Skarthe

From the previous topic, the idea was to not level Byleth until the forced unlock of Enlightened One, to have more levels with better growths.

What Dayni said; she's still available for choir practice and mealtime, so it's not all that hard to raise her support. I think I hit B with her the month of the Battle of Eagle and Lion on my current, non-NG+ Maddening playthrough.

I just went on and tested this; Hilda's Goddess Tower scene can be viewed in Black Eagles, with the caveat that supporting with her is a bit more difficult than others (but far from impossible).

Fair warning: this is true, but you do not get all of the rewards if both characters aren't recruited. As an example: Ingrid's paralogue will not give you Lúin if you haven't recruited Ingrid, and it will not give you the Goddess Ring if you haven't recruited Dorothea.

The DLC is a side story completely separate from the main game; it can be played at literally any time, as it uses a prebuilt set of characters.

I'd say aux battles should be fine in FE3H Ironman, aside from the ones available on Normal that don't cost activity points. Unlike things like the Tower of Valni, aux battles have a limit on how many can be done, not to mention a significant opportunity cost (weekends spent on aux battles are weekends not spent doing mealtimes, etc. in the monastery, meaning your support ranks and motivation levels suffer).

To be clear, this information was not completely correct. Hilda is difficult to support with in Black Eagles, but not impossible; she cannot be given gifts, recruited for Mission Assistance, or given Lost Items, but she can still be invited for tea parties or targeted for lunchtimes and choir practices, and the player can use these methods to rank her up to B support before the route split. Even with a B support, though, she still won't approach you to recruit herself into your house until such time as she's normally recruitable. As for whether her Goddess Tower scene can be viewed, not sure; I haven't put in the effort to raise her to B support by that point in Black Eagles. I'll try it on my current playthrough but it might be a bit too late for me to pull it off. Most of the maps are basically skirmish maps, yes; the level variety is one of Three Houses's biggest weaknesses. High ground doesn't factor into calculations; I think Radiant Dawn is the only game where it does.

I do think it might be worth considering items in a unit's rating if the unit has to be actively used to obtain it, like counting the Scythe of Sariel as a point in Caspar's favor. Pretty rare edge case though.

Warp is more important, but she doesn't have a ton of super high immediate priorities after Faith B, so there's no reason that she can't dip to Swords C after that to certify Mercenary. Additionally, due to how quickly she'll master classes, she can dip to it at almost any time; she can master the class within the durability of a Levin Sword, so putting her on it for a couple of paralogues or aux battles isn't difficult. Also, keeping high motivation on units that you're actively using is pretty trivial, between gifts, meals, lost items, and MVP.

I think Ferdinand and maybe Caspar and Leonie are difficult to recruit that early due to time-locked B supports; Ferdinand also suffers from requiring an obnoxious skill to recruit (Heavy Armor). Anyone else though, I agree; I've definitely recruited Lysithea and Annette that early before.

Vantage and Aegis in the same tier doesn't sit right with me. Vantage is niche, but it does have more usability than "useless unless you oneshot" due to the existence of Nosferatu, which is a pretty widespread spell. Vantage+Nosferatu is quite strong. Aegis is just a random chance to take less damage from specific threats; it's useful, but never something to be relied on. I don't think I'd move Vantage very far up, but I feel like Aegis could stand to go down.

Some characters leave after the skip for personal reasons. Usually they can be recruited back by defeating them with Byleth.

Keep in mind that Lysithea also has a budding talent in Swords, allowing her to use forged Levin Swords for 1-3 range. Also, assuming the player also has Lorenz and does his paralogue, all of Lysithea's magic becomes 1-4 range.

Generally, tier lists assume "moderate efficiency", which is to say not LTC, but also not deliberately stalling for strategies like this.