SnowFire

If I ever do a 3rd (or maybe 4th?) playthrough of Engage, I plan on doing the Fell Xenologue ASAP and then running the Four (Three?) Winds + dragon kids the whole game to see how it pans out. But until then, can't really rate the DLC units short of just pure theorycraft. Maybe a single all-DLC thread? Anyway, the rankings, rounded to the nearest 0.5 (I think the extra decimals are probably superfluous): 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 The average score (of the rounded scores) is 6, so Framme & Lapis win the Most Average Award. Here's a variant with a Tiermaker chart (values are rounded to the nearest score, not truncated, so e.g. Kagetsu's 8.58 becomes a 9; higher rankings to the left):

I agree with those who think that the idea behind this series of threads seems to be more about ranking the class rather than the character, when possible. Of course, there's often hefty overlap, but given that people generally gave strong ratings to say Engage Wyvern Rider, which clearly can't be just about Rosado. This isn't a "rank Edelgard" thread, it's "rank Lord / Armored Lord / Emperor." Although the wide variety of different "Lord" classes makes it difficult to rank the game as a whole, of course... ...anyway, trying to keep the focus on class as much as possible... Broken: 3H Wyvern Master / Barbarossa, FE10 most Laguz Lords (if they even count??) Excellent: Fates Nohr Noble, Echoes Hero, FE8 Lords Very good: Fates Hoshidan Noble, Echoes Princess Good: Awakening Great Lord, Awakening Grandmaster, 3H Enlightened One, 3H High Lord / Great Lord, FE10 Vanguard, FE7 Great Lord, Engage Divine Dragon, FE10 Queen (if this even counts?? Elincia is a Lord in like 2 chapters...) Average: FE9 Lord, FE7 Knight Lord, FE10 Light Priestess Meh: FE7 Blade Lord, FE6 Lord, FE11/12 Lord Pointless: 3H Lord, 3H Armored Lord / Emperor -- Random comments: Marth / Roy / Lyn's class isn't that great. They make up for it in some other ways, especially with late-breaking weapons (how much to hype up Prfs as part of a class?), but the class itself isn't super special. Eliwood, while worse in other ways, has a mobile class at least, and Eph / Eirika will be both mobile and deadly in FE8. Hector's Great Lord is decent. Ike's classes are swingy based on whether you give credit for Ragnell to the class itself as a Prf or to Ike. Great Lord in Awakening offers some key skills, but if you have room, it often makes sense for Chrom to go to Paladin afterward for more mobility or Lucina to some class unlocked by her mom. Increased proc rate is especially handy in the aftergame to get to very reliable 90%+ dual strikes and Rightful King skill procs. Veteran-powered fast leveling helps Tactician/Grandmaster get to Rally Spectrum, but strictly speaking Robin should probably go Sorcerer eventually as the power mage-class in Awakening. A lot of people hype up class-changing Corrin in Fates, and there certainly are some powerful things to do there, but... the base promotions are just fine. While the Fates Dragonstone has a reputation as falling off, I find that having a really tanky frontliner maintains value even when the offense drops. Draconic Hex is really badass for weakening up powerful enemies. And Hoshidan Noble's random staff utility is helpful, too. Alm's class having a Prf Sword AND the ability to shoot bows and being really tanky is just amazing. Celica's priestess is still very good too, just mortal in a game where Lord death = game over without resorting to the Turnwheel. 3H Lord isn't bad, precisely, just pointless because Intermediate classes without Canto don't differ very much from each other, but the mastery skill sucks. If Lord had a good mastery skill, it'd be a different story. Claude's unique class is totally badass, Dimitri's is okay, Edelgard's is... just make her a Warrior instead if you don't want to do Wyvern Lord. Divine Dragon in Engage is fine, but nothing that special. Main advantage is the Dragon typing, of course, which enables various cool unique Emblem bonuses, but it's basic ground-pounding combat otherwise.

If you had trouble with Echoes Hard Mode, then no shame in playing Path of Radiance on Normal. The differences between Normal & Hard in FE9 aren't that big anyway. Just be careful with your healers (Rhys / Mist). Radiant Dawn, on the other hand, I'd encourage you to play Normal (which is really JP Hard), unless you found FE9 Normal really gave you trouble. You can Battle Save at the start of every single turn, which is pretty close to a soft Casual mode as you can just reload a single turn's worth of actions if something goes pear-shaped. Note that if accepting casualties is psychically painful (fair, and good!), then the barracks is a safe place for lowbies to hide - RD is very much a game where you don't need or want to try to build every lowbie character. Totally fine to bench the likes of Edward (a squishy low-level Myrmidon) rather than try to build him.

Whisky: Shoulda clarified - "No Second Seals, baseline promotions," so excluding Emblem-granted proficiencies. For all that I think Wyvern is a mistake for Chloe anyway - she has a good Magic growth so getting her Staves from Griffin + Flame Lance is better than marginally more Strength. For Cormag, I'd rank his two routes equally. I don't think it's worth getting TOO in the weeds of FE8 tier list type stuff because it's generally agreed that the game isn't that hard even on Hard mode, which means everyone is viable and blends into an Average-tier mass. (Usual reminder that "Average" is not "bad"... we've just been ranking some incredibly good classes lately in Dancers / Fliers.) By the time Cormag joins, you could already have a monster Vanessa rolling through (even excluding Seth cheese!) or a decent Tana. Mentioned it on the Pegasus Knight thread, but I don't find flying utility quite as helpful in FE8 as some other games in the series. Lots of enemies that just politely stand around waiting to get baited without too much need to hurry up, barring stuff like the hatching Gorgon eggs map.

On Metodey: I think that the debate here is basically quibbling. Suppose Metodey was a rank-and-file Imperial soldier. Well, real armies have assholes in them too, even real armies that are incredibly well-run and ethical. That's just reflecting reality in the same way that Shinon serves as the obligatory jerk in Ike's band, so it's not *that bad*. Flip side, suppose Metodey was an Imperial mercenary, or a mercenary specifically hired by Arundel. I don't see how this makes it that *good* either, or lets Edelgard off the hook. She's still working with him. It'd be like explaining that it's okay, your brother was killed by some private contractors working with our army, not the regulars. Gee thanks, that doesn't change much at all. Of course this ends up really going back to Edelgard's choice of allies from before. From what little we know of Metodey, he somehow isn't worse than the actual Slitherers, whose ideology seems to be some sort of mass cleansing of the "beasts". So... just another case of being willing to work with evil forces for a greater good, make of it what you will. On earlier debates: I said when I peeked into the early version of this thread that I'd try to avoid getting sucked into was-Edelgard-right debates, but there was some chatter about actual history before, and I suppose I'll throw in my two cents there. Zapp's example of Iran is a weird one about America backing theocrats - that did happen sometimes, notably in neighboring Pakistan in the 80s.... but Iran isn't a great example. The Shah actively pissed the mullahs off, which is the biggest reason why he eventually fell. He was pro-modernization (by regional standards) and had comparatively forward stances on things like woman's rights compared to what the mullahs would have liked. That said, I do think the 20th century Middle East is kind of interesting if you're looking for analogues to what Edelgard was up to. I think Kusikhara summarized CF as "military rule" in one of those interviews, and that certainly has happened in real life. If you want a successful one, look at Ataturk in Turkey. He won legitimacy on the battlefield in WWI, then lead a rebellion that kicked the Allies out of Turkey at a time when the old Ottoman government was basically helpless and occupied. An underdog battle right out of Fire Emblem where he wins the war after the state has already lost the war and unifies the country. But he was also a secularist, and despised the old Sultanate for being weak, and abolished it. He reformed the Turkish alphabet & education system which led to an amazing leap in literacy, put competent people in charge, and swept the crimes of the Ottomans under the rug like the genocides and such in his own Rhea-like history rewriting. Even after he died, secular military types routinely overthrew any government that was too Islamist for taste in the 20th century, and... it actually worked. Yes, really. It was the "good" version of Coups For The Greater Good. Turkey's standard of living was *way* higher than the rest of the Middle East. (Of course, Erdogan would eventually get elected, accuse the military of a coup they may not have actually done, then used it as an excuse for a self-coup that purged all the old secularist types... unfortunately... but that was a more recent development. The system Ataturk setup worked well for 80 years.) Of course, the "bad" example is like... the entire rest of the Middle East. I already mentioned Iran above, but make no mistake, the shah of Iran was a murderous dictator even if a forward-thinking one, and was overthrown eventually. Syria & Iraq had fairly secularist dictators who sought to check the power of religion (yeah, yeah, the Assads are Alawites, but they're like a 10% minority in Syria, so they're interested in checking the majority Sunnis) and did so with lots of massacres and left unpleasant and poor countries. Egypt had its own problems and Nasserism ended up a bust that left Islamism more popular in the 1980s than it was in the 1950s. Jordan's managed to stumble through, but this may have been just sheer luck, and they certainly didn't do as well as Turkey. (You can read more on this at https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/the-death-of-arab-secularism-1.589937 if you're curious.) Basically, can it work after the credits roll? Yes, you can imagine post-CF Fodlan taking some sort of Turkey-style path. But you can also easily imagine Fodlan ending up like Egypt instead, with the Seiros Sisterhood constantly plotting overthrow of the government and positioning itself as the popular vehicle for any unhappiness, and the government growing corrupt.

As a slight nitpick, if rating DLC units, I think it's fair to also allow DLC rings (well, bracelets technically), Rule 3 in the guidelines. If you have access to Nel, you definitely have access to Edelgard / Dimitri / Claude at minimum and for free basically, and possibly more. (Although the DLC maps generally being harder than the regular game makes it weird, granted, since if you could already beat the DLC Emblem join map, you're clearly capable of taking on the rest of the game...)

Amazing: Three Houses, Path of Radiance, Shadow Dragon / New Mystery (if counting the full Peg-> Dracoknight) Very good: Radiant Dawn, Fates, Binding Blade, Engage Good: Awakening, Blazing Blade Average: Sacred Stones -- Three Houses is wyvern-premacy for reasons discussed before. I used to think that at least WL's balance was mildly offset by skill requirements, but Serenes Forest taught me that Wyvern Rider is actually incredibly generous to get into, even if you wait until 100% qualification chance, and will set up WL requirements just fine. But... it's pretty crazy when perma-dismounted Wyvern Lord is probably a better class than Warrior. Just insane stats, an Avoid boost in a game where Avoid boosts are very good, Axefaire when Axes are good, combat Canto and super-range. Path of Radiance Jill will turn out a bit better than Marcia by the second half, but joins later and has a worse start. But whatever. Still a godlike unit. Haar is solid filler for the short time he exists. FE11/12 were covered before (although weird to rank... would we be only ranking the time spent promoted?). As a mild note, FE12 Dracoknight has an annoyingly low Speed stat cap that sabotages its performance at the very endgame some... but oh well, you'll just have to settle for super performance over only 80% of the game. It feels weird not sticking Radiant Dawn in top tier, when Haar / Jill get such hype (and they can even carry around an A-support backpack for free if they equip Savior - Adjutanting before Adjuatants?!). It's just that it's Radiant Dawn, a game that also hands you nigh-immortal endgame-ready units in the Laguz Lords, which kinda wreck the curve for everyone else. (Also, Jill can have a bit of a rocky start before she gets rolling.) Fates Wyvern Riders are really good, even if we hypothetically exclude Malig Knight for some sort of Dark Flier category. It's not just Camilla being good, either; switching other characters into the Wyvern line is totally legit like Xander. Their skills are all pretty solid. Scarlet has some nice utility in Birthright (e.g. immune to the gimmick in Leo's swamp map). Even Beruka, the weakest native Wyvern Rider, is just totally usable and fine. Binding Blade is swingy based on if the Hard Mode bonuses are baked in. Miredy's fine even on Normal, though. Engage is a little weird to rate. Rosado is not that special - he's usable, sure, but joins lateish and with some sort of Nino / Est growth pattern. So a mere Average performance if you're playing with no Second Seals. That said, if you're allowing Second Seals, sticking Kagetsu / etc. on a Wyvern takes any ol' good physical beater and gives them much better range and flying utility in a game that really rewards that at times. So the value shoots way up then. Cherche & Gerome are solid in Awakening and tend to be able to go for goofy omni-breaker setups in the postgame if you care. Pair-up flying taxies are still a thing, but the Wyvern line misses the mighty Galeforce, and obviously aren't doing Nosferatu cheeze either, and can't quite get to the screw-you Defense values of Manaketes / Generals. So very good if playing fair, but misses three of the major "meta" Awakening strategies. Heath is... fine. He's fine. Like most Blazing Blade characters, you can give him Iote's Shield and a Javelin and rain some destruction down if you level him up enough, although the availability is worse than the Lowens of the world of course. Sacred Stones Cormag is less good. Usable, hence "Average" not "Bad", but he definitely feels like the most restrained we see of the Wyvern class line.

Lvl. 20/20 Warrior Anna: 57 HP, 25 Str, 20 Mag, 31 Dex, 30 Spd, 14 Def, 21 Res, 19 Lck, 11 Bld, 5 Move Technically, Anna can promote to Berserker too out of the box, except this would be really dumb. You're using Anna's great magic growth and settling for Hurricane Axe as the sole way to use it? Might as well use the Bow talent to grab a Radiant Bow in Warrior, and pick any other physical growths unit for a Berserker if you want one. (For all that it is annoyingly heavy - she's still weighed down by 1 even at endgame by it.) -- Anna is Engage's growth character that can pay off, at least, more so than Jean. I don't think she needs Micaiah to get levels if you're careful, although she absolutely does want an early promotion & probably a Second Seal, and likes Micaiah anyway. Now, Mage Knight is a good class, so it's not breaking news if someone makes a good Mage Knight, but... Anna makes a good Mage Knight. She's got that combination of Speed and Magic to create a character who really, really hurts once she gets rolling, and her passive can be a cute quirk too come the second half of the game. You can also make her a serviceable Sage if you want Staffs for that period when Micaiah is MIA. You can also have her be inverse Clanne; while Clanne had physical growths in mage-y classes, Anna has magical growths in physical classes. Her default Warrior build can absolutely work, especially on Hard mode, where she's threatening both Def & Res as required. Tends to have less raw killing power than Mage Knight or Sage, although giving her a smidge of durability is appreciated I suppose. I suppose you could go Griffin Knight as well for a hybrid option, although Flame Lance isn't really that great. While this is workable, I didn't give Clanne or Celine a particularly high rating due to the woes hybrid builds run into on Maddening with dealing enough damage, so I'd definitely consider this the "backup" build. Overall, I'll say 5/10, but a friendly 5/10. If you want to pick a character to give some favoritism too, Anna is a very solid choice, as an early joiner with a relevant passive. If you can get a built Anna into the second half of the game, her powerful magic doubles (whether with Elfire / Bolganone or a Radiant Bow) will wreck some stuff, so there is payoff for the slow start.

I think people have basically covered the points adequetely. I'll just expand on a few. Short version: Top Tier: Path of Radiance, Shadow Dragon, New Mystery, Three Houses Excellent: Engage, Blazing Blade, Awakening-if-counting-Dark-Flier Good: Echoes, Sacred Stones, Awakening-restricted-to-Falcon-Knight Average: Binding Blade, Radiant Dawn For 3H, I feel like Wyvern Lord is doing its usual thing of messing with perceptions - even if WL is a *little* better than Falcon Knight, I feel it's like comparing FE9 Cavs & Fliers, it's not by enough to care. And the strong performance of Intermediate Pegasus Knight still carries the overall class to a top tier rank - I definitely just left Ingrid in Pegasus Knight through Advanced tier, it was fine. New Mystery map design just loves favoring fliers. Lots of chasing after stuff, scary reinforcements, terrain getting in the way, etc. And as noted, SD Pegs can carry forged Wing Spears / Ridersbanes that kill most enemies regardless of the stats of the holder. While it's acquired fairly late (short of DLC grinding), Galeforce is such a centralizing skill in Awakening that any class that offers it gets a look. Even ignoring GF, though, flying Pair-Up taxis are great, although a lot of enemies have bows (notably including enemy Assassins, a fairly common enemy type). For Echoes, the class has some issues in a vacuum as seen by Clair's woes at dealing damage in Alm route (or FK!Faye), but are hard-carried by Celica map design featuring hordes of Terrors for Anti-Terrors to work against and big swamps to fly over. They're still a good class thanks to that. I feel like I'm being a little unfair to Radiant Dawn flyers, as they're... fine, especially with how many people will play the game with trying to let the lesser units catch up and level-up. But objectively speaking, by the time you hit Act 4, you also have nonsense like near-unkillable Laguz lords, or potentially unkillable Dracoknights. Sure, Sigrun & Elincia will put in some good work, but it's harder to stand out against the power creep.

Jean, like Anna, is unusual in having two class upgrade options out of the box, no need for Emblems. 20/20 Martial Master 46 HP, 22 Str, 28 Mag, 23 Dex, 22 Spd, 26 Def, 34 Res, 21 Lck, 8 Bld, 5 Move 20/20 High Priest 42 HP, 15 Str, 33 Mag, 25 Dex, 25 Spd, 19 Def, 39 Res, 30 Lck, 6 Bld, 5 Move Note that Martial Master only does +1 damage compared to High Priest when punching people out (50 combined vs. 48 combined, cut in half to 25/24, although 2x hits means +2 damage when initiating), although Martial Master can run Flashing Fist Art to fix his Speed some (at the cost of tanking some durability). -- As others have said, I like the idea of Expertise. It makes Jean more of a focused "do something really good" compared to Aptitude's "become an overall stat monster". Additionally, I wouldn't totally discount the fact that Jean simply has Staves early when there is very little competition for Staff-users (i.e. pre-Pandreo in C12). If Framme died, then Jean IS your backup, until you early promote Celine / Chloe / Citrinne or the like. And running two staff-users can be absolutely legitimate. This ensures a certain baseline competence. Qi Adept's Chain Guard ability works fine even with low-level units, too, as long as you keep Jean himself out of threat range. All that said... while Jean makes an interesting project PC, he's ultimately not THAT worthwhile. He just never really blossoms into some ultimate stat badass by endgame, leaving a unit that requires babying and catch-up for a questionable reward. Engage doesn't shower you with so many PCs that simply having cannon fodder in a Classic Ironman run can be handy, but he's definitely not really a power choice right off. End result is 3/10. Early join saves him from the true dregs like Bunet / Jade, but not that great. I do have one suggestion here: since he starts at Level 1, and getting good damage from Arts requires high-stats all around, he does make a good pair with DLC Emblem Tiki. The DLC / patches handed out some super-cheaty skill scrolls, too, so you can just insta-learn Starsphere if you don't want to actually equip him with Emblem Tiki. Add an extra +15% growths to all Jean's stats, and he starts to look a lot more tempting, and you can even argue he does something that other characters don't in letting you maximize your level-ups with Starsphere equipped. (This is CHEATING, but hey.)

Lvl. 20 Royal Knight Mauvier 57 HP, 25 Str, 27 Mag, 29 Dex, 26 Spd, 30 Def, 29 Res, 18 Lck, 12 Bld, 6 Move Mauvier doesn't have an internal level in the data dump, but manual testing seems to suggest it's as if he promoted at L20, meaning a default endgame level of */20. -- Mauvier is solid. As noted already, the game gives you an extra slot just for him (thus making low availability arguments a bit less potent), and he's appropriately leveled and a general all-rounder. Royal Knight isn't considered a particularly good class, but he's fine in it. Make him a Griffin Knight for +4 Spd and better mobility, or a Sage for +4 Magic. It's all good. To be sure, if you have plenty of staffers already, you can just slot in Saphir / Goldmary / Rosado instead for more of a physical focus. 6/10.

I feel like there's almost two ratings here - how good each Dancer is on pure merits, and how good they are within the context of the game. I'm mostly going by the second here, so a "boring" dancer that is extremely relevant is better than a busted but unnecessary dancer. Engage - Seadall isn't THAT special in isolation, but... see the Engage rank-the-characters thread on him, for various reasons he ends up the most important character in the PC cast by a healthy margin. Notably, he doesn't really need in-demand Emblems; he's in the same game as Emblem Byleth, which allows very busted plays; he can learn Canter (or possibly some other degenerate skill); he can Dance for Engage'd characters and get more actions out of an Engage'd Emblem, notably Corrin for multiple waves of Dreadful Aura / Draconic Hex / etc., but also just "the character who hurts the boss the most." Radiant Dawn - Rafiel gets a 4x Dance...? Okay then. Reyson & Leanne have Canto'd Dance which is also very nice. The only "problem" is just that Radiant Dawn has a reputation as an enemy-phase centric game, so if your strategy is something like "Drive Dracoknight Haar / Jill into the middle of a bunch of enemies, listen to a bunch of buzzsaw whirring noises", then Dancers don't matter that much. Path of Radiance - Reyson flies, has Canto, and sometimes offers a 4x Dancer which is extremely busted. Same issue as above about PoR being a bit enemy-phase centric though. Three Houses - Given how strong dodgetanking is in this game - a strategy that get proportionately better in Maddening because it's affected less - if Dancer only offered Sword Avo +20, I'd be interested. But letting the character also be an infantry mage, so they can do things like have linked attacks with Meteor/Bolting for the like of Dorothea / Hilda? I'm down. Fates - While still frail, Azura is a marked improvement on Olivia, being fast and strong at least. Also, Conquest has much "fairer" map design than Awakening, meaning that it's much easier to keep Azura safe if you play tightly. Even has a mildly useful passive vs. Vallites in Foreign Princess, which comes up a lot in Revelation. New Mystery of the Emblem - Phina / Feena dies pretty easily, but this is a game where both on her join map and a few other maps have fun mechanics like "chase after escaping Thieves carrying items you need to get if you want the Good ending" or "kill the boss ASAP or deal with hordes of ninja reinforcements." It's pretty player-phase focused, too, so dancing a Sniper to get a second shot can be handy. So... turns out okay anyway. (Slightly hurt by competition with the Dance-staff, but charges are rare for that.) Blazing Blade - The ability to turn a unit into a nuke briefly is cool, even if you're still usually doing vanilla dances. Game can be a bit enemy-phase focused which devalues dancers some though. Binding Blade, Sacred Stones - Very, very vanilla Dancers. Awakening - This has to be one of the worst showings for Dancers of all time. At endgame (& postgame), other units can replicate the effect with Galeforce. Olivia is extremely frail and in a game that has ninja reinforcements, so using her safely means really knowing your reinforcement timings and locations. You don't really want to pair Olivia up, either, since it'd mean whoever is the other side of the pair isn't really doing anything while she dances, and her stat boosts and linked attacks aren't great if she's the backup side of the pair. Despite all this, she has some purpose in that if you're doing some sort of fast boss rush clear in the second half of the game on Lunatic, merely having her hide in half of a Pair-up so she can dance the Galeforcing flyer on the way to the boss since you have no plans of surviving all the reinforcements. N/A - I'm not considering Cleric Faye in Echoes an honorary Dancer here. Anew is learned way too late, it's basically post-game only. Sorry!

Lvl. 20 Warrior Saphir: 65 HP, 31 Str, 2 Mag, 28 Dex, 25 Spd, 24 Def, 10 Res, 18 Lck, 17 Bld, 5 Move That's a lot of HP. Abysmal Resistance, though (better than only Amber? Worse than even Louis?). -- Physical filler, yep. Warrior is a good class, at least, with the 3-range Chain attacks and respectable Str. Allergic to magic which is definitely a weakness for a front-liner, though. Combination of decent Str & average Spd means she can both go for doubles vs. the slow and Smash weapon one-shots vs. the fast. I'm not sure why you'd do this given that there's not that much game left, but you could hypothetically do some sort of weird Panette-style build with Saphir where your reward for going to low Health and turning on Wrath is +20 Hit rather than more Crit, theoretically making Vantage strats more reliable if you had some sort of low-accuracy, high-crit weapon (a Killer Axe?). Given that this turns on later and is probably worse, it's questionable, but it's something she is better at than units whose passives are a blank on this, so it's something. In general, if you need last-second filler, I'd probably suggest Goldmary or Lindon over Saphir. But it's not like she's a bad choice, exactly. 4/10 it is, can be a 5/10 if you don't ding her for the low availability at all.

A) See lenticular & Elf's comments. As lenticular notes, you can backfill Brigand or Archer masteries quickly if desired with some Adjutanting with a Knowledge Ring on. And per Elf, Stride can make cavalry *more* dominant, as they make better use of extreme move range thanks to Canto. B ) A friend of mine got Move +1 on Dancer Dimitri before White Clouds finished, and this was on Maddening (less skill XP from training) and before the Sauna existed IIRC. Which is important since Dimitri can't train for a bit post-timeskip. If you personally can't get Move +1 quickly enough to matter, that's fine, but it can be done by others.

gnip: As sam indicated, it's more about the gap between Cavs/Paladins and everyone else. If you think Marcia / Jill are slightly better than Oscar/Kieran, that's cool, but I think it's generally agreed they're at least at a similar tier level. But Canto units are wildly better than almost any foot-mounted combat units barring, maybe, Ike-with-Ragnell-and-Earth-Supports. The single easiest way to up the challenge of a FE9 hard mode playthrough is to bench every unit with Canto instantly while also trying to complete chapters promptly for BEXP. (Well, maybe not right away - Chapter 6 is pretty well impossible to complete quickly without Titania abuse.) That isn't as true of other games - like, FE6 without Cavaliers will be a bit sloggier, but not that different ultimately (if we spot ourselves some Marcus chipping in Chapters 1 & 2 on Hard Mode). In general: Just to talk a bit more about 3H Cavaliers (cavs specifically, i.e. the Intermediate class). Lance-users probably grabbed Reposition at the Beginner level, which for those who've played FE Heroes know is amazing, and it's even better with Canto & high move. Chapter 6 has a time limit and some long corridors where if you're trying to get all the treasure, or kill everyone in time because you have trouble with the DK, where having some high-mobility characters is great. Chapter 7 has a soft time limit in that if you charge in quickly, you can reduce the number of kills the other team gets, making it less likely the big stat boost reward for killing units kicks in. Chapter 8 ALSO rewards high-mobility units - admittedly, Pegasi are probably more important here due to obstructions they fly over, but Cavalier is still very good and can help Repo other units while still moving to get to the villagers ASAP. (And is your only option for, say, Dimitri / Sylvain / Ferdinand, who aren't going Pegasus.) Chapter 9 is generally pretty easy, especially if you've been doing any Paralogues, but again has a soft time-limit mechanic that rewards you for moving quickly. And a number of those Paralogues also reward quick movement - if you're doing Felix's paralogue, say, moving quickly to get to Rodrigue is helpful (for all that flyers are even better, yes, but you take what you can get), given that he's very likely to die on turn 2 if you take it slow. Basically, running Cavalier will make a bunch of White Clouds missions substantially easier and get you a pile of Horsie Skill XP to trade in for Move +1 eventually, in exchange for, what, -1 Speed or so at endgame? Maybe -2 Speed if you were going to use Thief instead? Oh noes. A very good trade, IMO.

I'm sure this was done with good faith, but regardless of the intent, this is essentially flamebait. Imagine a debating club where people share opinions, sometimes strongly. And some of the debaters don't agree on terms, or are overly nitpicky about something, or are just wrong. That's debate! It's healthy. The undercurrent of the OP's post is essentially "Everyone else is Doing It Wrong, why don't you fix your problems by agreeing to my terms instead." That's a tad insulting, frankly. If you disagree, that's cool! State your case. People's opinions do change over time, and have - 2004 Fire Emblem opinions are not 2010 FE opinions are not 2018 FE opinions are not 2023 FE opinions. But this seems to be going up a meta-level, and treating the disagreement like it's a "problem" rather than just, that's how discussion on the Internet works. There is no problem and nothing to "fix" here. You are free to go into any FE discussion and talk about how you don't consider efficiency that important - and that's fine! But going in and telling everyone "Hey you've been arguing wrong, you need to build unit performance charts according to my specs", and... no. There will NEVER be a "proper resolution" to FE debates, nor is one desirable if it could be achieved. If everyone hates Unit X and one person comes along and loves Unit X, that's great - that's the whole point of these discussions. We're not gonna say "Sorry this point has been settled, Ewan is officially a mere D-class unit" if someone shows up talking about how Summoner wrecked Lagdou for them. It's also very weird seeing the OP act as if the existing standards are "too strict" , when they totally aren't and the OP's new guidelines are far stricter. Sometimes areas of the Internet have a bit of a hivemind, but I can't think of any "exclusionary" FE groups, and if you're in one, then you should just leave it. Bad And Wrong Opinions are welcome at every FE discussion I see, which is good because otherwise it's not a discussion, it's a group essay or something. (If I have one complaint I would make about Reddit, it's that a subset of people cannot resist using downvote for "I disagree" rather than "This is off-topic / flamebait" - but that's not a problem with FE discussions, but rather Reddit software.)

20/2 Sage Lindon: 48 HP, 12 Str, 28 Mag, 26 Dex, 25 Spd, 16 Def, 32 Res, 13 Lck, 12 Bld, 5 Move That Build means he can heft even heavy tomes just fine, although that might turn off his personal skill if you care. Makes it so that despite being a tad slower than Celine, he's probably about as fast in practice. -- I think everyone else has covered it pretty well. He's filler for Classic playthroughs, being able to slot in respectably for anyone missing. If you invest in him a little, he can have a goofy magical Panette crit build (Elsurge, your Crit option, having just 1 range is unfortunate, though) and has the SP to spend to turn it on essentially immediately, which is cool, although given that you need some second bananas, just having a staffer who can also poke with Elthunder and Draconic Hex is totally valid. 5/10, could be convinced for 6/10 if you really invest in him although there's not a ton of game left if you do so.

Very belated reply: Hmm. If an Awakening-like sequel was ever made, there's one aspect I'd really want them to do, but strongly suspect they wouldn't given their inclinations, but would almost rather them not do it all then do it without this. And that's the general technological level of the setting. If we did the far future of Fodlan, it needs to be notably different tech - doesn't have to mirror real human civilization precisely, but don't just have Renaissance-without-guns again. In actual Awakening, the tech level seems flat, or even gone into reverse, compared to what existed in the time of Marth. The Falchion is still just as important a super-weapon with no progression or differences in warfare despite the progression of a 1,000 years (well, aside from the discovery of fighting in pairs). This is depressing, but it's also not out of theme or anything - it's a "Here it is again, but better!" nostalgia call, and disrupting the setting a bunch would work against it. However, one of the elements in Three Houses is that the world has been in stasis for 1,000 years, and further that this is bad. This was especially drilled in with the addition of the Shadow Library in the DLC, which talked about how Agarthan advanced technology was suppressed, presumably to prevent a repeat of the Zanado incident or the very VERY old war at all (i.e. even before Seiros, when the Agarthans were at their height - the Agarthans were already a shadowy underworld 1,000 years ago). All of the routes - yes, including Dimitri's and even Silver Snow - have moving forward and letting the past go being a direct theme. Given that, having roughly the same tech / social level would be really depressing, since it'd mean that all of the Lords failed in some sense. (Or that the sequel isn't that far in the future, of course.) Basically, if we go 200 years+ into the future, let's see some Industrial Revolution Fodlan, or Edwardian Fodlan, or even Cyberpunk Fodlan. Don't have Paladins riding around on horses poking people with lances, still.

Game-breaking 1. FE9 - Nothing needs to be said here. Titania, Oscar, Kieran, etc. are all godlike units. I don't recall anti-cav weapons being THAT common either (and they're inaccurate meaning they won't hit an Earth-Supported Oscar anyway). Excellent 2. FE7 - Especially if you do Lyn mode first (which most players do), Kent & Sain with a Javelin can solo the game if you want. If you care about rank, high move helps you complete chapters quickly. And even if you just care about beating the game, high move is handy for stuff like saving Zephiel. Cav weakness is just 2x in US FE7, too. Helped by FE7's fliers having some weaknesses rather than the gods they are in some games. 3. FE8 - Seth is obviously bananas, but that's Seth being good moreso than the class. But otherwise, usual Javelin destruction hype. I don't feel FE8 pressures you on movement all THAT often, although it certainly comes up (hatching Gorgon eggs map, e.g.), so a bit worse than FE7 on that front. I think Paladin is indeed probably Amelia's best class - the stat boost from General isn't really enough IMO unless you're also saccing the Boots for her. Good 4. Three Houses - Cavalier & Paladin are good classes! Mobility is VERY handy in 3H for all sorts of builds, leaving infantry in the dust a lot. The only reason Cavs are merely in Good is solely because 3H includes the even more busted Wyvern-line, which does something similar-but-better for many characters, but the existence of a +99 Sword doesn't mean the +97 Sword sucks. The speed penalty is annoying but not actually THAT bad, especially on Maddening - you can set up for OHKOs anyway with Swift Strikes or a Brave Lance making the speed just not that important. 5. FE10 - Stat caps are low enough that they have a notable hole compared to FE9. Gold Knights cap at 32 Spd IIRC? And they're competing with RD nonsense in the Tower. Fiona also sucks for Dawn Brigade maps. Geofrey is good although his map seems designed around him being able to solo it so idk how much credit he gets there. And while the Greil Merc Paladins are certainly good, the Greil Mercs can crush with a lot of options. Solid but not game-breaking. 6. New Mystery of the Emblem - Luke I recall being good, although stat caps are strict in this game. High mobility is nice since the difference between high and low move characters can be pretty stark. 7. FE6 - Usable enough, and FE6 has annoyingly big maps, for all that it doesn't tend to pressure you to move fast all that often. HM late-recruited Perceval is badass as usual. Meh 8. Fates - Silas & Peri aren't bad or anything, just Fates does have some scary stat-check bosses and so the mild stat hit is notable. That said, Cavalier taxis are helpful in a system with Pair-up. Xander is busted but is busted in a lot of classes. 9. Awakening - Anybody is usable in Awakening, but it's definitely a game where I prefer flyers as taxi units, since they can always just switch to the other unit if archers are around, and fliers get busted stuff like Galeforce and Lancefaire. 10. Shadow Dragon - I don't really recall SD well enough to say for sure, but I guess high move does help in races to block forts? Usable I suppose. Bad 11. Echoes - The class balance in Echoes is actually pretty good, but I feel Gold Knight is probably the second-worst line after Baron. It just doesn't have any tricks other than high move. making it the most replaceable. Flat can't move through watery terrain, which comes up sometimes. If you are XP-focusing than just having a single super-unit charging ahead and letting enemies kill themselves against it, then sure, GK has a purpose, I suppose, but meh. (And yes, I say this despite the high hype for FE7 units being able to do something similar, but that's in a game where that's what every unit does rather than all the cool stuff other Echoes class lines have, like high range.) Very few people hype turning Villagers into Gold Knights, for example. And the usual mobility edge is dulled when Dread Fighters have 7 move, better speed, and a really useful passive in the magic-damage halving. 12. Engage - Not a very useful passive, only +1 move vs. infantry, just one weapon type, not particularly impressive stats. The +1 move is still handy, of course, so not totally useless, but definitely a bottom-half class. The score would go up if Great Knights are included, of course.

Sure. So just... don't maintain it, then. That's what I was getting at with the hypothetical 50% trigger, you don't need it up constantly for it to pay off. Or hell, say the uptime is only 25%. Even if we're being really lackadaisical about staying at full health, Brave Assist is competing with stuff like Berserker's ability to smash foes two tiles (... that you didn't already kill with a Smash weapon...?) or Swordmaster's Run Through (that lets you put your SM even more in danger at the end of their move...?) that are just useless. Of course, if the uptime is truly bad enough, then Warrior starts getting hype as having an actually useful passive, but point is, even unreliable Brave Assist is still one of the better class passive skills.

I disagree with the premise here. This sounds like the explanation you'd come across in a Star Trek show where magic isn't real, but super sci-fi tech is real, so the local witch doctor's "healing staff" is unknowingly a primitive version of a medical tricorder accidentally deposited by a Federation ship 100 years ago, and the rituals and chanting just happen to include the activation code. In that case, sure, it's stimulating unnatural cell growth. ...but that's not the case. Magic IS real. So magic is just creating the new cells, fixing the damage, creating new blood, etc. That's assuming "cells" are even real in-setting at all - nobody has microscopes until the 1600s, so it's not a concept that is necessarily known to be true given Renaissance levels of knowledge. Put things another way, there's various naturalistic "explanations" of magical ancient stories. Unusual winds parted the Sea of Reeds which becomes God parting the Red Sea, a woman with 14 kids tragically has most/all of them all die of disease which becomes Apollo and Artemis handing down a twisted punishment, the war between the Aesir and the Vanir was really just two Germanic tribes with slightly different sets of gods ceasing their warring and agreeing to revere a unified pantheon, Achilles was just really badass / lucky, etc. But... the Fire Emblem world isn't one of naturalistic post-hoc explanations. God Really Did part the Red Sea by divine miracle, Niobe's kids were shot by Apollo & Artemis's arrows rather than sickened by some contagious disease, the Aesir and Vanir themselves really did have a war and then a peace treaty, Achilles avoided death despite bravery in battle because he was literally (mostly) invincible thanks to his mom dipping him in the river Styx. So... a healing staff isn't doing something naturalistic, it's actually just channeling magic powers. The bigger issue is just that magic is inconsistent. Magic can heal wounds, and sufficiently badass magic can even do things like resurrect the dead (e.g. the Echoes explanation of Awakening Risen as being a twisted science experiment using insects and divine dragon blood), but magic can't cure old age? Except when it can, like with Athos / Brammimond? And if you're invoking divine power directly, then for FE settings with "interventionist" gods, you get smacked with the "Problem of Evil" pretty hard where you start asking why Naga is such a jerk. Ah well.

I'll keep this brief because I strongly disagreed with you on the Ferdinand case too, but... think of it this way. Brave Assist (or Confidence) aren't like the Devil Axe, where the fail state is terrible. If they turn off sometimes... whatever. Imagine they were worded something like "X% of the time, at start of turn, you get [bonus]." (i.e. you know in advance whether you have the bonus or not). Let's say one player has Brave Assist turn on 90% of the time, and another player has it on only 50% of the time. Well... even a 50% rate of Brave Assist is still a good class passive, by Engage standards. And because you know if it's available, you can set up to attack bosses or major tanks like Corrupted Wyrms when it's ready. The 50% rate is obviously worse, but it doesn't make the skill useless, even for players / teams that have trouble setting it up. You can take advantage of it when it's available and shrug when it's not. As a note, worrying about level-ups is less relevant for Heroes because Brave Assist only matters on player phase, giving the player a lot of flexibility. i.e. worst comes to absolute worst, just move Goldmary in close to the enemy you want to chain attack and pass turn - no XP gained. More important for if she would eat a counterattack then fear of an HP level-up on a kill, of course.

20/3 Hero Goldmary: 55 HP, 26 Str, 3 Mag, 25 Dex, 28 Spd, 30 Def, 19 Res, 21 Lck, 10 Bld, 5 Move 10 Build is the same as Rosado, but as a Sword / Lance Hero by default, it is a lot more tolerable. -- Goldmary is a weird unit to rate - she's something like the best second banana the game has to offer. She's not a great carry, but if you just want a low-investment slot filled, she (and Lindon if you need staffers, sure) are probably the best the game has to offer. Since Hero's speciality is chain attacks, she doesn't need a drop of XP to still offer Javelin-powered Brave Chain attacks, which is proportionately stronger vs. Maddening enemy bulk. Excellent natural tankiness, with the right combination of Speed and Defense, means she can get to the front lines and survive. (Lategame, I definitely prefer having at least some speed on tanks rather than earlygame Louis-style raw-Def tanking.) Oddly enough, she isn't actually a huge fan of Ike since that wastes her evasion passive, but having a second tanky unit is just fine - agree she makes a solid Roy user. If you leave her in Hero, then investing the Bond Fragments to get Dual Assist+ at L18 is a good investment for longer-range double chain attacks, if not 100% reliable ones. Since the game showers you with Bond Fragments, this isn't really as much of an investment as it should be. While I don't agree with samthedigital that Bonded Shield strategies should be assumed by default (lots of ways to cook Engage, it's just one), it is certainly a strong strategy, and if you want to do it, then Qi Adept Goldmary is maybe your best option? As noted, you want a tanky unit there to guide the AI to hit the Bonded Shield target. Sends her own damage into the toilet forever, but can be worth it if the enemies all skewered themselves on a Bonded Shied'd Citrinne or Panette or the like. I'm inclined to be a bit nice and offer a 7/10. Late join time means she only goes so high, and she's certainly replaceable, but a high floor and at least some interesting things to do at her ceiling speak well for her.

You didn't lose out on anything. Dark Seals are needed to become Dark Mage and Dark Bishop, but they are sidegrades to Mage and Warlock at best, and downgrades or impossible to qualify for at worst. This is especially true for the Blue Lions, whose natural mages are Annette, Mercedes, and Flayn, all of whom are women and thus can't even qualify for the gender-locked Dark Mage. I guess Hanneman could hypothetically be a Dark Mage, but it's not a very good use of his time and by the time he joins, there's not too much time left for Intermediate classes anyway. The problem with Dark Bishop vs. Warlock is that Warlock has Black Tomefaire & BM Uses x2, which is very good for mages who use Black Magic, which is most of them (including Hanneman - twice as many Meteor casts!). Dark Bishop offers Fiendish Blow... except you can get that from mastering vanilla Mage and it doesn't stack with itself. This means Dark Bishop does less damage with fewer charges for most mages. (And the three pure Dark Mages in the game who aren't aided by Black Tomefaire & BM Uses x2 are Hubert, Lysithea, and Hapi... and two of them are female and thus can't pick the Dark Bishop class anyway! Game really just wants Hubert to have it. Where it isn't even that great anyway.) I'm not sure, but I would seriously not worry about this. You get so much Renown from doing a NG+ that spending it all is difficult unless you are being very loose. I've never done layered NG+s, but my understanding is that on third and fourth playthroughs, for each character, you'll have access to the best skill level attained across all previous playthroughs - hence the possibility of "perfect files" where everyone has learned everything and the like. It won't "add" levels, though, so your Flayn would be able to buy up to a B+ skill level. (Alternatively, if you had an A and a C previously, then you could buy up to A, etc.) You can carry over class mastery skills and skill ranks in NG+, but not actual class qualifications - you still need to take the exam. This means no 2nd Dancer in an NG+ (although you could maybe get the Dancer's Special Dance skill in NG+? Which is almost completely useless on non-Dancers?) (Edit: And to be clear, by "carry over", what I mean is "the skills and skill ranks are available to buy for Renown." So you're not FORCED to get them, but you'll have plenty of Renown, because Saint Statue levels carry over, the main Renown drain in-game, and so you don't need to keep "spending" there.) Yes, specifically weapon XP for what weapon you've equipped them with - so don't use an Adjutant with no weapon! 12 is the hard cap for deploy slots, along with 3 adjutants. This means there's not much advantage to going over 15 units trained - and you can definitely have some units in a "perma adjutant" state where you're not really training them for deployment, but just farming some support ranks on adjutant duty for support conversations. I will say that if you're planning on beating the game 4 times, I would highly recommend getting the DLC. That will give you 4 more units to deploy in the Ashen Wolves. (After you've beaten the game once normally though, of course.) You also might want to spy out which units have joint Paralogues that cross class boundaries, as those mean you have to do some "required" recruiting in order to see these paralogues. You can technically get away with just one half of the pair during White Clouds (e.g. Dorothea / Ingrid, Ashe / Catherine) but that's not an option for the post-skip Paralogues. Notably, these include Mercedes / Caspar (can't be on Crimson Flower), Linhardt / Leonie (can lock yourself out of this on Crimson Flower if you're not careful, but otherwise accessible to all routes), and Ferdinand / Lysithea (can't be on Crimson Flower). So make sure you recruit whichever part of that pairing you're missing on at least one playthrough. You didn't ask this, but I will add one other bit of unsolicited advice: don't play Verdant Wind (Deer) and Silver Snow (Eagles w/ Church) back to back. It's a common point of speculation that IntSys & Koei Tecmo just shoved what they had done out the door at some point, and one aspect is that these two routes are very, very similar to one another. Too similar. Basically, if you play Crimson Flower next and then Verdant Wind, give the game a break for awhile before tackling Silver Snow. (Less important if you do Verdant Wind next, of course.)

20/3 Rosado: 62 HP, 28 Str, 12 Mag, 29 Dex, 31 Spd, 25 Def, 18 Res, 13 Lck, 10 Bld, 6 Move That build is a problem, because Axes & Lances are both heavy... he's gonna be eating a 2-4 point Speed hit even at max level from a Silver Lance/Axe. It might be worth instantly class changing him into a Sword / Axe Wyvern Knight to give him a lower-weight option, or giving him either Sigurd or Leif as those two Emblems offer a Bld boost. (Hector, too, if playing with DLC.) -- Rosado is... fine. He's perfectly serviceable and usable, but unlike Kagetsu / Merrin, doesn't knock the early-joiners socks off with super stats. He has a mild Est / Nino archetype, yes, with weak bases but good growths, but even then it's not THAT extreme. (The Zeiss archetype?!) If you're doing a Classic Ironman playthrough or the like, he's perfectly valid to slot in to a missing deploy from a death. But you don't really NEED to use him, and if you didn't suffer a death as already noted, he doesn't really bring much new to the table. (More fliers are always appreciated if you're doing a "no Second Seal" challenge, though... did you know that Chloe & Rosado are the only physical damage fliers in the game out of the box? It's just those two & Ivy / Hortensia...) I do think his passive is fine, though - means you can thwack male enemies with a Steel / Silver Greataxe reasonably reliably for OHKOs. It's something. 5/10 it is.