SnowFire

On Echoes: Well, Echoes didn't sell as well as Fates. Not saying it lost money, but effort isn't infinite. If you can assign people to more lucrative or less lucrative projects, pick more lucrative ones; maybe some sort of Fates ripoff would have sold better as 3DS FE game #3. On FE5remake: Let's imagine what this conversation looks like in the board room. Does the manager approve the remake of FE5, or a fresh new game? The problem is that FE5 as a template is worse than nothing. A fresh new game is a blank canvass of possibility, everything to everyone. Spin it with advertising and launch trailers however you like. FE5 is a remake of an old game, which can work if you're doing a nostalgia play... but... nobody has any nostalgia for FE5 in the first place! It is the worst-selling game in the series. Worse, some low-information casuals will assume it's only a nostalgia play and thus not for them. Medium information casuals will know about FE5, and also know that it has a bad reputation. And you can't run an advertising campaign around "FE5 remake: Trust us, it doesn't suck like the original!" (Doubly so in IS's case, as FE11 was probably too loyal a remake.) And we haven't even gotten into whether some of the FE5-ness of the game will still even be popular on its own merits. If a lot of what makes FE5 FE5 has to be removed... why call the resulting product FE5 at all? If it's not removed, then doesn't that run the risk of reviewers + the community saying "well it was tedious before, and guess what, it's still tedious?" Basically there are two ways some sort of FE5 remake happens: A) Keeping the budget extremely, extremely low. Either an "enhanced port" of the SFC game or some sort of map pack using Engage's assets, say. Maybe it doesn't sell great, but it didn't cost much either, and keeps knowledge of FE5 out there, and maybe generates some new fans of obscure characters to sell in FEH. B ) Being a legitimately great game that, for whatever reason, has no choice but to be FE5, and that being FE5 makes it an even stronger, more resonant experience. An example of B ) was Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty over in Magic: The Gathering. The original Kamigawa block sold rather poorly for MTG in 2005 or so, and all the reasons stated above were reasons not to go back to Kamigawa. Why go back to a world that the company knew players were meh on, when they could invent new worlds without the baggage? They found a way to create a cool setting that would be legitimately enhanced by having the history of Kamigawa behind it, but that also had an excuse to change a lot. Basically, this probably means something like what FE3 was to FE1, there's a totally new game that happens to intersect some with FE5. Unlikely they pull it off! But if they do, hey, there you go.

Hmm. Don't get me wrong, 95% of romance novels are trash (from a literary perspective), which is batting below Sturgeon's law's baseline of 90% of everything being crap, but I also aren't sure that they particularly encourage bad real-life expectations. (And to be clear, this can be a problem too if you're writing fiction explictly meant to better the readers' moral values or the like; the lessons tend to bounce off, although maybe you can do some education.) Like, to switch gears, ridiculous shit happens in action movies and thrillers and spy movies and such that would be incredibly bad ideas in real life (high speed car chases, etc.) but people like watching Our Heroes navigate extreme situations. Same deal for romance - too realistic and it stops being escapism and is something else. The romantic equivalent of car chases, explosions, stolen jewels, etc. is wealthy bachelor tycoons, crazed love triangles, some external force (societal expectations, jerk ass parents, vampire hunters, whatever) trying to stop the destined match, etc. It's not healthy, no, but people want to see it hammed up. Now, to be sure, the best-selling romance novel of the 21st century is Fifty Shades of Grey which was shoddy wish-fulfillment fan-fiction, but eh. Just goes to show that readable trash is what people want sometimes, in the same way that Jersey Shore / Keeping up with the Kardashians / Real Housewives of XYZ are popular on TV. -- Going back to more important matters, I highly doubt that IntSys is gonna remake FE5, but if they did something more than port it... when life hands you an opportunity, you take it. Reinhardt is like the most well-known non-Leif character, even if by a strange method. He damn well should get more of the spotlight! (But I wouldn't get our hopes up for an FE5 remake, or even an FE5 official port, any time soon...)

Excellent: Awakening Manakete, FE10 Laguz Lords (?!) Good: Fates Nine-Tails / Wolfessenger Good but highly limited use: FE6, FE8 Average: FE10 Birds, FE10 Dragons, FE11, Awakening Taguel, Fates Kana (w/ a Dragonstone build) Bad: FE9 Laguz, FE10 Lions, FE10 Wolves, FE12 Very bad: FE10 Cats N/A: Dancers (FE7 Bard/Dancer, FE9/10 Herons) -- Fa is weird in FE6. Extremely, extremely limited usage due to Dragonstone shortage, but very good for whatever you do want to throw her at. Notably, she's one of your best options for enemy Manaketes other than mages / Legendary Weapons. Amazing Res means she's good for soaking long-range status staves. Myrrh has a few more uses of her Dragonstone, but it's still limited such that you can't use her everywhere, and she has trouble with archers and she & her dad kinda counter each other. Lethe & Mordecai are okay early in FE9 as some sort of subpar Titania variant. In particular, there's some fun usages of Mordecai's Smite to help recruit Astrid on turn 1 and the like, and Mordecai is honestly pretty solid at holding chokepoints. That said, laguz keep falling off the later the game goes. Combat is too common in the second half where being untransformed is a pain, the stats don't keep up once beorc promote and grab forged weapons, and saving a little bit of money isn't that important. I guess Nasir / Ena get mild credit as helping out vs. Ashnard if Ike is stat-screwed or something, but meh. FE10 is a mess. Obviously Volug is usable, but more due to coming well-leveled and with Wildheart than Wolf being particularly good. Cat gauge is infamous and a good way to get Ranulf killed if you're not careful. Lion gauge is much better than Cat Gauge but Skrmir being forced to trudge around a desert map isn't great compared to flyers. Dragons are at least okay support units for the Tower, and the birds are fine. The Laguz Lords I'm setting aside as a separate thing - they feel different enough to rank separately as not having to deal with gauge mechanics makes them play very differently, although it's hard to disentangle them from all being Level Awesome as well. Speaking of which, availability of Laguz Gems at endgame also mess with this as you can make a few Laguz units honorary Lords and bump them up a tier, make of that what you will. For FE11.... uh, Tiki is usable enough, sure. One of those units who really likes some favoritism though from stat boosters and/or the Starsphere to prevent her weapon from breaking. Bantu is bad but that's Bantu being bad rather than the class. Nagi is an escape hatch vs. Medeus, as is a leveled Tiki, which deserves some cred. FE12 is rougher. Bantu is still bad, but now Tiki is bad too, as her niche is killing dragons and you recruit her after 3 maps filled with dragons and the like just in time for lots of maps with no dragons and enemy mages packing Glower which cuts through her good Resistance. Great. At least Nagi is still usable and ready to go for the final maps. In Awakening, Nosferatu is one of the most famous ways of surviving brutal enemy phases, but it's not the only one. Building a supertank is also fine and Manaketes are probably the best unit for it, especially since they also fling back counterattacks at 1-2 range (and thus get the opportunity for pair-up attacks to finish off counter-kills that they might not get alone). Nowi / Tiki / Nah all make fine super-tanks to send in front of your force. Meanwhile, Taguel... exists. Decent speed helps save it's nothing special either, just averageish. For Fates... assuming we ranked Corrin in the Lords set... Dragonstone is very good early, but falls off a bit later in the game as tanking gets tougher and giving up follow-up attacks becomes more punishing if your Corrin has decent Speed. Kana has a passive that makes using Dragonstones slightly better, but isn't really that special, just increased regen. There's still a niche here but it's weaker than Corrin's spot. Also doesn't help that maximizing Kana probably implies a wacky Corrin build since Kana has swapped stat growths (i.e. the perfect Kana involves something like a +Str, -Mag Corrin which isn't very meta). Meanwhile, for Kaden / Selkie / Keaton / Velouria.. eh, I think the Fates beast classes are fine. They don't really have any tricks (aside from the Grisly Wound max HP damage, I guess?) but at least feel like they have a significant stat edge to compensate for the range-1 lock. They're all usable.

To be clear, tastes differ, but... I will say that both Engage's floating Somniel (that everyone reaches via... Teleportation? Pegasi transport off-screen?) and Fate's pocket-dimension castle kinda work against the game any time that they want to actually have tension and threat. Both games seem to just ignore that they exist when discussing the rest of the plot, which is probably the right call, but they clearly do exist, so ???. While it's a little weird that Garreg Mach is apparently the closest place to everywhere in the setting, this is indeed an actual plot point and it's less jarring.

While normally I wouldn't try to convince other people, if this is your worry, then maybe you should give Engage a try after all? The thing that the Engage Somniel does better than Garreg Mach is precisely cut down the time spent. You can do Somniel runs very, very quickly, especially if you don't count shopping / forging (which is something you'd just do from a menu anyway with the Merlinus equivalnet in a hypothetical Somniel-less version of the game). Most of the minigame nonsense just doesn't matter, so no worries skipping it. (Okay, the one minor exception: Arena Emblem battles take too long. Which is not actually that long individually, but you can potentially do a lot of them since the game throws Bond Points at you willy nilly, and if you feel obligated to spend them you can waste some time here. But, well, just don't do that then. And even if you do do them, they're still faster than many 3H activities.) Engage is also much more about not having a between-mission grind. You are expected to go from story mission to story mission, without tons of dialogue in the middle. On Maddening, they don't even really offer you very many skirmishes, and they're not helpful if you do them. So... honestly, given your worries, it sounds like Engage goes in the exact direction you wanted from Three Houses. (Although doing optional Paralogues are rather potent and maybe count as "grind"? But they're also skippable, so eh, do as many as you enjoy.)

Well, if you're not a fan of map gimmicks, I get it - both Conquest and Revelation have a decent number of gimmick maps. Flip side, other people complain Birthright is boring, because a lot of the maps are rout-fests where enemies aren't equipped with much particularly interesting weapons, and gimmicks help freshen the experience up. That said, for a gimmick to mean something, it needs to make the player engage with it. Fates has this whole idea of Dragon Veins changing the way battle works. For this to feel appropriately powerful to match the plot hype, it needs to, well, mean something, which means failing or declining to engage with the gimmick should result in a tough experience, and using it properly should make you feel like a tactical badass. They're kind of inherently linked; if you have a gimmick that doesn't matter because playing normally works, then why have the gimmick at all? Anyway, C24's gimmick of flyers with super-range is scary, yes, but you have your own Dragon Veins on that map. What the designer "wants" you to do is to keep aggressively moving forward and activating your own Dragon Veins to reduce flyer movement, letting you safely pick them off. And if you don't do that, then yeah, it's gonna be backup strats time. It's unfortunate you weren't a fan, but I also think that there was no other option here - making it cool for players who liked interacting with the gimmick as a change of pace inherently means a rough ride if you don't interact with it. (I do agree that Conquest has some deeply unfun ideas, notably the Kitsune lair and a certain skill on the Lunatic final map. But I personally thought C24 was cool.)

Sam: Hmm, interesting that you also don't consider DLC grinding. Tomefaire is a good skill, yes, probably the best thing about Sage, but it's fairly late arriving and not as dominant as some of the other L15 skills you can get (especially on F-Robin, where it's competing with the mighty Galeforce as an X/15 skill, or just a Sorc Robin grabbing Tomebreaker which is also good). I'd be more willing to hype Sage if we assume some safe DLC grinding to get to the power skills, but it seems just way scarier to safely level a Sage without DLC. Even on Hard difficulty, enemies can kill Sages very fast; I wanna say enemies generally 2HKO Miriel on Hard and can potentially one-round on Lunatic unless you're overlevelling her or have like a Kellam pair-up or something. Obviously still has some use as a Rescue / Physic spammer, or just playing it very safe, but per earlier comments, eh, I'll just take a Valkyrie for that role myself for more move.

I guess you learned something new about me then! I'm a fan of Orochi. Not Ryoma-tier or anything, or even Hinoka-tier, but then most characters aren't. Now you know.

Cysx: I was abbreviating things in my head there some, but yes, that sentence had an implicit "bring at least a few staffers to the Tower" in there in my head, just not written on the page. Whoops! Anyway, I consider the marginal value of more combat units to start dropping some, and even a low-ranked staffer who also has 1-2 offense has some value. (And to be clear, RD Sages are still getting a "Below Average" rating here, just I don't consider them hyper-terrible garbage, hence the somewhat defensive tone of "nah it's okay you can use one or two.") Mir: We'll have to agree to disagree, but you're talking to a local Orochi hyper. +3 Skl/Spd/Def/Res is truly one of the best D-rank weapons in the series, let alone Fates. I got good use out of her and found Horse Spirit did help her survive by avoiding key enemy doubles and sometimes even sneaking her own double in if given the right support. (And most other tome/scroll classes are way worse at it than Diviner / Onmyoji.) Also, reading Elf's list I realize I forgot to write-up 3H despite thinking about it! I largely agree, though. Mage -> Warlock -> Gremory gets a Good ranking, it's very usable. (I dunno if I'd give credit for Monk here as that seems closer to Ewan's Pupil or the like, though.) Mage has a great mastery skill, Warlock has the 2x uses + Faire which vary in strength by character (very good for Dorothea / Hanneman / Constance that have Meteor / Bolting with few natural uses, less helpful for the Lorenzs / Mercedes without standout spells), and Gremory gets +1 Move and a great class Magic boost. While the existence of Caduceus and maybe Thrysus is more a credit to any magic-using class than just the Warlock / Gremory line, it does enable crazy range games.

Celica's Gale only has 20 uses, and the Brave effect chews through uses fast, so even if you bake in a Renown reward copy for free, being patient / lucky at Barracks drops is still rewarded, unfortunately. But yes, even just one is very strong for the first half for efficiently killing Wyverns and the like. (If you're in the postgame, you can consider getting an Armsthrift Sage by a jaunt into Merc, but there's no time early game and your Lck scores aren't high enough to even matter.) On reinforcements: I'm familiar, yes, but I don't think that helps Sage's case. "Using frail classes in this game requires you to have a Reinforcements guide open or to have memorized them from the last playthrough" is one of the worst things to say about a class! Lunatic+, eh, sort of. If you're keeping sane on L+ you're doing DLC grinding then Galeforcing to kill the boss ASAP before reinforcements spawn because they're such incredible BS. So I don't know if I would consider researching the reinforcements as a baked in "you're doing this anyway" deal.

As a note, it might be worth having a separate topic for mixed physical / magic units - your 3H Mortal Savant / Echoes Priestess / Fates Oni Chieftain / (Honorary Awakening Trickster & Fates Adventurer, which uses staves but also potentially magic weapons?). It occurs to me that they don't seem right to stick in this topic but then I think they fall through the cracks. Anyway... Very Good: FE6, Engage Good: FE7, FE11, Fates Average: FE8, FE9, Echoes Meh: FE10, FE12, Awakening -- Enemy Resistance mostly sucks in FE6, with the few exceptions (enemy Bishops, etc.) easily dealt with by the rest of your team. Result is that Lugh goes on a giant killing spree if you want with his High-Speed acceptable-Magic build never getting punished by Resistance tanks, while also providing handy healing if desired later. Lilina, while scarier to use due to her fraility, is just fine as well. Hugh is weird but I'd count his wacky recruitment against him, not the Mage class. Over in Engage, Sages are really more like "better Bishops" as they muscle High Priest out of their role. Staves are really good in Engage, and while Griffin Knights and Ivy / Hortensia can handle some of the burden, having a Sage in the backlines is still quite handy, as they can also smash with high-powered magic too. Erk is fine in FE7, but we all know that this is mostly hyping up the almighty Pent (and Athos if he counts?). 1-2 range for easy chipping, very safe, can do staffing, Pent comes pre-leveled. Erk is a little dangerous to use early on, though, as he's frail enough to die. FE11 enemies have trash Resistance (and PCs, for that matter!) as some homage to spells doing fixed damage in FE1. So Sages can put some real hurt on if you can keep them alive. (Although the higher difficulty levels also feature lovely ninja reinforcements if you're trying to level Linde or something.) Fates Onmyoji is just a solid class for all the usual reasons. Note that Horse Spirit really helps salvage Orochi's durability & speed issues, and having powerful ranged chip can really matter vs. some of the scarier enemies. Probably Sakura's best promotion in Birthright, and fine in Revelations too. Hayato isn't fantastic, although with the right breeding program he can help make a better Rhajat at least. FE8 is similar to FE7, but Bishops get a reason to exist in Slayer, and Mage Knight is a valid promotion for some of the mages. As a result, many units don't really want to go Sage - Ewan probably wants Sorcerer, Artur / Moulder at least consider Bishop, and Lute probably prefers Mage Knight unless you really need the higher caps for Lagdou. But it's not like Sage is bad if you do make a Sage Lute / Ewan. FE9 varies a bit by difficulty level. Keeping Soren / Ilyana alive can be tricky given their frailty, but they do provide the promise of both offense and staves later. Calill is pretty decent too. Their value goes up some on Maniac mode, as the tankier enemies mean that their overkill offense (e.g. Soren's Adept) is less "wasted" than on Hard. (Also for the less cool reason of there being so many $%^& enemies that one of the classic advantages of fighters, availability of better forged weapons, gets worn down on Maniac some, since FE9 wants to really restrict Tome forges for whatever dumb reason.) Echoes - Hard to judge, assuming this is just Sages and not Priestesses. In theory, +10 Hit is handy and maybe worth not being able to hit both defenses, especially since Echoes has really good Rings that make the cost of a Priestess equipping a Sword high anyway. In practice, all the Priestesses tend to be better combat units than the Sages. Don't get me wrong, Boey is a total usable unit especially if given just a drink or two of the initial Speed fountain, but he's worse than Mae. Meanwhile Luthier competes with the Lightning Sword on Alm's route and gets swamped quickly by his sister, and Nomah is just a backline healer. People complain a lot about mages in FE10, and maybe I need to play Hard mode some day (with the enemy ranges hacked back in), but... while enemy Resistance is definitely higher and their stat caps are annoyingly low, they're still basically usable. Natural Range 1-2 is just really powerful, and you do get some siege tomes for shenanigans like Meteor. And you need to bring at least a few staffers along anyway, and as already discussed the Bishop/Saint crew isn't great in this game, so why not a Sage? I'm definitely a fan of Calill, at least. (But they have the usual FE10 problem of being in a game where they're often competing with pre-leveled super-units, of course). This might be an abstain on FE12 but I'm ranking them low due to the fact enemies have Resistance scores again compared to FE11, and their own high Res doesn't even help tons since a lot of enemy mages pack Glower which ignores Sage's own good Res. This is also the game where people recommend switching Sages over to Swordmaster-with-a-Levin Sword if you want to keep up at offense. Awakening... well, Sage does get Tomefaire eventually, which can be a handy endgame build option. But they're competing with Dark Mage / Sorcerer, which is rough. Their value increases, especially in the early game, by how patient / lucky you are with the Barracks... Celica's Gale is a dominating, dominating Tome usable right from the start (just C rank to use it, which is nothing!) but you can't just buy it, you're stuck relying on the RNG. And similar to FE11, Awakening is a game with ninja reinforcements on higher difficulties that are really strong and can end your frail mages like Miriel / Ricken / Laurent easily. Robin / Morgan are already providing some tome damage from Tactician (or Sorcerer / Dark Flier if you moved Robin over to that) so Sages aren't really that "necessary", either.

Re @Shanty Pete's 1st Mate, on Fates: Well, this obviously isn't a scientific endeavor, but in favor of counting Maids / Butlers here, they're the sole class in Fates that gets S-Rank staves, while their max Dagger rank is notably beneath that of Master Ninjas and the like. Enemy Maids often tend to just carry a status staff or Physic and don't even bother with a Dagger. And they're from the Troubadour class set, which is a pure-healing class at base (even if the horsie got lost somewhere along the way). They do seem intended to be staff healer first, debuffs second. Flip side, Onmyoji is probably the Fates equivalent of Sage and so Izana definitely counts over in the Mages & Sages topic. (Hence me running with Butler / Maid / Priestess / Great Master as the Fates entrants here.) For FE9, I do agree that for Rhys personally, him having a soft monopoly on early healing is nice, but I'm personally still not inclined to credit his class much for that. If some Kaizo ROMhack of FE9 made all the Paladins Bishops and made Rhys a Cavalier / Paladin, the value of poor Titania / Oscar would seriously be in the gutter and the game more difficult. (But an angels-dancing-on-a-pin issue, of course!)

Since pure Light mages are pretty rare, gonna assume Lucius / Artur qualify for this topic. (Arguably Micaiah does too, albeit with the Lord asterisk.) Fates is a bit wacky - there are no less than *four* infantry healer classes in Butler, Maid, Shrine Maiden / Priestess, Monk / Great Master. And yes, Butler/Maid technically descend from Troubadour, but people seemed to be rating Troubadour / Strategist in the ranking thread for that and excluding Butlers & Maids, meaning they end up here. (Assuming Onmyoji is more a Sage, of course.) -- Broken: Echoes!!!!! (gap) (more gap) (gap III) Good: Three Houses, Fates Butler/Maid, Fates Birthright Monk / Great Master Average: FE6, FE8, Fates Revelation Shrine Maiden/Priestess & Monk / Great Master Filler: FE7, Engage, Fates Birthright Shrine Maiden/Priestess Bad: FE10, Awakening Very bad: FE9 Don't remember well enough to rank: FE11, FE12 -- I know there are dopey tricks that can be done with early Warp access in FE6, but eh, not much of a warp-skipper player. That said, most Mage->Sages having E-rank staves on promotion IIRC does help ensure that staffers keep their niche if you built one. Yodel is solid enough late-game filler. Probably still prefer Valks but the cleric crew is fine. FE7 gives you early game filler and late game filler both. Serra is fine for keeping people topped off, and if you're doing a casual scrubby FE7 playthrough and need an emergency leveled staffer for Light Renault is fine (this is the game with pretty bad XP gain for staves, after all). Although despite ragging on the XP gain, if you care about XP rank, every bit helps, so there's something to be said for deploying both Serra & Priscilla for awhile to just farm more XP. Anyway, Pent existing is kind of a big hiccup for Serra, as he can cover staffing duties just fine while being pre-leveled. Lucius, if he counts, exists. He's fine but also very similar to Erk so nothing special here. Also Serra / Lucius being frail is not great given that FE7 is a game where enemy offense tends to be on the low side, so he's vulnerable in a way tankier units aren't. They exist in FE8. Valkyrie / Sage are better promotions on paper for Moulder / Natasha, but Bishop's Slayer is a cool niche given that the lategame of FE8 is extremely monster-heavy, as is Lagdou. Artur is a bit worse than Lute IMO but he's usable, sure. Rhys is pretty terrible in FE9, saved only by high availability, but that doesn't really "count" for much in a class-ranking thread. He is absolutely one of the most killable units in FE9, being frail & slow (fitting given his backstory!). I guess the one thing in his favor is that a lot of the late-joining Sages have foolishly grabbed Knives as their secondary (Calill, Bastian), so if Mist / Soren / Ilyana all died or something, maybe it gets more interesting. But I don't feel that is also a damning with faint praise thing, the class is more important solely because staves are at least somewhat rare? I guess. Offense is wretched. FE10 at least has some status staff shenanigans that can be done, like Laura's Sleep staff. But enemies are scarier than FE9 and as a result Laura & Rhys are also eagerly lining up for the grave if not played very carefully. Ranking might go up some if Micaiah is included, as Thani at least gives her some offense when she isn't using Physic safely from the back lines. I don't feel like I know FE11 & FE12 well enough to comment, for all that infinite-range Warp in FE11 is obviously silly for LTCs, and FE12's dance staff is kinda OP. Although FE12 is also weird in that it screws over staffers on Lunatic mode by denying them some cool stuff. Awakening... well, Lissa is acceptable filler early, and Libra does join reasonably leveled. I said my piece in the Troubadours thread that I personally prefer Valkyries for your long-term staffing needs. That said, War Monk is actually quite bad, so you really should pick anything else for your staffing needs like Sage / Valkyrie / Trickster. If you make Brady a War Monk for flavor reasons he is hilariously terrible, although he's kinda terrible in general. Fates: This one is complicated. Butler / Maid is good - you get access to a Flame Shuriken on all routes, they get good supporty aura-bonuses like Gentilhomme, and Jakob/Felicia at least get the early access to Tomebreaker which can set up some funny plays (although enemy mages aren't super-common in Fates). Along with access to both range-1 and range-2 staffs compared to other games (although maybe not in Conquest after the Internet turns off!!1!). That said, I know others hype getting Jakob out of Butler, for all that I've never done it myself. Going over to Hoshido... Monk/Shrine Maiden is filler early, but useful filler. Priestess is sadly not very good in Birthright long term because getting a Shining Bow is very dumb; just go Onmyoji. That said, it's fine in Revelation for Sakura / Mitama. Meanwhile, Great Master is actually quite good in Birthright, because it's the route of squishies who explode, and GM's 10% Defense boost is actually one of the best out there, making Azama one of your best tanks. (And unlike Rinkah, he actually can have an HP score & a Resistance score, too.) And you do have access to Bolt Naginata. Azama joins too late against too crazy competition to seriously hype that in Revelation, though. Echoes is insanely busted enough to require underlining as well. Genny's Invoke is game-breakingly powerful and dominates the game from Act 1 all the way into the Postgame if you want to. The AI just loves killing her weak phantoms, allowing you to survive enemy phases you really shouldn't, and generally provide cover / blockers for your team. She summons a ton of phantoms, too (unlike say Tatiana). Meanwhile over in Alm's route, Silque learns Warp very quickly in a game where Warp is quite handy - lets units get past walls and up on ledges, or just assassinate the boss. I'm less hypey on Cleric Faye, but it is probably her best promotion, and eventually becomes a Dance-Cleric in the postgame. Meanwhile, Tatiana is perfectly acceptable filler, joining reasonably leveled and actually has a speed stat if you want her to fight on the front lines for some reason. Are we back to Genny yet? Okay, she's really good even if you're not cheesing with Invoke. Physics your team safely from that backlines, and later on helps heal your whole team up as they trudge through all the swamps in Celica Act 4. Can we talk more about Echoes Saints? Sure, let's. This isn't really worth your while, but if you want to do funny meme nonsense, you can save a bunch of fountain drinks for a Saint and do Nos-tanking out of the Dark Magic thread last week. Sure, it's inaccurate, but if you pump their stats enough it stops mattering. This is like option #48 for what to do with a Saint, but it's still better than what scrubs have to offer. Three Houses: I think the heal boost on Priest is fine. Strictly speaking, if you think your healer might go aggro some day (your Mariannes / Mercedes), then you should go through Mage at some point for Fiendish Blow, but it might be worth switching back to Priest if there's still time before L20. But the Linhardts / Flayns of the world might well not even care and just happily stay Priest the whole time. Meanwhile, Bishop is good for the same reason. Double-uses on spells like Warp / Rescue / Fortify is very handy. I think most 3H teams should probably deploy at least one pure-support which probably ends up being a Bishop or Gremory. But Linhardt can't become a Gremory, and it may not even be worth it for Manuela / Flayn / Mercedes. The heal boost is still helpful here to ensure that even Physic'ing the Dedues / Balthuses of the world gets 'em healthy. Engage: Early game, Martial Monk is authentically handy. People respected Framme in the ranking thread for this just because staff access is quite rare then. As the game proceeds... the good news is that Engage Staves are quite good, but they aren't generally harshly limited by Staff rank. So Griffin Knights / Sages / Micaiah-users can still use a bunch of power Staves like Obstruct & Physic, which kinda messes with High Priest's S-rank staff niche (the only S-rank staff in the game is a bad joke). That said, having a single Martial Master for Chain Guarding the approach of extremely dangerous bosses is still handy, especially if you're not set up for Lucina Bonded Shield strats (and hell, if you are, Qi Adept makes the rate 100%). And while it's not THAT amazing, High Priest's self-healing ability can be cool - inventory space is harshly limited for staff-users, with only 5 slots for (damaging tome / healing staff / 3 free), meaning that carrying around healing items has a real cost to it. It doesn't really hold up compared to Sage once A-rank Tomes become available and Elfire looks meh, but there are some chapters before that's true. End result is a filler class - maybe you run exactly one Martial Monk lategame, but mostly because of the Chain Guard ability on more useful units, which is not a stirring endorsement.

More seriously, it's definitely French as the European language the devs decided to be influenced by in Engage, especially in Firene. Libération, Misericorde, etc. are also French; Céline / Chloé / Louis / Boucheron / Ève are all French names. (Alfred, admittedly, is an English name, and Etie was maybe "We saw the male name Etienne and decided to chop off some letters to make a female version"). The bat characters in FE Heroes are just Embla, her goon Elm, and nameless goons. But I can't say the plot there was done with a lot of care. Embla is RIP and Elm generated so little interest from the scriptwriter that it wasn't even that clear whether he was dead or not after he was defeated, and only showed back up again like 9 months later in side content to show he wasn't dead yet.

I urge you to absolutely, do not, under any circumstances, look up what Obscurité means in French. Don't do it. No, stop! You'll regret it! ...but yeah, honestly, I think Fell Child might be the closest to Dark Mage, since I think the prf. is tied to the class rather than Veyle herself. It's just like Sorcerer in Fates where there's only a single Dark Magic spell to cast, and is mostly casting Tomes usable by all, except even lamer because Obscurité is basically a worse Ragnarok but with a little crit rather than doing something truly unique. So a Dark Mage in flavor, just the two most standout things about the class have nothing to do with dark magic: Dragon typing for better Emblem usage, and Dagger access along with a prf. magical dagger. It's okay - bad stats but Dragon typing is so rare that if you want a certain Dragon effect, your options are limited barring running the Fell Xenologue.

+1 to Jotari. It was definitely confusing, but the "Dark Knight" class in some games really seems more like "Mage Knight" in games that have a class called that. -- Busted: Awakening (....big huge gap...) Very good: FE6 Good: FE7, FE8 (Lagdou) Average: Fates, (FE11/FE12 ?) Bad: FE8 (maingame) Pointless but inoffensive: Three Houses Dark Mage Pointless and also very bad: Three Houses Dark Bishop Sir Not Appearing Without New Game+: FE10 -- FE6 Nosferatu is kinda busted, similar to Awakening - it's reasonably light in weight and full heals damage dealt. The only "problem" is that availability isn't great (and Sophia is bad, yes), but I see that as more a property of the characters than the class - if you could make Lugh a Dark Mage or something with sufficient funds to do so, it'd be an interesting option. Helps that lots of enemies have garbage Res, so Raigh can go on a killing spree as long as he avoids unlucky misses. Niime is famous for joining with A rank staves as well. And hey, goofy Eclipse tricks too?! FE7 Nos went from 6 Weight (FE6) to 14 Weight (!!), and Canas's stat spread isn't that great. Still, goofy tricks like Luna offers some unique options. FE8... despite saying above that FE6 availability woes were more about characters than classes, it's just too big an issue here. Knoll joins late and underlevel with 0 Lck, Ewan requires some boss grinding. But I'm not even sure I'd be that hyped for Dark Mage even if Lute could be a Dark Mage; Anima is the magic type you want in FE8. The class's rating would be in the garbage but Summoner is admittedly very good for endgame / postgame if you grind your way up to that, albeit in a deeply unfun kind of "let me watch AI-controlled units fight each other" strategy. Giving FE10 a pass for obvious reasons. Pelleas is... okay for an Archsage on paper, but RD isn't known for being all that friendly to mages in general. Sorcs are basically the same class as Sages in FE11/FE12, at least based on a quick trip to the stats page. -1 Mag, +1 Def/Res, so... probably a little worse. But especially in FE11, a lot of enemies have garbage Resistance, so there's that at least. Sorcs are broken in Awakening. It's not just Nosferatu; Sorcs also get Waste at the lategame for when you really want to kill a boss now (and yeah, Celica's Gale exists if you farm Barracks events, but with much lower might and fewer weapon uses). While it's still half-healing, it turns out that's still enough, especially when Tharja (/class-changed Robin) can get fast enough to double consistently with it, using +Speed Pairups if required. Vengeance is funny for how even despite being half-healing, damage goes UP after taking damage which then allows for even more parasitic healing. But wait there's more: Sorcs also learn Tomebreaker at L15, which can be pretty handy (screws over Aversa, the reinforcement siege tome users in C21, various scary postgame threats, etc.). In Fates, Sorcs get just a single unique Dark Magic spell in Nosferatu, which has a flat "can't double" tag slapped on it along with 0 Crit / no skills. Your "default" dark mage in Nyx is also extremely frail to try to dissuade you from Nos-tanking the map. You can switch Leo over, but Dark Knight mobility can be pretty handy in Fates, so I don't think it's a great idea. This would all be adding up to an outright Bad class, but I'll stick it in Average because I know people have made Nos-tanking work anyway, generally with either a +Mag Corrin build or some customized kid like an Ophelia with a mage mom like Felicia or Orochi (Rev-only). Since you can't double, you just need absolutely every scrap of +Mag you can get to aim for OHKOs instead. (EDIT: Not just Nyx, Odin too! Yeah you can tell I class-changed him the one time I used him.) In Three Houses, well, the flexible class system at the Intermediate level means that strictly speaking, there's not really any significant difference between Dark Mage and Mage. +1/-1 stat here or there, who cares, it's a class with "can use Magic" and that's what's important. However, Mage has a very good reward for mastering the class in Fiendish Blow, and Dark Mage has an extremely, extremely niche reward in Poison Strike. And if you really want to use Poison Strike, it's actually not even at its best on mages in general (who should already be delivering plenty of damage), but rather on Bow Knights with low Str. So while not, strictly speaking, a bad class, it's pointless because the reward isn't that great. Dark Bishop goes beyond pointless and starts being actively terrible. Again, in theory, Fiendish Blow helps make up for not having Dark Tomefaire for Hubert or something. Except... you can just master Mage, and now DB having Fiendish Blow is a lot less compelling. For anyone not named Hubert, you either can't qualify because you're female, or you don't want to qualify because Warlock is strictly better offering more spell charges and more spell damage. Even Hubert is probably better off just being in Warlock. Sheesh.

@Shadow Mir: Have you ever actually built a Holy Knight? 3H is a long game so "no" is totally fine as a response. I agree that the limited uses of White Magic is an issue (incidentally, you asked about Aura vs. Abraxas before, and Aura having fully +50% more uses is part of why I'd rather have it than Abraxas), and giving Holy Knight some extra shots of Seraphim / some other White spell woulda been handy, but it's not like you can't use Black Magic in the class, or a Levin Sword for that matter. You'll miss out on Black Tomefaire, which is unfortunate, and you might have to spend a skill slot on Black Proficiency, but you won't truly "run out of gas" and be stuck with nothing. (And some Holy Knight candidates also have relevant magic-related Combat Arts, of course.)

Yeah, I put some stats in the old threads ( Etie thread , Alcryst thread ), but just to briefly go over a bit... if you are willing to give Lyn to your archer, then Etie is arguably the best user of it. But if not, and this is a reasonable thing to talk about (in the same way that part of why Seadall is good is that he isn't needy for Emblems and Panette makes good use of a "bad" Emblem in Leif, so the reverse case of really desperately wanting one of the best Emblems in the game)... Etie definitely looks a lot worse, as now she pays for her bad speed. I think it's also worth mentioning that Etie has the worst overall durability in the game. Not among archers, frailest among the entire cast. Sure, there are some physically frailer units like Hortensia, and there are some slower units like Louis, but Etie manages to combine horrible HP / Defense with bad speed and meh Resistance. And bad Build too which makes the speed even worse! At least Hortensia can be hard for enemies to double. Sure, if you really know what you're doing, Etie's fraility can be compensated for with careful play and the occasional Tonic, or the Draconic Time Crystal at worst. But this has to count for something. Etie is so, so much more likely to get one-rounded and die than your other options if you need to leave your archer in enemy range.

https://serenesforest.net/three-houses/classes/class-abilities-arts/ The column headers have "Ability 2" listed twice, rather than "Ability 1" / "Ability 2" / "Ability 3".

Shadow Mir's feelings on Dark/Holy Knight are well-known, yes. I agree with the Renning analogy on Holy Knight. If some prankster said "whoops I accidentally locked your Dark Knight into Holy Knight" it's too bad but it's not, like, tragic. If the same prankster changed an Assassin into a Swordmaster, that's substantially more troubling. On Awakening, I may admittedly be swayed by thinking of class judgments as being endgame / postgame weighted, because if you're using early Second Seals, it's for things like making Robin a Sorcerer or Dark Flier, making Panne a Wyvern, etc. By the time I want to juggle my staffer's classes, it's later in the game and they've built up sufficient Magic for decent-length Rescues, so I want 'em in Valkyrie if possible. Admittedly, in a "first half" approach, I think Valkyrie scores worse, as Maribelle / class-changed Lissa are both very frail and explodable to a sneeze.

To be sure, if you are Nos tanking everything, staff users aren't that important, but any other strategies tend to appreciate at least one or two staffers. If we're running a staffer, your options are Valkyrie, Sage, War Monk, Trickster, and Falcon Knight. FK is cool but generally learned by characters with physical stat spreads (your Cordelias). Of the rest, Valkyrie has the best movement and 2nd best Speed (behind Trickster), but can use Tomes rather than being stuck with Levin Swords like Trickster. That makes it pretty firmly the best long-term option for any staffer on the team, IMO. (Which is not THAT important in Awakening, sure, but it's something.)

I'm assuming this does not include Mage Knight / Dark Knight, but does include Fates Strategist and 3H Holy Knight. (And also does not include Engage Royal Knight, for all that this class may be off in its own special snowflake land... weird that a classical "Paladin" that is mostly physical but has healing shows up so rarely.) Very Good: 3H Valkyrie Good: FE6, FE7, FE8, Awakening, Fates, [3H overall] Average: FE9, FE10 Highly Situational, but decent in the rare situation it comes up: 3H Holy Knight -- All of the GBA Valks are fine. Clarine is very dodgy (especially with a Rutger support for a cool +15 Avoid) but runs an annoying risk of getting OHKO'd on Hard Mode. Cecilia is a backup staffer. Priscilla is generally considered better than Serra for your healer and is good for farming XP tactician rank. If you only care about beating the game rather than doing Lagdou, promoting Natasha to Valkyrie is probably a solid choice. L'Arachel loses a bunch of damage going to inferior Light tomes from Valk rather than MK, buuuut she keeps her healer XP boost in Valk which she doesn't in MK, and thus can catch up faster. And besides, if you're doing Lagdou, wouldn't hurt to have at least one wielder of Ivaldi if you're willing to do some grindanz. Mist is okay. FE9 has a reputation of having low damage enemies, but Mist is frail enough to be at risk of dying. Nevertheless, she's probably the better choice of long-term healer than Rhys given that Rhys is even frailer, slower, and with worse move. The Sonic Sword hype usually comes with the assumption she eats 2 Arms Scrolls, but what else are you using those on, anyway. She's pretty similar in RD, although her Str-based attacks really don't keep up there without some shenanigans. Awakening healers are pretty interchangeable, spamming Physic and Rescue from the backlines. Precisely because of this, you might as well stick them on horsies. Valk is definitely the long-term call for the likes of Lissa / post-game Emmeryn. The class is just fine in Fates. In particular, the Strategist L15 skill is pretty badass early in the game, which can be gotten quickly by Jakob / Felicia due to how their levelling works. Otherwise, similar to Awakening - stay in the backlines and use staves, except now it has the cool Inspiration Aura to help baiting units survive. Dwyer & Forrest are usable enough kids IMO, slotting into any spare support roles you need. 3H Valkyrie is pretty impressive. Range+ games are abusive combined with Canto, along with 3H not being very chokepointy. Certain Blow is a very cool skill. 3H Holy Knight is the odd one out of the bunch. In an absolute sense, it's fine - it's still Canto with "can use magic", just it competes very directly with Dark Knight and the devs didn't really carve out a proper niche for it. Really needed either Lancefaire or White Magic Uses x2 on it rather than #$%^& Terrain Resistance. It's also screwed over by many, many mages having only Nosferatu as their sole attack spell, or sometimes Nos + Abraxas when Abraxas is terrible. And your reward for mastering this is friggin' Defiant Res? That said, it's certainly still better than the actually bad classes of 3H like Swordmaster. It has some very niche use for M!Byleth running a Faith build (since he gets Aura, one of the decent spells, and WM Avo +20) or maybe Bernadetta doing Pass + Rescue shenanigans.

I hesitate to mention it because I know you have strong opinions here, but... Fates. Corrin (as a Nohrian / Hoshidan Noble) and Camilla are just plain good, albeit slightly cheating by having above-average stats in general which helps make a mixed build sing. However, it has merit even for characters not sporting busted stat spreads. Jakob, if left as a Butler, makes good use of both physical Shurikens/Daggers and the Flame Shuriken as a support unit for weakening enemies up while also having staff utility. If he can't hustle out a KO, that's fine, he's still applying debuffs. Also, Adventurers and Priestesses can make this work (well, in Conquest / Revelation; getting access to a Shining Bow in Birthright is annoying). Physical bows hit weakness on high-Res flyers like Falcon Knights (covering for Nina / Sakura / etc.'s low Strength), while the Shining Bow gets used on enemy Wyverns and random enemies. Now, this isn't to say it works everywhere; something like Swordmaster Odin with a Levin Sword is funny, but not exactly good. But I'd say Fates' mixed damage options are respectable, and certainly better than Engage's.

I think the combined chart is pretty good, overall. I'll agree with others in this thread though that Citrinne is underranked. (But I guess all the pro-Citrinne crowd turned up here?). My major differences is that I think both Céline and Clanne are overranked. Granted, not by a huge absolute degree, but given the clump in the 5-6 range, even being demoted by a single point is enough to put like 10 other characters above you. They're both trying to do mixed damage, and this is just not a thing Engage is particularly friendly toward - their damage will be so, so much worse than focused physical or mage bruisers. (And if you make Clanne a pure bruiser via early Second Seal shenanigans, he's one who comes online very late and requires special babying to catch up.) They're certainly usable, but not particularly good.

Unsure if this will be the roundup thread or if there'll be a further one after rerating, but just to post again from the Intermission thread, rounded values (which I think are somewhat more meaningful, as the decimals are often "noise" past a certain amount due to not enough raters): 9.5: Seadall 9: Chloé, Ivy, Panette 8.5: Kagetsu 8: Pandreo, Merrin 7.5: Alear, Hortensia, Louis 7: Fogado 6.5: Céline, Veyle, Goldmary, Framme 6: Lapis, Yunaka, Amber 5.5: Diamant, Alcryst, Citrinne, Zelkov 5: Vander, Mauvier, Clanne, Timerra, Lindon, Saphir, Rosado 4.5: Anna, Etie 4: Alfred 3.5: Jade, Boucheron 3: Jean 2: Bunet And the resulting TierMaker chart when rounding to the nearest entry (doesn't match above always) - thanks to Imuabicus for catching that Jean was missing before (the first result when googling for an Engage Tier Maker chart comes up with a list that doesn't include Lindon, Saphir, or Jean... sigh...):