside that class, our picks are Dedue in Soldier, Caspar and Hilda in Brigand, and Raphael in Brawler, which is the gauntlet class that keeps chaining combos and eats tome users.

Keep the squad alive

Our Priest page is direct about this: go without a healer and you get taken apart. The class is not only a heal bot either, since it fights with magic and is strong into enemy mages and archers, but it collapses against anything physical, and Swordmasters in particular. Linhardt, Mercedes and Marianne are the three units our build page names, one per house, and Manuela joins them on the roster page.

Cover ground and go airborne

The Pegasus Knight is the one class in our set that fights on two planes, with separate ground and airtime combo chains and a dismount on L plus B whenever you want a third set on foot. It wants high agility and movement, it holds up well against magic, and it hunts sword users. The two things that undo it are arrows and any enemy carrying Effective vs. Fliers, so check before you commit. Dorothea, Ingrid and Leonie are the recommended units. Alert Stance, its other ability, stretches the invincibility window on a dodge. For ground coverage without the flying, the Cavalier picks and Claude's Wyvern Master do the same job differently.

Delete things from range

Mages and Archers, and the split between them is about what you are shooting at. Mages carry real resistance to magic and are the answer to archers, at the cost of folding to anything that reaches them. Archers get more out of their ability, which chains straight into a normal attack for mixups. Five of our recommendations are Mages and four are Archers, so between them they cover nearly a third of the roster.

How often each class comes up

Tallying our own thirty recommendations produces the most useful fact on this page, which is that the roster is far less varied than the class list suggests.

Nineteen of the twenty six non exclusive picks land in four classes. Cavalier, Mage, Priest and Archer are what you will actually be building over and over, so any investment you make in understanding those four pays back across the whole game, while Thief, Soldier, Mercenary, Brawler and Pegasus Knight are one unit decisions.

The four you cannot spread around

Shez is the only one of the four you keep whichever house you join, which makes Fluegel the single class you can plan around from the start of any run.

Every character's pick, by route

This is the roster our best classes guide argues for, one line each. It carries the reasoning per character; this is the shape of it.

Thirty entries, one per character, and Shez sits outside the three tables because Fluegel travels with you regardless.

Where the combo inputs live

Each of our three build pages carries its own input table, and they are worth reading before you commit a unit rather than after. The Armored Lord page has five axe chains, from a downward strike through a shield smash that clears space, an axe swirl that gathers a crowd before knocking it back, and a shield throw. The Pegasus Knight page splits into two tables, one for ground work ending in a cyclone that launches everything upward, and one for airtime, which is the half most people never look at. The Priest page has five magic chains, ending in five orb waves in a row.

Once you know what each class is for, our mechanics guide covers the weapon triangles those Buster abilities plug into, and our companions guide covers who you can actually recruit into them on your route.