I'm on Hard and I only use lances on him. Doesn't really matter though, because for some reason all the enemies gang up on him, ignoring even MC. This always happened, but where in the past he could take the beating for the whole chapter, now 2~3 attacks are enough to kill him, and he can only really kill mages in one hit. If he can't take the heat in the front line then I dunno what to do with him, I guess I could reclass but I kinda got used to sacrificing him for some peace in the first turn.
Speed has become the key stat ever since chapter 10 or so. Gaius, Lon'qu, Anna etc are all monsters. Even Kellam who was still a tank up until the mid 10's chapters is getting crippled too fast to be useful, the only ones that are still bulky are the dragons.
I haven't looked into what ya'll are doing in lunatic, so I might be completely wrong, but the kind of strategy I'm seeing is the most viable is just to maximize the amount of luck based variables. Encounter-winning effects have such a high chance of happening that as long as I aim to have as much as possible in play, it's almost guaranteed. That means tanks are everything but useless.
Though I've been ignoring the weapon advantage triangle for the whole game, I guess that would make a difference, haha. Hard/Newcomer is still easy enough that I don't have to think about it.
My core strategy right now is
- Pair Chrom & Lucina, MC & Anna
- Find a tight spot to set up formation in
- Put Kellam and Frederick at checkpoints (usually the previous step can take another turn)
- Move in formation while killing everything during enemy turns in counters