1. Who is best character for combat and why?

2. Also, who is the worst in combat?

Personally my best is either Cynthia or Lorena, but picking one I'd choose Lorena.

I might be biased towards ice because it's my favorite element in everything, but actually freezing enemies isn't really the main reason I feel like Lorena is the best. Lorena has lots of multiple target damage, and is a great tank as well. Being able to give yourself over a thousand block along with chilling all attackers every five turns for only twenty TP is cracked, and martyrdom is great when you're not dealing with one shot attacks.

And the ones I was incredibly thankful to be able to swap out are probably Ligaea and Calysia.

Ligaea is only good at ranged single target damage, which is incredibly limiting. Aside from that, she also is the only character that immensely struggles with TP. Low health and mediocre damage, with attacks causing her to lose not one, but usually two turns from tp drain (Even only draining five is still annoying.) The only possibly redeeming experience I've had is the one time I got power shot to deal 6000 damage, and I still don't know what happened there.

I chose to screw over Somnus, so I can't say anything about him.

I might be wrong about who the worst is, but I want to hear you guys' thoughts.

Well it can depend on the battle, however, I find Cynthia to be a little too hard to kill which makes her a strong pick for the strongest. Her life draining attacks often times full heal her and she's very hard to take down quickly which means you have plenty of  survivibilty to just use her life drain abilites whenever she gets low. I think the game is balanced enough where shes not too broken tho as she can deal good damage but is not putting out as much as an optimized ligaea or Ariadne spreading burn damge. Ironically I found Lorena to be more of a letdown but I probably am not optimizing/using her right. It feels like shes a good jack of all trades but if i want magic damage you go aria, tanking go cynthia, physical go ligaea, and healing go Calysia, and if you want to take a nap go Somnus. Her freeze is nice tho but Somnus might be better at CC with his sleep. Like I said tho I think the game is bery balanced and doesn't have especially broken or weak characters.

I suppose I'll write up my personal thoughts now. Was going to wait a bit longer so as not to bias anyone reading, but I don't want to forget.

If we exclude Alexander from the discussion (otherwise he wins for me overall, given that I really enjoy both tanks and mage knights, and also, he's definitely deliberately very good as the required use character), I think the best is Ariadne. She's my go-to for destroying large packs with spread Burning stacks, but she also has good focus damage with Incinerate, and I think her overall kit is just very nicely cohesive.

Ironically,  Ligaea and Calysia are probably tied for second strongest to me.  Ligaea can just delete enemies if properly setup, and overall her single target output is just extremely high. Since the game definitely has a lot of priority targets to kill, that has a lot of utility. Honestly, it's only how many things resist ranged physical that keeps her from breaking the game. XD Especially now that she has Barrage. But she has a very high skill floor for effective use, so I see why it would be easy to feel like she's weak. It's very in character for her, though, haha. As for Calysia, her single target output is actually quite strong as well, especially for someone who's mainly a healer. If you need heals, she gives you heals. XD Lorena's healing is workable, but definitely not on the same level. But mainly, I think she's very strong in that she does her main job very well while having decently good ability to do other things too. 

Weakest really is hard for me to say. Before the recent rework, definitely would've been Sindarion. After the rework, I lean toward Cynthia by a tiny margin, mainly because there can be some awkwardness in properly building/using Fury for her (something I want to adjust in the future). Plus, while she's extremely tanky if played defensively, that does cripple her damage output, while her damage is pretty high in Blood Oath but at the cost of putting her at dangerously low HP sometimes. None of that makes her *bad*, but I do feel like she's the least good by a tiny margin, at least for how I tend to play.

Lorena is, I'd say, the best if you could bring only 1 character. Frozen Rampart and Flash Freeze are just darn efficient and she's otherwise a good jack of all trades. However, she also doesn't have very good synergy with the rest of the team (which I think fits her character kind of well).

In most group battles your most important unit is your tank, so Alexander and/or Cynthia.

The weakest is probably Ligea. Not because she is weak, but because she is the one most easily disrupted.

In order from weakest to strongest, I'd have to say:

7. Alexander: Probably a bit of a hot take (since it's not like you can choose to not use him), but I just don't think Alexander does anything particularly well. He's kind of a jack of all trades, which unfortunately leaves him not excelling at anything.

He's got "alright" single target physical damage, but nothing compared to Ligaea, Cynthia or Sindarion; he's got "alright" single target ranged/magical damage, but nothing compared to Ligaea and Sindarion for ranged or Ariadne and Calysia for magical; he's got "alright" magical AoE, but nothing compared to Ariadne and Lorena (mostly because he doesn't have a decent way to regen MP mid fight). His physical AoE is nonexistent and his Riposte doesn't scale well in my experience.

His one *almost* saving grace is he's a pretty decent tank, he has high evasion for physical attacks, good MDF for the (normally) unavoidable magic attacks and Wind Veil to protect the squishier damage dealers from being focused down by archers (as well as Wind Wall for himself later to mitigate damage he can't evade). The reason this isn't enough to make him not the weakest character in the game is... well, skip ahead to #1 if you're curious. I would quite literally choose any other character to fill Alexander's party slot if it were allowed and it's not even close.

6. Ligaea: Ligaea isn't useless, far from it. She just has the unfortunate luck of being an essentially exclusively single target character in a game where AoE is king, and the nature of her being punished so severely for being hit when many enemy groups have AoE (much of which is magical, and therefore unavoidable... unless of course you have a certain #1 character in your party).

Theoretically, her purpose is to burst down high value, "backline" enemies with her high, ranged, single target damage. The problem you often run into is that, after a point, most of these specific sorts of enemies are defended by one or more "tank" units that will forcefully redirect her damage to them, which she performs poorly against due to them generally having resistance to ranged damage (though again, a certain #1 character can help with this problem...).

Having said all that, when you put her in the specific scenarios where she is able to perform well, she *does* perform well, and Power Shot legitimately is an amazing ability, though I also can't justify putting her any higher because of all her limitations and the fact that she's hardly *that* much better in her ideal scenarios than any of the other potential damage options *cough* except Alexander *cough*.

5. Cynthia: Cynthia is a bit strange in that, honestly as a rule, with all party members available, I'd say I get less usage out of Cynthia than I do Ligaea despite putting Cynthia above her. The main reason is that if for some reason any of my top 4 were unavailable, I'd swap Cynthia in long before I did Ligaea.

Cynthia is a much better "general combat" character than Ligaea, it just happens that she's worse than the other options available. She's definitely not "bad" either, she has good single target physical damage, some decent physical AoE, and is very flexible because of her stance swapping, but I find she just doesn't synergize well with any of the other characters.

Though I will say, though it's not exactly a common occurrence, if I ever had to pick freely from any of the available characters to perform in a 1v1 duel, it'd almost certainly be Cynthia (ever so slightly edging out #1 character...).

4. Sindarion: This is where we get to the "legitimately very good" characters, though Sindarion very slightly falls into "very good, but outshone by better options", but you have 4 character slots besides Alexander, so that ultimately doesn't really matter.

Sindarion is basically Ligaea with less raw damage potential on their "ideal" targets, but far more flexible, capable of AoE applying very strong DoTs and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to bypass "tank" enemies' damage redirection to finish off high value "backline" targets.

Not to mention, once you get Wracking Poison, he's legitimately the best general "time waster" (barring maybe #1 character...) for enemies since it has a chance to stun any enemy affected by it, which can significantly shift the turn economy in your favor if you get decently lucky with Fan of Knives and poison gets applied to all/most enemies. And if you stack both Deadly Poison + Wracking Poison + Firebomb on a boss you can rack up an impressive amount of DPS purely off DoTs with him (and then force much of the damage to proc early with Precise Strike).

On top of all of that, he can even silence enemy spellcasters in the situations where you can't burst them down just yet, which often eliminates a substantial amount of enemy damage output for its duration.

All in all, he's an absolute A tier single target/DoTs/disabler DPS character and the other characters would either need significant buffs or powerful new abilities for me to even consider replacing him as a general use character despite being at the "bottom" of the best. At the absolute least, he lives up to his past role as part of Antiochus's personal retinue.

3. Calysia: Honestly, probably the most "boring" character gameplay wise, since she's essentially a single target pure damage spellcaster + healer with some utility. But Moonlance and later Moonblades are insanely strong spells, she's indisputably the best healer and her utility abilities though "boring" are also very strong, being able to force more crits and damage on an enemy for a turn with Ill Omen and supporting the tank with Nightshroud (in particular #1 character...).

Not much more to say about her, like I said kind of "boring", but that's kind of the nature of cleric characters I think, and isn't necessarily a "bad" thing. She can have issues with MP if you poorly manage it, but it's not particularly difficult to keep it up if you're making use of her abilities properly.

2. Ariadne: If AoE is king in this game, Ariadne is certainly its queen. Ariadne, by a significant margin, has the best ability to consistently output high levels of AoE damage basically whenever she wants. If you don't get the 25% MP cost reduction cloak from fighting Somnus, she has a bit longer of a "ramp up" period in the game (though you could always give her the Moongrace Ring instead of Calysia if need be), since she'll need to rely more on applying Burning to keep her MP high, and she'll generally need Conflagrate to do that consistently, but once you reach that point she'll basically always be at max MP when it actually matters, and even before that you just need to slightly pace yourself (can't use Fireball *every* turn).

Outside of her general superb AoE ability, she also has good single target magical damage (being your go to for dealing with armored enemies since Calysia can't as effectively spam offensive spells), incredible AoE DoTs from Conflagrate applying Burning which also increases crit chance on enemies affected by it, which benefits all other character's DPS as a whole.

She's the only other character besides Calysia with the ability to revive without consumables, which can be incredibly useful in the case that either Calysia manages to get randomly burst down or you otherwise need to use Calysia's turn to heal someone else. She also has Cauterize which, while you won't be using very often, is certainly useful when you get hit by a strong/succession of AoE hits and need to heal multiple targets on the same turn.

1. Lorena: Yep. It's Lorena. She is the best character in the game (and the reason Alexander is worthless) and it is not even remotely close. She is so good that I *almost* feel like I'm cheating when I use her. Even if you hate the Order of Alcina and wish you could personally execute every single member of their faith, it's worth it not to banish them purely to get Lorena. She's that good.

Where to even start? Out of your three potential tank options (Alexander, Cynthia, and her), she is the best one by at least tenfold. Radiance will force everyone and their mother that isn't an archer to focus her with any single target attacks they make, while also having a chance to proc a stack of Chilled on any physical attackers that hit her. She can, on her first turn, cast a barrier on herself for (essentially) free that not only absorbs damage but also *increases* the chance of proc-ing Chilled on physical attackers, all but guaranteeing that all physical attackers on the enemy team will regularly freeze themselves without any effort on your part required (this is the part about her being the only one to compete with Sindarion for "time wasting").

Not only can she cast a barrier on herself, but she can cast it on *others* as well, essentially functioning as a Wind Wall that can be applied to other characters, notable not only for the fact that it means Alexander's Wind Veil is redundant for protecting allies, but that Lorena is the only character that can consistently protect Ligaea from *all* damage, preventing her from losing concentration to AoE and allowing her to get into her "ideal" state to deal high single target damage.

If, somehow, the enemy manages to break through your defenses before you are able to recast it in some form again, and Lorena actually starts taking damage? Well, she has physical and range damage resistance, high DEF and good MDF, so damage will be manageable, and she has the ability to heal (a heal that heals for EVEN MORE on herself when Radiance is active, which obviously it always is). What's that? You played *incredibly poorly* and let Lorena get low enough to be at risk? That's alright, just pop Holy Guardian. Sure, it's got a 10 turn cooldown, but it's INSTANT CAST, lasts for 2 turns, and HALVES ALL DAMAGE. What's that you say? What if she gets CC'd? Well, yes, that would be bad, she wouldn't be able to cast all these super powerful abilities if that were to happen... but luckily, she is COMPLETELY IMMUNE to stun, silence, charm, sleep, and paralyze. That's right, she's completely immune to hard CC or her magic being sealed. This girl is an impenetrable glacier. If she fought like she was controlled by the player during the fight when you first meet her, Alexander never would've made it to Veronica; even if she couldn't defeat you, you'd never kill her either. Comrade Lorena could've single-handedly stonewalled Blitzkrieg on the Eastern Front.

"Well surely", I hear you say, "Surely if she's such an amazing tank, then surely she's near useless for anything else?". Ohohoho, you might think so. Understandably, you may indeed think that. But no! Not only is she an impenetrable glacier, she also has the second most consistent AoE damage after Ariadne, being able to regularly rotate between Sweeping Slash (to regen MP) and Divine Barrage (to regen TP), which I may note Sweeping Slash *also* has a chance to proc a stack of Chilled on any enemy it hits, leading to even *more* enemies being regularly frozen! "W-Well surely, surely she must have poor single targ-" NO! Not only does she have impressive AoE, she can also do impressive single target damage by using Shatter on any target that happens to get frozen (which is itself actually an AoE ability that affects ANY enemy currently frozen when used).

That's right, while not being the absolute best at any sort of damage, this girl is essentially "Master of tanking, expert of everything else". The only thing she doesn't have is a physical range type damage ability. "Ah, so there is her weak-" WRONG! Despite having no "ideal" way to deal damage to magic users, she has something EVEN BETTER! That being, Flash Freeze! That's right, for the cheap cost of only 100MP and a 4 turn CD, you can CC an enemy for ~3 turns. Who cares that the high damage caster isn't dead when they might as well be, being frozen for 3 turns while the rest of their party is killed? Or even better, cast Flash Freeze on the inevitable "tank" enemy and completely negate their ability to shield their squishies for 3 turns while Ariadne and Sindarion fill them full of burning holes!

Legitimately, Lorena is probably OP, but she's so incredibly fun to use because of it. Just watching the entire enemy party smash their heads against an unbreakable wall of ice, doing absolutely no *actual* damage and simply hurting themselves while I spam them with AoEs repeatedly. The entire gameplay loop fundamentally changes once you get Lorena if you use her properly. The irony is that when I first got her I slept on her hard because at the time I was being too lazy to learn her kit because, "Alexander is good enough". Oh, how foolish I was.

Can't comment on Somnus. My first playthrough I fought him, not knowing he was a potential party member later, and haven't yet reached the point that he shows up as a party member on my second playthrough yet. If the 25% MP cost reduction cloak you get for beating him is any indicator of the opportunity cost of not being able to recruit him, he's presumably at least decent.