Cysx

Yeah, this one's tough, it shows in the ratings. Mostly because they're perhaps the most meta-dependent class line in general, so you don't need to just have played the game, you need to be familiar with optimal strategies for it, and for so many games at once, that's a tall ask. Straight up I'll abstain from some entries I usually rate tentatively because of this. Also I'm late. FE1, FE2, FE3, FE4, PoR, FE11, FE12 : Abstain FE5 : S tier Game defining to an absurd extent. Thracia without staves is a completely different game, this is no exaggeration. Technically I'm rating Clerics/Priests and not staves though, so Salem could do some of the heavy lifting even on his own. Regardless, considering even Hammerne and Thief, which are personal staves, are meta defining, how can one justify anything lower really ? You'd think Fatigue and staff misses would take it down; they're barely a distraction(staff missing especially). If anything, Fatigue encourages you to use more of these characters, making them all individually better. I'm a big advocate that Sleuf isn't an S-rank unit because his utility is already covered by others by the time he joins and loses in relevance very fast as you're flooded with competent staff users with perks he doesn't have; something tells me that without Fatigue, this would be a bit more common of a stance. In general, the very ability to use staves C and up is incredible. So yeah. FE6 : Tentative A tier Okay so I wouldn't want to oversell my own knowledge of this, but from my understanding and experience, the additional range on Physic(which you only have one of for very long), Warp and Status staves Saul and Ellen enjoy over other options, plus reasonably reaching the needed ranks in the first place, are very much a huge deal. They open up strategies that would simply be impossible otherwise. As for Yodel, by virtue of his 30 base Res (because you know, why not), he's the best status bait in the lategame, which you can directly control through deployment order. He can also use Purge at base (freely buyable in his recruitment chapter), so he's pretty useful all around. Aureola he's likely never reaching, so meh. They're characters that make a difference when used correctly. You do get other staff users so the healing utility itself I cannot rate amazingly high. I think A's fine. FE7 : Tentative C tier I just don't believe they bring all that much to the party, overall ? Priscilla is better Serra, I think that's fair to generally say, Lucius I'm not entirely certain on what he can do if promoted early to be honest, hence the "tentative" up there. Renault is... not that useful, again, to my knowledge. FE8 : A tier I'm counting Artur here, without him this would likely be a B, since Moulder covers his utility, but less well, and Natasha is just pretty underwhelming all around. Basically, Artur is your only real choice for good Warp range in a lategame filled with bosskills. Since the final boss is a pushover, nothing really stops you from just finishing the game off early, as you certainly don't need experience (even in a non-optimized sense... that's a loaded sentence these days init). Also, Slayer is really good. A bit less so if you're going to warpskip maps where it matters the most, but it still gets room to shine. RD : B tier This one's definitely debatable. It's insane how few useful staves there are in part 1, and just like in Engage, being able to use a staff at a high rank very quickly becomes mundane. And, as people have brought up, healing items are jacked here. ... But then again, you also take a lot of damage in this, in the Dawn brigade chapters especially. Laura is as basic a cleric as it gets, she heals at 1 range and that's it, but when you're trying to go for Bexp turn incentives on HM, it's very difficult to do without, since using items slows your combat. Now unfortunately these give paltry amounts of Bexp, so, that's also to consider, but still, allowing faster play is always a plus, and again, enemies hit really, really hard in part 1. Also, since Micaiah is stuck far away, Laura gets exclusive Ike sleeping merits in 3-13 with very reliable rates, which is by far the simplest way to deal with him, to my knowledge. And starting from part 3 she shares Physic duty with Micaiah, which is also really useful. She will likely never make it to tier 3, but that's okay really, she doesn't need it. Rhys is much like her, a solid healer, with the caveat that he doesn't have free deployment for most chapters like her, and that Mist exists. He also has no longterm potential whatsoever, but that's true of so many characters here, and he does the job while he's around, plus safe chip here and there. You can even pass him a Light forge from part 1 (since you lose the ability to forge light tomes in part 3 for some reason) to help a bit with that. Oliver is irrelevant. Don't feel like bringing the whole thing down for an unit that exists for one or two turns in the vast majority of playthroughs. By part 4 the former two can still do a bit of work since there are 3 routes to cover. None of them are seeing the tower for the most part. I think Laura could qualify for an A rank unit, but overall, gonna be a B. Awakening : A tier Another difficult one, and there's the question of whether or not Sage belongs in the equation. Not sure how to answer it, not sure it needs answering really. After all, Libra is living proof that War Cleric is just a slightly lesser alternative, rally magic notwithstanding. Mostly this class is good because beyond Healtouch being really useful, the characters starting in it are good. Lissa and Libra are two of the big three staff winners in Awakening, that get the honor of using Rescue all day long for half the game just by virtue of having way more range than other people. And the odd Physic is nice too. This could be an S, but Lissa does like going Falcon Knight, and I'd rather not ignore that. Fates : Tentative B tier Would be an A if reclassed Azama was considered. As it stands, you can have your servant on healing duty, and Sakura isn't exactly explosive like Elise is. Still, her personal skill is incredibly slept on for seemingly no reason, arguably among the best in the game even if merely to ease early juggernauting in BR, and synergizes very well with 2 range staves, obviously. Hopefully, with the advent of Alear's personal, this will progressively stop being the case. Azama can work fairly well as a combat unit if promoted fast. I don't think Izana fits here, he's a Sage archetype imo. Mostly I've never made creative use of status staves in BR or Rev, so, tentative it is. SoV : S tier Add me to the list of people who would have put this in A tier before reading the thread. Mostly, I don't think it's anywhere near Thracia, in part because SoV maps are so short it tends not to make a massive difference how you tackle them, and I've tried getting Silque to Warp before Zofia castle, but without monster battles (which you can flee from and despawn after 3 turns, so choosing to engage with them gets dangerously close to grinding in my book), it just doesn't happen. Still, it's not like Warp is useless after that, Rescue is useful, Invoke is random but great, same for Expel (Genny in general is amazing), and Fortify is really good too. All members of that class are great units, so yeah. 3H : A tier Even with the amount of classes with White magic access, I think Physic is centric enough, and Bishop has enough of an edge with it, that you more or less always want a Bishop (or two !)around. It's a very low maintenance class too (the lowest there is relative to efficacy, I'd say), and you kinda need some of that because you can only focus on so many students at once, just in terms of the resources the game provides you. And of course, 2x Warp is good in a variety of situations. Engage : C tier ... this is meant as a bit of a hot take, B isn't out of the question. Mostly... I do not value early Chain Guard that much(it's still good, though), then Micaiah's around to make taking damage a bit of a non-issue, and then, Lucina, of course. Speaking of, Qi Adept Bonded Shield is both more permissive and restrictive than Cavalry/Flying due to the -1 move attached, and the lack of other utility. Framme is a good character but kinda needs to go into a magic class to retain relevance, as Martial arts are, to my chagrin, bad without Eirika, who comes too late. Jean is Jean. Only Anna would arguably want High Priest, the kicker being that she cannot access it until Byleth because of the Martial Arts aptitude required, and by then she'll be off doing something else. To me, that's a lot of things going against the class line. Past the earlygame I feel there's just no more place for it on most teams. Yes, I think it's among the worst non-mounted staffers this series has seen, an opinion none of you share it seems, but hey, it happens. ... now to go rate mages in a month or so

It's not really formatted, but I use this when I want to know FE6 HM stats in general : Raigh should have around 40 natural Avo, + 15 from supports, + 20 from Forests, for a total of 75. Wyverns have between 84 and 111 Hit, meaning at worst he has to face ~36 displayed, or 26 true, and a rough average of ~25 displayed, or ~13 true, unless speed screwed, which can happen. Beyond that, targets that cannot hit you are great for lifesteal builds(in general), since they serve as guaranteed HP refills. It's not all that relevant here, but it can cover for a couple very bad rolls in a row. It's pretty normal to bring up wyvernland when discussing FE6, but really Lugh isn't particularly less effective at dealing with that situation, since he'll usually be around 15 Avo higher. It's mostly the swiss knife aspect of Nosferatanking that really makes it shine imo, once it's online.

Counting Dark knight in Awakening and Fates for the record, but not in 3H, where it belongs in the Mage/Sage/Mage knight conversation imo. Even if it cannot use Dark magic in the former two, Dark mage does promote directly into it, and reclassing being character specific (unlike in 3H), it's always part of the package, or absent completely. Don't want to oversell this since I ultimately don't have that much to say, but yeah, I think this is the proper thread for them. FE5 : S This could have been an A, as while Salem is definitely a great asset overall, he's no Safy. Still, because of Fatigue as well as overall flexibility you really want a second A rank staff user asap, and he's the only candidate for a while. His performance with actual dark magic is, as others said, quite limited, as he'll always be weighed down by 12 when using it, although it hits quite hard at least. He can also use Wind at base (it's D rank, many mages can't), which is good. Where others have personal staves or movement stars, he has actually good HP, allowing him to be fielded more often, be exposed to ballistae early, etc, and a workable Bld stat, which allows him to rescue low Bld characters (such as Leif, potentially) and Rewarp with them, instead of consuming Warp staff uses which can be pretty sparse, especially on route B / if you skip the 12x one. Cuz, you know, it's hard to justify waiting 30 turns for it even if you're not going for ranks. FE6 : B Probably the trickiest to rate, though we all know why. I prefer to consider every candidate at once, and by that measure a C would have worked as well. Niime is great, she brings something no other character does, although I don't really agree that getting her to S Dark magic for Apocalypse is all that simple, and she's not around for that long. Raigh is fine, he lacks flexibility but is likely your best Nosferatu candidate if you want to take the plunge. Sofia is a strong candidate for worst magic unit in the series, and is only somewhat redeemed by getting you a promo item in a chapter she's forced in, right before they're buyable for 5000G with silver card in hand. It's almost fascinating how bad they've made her for seemingly no reason. She can grind the bandit reinforcements in her join chapter with some success with one or two bodyguards(strong, strong emphasis on some) thanks to desert movement, but there's remarkably little reason to bother. FE7 : Tentative A I've never had that much success with Canas myself, but it's easy to see what he brings to the table, and yes, +3 Spd through promotion is quite nice, as is getting Luna and Nosferatu as pseudo prf weaponry and staff utility. FE8 : B ... because Ewan bad, but Summoner good, really good even. The AI just isn't built to deal with Summons. If no Ewan, this would only miss S for availability reason. If not for Summoner, well it's not like Knoll is a combat master and both Luna and Nosferatu have seen better days, so this would be a D. FE10 : D I do think Pelleas is a nice novelty character, and that his performance integrates decently well in the story, aka he's... bad, unfortunately. And Radiant Dawn sure isn't hurting for mediocre units to favor, especially this late. He has major accuracy and AS issues unless you forge him a thunder tome, and a mere glance at Bastian (who joins the next chapter on Tibarn route) can really put things in perspective. What Bastian lacks in potential, well Pelleas really doesn't have either. Could have been an E, but you know, he gets a free chapter and isn't a liability. SD : Abstain NMotE : Abstain Awakening : S Most Nosferatu iterations throughout the series have been restricted in some way or another, either through availability, price, lack of good users, combat itself not being a huge focus, etc. Awakening brings no such considerations; this is an army lawnmower, buyable freely past the first half of the game when enemy density starts exploding (in a game that showers you with cash) and you can no longer facetank everything, and Nostank is the most standout build of good ol' Robin. Not like the class is too shabby either, as Vengeance is one of the best procs in the series with pretty easy ~100% rate, Tomebreaker invalidates 25% of what you face, and even Hex and Anathema are great. Dark Knight on the other hand doesn't bring much of anything to the table, but I don't think that really matters. Don't find other Dark tomes to be a huge deal beyond Waste allowing Sorcerers to kill Grima, and that's not because they're bad. Mostly, Ruin and Mire are utility-based in a game where there tends to be no room for that, and bosskills are lenient enough that Nosferatu or even your random Fire tome can usually do the job. If not for Robin (or rather, if Robin was bad), well there'd still be Morgan, or even Lucina to an extent, and Miriel can work too after putting in the time. It'd still probably drop to A then due to an even lower earlygame presence, but that wouldn't be enough to kill the class/weapon, it's that dumb. Fates : Tentative B This is primarily for Conquest, as the class has pretty much no presence in BR, and remarkably little relevance in Rev outside of Leo, to my knowledge. Anyway, another tough one. Odin is mediocre, Nyx is specific, Ophelia has a barrier of entry, and Leo is pretty good. Nosferatu and Excalibur are good but limited, and Dark Knight, the all around better class, gets neither. Dare I say that's good balancing, idk, and there's a lot going on here, but my experience with two of those characters is very limited. I'd say that's roughly where it lands overall. 3H : D Okay, so why no Dark knight when I just counted it for the previous two contenders, well for the reasons you can probably guess; it fits more as the general offensive magic promotion than a specifically dark magic thing. Doesn't help that, yes, there's an existing seal precisely meant for that, and this class doesn't use it. For the record, this would likely push the rating to a B, Dark knight is pretty good in 3H, if a bit undermined by DLC from my understanding. ... so anyway, Dark mage and Sorcerer are miscellaneous classes that don't build towards anything unlike their competition, and getting Fiendish blow from mage (aka, the meta for better or for worse) makes Sorcerer completely underwhelming. It's also locked to males when competent magic users are primarily female in 3H. Not like the class is completely incompetent, it's really not, but as said in previous threads, if no one wants to be in a class, that should count for something imo.

Probably top ten in the game(would be top 5 if Raigh joined earlier), and those two units have the same mobility (Lugh will likely be promoted but that's it) and have 1-2 range, making placement fairly easy. That being said, it ain't brisk. No need to wonder, the ch 21 ones deal 40 damage at most, and he averages 41 physical durability after 14 levels and a promotion, or 12 with +Def from his support Also can someone define scuffed to me in this context, genuinely ? I thought I had a decent understanding of the word, but now I'm not so sure. It's not hard to get money in BB, but there are a ton of useful things to spend it on is the thing. You can hardly go wrong with +7 HP on most people, in that specific case. Let's not mince words people haven't played the game You're likely not getting him to A for Fenrir. I tried once, it's way too much work, acquiring one is the easy part. That being said, Niime is considered one of the best dark mages in the series, and she's 100% primarily a staff unit. Class is class, Salem is a Dark mage. He does differ on a few key parts also compared to other staffers, like more HP for Fatigue and just plain survival, and Con. Why Con when that doesn't affect AS for magic, well because he can rescue other people, then use the much more plentiful Rewarp to save on Warp uses. It's a bit niche, but that can be useful here and there.

It is quite good but there are numerous caveats. Raigh, as you said, has accuracy issues with it unless you build he and his brother's support(which is the only reasonable one he has, but it is a double accuracy one) and keep them together. As for Niime, she needs two, maybe three bought Seraph robes, but accuracy's not a concern, nor is anything else really. She does come late, though Then Nosferatu itself is far from cheap(150G per use, 75G with the member card) and not readily available so you have to buy it in bulk in ch14, right before the first secret shop. If you do things right it makes your unit of choice essentially invincible. So, you know, that ain't bad. Whenever people defend Sophia you can bet that they'll mention it without fail, even on HM.

They do not, unless they've updated it since I checked last.

I still don't think it's ever really worth bringing Rhys just for that. You already have Micaiah on constant healing duty regardless. Thing only has three uses, too.

Just to acknowledge it, my counterargument about Micaiah was incorrect ! She can only reach A staves at tier 2. Well Ragnarok was never a Prf, OG Delthea could always use it. And Aura and Excalibur were prf-only for all of one game, different philosophies back then I suppose

Yup, she's definitely the better of the two. Although Conomore does have a support unlike her (a double one at that), allowing him to arena in ch 20 with a bunch of scrolls. Even still he's just another combat unit at best. It's just pretty natural to compare them.

Ensorcels are quite important to help Sara reach thresholds with the Thief staff, and buffing mage combat in general, as well as helping with status staves thresholds since you're usually targetting magic users. And, it's a solid source of Wexp for characters like Salem and Tina. The lategame is also not all warpskipping(24 has the whole 24x unlocking, 24x is escape, 25 you'll sure warp a lot but you'll likely want the Ensorcel too), though there is indeed a lot of it. Either way, you're especially not using it on Nanna if she doesn't need it, and usually, well she doesn't. If you're saying her Mag can be much higher, yeah, the tools do exist. Realistically there's fairly little reason for it to be the case though. As for Pure waters, the early midgame does give a bunch, but they're 1 use in Thracia. They can run out fast, and they're the only way for characters to boost Mag on their own. They're also never buyable, to my knowledge. 30 base damage is (12 mt + 3 Str) * 2 from Wrath crit, that's all I meant. She's weighed down too much at first(by 5, it's way worse) so indeed, she's aiming for OHKOs. It's just that cavaliers and soldiers are usually in that range(assuming she's gained some levels), even in Melee, and then she kills so many things that she just outgrows enemy defenses and especially AS, usually. Early promoting Nanna isn't unrealistic at all, what I meant is that it's low priority because it doesn't make that meaningful a difference. And by early promoting I mean doing it right as she gets to level 10 so that her Mag stays ahead, it wasn't really about the timing of it. Also I'd definitely say Karin is top priority because it allows her to move through ballista range and kill them. Yeah, I guess I also read into it a bit too much. She's not usually a very well known character, so I jumped the gun a little. My bad. ----- Right, and +1 Move and a Movement star, too. I tend to compare her to Conomore so what she doesn't have over him I almost can't see nowadays.

It's not a thing though. Genuinely until Rescue's freely buyable, it's luck based, that's why I spoke of the earlygame. At first, staffers primarily just heal. Besides, unless you're reclassing Lissa, the Mag difference with Maribelle is so high that her rescue range should still be better. Past that point yeah, Healtouch becomes unimportant, my larger point was that Troubadour/Valkyrie was beaten by something at every point. Also I'm not criticizing your tier placement really, just commenting on what you said. Yeah, no point going through Peg, but then again there's little reason to reclass anyone to Troubadour, so it's mostly just Valkyrie vs Falcon Knight and Sage. And your staffer really won't be able to fight for the most part, not on Lunatic anyway. Enemies will outgrow them unless they're constantly being grinded, and it's difficult to enter combat without having to face several people at once due to enemy density, so they typically just die. It does lose one range, that's true. At the same time, it gets rally speed, which is an excellent support skill, and really helpful for Grima, down the line. You also eventually have enough Rescue range that one isn't that big a deal, meanwhile flying rescue is huge for certain maps, like Milla's Tree, the volcano and the penultimate chapter. You generally cannot reasonably one turn the volcano without it really, while Milla's tree is considerably trickier. True, there's also the Spirit dust with A Boyd, but that doesn't really require training them per se, nor is it a game changer particularly. It's more like, if you want it she'll be deployed, and if she's deployed she might as well Physic people. ---- Well Paladin Jakob has considerably better bulk than Strategist Felicia, so even without these skills he has a ton of utility she doesn't have. And still 8 move, that's the big thing Silas doesn't bring. Trivializes the ice tribe chapter in particular. Did I ask a question, well whatever. While Wrath isn't available immediately, she will still gain levels at a time where Heim isn't available, and Sety is in high demand. You also don't want to wait to build her Staff rank because she wants Physic asap if possible, so she will usually gain levels during this period(also, forgot to mention that her competing with Safy isn't much of a thing, because of Fatigue getting them deployed in different chapters, and Safy really not needing that much staff exp to reach A, or you can also simply promote her). Similarly, Ensorcel and Pure waters aren't this readily available(especially not this early) that you can just constantly buff her combat with them. Meanwhile you do have Hezul, which is a good idea anyway for Fatigue reasons. As for Falla it also gives Str. Heim and +Mag are also really good on multiple sword users since that's their 2 range stat, not to mention rounding off their durability. Her promo bonus gives her +2 Mag(relative to Str), yeah. There's no particular reason to early promote her to my knowledge, though, so her Str growth will still have time to build up. By the time you can have rebuilt a significant mag lead on her if you choose to, she can reasonably OHKO most targets at 1 range too, is the larger point. Especially since she'll likely double, even though that won't crit. It does vary depending on enemy type, admittedly. Before that, she has 30 base 1 range damage with Wrath, which covers a lot of enemy types already, and that's at level 1. I know, I was responding to her staff rank being unfortunate. It really isn't, you should have multiple warpers by that point. I guess her having A for Rewarp would be nice, since she could actually rescue Rewarp people for the few outdoor maps left, but that's kinda it. You also hadn't mentioned the combination of Magic swords and staves, which is a class-exclusive thing that she doesn't need training for. You did speak of status though, admittedly, so I could have phrased it better.

Don't get me wrong she won't be doubling anybody really, but that does tend to be the difference between getting doubled or not. Also, magical enemies will usually pick other targets. Mist has plenty of Res and Water affinity, and in fact... the Florete sucks (or rather, Mist's Str sucks, the Florete's amazing), but it does work decently well against mages. I don't know. Micaiah can sport Aptitude Discipline for part 3 and get to around S by part 4. It's not all that hard. Arms scrolls are also not in high demand, although I guess you could sell them, the things are worth a lot. The Elincia comparison is pretty on point, yeah, though they're not competing in terms of weaponry, at least. ... and in a bit of an ironic twist, anyone can have good combat with a Brave sword and 4x the chance to proc their Mastery skill. Sol's a good one, too. Actually that might not work too great against dragons... Yeah, my use of the word "passing" wasn't very wise, considering... it's FE4. But I did mean selling it to them, my bad.

Wouldn't that cost two seals instead of one, plus an S-rank(I guess A outside of Conquest) ? Doesn't sound like the same cost at all... Funnily enough, not the case. Her Str and Mag are very balanced. It's mostly about enemies having more Def instead, but in general, what she can kill at 2 range, she can kill at 1. Also, C-staves brings Sleep, which with the Flame sword's +5 Mag instantly gives Amalda great staff utility... she just won't be warping people. ----- FE4 is always really tricky because the commonly considered way of playing it now is min maxing the heck out of it it seems. Which, I guess I simply have no real experience with first off, but in general I do question the idea of passing the best non legendary sword in the game to units who likely won't use it on the field, just so they can get levels and money they may or may not be able to put to good use, and then sell it back. Outside of ranks that is. I'm definitely being a bit obtuse here though, not to mention that's like, the opposite of my usual stance, which is that "high effort" units... really aren't that high effort. Semantics aside, I just need to replay the game, please don't pay too much attention to what I say about it. Oh, I meant he's worse compared to PoR. Their "earlygame" matchup isn't as skewed basically, and the availability side is a decently big part of it. Is she actually better than him... Well he does fall off pretty hard, and his combat is really not that good (he deals considerably more damage but tends to get doubled to death if they can counter, you also generally can't expose him at all). B rank staff is also plenty, A and S bring very little. Mist also has the better affinity (by a little, Fire is good too), and the capacity to actually be around to give the bonuses. She even actually catches up in Mag after a while since he caps his very quickly and isn't a particularly noteworthy master crown candidate. Speaking of capping, Rhys can be Bexped to great success since he caps two stats early, but, his third tier speed cap(of 30, tied for lowest non-laguz in the game I believe) robs this of all meaning. Bringing Mist to the tower is debatable, Rhys is... usually not even considered, afaik. So he has a slightly better part 3 and she has a better, but mostly optional, part 4. Thinking back on it... maybe B was a bit high for RD Mist, yeah. Meh.

Okay, so, ratings. Don't think this is nearly as prevalent a class as Wyverns last time (just skipped lords because I couldn't decide how I wanted to rate them). I'll just go by game. FE4 : Tentative C B Edit : Okay so hum, I completely forgot about Ethlyn somehow. So yeah, bumping this from C to B, Ethlyn is undeniably really useful in early Gen 1. While Canto and higher movement obviously sound amazing at first, the class is stuck with the lowest staff rank unless Claude is Nanna's dad (which is usually not the best choice for reasons). It's almost more functional as a physical class (at least for Nanna, far as I'm aware Jane is a staffbot through and through), especially since Paladin promo bonuses are pretty good, but the problem is that both her and Jane join pretty underlevelled. FE5 : B So here we have Nanna and Amalda, two pretty different units, but who somehow end up roughly in the same tier. Nanna is still a pretty poor staffer without minmaxing, while Amalda is actually pretty good at it and not much else. Nanna is also more important in the sense that she supports both Leif and Fin and has her own Prf, a pretty great one at that. Overall this could almost be A, but I guess B's fine. FE6 : A Both pretty strong utility characters. It gets pretty close to S, but I'm not considering the Rutger/Clarine support because it requires grinding, and Saul and Ellen do provide longterm utility Clarine cannot due to her lower Mag. FE7: Tentative A In a game where Pent didn't exist, this would likely be the only S of this list (spoilers). As it stands, Priscilla still has a place in most any team for a good half of the game, and isn't particularly worthless afterwards really. FE8 : D Sorry L'Arachel, but I don't know what they were thinking when they made your statsheet, and Bishop on Natasha is almost unequivocally the stronger choice, on top of Natasha herself being worse Moulder who's eventually a worse Artur. Removing this class from the game would have remarkably little impact. I think -1 move was warranted on a lot of mounted class, but definitely not this one in particular. FE9 : Tentative C I find Mist really difficult to rate in both games she's in. She's a high investment character with a clear, good on paper niche. I guess in PoR it's just too much work, plus I'm not sure how relevant winning the Black Knight fight (since she can help a good bit with that if trained) even is these days. Nasir is certainly better than Eda, but is he needed, I can't say. FE10 : B Again this is a bit difficult. If she could early promote, she'd very likely be A, but here again she has an embryon phase which is frustrating to go through, though it's also not nearly as bad. Rhys, her direct competitor, is also quite a bit worse. Ultimately she's hurt by Physic staves being plentifully available, meaning healers can hang back safely... and Micaiah existing in the tower. FE13(Awakening) : C Pretty close to being a D, and I just said why I think that is in my previous post. Between it lacking Cleric's Healtouch early on, and Sage and Falcon Knight bottlenecking the class' niche completely, it just kinda exists. It's nice for +Mag & Spd pairup bonuses, but that's not in high demand unfortunately. FE14(Fates) : B With the rise of Wyvern Elise and Felicia being basically unarguably worse than Paladin!Jakob, I don't think I can justify an A on this one anymore. Dwyer (Edit : and Forrest) isn't particularly remarkable in his base class either, and I don't really have any knowledge of anyone who actually wants to reclass into Troubadour. Still, Demoiselle/Gentilhomme is a good skill, and Inspiration Felicia remains a pretty strong build. FE16(3H) : Tentative A Truth is, I have no experience with the DLC classes despite having bought the thing, although it's pretty blatantly obvious that Valkyrie's great. As, it gives magic units more or less everything they want. ... okay, as for the elephant in the room, Holy Knight gets a C from me. It is indeed functional but lacks a niche almost completely. If no one actually wants to be in the class, I think that hurts it quite a bit. FE17(Engage) : C I guess I can agree that Royal Knight fits the bill. As we all know however, it's not great. Not terrible either, stats are actually serviceable, but it doesn't do much of anything particularly well. Mostly, the Flame Lance being as heavy as it is hurts the class tremendously, since it's otherwise an obvious match. As it stands it has mediocre offense and mediocre staffing. Yeah.

Rankings will come in time, for now we must fight I'd say Cleric beats Troubadour though, because healtouch is actually genuinely useful early on. Without it, you constantly have to heal people twice. Also, Sages don't exclusively come from Mage, they're also a promotion option for Cleric, and as it stands, all three of the best staff users in Awakening have direct access to it, while Lissa needs to be reclassed to be a Valkyrie and Anna and Libra cannot be one at all. Mostly the big thing about Valkyrie is that Falcon Knight is usually a better alternative if you want a mobile staffer, both for Maribelle and Lissa. Really there's not much room for the class to shine overall. At least its pairup stats are decent. Also, add me to the list of people who never got a rescue staff from merchants before ch 5 in at least a couple playthroughs. And yes you get a rescue staff in paralogue 1, in fact that's one of the main reasons not to postpone it(it's certainly not Donnel) since it greatly simplifies the retrieval of Maribelle and Ricken.

I will admit, it bothers me a good deal more than reasonable how potentially fallacious our system in place is. Not that I like the idea of assuming boosters go to the best either at face value, it's more that I want change and I see it as the most direct first step. Facing the facts, realizing that they're not conducive to entertaining conversation and finding solutions. It's whatever, though. I just felt like talking about it.

This is interesting, because I think this is actually a mindset that prevents us from seeing certain problems by closing our eyes to them. To be blunt, we're human beings. Personal experience always plays a part in our judgement, not to mention sometimes faulty memory, or miscalculations. Theorycrafting is a valuable tool but tends to only lead so far and to tunnel vision (the early Engage discourse makes this pretty clear all over again), and ideally a proper assessment is a combination of both. You can estimate what giving a booster to a different character would do to their performance, but when it comes to the thresholds they'd now reach, the new situations they could now face and the longterm ramifications in terms of growth, it's pretty difficult... for one character, that ideally you've been training. I'm not saying FE has the highest unit variety of any series out there, yet doing it for the whole cast of any given FE game, is still generally not possible. So what actually typically happens, is that... we just don't do it. Too complex. Basically I disagree that your elegant solution even exists and find the pretense that it's completely reasonable... how should I say... misguiding. It doesn't really matter what we call it, "practicality" or "optimization", ultimately the subject is what's being considered in most serious gameplay discussions, which I frankly think is much more tangible than you're letting on here regardless of variations from person to person. We can clearly establish that mid tier units or lower, outside of exceptions... don't get boosters in these exchanges, basically ever. Usually they avoid discussing stat boosts period outside of scenarios where they're demonstrably immediately useful in the short term. Aka, only amazing candidates get them when anyone does, but that's not actually the main thing. The main thing arks back to personal experience. Because people do use stat boosters and then have to discuss the games as if they didn't, and nobody seems to see a problem there. This premise leads to the very circular logic you're denouncing here(but with a spice of unit bias added right in), except now it's even worse because no one will want to recognize it's happening. I like to say this a lot but we didn't design the games, if stat boosters are blatantly more effective in certain places, I don't see much of a point pretending it's not the case. Of course, discussion where we just use all the best tools and ignore the rest isn't as interesting, I agree, but that's why we now consider universal investment and what characters can individually do with that. I don't think it's impossible to work with boosters in a comparable way, but that has to be figured out, and it cannot if we just keep pretending there's nothing to even fix. I guess this means we want the same thing, but the core of my issue is that if I'm understanding correctly you seem to think it's a thing already, and boy do I really not think it is, and we're not even halfway there. Maybe I'm not giving the community enough credit here, though.

I guess I expressed myself poorly; Jotari and I are in agreement here, I was just commenting on something. The other side of that coin, which is also true for Roy, is that their additional utility limits how much combat they get to see. FE11 Marth struggles to gain levels and justify a forged Rapier because he's so often away from the action. In other words, him being the only unit that can visit villages and seize significantly hurts his combat. As for Roy, well he tends to spend his time rescued, which obviously poses the same issue, though of course his combat has a pretty low ceiling for most of the game regardless. That's simplifying things a fair bit. Oftentimes, the best characters for stat boosters are the already great ones. In fact that's the primary problem of stat boosters, instead of equalizing the roster, when used practically they just make things worse.

Yeah, I know. That's why I never looked at them separately before. It's just interesting considering he's known for having bad bases and this tidbit makes that marginally inaccurate. It may be relevant in a future remake though, depending on how they go about it.

I actually never payed much attention to FE6's class bases, but it's pretty interesting to see that Roy's personal bases... aren't actually bad at all. 2 Str 2 Skl 3 Spd 7 Lck for a level 1 unit (no HP, Def or Res though, granted). If he was reclassed to cavalier, he'd be better than both Alan(1 HP 2 Str 2 Skl 1 Spd 3 Lck) and Lance(0 Str 4 Skl 3 Spd 2 Lck) at base. Somehow I never knew that.

Okay. Well, with rescue spam it really is quite easy(even from base once you have buyable rescues, Cleric 10 Sage 10 Falcon 5 could be done in about five chapters), and can simplify the final battle a good bunch. Yeah. As a pure pairup in a solo Chrom's in luck if he gets >25 levels in the whole game. I do maintain that there are some considerably less commital options, but whatever works I suppose. Better Chrom does give more reliable Grima kills for many, including Fred.

Well technically you could stay as great lord for +1 speed pairup, and I didn't think of defender... The actual difference would be, why... don't you have Rally speed, exactly ? It's ridiculously easy to get on Lissa. I was assuming Rally speed on Great knight, my quick math might have been rough, though. There's also Rally Spectrum, but I didn't assume it in a Fred solo. From my experience it's pretty easy to cap your solo unit's stats outside of really bad growths, and as you said, you could use speedwings. Chrom as a pure pairup tends not to reach 30 speed from my experience. And there's definitely the possibility of him getting screwed. Did you use him as an active unit a lot ?

You could always make Fred a Paladin for +3 cap, because a 30 speed Chrom is a pretty tall ask. But yes it generally has to be a two turns, so you have to calculate according to that. You can either do a rescue chain (it's possible with base Libra, Anna and Olivia), or just bank everything on turn 2.

You really don't, however it is true that it's one of the few chapters where you cannot just rush in and win without taking some time looking at numbers. Definitely helps to have forged brave weaponry, so if you've spent all your money already...

Feels like the community is slowly coming around in that regard, since many shared your stance a while ago. The unfortunate truth is that there's no winning with Awakening. It's horribly balanced, and making it easier does nothing to fix that. Lunatic is also not all that it's been built up to be, characters who cannot reasonably function in it are actually relatively few. ... And then you have Lunatic+, and suddenly I'm the one whose line is getting crossed. Anyway, within the context of Awakening HM, Wyverns definitely don't mind effective damage nearly as much, so maybe they'd be up a tier relative to where I rated them. That being said, Galeforce also has more of a tangible presence. Maybe. It's been ages since I last played on that difficulty.