Renall

He loses MOV for half the second gen. You can't just pretend his before-promotion time doesn't exist, or that it isn't a significant chunk of time.

Holsety is the better weapon. I don't, however, see "Holsety" anywhere as a character on this tier list. Shanan is the better character, which is what we are ranking.

Linda is fine. She has Elite and Minor Tordo blood, which is more than most replacements can say. Leveling up is one of Tinny's biggest problems, so her replacement coming with a way to gain lots more experience is nice. On Shanan vs. Arthur... man, you really won't give this up. Arthur has no right to the Pursuit Ring. In fact in instances where manufactured Wrath + Holsety is safe (which isn't always), it would be pretty stupid to do it. But Shanan never even needs to consider the Pursuit Ring at all. Shanan is also a prepromote, so his unmounted status (and bear in mind Arthur's unmounted too for quite a long time, certainly not going to promote before Shanan is around) is balanced by the fact that he's got better bases and a higher level. He's good out of the box, he doesn't need massive amounts of experience funneled his way to reach his potential, and although he does get Balmung-dependent by the final chapter, I don't see why you wouldn't be using the hell out of your holy weapons at that point. Early on, Shanan's overkill offense is so obscene that he can easily kill with weaker weapons and not worry about survival too much (he still has lots of SPD and some DEF, something Arthur doesn't). So he's able to use his maxed-out gold for whatever he needs. And he doesn't need much... so he could probably pass it to his lover. And what with Patty being predestined, Shanan could become a gold funnel for everybody else. He's got lots of uses even when he's not getting to the party as fast as everybody else. On Holyn vs. Lex for Ayra's kids... don't underrate Elite here. Foot units are getting to the battle later in some cases. Elite helps this out a good deal. Skasaha not getting swords from his dad is rectified rather quickly by having Lakche sell him one of hers as soon as he can afford it. Not as simple as just getting it from Holyn, but still. Also, I would consider the Balmung glitch totally invalid, as it's an exploit of a game oversight.

You do remember that there aren't any fights until you conquer the castle where Shanan starts near because the neutral border guards won't let you through to the area where Ishtor's castle is, and then you have to fight that, and then Aless's group attacks, right? Arthur is by no means seeing "more combat" considering the enemies before that point are a paltry handful of Dark Mages where Shanan is the only threat to the Dark Mages around the castle, and very capable of killing the boss as well before he can switch to his long-range tome. Then he has time to catch back up while Celice is hustling his slow lordly ass up the mountain. Then once Arthur promotes, his SPD is capped at a piddly 22 and he has a 67% chance of doubling at all without the Pursuit Ring. That sure kicks Shanan's a- oh wait, Shanan starts with more SPD than Arthur can ever have, Balmung also gives +20 SPD, and it actually weighs less, giving him a 100% chance of doubling anything in the game that he attacks, a 67% chance of attacking twice each of those attacks, and a 1-in-3 or higher (around 33-35% by lv15) chance of hitting five times on each of those attacks. Also Shanan is so badass the mage sisters in ch8 will attack him in melee. Because they know they have no prayer against him so they throw themselves at his ultimate godlike offense. And the second generation has a lot of instances where mobility is not as useful, such as ch8-10 where there are some huge enemy clumps you get to fight. Shanan is admittedly inferior to Arthur for taking out Ishtar if you knock Arthur down to Wrath range first though. Don't get me wrong. Levin!Arthur is godlike. But Shanan is God.

Sharlow > Any non-Levin (or Lex?) Corple. Hello Elite and Berserk Staff.

I actually ran numbers on this for the (now eaten) debate. Ayra's durability is not so dissimilar to Holyn's (nor is his Evade so different) in most cases. There are a few places where he survives an additional round, but often his durability is the same or one hit better at best. Make of that what you will. Note that I was defending Holyn, so I was actually expecting a much bigger curbstomp on concrete durability than the numbers wound up giving me.

Lex is top tier. Ayra and Holyn need to be right freakin' next to each other. Wherever that happens to be (probably down). Alec and Noish are fine. It can be quite hard to ORKO anything in this game because of high enemy HP. And they're mounted. They aren't high ranked or anything, but certainly better than Bottom for availability, movement, and swords + lances (for all the use lances are).

I love Levin!Arthur a lot but you're on crack if you think he's better than Shanan. Levin!Arthur and Levin!Sety are Top or top of High, but Shanan and Aless ought to rank higher (maybe Levin!Arthur over Aless?). Arthur starts on foot and somewhat late in ch6, kind of far away from the action. His bases blow nuts. Granted, he has lolsety, so he's not dying, but he's got 18 levels to go until promotion and when Shanan does show up at the start of ch7 he's owning the shit out of him on bases alone. Also, Pursuit and Meteor. Granted, that's up against Continue and 1~2 range, but Shanan is just as untouchable. Also, Femina is utter shit. We had a prelim 2nd Gen Tier List going at GameFAQs with some debates and info. Only got in a couple of kids, mostly Faval because most Favals are the same.

Based on the enemy stats it was basically impossible for either of us to argue much of an offense lead unless one of the two had the Hero Sword, as the second-best weapon available to either still one-rounded nearly everything and their activation rates were the same with Luna/Meteor and both essentially amount to a kill if they go off. My position was that Ayra's advantage only comes into play with favorable terrain (where she becomes much more dodgy) and Holyn's is more useful everywhere because of HP and DEF, but honestly the difference in avoid and DEF/HP between the two is so marginal that one ring on each makes them functionally identical. There's only one Hero Sword so whoever gets it is offensively better, but if neither gets it they're about the same offensively and defensively. Really I'd rank them somewhere in High for insane offense, with Holyn positioned directly above Ayra. Any attempt to argue any character between the two of them should auto-fail because they are so close in every other way that you cannot possibly convince me that one is substantively better or worse enough to put a third character between them. Also we aren't discussing parentage but even that's pretty much a non-starting debate because Ayra's kids are never bad and Holyn is the uber Brigid baby daddy. I guess Ayra has boobs, if that's your thing. But Holyn is manpretty and... damn man, these guys are way too close.

"You remind me of my granddaughter. I wonder where she got to?"

You get Bargain via Shanam, one more character than the other route if you keep Olwen (sort of, and it's Miranda so who gives a shit), access to more staves of certain types (but fewer Warps, I believe?), Luna manual instead of Sol, and a second Pugi. Certainly the stuff you can get from the other route (Warps, Sleep Swords, Sleuf and Eyrios) is also good. I don't think I'd say one choice is clearly better, but even if it were, I'm uncomfortable with ranking people in tier lists just because they're mutually exclusive with one another. The only good example I can think of here is: Theoretically, it's possible for a replacement in FE4 (say Laylea for her Charisma) is better than some version of one of the children from that mother (Levin!Corple or something). Obviously Laylea is not below Levin!Leen just because not pairing Sylvia denies you the theoretical best Corple. Laylea is a better unit. That's sort of a crap example but I don't own FEDS so I can't give some other example with those characters who replace others. Karel/Harken is I guess still the best I can offer.

Except Sigurd has 10 more levels to grow than Oifaye does. Admittedly, Oifaye's bases are drastically better (like 8 more DEF and shit). Oifaye's problems were always just getting overshadowed by characters with better growths, which makes Seth all the more impressive in 8 because he doesn't get overshadowed. Or just shows how busted-ass FE4's children were.

If your sole reasoning for Conomore's low placement is route dependency, you need to get over that real quick, because route dependency has been roundly discredited in nearly every tier list debate I have ever seen: Karel and Harken (Harken still wins, but Karel is not auto-bottom just because he precludes a better unit), Olwen and Eyrios (the debate around them has always been more about whether Olwen's personals and potential are better than Eyrios's solid bases and high weapon ranks, and their placement usually reflects this closeness), Sety and Cyas (Cyas is not bottom tier just because Sety is better, especially given what he offers), Echidna and Bartre (lol who cares). He's not a bad unit. He's not a great unit, but he's not bad by any means. And a free leadership star isn't unwelcome when he's fielded, as it means he can be useful without doing a goddamn thing. That's never going to be Bottom material. Lara is not the 2nd best unit in the game. Dancers are massively overrated. But she's not a bad unit either. So I'd not say she should plummet as such. But she needs to go down.

Archetypes aren't really an objective construct, so there is an "Oifaye" archetype if people collectively determine there is. That said, I actually agree with you, there is no "Oifaye" archetype. Though I think it's simply because there is no strong consensus toward that end. But I won't deny the existence of the Jeigan because it's pretty firmly entrenched whether I would like to acknowledge it or not.

Chainey mentioned this about FE5: The enemies sucked dick, but they were exceedingly well-equipped (poor Dalshien, enjoy facing Hammers every single map when you're supposed to be the tank). Enemies should not be using Iron midgame or Steel lategame unless it's a deliberate use of lower-end weaponry to keep AS up. Effective weapons, killers, that sort of thing should be fairly common (I know killers are unpopular because of the annoyance of lucky enemy crits but... too bad; I guess you can also nerf strength of crits). They should have few uses, but be decent weight (around Steel perhaps). More 1-2 range as well, though perhaps considerably less accurate. The few uses is so that Thieves are actually useful in stealing them, but swiping a Hammer doesn't give you ages upon ages of effective strikes. With better-equipped enemies, even if they aren't very threatening defensively, you're still taking risks against them if they do manage to attack you. Granted, you need to be careful with the effective weapons or balance them so that foot units with no types aren't actually better than supposedly superior units (lol being an Armor is a liability at equal DEF). Or add an effective type against "infantry" units so there's no character immune to all effective weapons.

The real problem I always had was that Speed was too important. And it still is pretty much. Doubling/avoiding doubling + dodge? Pretty much broken. Hit can be balanced by making sure enemies have some evasion and not making every weapon too high-Hit (hi GBA games). Getting rid of the 2 RN system and "true hit" wouldn't hurt either, since it inflates extremes and essentially reduces hit ratings to "hits all the time" and "never hits." An idea I had for a never-to-come-to-pass fan game would be skill trees with the ability to unlock the ability to add other stats to Avoid. Speed would be nerfed down but certain classes would gain things like Parry (add SKL to Avoid) or Block (add DEF to Avoid). Weapon accuracy would need to be correspondingly adjusted of course, but some classes would be able to really bolster their dodge rates if they went into the right skills.

I still think Fin's leadership star is worth mentioning. It shouldn't change his rating any (9/10 is perfectly accurate to me), but it's worth noting that in addition to all his other asskicking, he also makes everyone else a little better. So is anyone else gonna rank 10/10 or is Othin the man? Sety maybe? Comedy "Cyas as an Enemy" Option.

These are both good weapons, they're just on bad characters. The Sword of Seals is a good weapon, it's just Roy kinda blows and it comes late. But it's still a good weapon. Lughnasadh is amazing, and if you do somehow use Leo and have him turn out well, it's a fantastic personal. And Florete would be busted on anyone BUT Mist. Holsety on Sety is good in part because Sety is awesome, but give Holsety to Corple instead and the weapon's still good. I don't think it's fair to judge the weapon based on the wielder (even recognizing that there's usually only one wielder for it) when the question is best/worst WEAPON.

Meh, it's a Steel Blade with -1 Mt and +10 Hit and Crit, 50 uses, free, and you get two of them. It's "nothing special" but it also means all you need to buy Ike are a couple Wind Blades and by the time you've used most of your 100 Ettard swings, you have Ragnell. It does exactly what it needs to do, and Ike doesn't need any help. Gotta go with Durandal. It's really, really awful. I can't think of anything quite so bad. Sol Katti at worst makes Lyn "okay" and doesn't really hold her back too much, relatively speaking. Durandal is alright versus the dragon, but the dragon isn't exactly difficult (and by the time I get down to Eliwood in the turn order I take, the dragon oughta be dead). Speaking of FE10, what's up with Florete? I never realized how good a personal weapon that is, although it's on the worst person to have it. It's actually pretty damn amazing. If it used Magic instead of Strength, it'd be outright broken.

Holsety without question. And it *is* a personal weapon, in Thracia 776. But that counts, unless we're counting FE4 Holsety different from FE5 Holsety. But in either case it's broken. Put it on Arthur and use it from Chapter 6 to the end. Put it on Sety and you have an invincible Sage. And in FE5, Sety is one of the characters who one-rounds the final boss like it ain't even a thang. Not that the final boss of FE5 is that hard... but Sety ALSO massacres the berserkers guarding him. Wolf Beil is pretty good too. Honestly if Holsety doesn't count you could go for a Rapier/Wolf Beil/Thani vote if just for the effectiveness utility early in the game when it's needed... just hard to beat the Jugdral series and its amazing legendaries. EDIT: Actually the Puji/Puche/Whatever Axe is pretty high-ranking. I'm not sure it's AS good as Holsety, but it sure makes Othin a beast.