Best champion for all late game plate

Just armor? And it's Champion?

Then defender wins handdown. I have a defender with over 400+ hp with full set of champion armor equipped.

Your question is impossible to answer because there's no one way only in this game.

I once had a warrior hero equipped with some accessory that grants him maul ability and then he equipped the Doom Maul.... And I have leveled up training at least 10 times by that point.... I'm sure you understand where I'm getting at now. Everything he hit, DIED! And if it fails to die, the next hit will hit harder and harder and harder and harder and HARDER! To the point where simply attacking did 10 times over the damage of simply spamming smash and becoming dazed for a turn.

If Solo, the defender have better survivability overall due to the nature of the class.

Late game I think Defender beats the Warrior just barely because at that point you will want your armies to stay alive and not die and lose all the levels they accumulated.

Ok defender probably wins this one.

Yeah I think so - late game defender probably wins, at least for an all plate melee soldier. The problem I've always had with defenders is that there isn't a "force attack me".

The problem with warriors is that against late game opponents, they tend to die relatively easily and that needs expensive potions to cure their wounds.

To be honest, both classes could see some reform.

AI units tend to bash on whoever they come in contact with first. SO if you take the units off the AI units and have defender wade in there or just get in there and get other units that you don't want getting hit off by next turn. Defender will be getting hit for sure by next turn. AI units do move off your melee units to attack someone else but very rarely, Only seen it happen twice.

I personally feel ALL champions should be able to wear magic armor, not just those that can have plate. After all, it is magical! Perhaps some would get a bigger bonus than others based on the class, but why couldn't my mage wear it?

Balance reasons.

Haven't you seen what a ret paladin could do in battlefields during their zenith?

You have to be prepared to kill ret paladin if they're controlled by a gud player.\

But really if a mage wants to wear plate armor in FE:LH its for the armor value, because it will slow you by like about 4 initiative if you wear the whole shebang. But if you insist, closest equivalent is the Titans. And they're pretty OP. Although they always get bumrushed by me.

Uber melee damage.

Uber magic.

Uber protection.

haha

Ret pally?

I am saying only magical armor. Why not? Or at least give other classes better armor/magic defense.

Again for balance. Champions armor would mean that warrior and defender lose an incentive to choose those 2 classes.

From world of warcraft, I have one ret pally. Completely tooled out for it's time.

I pretty much could bend the flow of small battles my way Even when Horde ambushed us.

I was almost always well prepared.

Now, a spell caster in plate armor.. is HARD to kill.

Ahh good times I had.

Answer to the OP question: Defender is better. Unless you're Altar or custom faction with that henchmen trait or have earth spellbook tier 5 (giant form + diamond skin). Only with this, i can consider warrior equal to defender, perhaps better. I will only highlight the henchmen, because the earth spells are self explanatory.

The advantage of this henchmen is you can give mini spellbook to the henchmen. If you create a warrior henchmen with Life and Fire Adept then Bloodthirsty, or just fire adept and bloodthirsty and give life adept to other henchmen that will always stick close to the warrior. You can boost this champion atk status by 100% by doing that, meaning doubling its attack. Now just take the +atk bonus in warrior trait, plus that 100% boost, using a weapon with 10 attack can give you around 50 attack against injured enemy (10 from weapon +15 total from traits, multiply it by 2), if this is combined with warrior weapon specific damage bonus trait, it will boost it further by 75% to 88 damage, not counting crushing blow, which will boost it even further.

The good thing is you can achieve this at just level 9 or 10. And altar henchmen doesn't split experience like normal champion does, this combined with relias starting air spellbook which have tulelage on it means this kind of situation is easily achievable in no time, add the quest map too for fun. Too bad the unique weapon for altar is a sword, you need weapon other than sword to do this. I often do this, in practice it's good enough even for ridiculous/ridiculous map setting with largest map size and 9 AI opponent. If you have a spear that has at least 15 atk, this warrior can do 100 damage to enemy units with impale.

Also worth mentioning is growth spell can stack if it's from different henchmen, not champion but henchmen with life adept. It's most certainly a bug, but idk for sure.

You can create a good combination by creating that warrior, pair it with henchmen mage with life adept and commander that has battle cry (usually i make my relias as commander). If you want all champion army, try 3 warrior, 3 mage (mostly for buffing) and 3 commander that constantly spam battle cry and watch the fun. Only doable with altar or henchmen trait because of the exp split.

atlatea... do henchmen become bigger and bigger each time it gets hit with growth visually?

A lot of things are possible with Altar that others cannot do. They're OP with henchmen.

I usually go with 2 defenders, 4 mage, and 3 commander.

My strategy is quite different:

- Mages are to max out fire if possible, save maybe 1 life mage to heal. Henchmen defenders are just there to hold the line for the mages. Commanders can recycle for the force to attack.

But yeah, Alter is just plain OP with henchmen massing.

I rarely spam henchmen, mostly by the time you can get all of them to useful level, the game is already decided. Although 2 or 3 commander henchmen with exp buff traits is insane to level either champion or units to insanely high level due to henchmen doesn't drain exp, they count as units to other normal champion. Unfortunately altar racial traits doesn't synergy with level, unlike Pariden or Magnar traits (they have single target spell that deals damage depending on the unit level).

But my point is just to answer and give insight to the question you asked.

Warrior is very very not useful compared to defender in high difficulty setting (ridiculous or insane), if you want a good warrior champion, there is only 4 way to achieve it, either your warrior have earth magic (if he/she has life magic, it's even better); or your faction can create henchmen (like altar faction); or your faction has decalon (like pariden) so your warrior can buy earth spellbook thus can unlock earth magic tier 5 (for giant form and diamond skin); or your warrior race is the same race as gilden.

Also worth noting is if you want to focus on warrior or defender hero, a good number of city that specialize in town is needed for the hp buff. 4 or 5 city can give 20% to 25% increase in hp which can make a lv 15 defender have around 150 hp with champion armor, warrior with the same set can have around 100-110 hp.

This is where life magic tier 1 shines for the sovereign call buff, but unless you're Pariden or faction that has scrying pool trait, not all your town will have that enchantment.

Nope, but his/her atk is increased. A spear with 14 atk wielded by a lv 7 warrior can deal 200 damage with impale, it's just with 2 growth, and it's not even critical attack.

Aw that makes me sad.... I wanted to have a henchmen the size of the elemental lords running around on battlefields

I would give him the name.. Incredible Hulk

Haha.. i thought of something similar back then, except the hulk thing. I was surprised when i first accidentally casting growth on my henchmen that already has growth on it only to discover no restriction tool tip and his atk got increased further, then i immediately check whether his size got bigger or not.

It depends. Sometimes on 1600 turn games, they can go on for a long time.

Increasingly I get the impression that defender is just ... better at the higher difficulty levels.

Welll.... out of all heroes, the hero that you want to be taking hits is Defender because it basically have best baseline survivability out of all heroes. There's even three or four traits defender can unlock just to bump up it's hitpoints which means even more bigger % hp buffs from guild grocers in level 3 towns which boost hp by 5%.

Although I don't know about mages. They might have insane magic resist. And their initiative is boosted so high with savant trait allowing them to instant cast blizzard very early at beginning of battles when most of the soldiers is still clustered up. And to the date, I only know of one mage that can equip plate, he's an alliance hero named Sir Kodrin something and he have a follower. He's a life mage. Although That plate chest armor is only plate he can equip, if he tries to equip anything else it will be said invalid. I think.

Note that if you remove the Light Plate chest armor, you will not be able to re-equip it, as he does not have the required armor proficiency (this could probably be classified as a bug, albeit a very minor one.)  That said, you should probably do it anyway, as the armor is not all that good and as a spellcaster initiative is more valuable than a little defense.

Also, Sir Kodrin is given out as a quest reward; you can have him just fine as an Empire faction (and it's one of the few ways to gain access to life spells for them.)

If you stack defender henchmen, then they can have good magic resist too.