samthedigital

A Brave Bow is definitely ideal as you mentioned, but failing that I'd go with any Brave Weapon with decent starting damage paired with Chrom or Lucina in the back to help with Dual Strikes.

If Rally Mag and/or Tomefaire are in the picture it does support the argument that Sage is not a completely redundant class at the very least. Personally though I tend to assume that the only units that will get any exp are the carry, Chrom, and Fred, so I would probably not have any convenient Rally other than Basilio's. In that context Chrom is likely to have some decent damage numbers against Grima himself provided he's getting stat boosters and a few kills here and there. It's probably doesn't matter if you're looking for good enough, but I'm not sure that it's a 100% reliable setup since there are a few failure points. I would tend towards using fewer units myself on Lunatic compared to Lunatic+ because of what I'm looking for when playing on that difficulty personally, but I have no opinions on what should be the way.

I'm talking about Sage for Tomefaire earlier on and for the kill if you use Renown or luck into it (otherwise just use Sorc with Tomefaire). It's a little more consistent than Sorc, but magic really isn't that great against Grima from what I remember; I've always gone with a physical set-up when given the opportunity. I used 4 combat kids and got a few more filler ones that I didn't use. Laurent, Severa, Lucina, and Morgan were the combat kids. The reason I like Sage Miriel in particular is because she doubles (triples?) as utility and producing a much better Nos tanking unit in Laurent while also not competing for combat exp once she promotes. I'm not going to pretend that I have a lot of experience myself; I've played through once, and I know that there are people that have finished ironmans of it and the like. I would say that it is harder though, yeah. Counter is incredibly oppressive on its own, and I don't know that having Robin press start to win the game is possible given that and several other nasty skill combinations. That's not to say that it's impossible to juggernaut; it just requires smarter play and positioning with a few more unit types for different skill combinations. I can definitely see myself being wrong about this to some degree though as I haven't done a lot of research on the Lunatic+ meta outside of watching Kuroi and a friend of mine play. edit: I forgot to reply to this. I agree, I should have said that they can rely on sheer stats up to a certain point which gives them room to inherit skills.

The way I beat Lunatic+ was by using 2 gen 1 combat pairs, kids, and a few Rescue bots; that's more or less my frame of reference for that difficulty. That being said all of the Veteran units capped their relevant stats, and more than one unit was necessary to deal with different skill combinations, so a single unit snowballing didn't happen. Maybe I was playing wrong, but I'm not sure. It's not that it's boring exactly; it's just that if we're using that as our way of ranking classes in Awakening I'm not sure why Valkyries would be compared to Sages or why Miriel even enters the conversation at all. I'm mostly talking about Lunatic carries here; I haven't experimented with Lunatic+ enough, but there's really no reason for a carry to go into Valkyrie, and there is a reason to go into Sage if Robin is trying to kill Grima with a magic build. On that difficulty Robin can sustain through sheer stats, but Sol or stacking defensive skills works. I've only ever tried the latter with Fred, but I'm assuming that it works with Robin for obvious reasons. Well, if you want to talk about a specific style of play then I'm sure there are ways of finding good approximations. I had originally assumed that you said this because it's difficult to gauge how someone is playing, but I'm not so sure now.

If we're talking about predicting levels for other players then I agree, sure, but it is more or less possible to reasonably approximate a unit's levels in your own playthrough. Stats are a little more complicated; it's difficult to predict how exactly a parent that isn't Robin will turn out, but that's just natural in a growths game. This is the solution to the problem, but as you alluded to it's complicated because it's impossible to have any kind of baseline for comparison unless it's in some specific context. Just using Lunatic as an example I can play a predominantly player phase focused strategy leveling a handful of units without any real form of sustain (probably doable on Lunatic+ depending on your definition of sustain), but I could just solo the game with Fred. The latter is definitely easier, but I'm not sure that a discussion should be focused on how well a class can help solo the game either.

Tomefaire can be obtained as early as the end of chapter 13 with Rescue spam/grinding (one chapter earlier than buying a Nosferatu tome); you don't even need DLC to do that. It's one of the earlier level 15 skills that non Robin units will get even without that though since Rescue is used a lot in non solo/carry strategies. Robin can pick up multiple level 15 skills, so it's not really a competition, and if they want all the help they can get if they're looking to kill Grima as a magic unit. Sorcerer isn't really a great class choice for killing Grima all things considered. I can understand the want for playing safe, but assuming that the player knows ambush spawns keeping them safe is a skill; there's no reason that they should die in the same way that a dancer shouldn't be dying even if they're frail. What Valkyrie are you taking though, and how much does that move help you? I've seen it mentioned multiple times in several of these topics, but... There are a list of problems with reclassing units into Troubadour, and reclassing a unit into Valkyrie happens pretty late. That leaves Maribelle, and she has problems in the desert a few chapters after she joins, might not have as good of a Rescue range as Lissa even when factoring in the move*, and she won't pass a great skill to her kid if she stays in that class line. Brady also isn't as good as Laurent from what I remember for what it's worth. The movement bonus that Valkyrie has is really overstated in my opinion. Movement is king and if everything else is equal I'd go for Valk or Falcon Knight (thought that's without considering skills whatsoever), but oftentimes a Rescue bot is sitting in the back with enough range to grab anyone and the extra movement is just a superfluous stat. edit: I mean, not really if I'm being honest. I generally don't consider DLC at all. Grinding is something else entirely, and if I got into it I would be here for a while to be honest lol.

I value Nosferatu just as much as anyone, but I find that people overlook other attributes about the class because Nosferatu exists let alone other classes and strategies that are equally effective in breaking the game. I could share more of my thoughts on Engage Sages if you're interested, but it wasn't really the point of the counter argument. Bad is perhaps a strong word, and I wasn't targeting that specifically at you; it's just the general sentiment every unit wants to go into another class instead of Sage because the other class is better instead of talking about the actual merits of the class. It's also just not true because of how experience works as a resource in that game with kids in play. I mentioned Miriel and Lissa; those are two examples of where it can be more valuable to go into Sage to have more strong units to beat the game with. Maribelle also works technically speaking, but she has some other issues; I've already mentioned one of them. Robin wants to go into Sage class too if they're going for a magic based carry job in Lunatic, but Robin and any other Veteran units have the luxury of going into every class they want for skills since they have the stats and skills to make class specific advantages like Nosferatu redundant. I also want to reiterate something I said in my last post. It's difficult to separate a unit from their class sets. I would absolutely have lower opinion of them as I do with Engage where units can reclass into anything. The only difference is that there still situations where I would level a Sage to 15 in Awakening, but I would never do something comparable in Engage.

What units are you using in Falcon Knight for Rescue purposes? Lissa is by far the standout to me, but going through Sage gives her utility rather than swapping to a class where she denies other units combat exp, and her combat is going to stink anyway if she goes into a physical class. The other option is Maribelle, but I generally find Lissa to be superior because Maribelle has two desert maps to contend with close to her joining map. Otherwise units that want to go to DF first come to mind, but it's a different niche. I'm thinking of units like Cordelia or Sumia who still make fantastic Galeforce+Rescue bots, but it takes a while to get that going, and they're not going to have the magic for some of the bigger Rescues. This isn't such a big deal honestly since Physic isn't really plentiful until later on when Miriel has the staff rank for it, and most staff usage consists of Rescue/Mend/Heal anyway. I'm not sure whether I agree or not depending on the use case and the unit. In most instances I find that it doesn't make a difference for units with good magic. Miriel for example eventually gets to the point where her Rescue range is effectively map wide even before she swaps to Valk. When she first promotes the worst she'd have to do is pair into someone to grab someone across the map from her starting position, and I can only think of one situation where that was relevant for me. There are some specific situations (mostly one turn boss kills off the top of my head) where having both is important, but generally speaking one of two is enough; Rescue is just ridiculous in Awakening, and the main argument I've seen is that Sage is bad because another class is better. If classes were as open as say Engage I'd be a little more willing to entertain that argument, but even then I'm not fond of it because it pushes discussions to only consider what's best. I'll use Engage as a quick example of this. Mage Knight is better at combat; Citrinne in particular appreciates the extra speed from MK, and staff utility is best covered by other units. The Emblem synergy isn't as useful as giving it to other classes. Speed and all stats are far better for the Byleth Instruct, and Corrin appreciates more movement to spam Draconic Hex provided the player is playing quickly enough to make use of Dreadful Aura every turn. I can say that and also agree with most of what you're saying except Sage being anyone's best class.

Nosferatu isn't necessarily the reason most units prefer Dark Mage/Sorcerer. It has better class bases/caps, and Hex/Anathema are better skills for combat first units. Units like Robin and Morgan can grab Sol depending on difficulty too, so they can use stronger tomes than Nosferatu or go into Sage temporarily for skills without issue. In a vacuum sure, but they don't have access to the magic Rally or Tomefaire which some units want to have before going to one of those two classes since it double dips with staff range and combat utility. edit: I read Dark Flier as Falcon Knight initially since my use case for that class is a lot closer to Sage/Valkyrie than DF depending on the unit. If I'm being honest I like Sage a lot more than Dark Mage for Miriel. Instead of being a combat unit she becomes a utility unit that can also kill enemies here and there, and Rescue bots are always in high demand depending on playstyle. It also helps with exp distribution since she isn't competing for combat exp to get skills for her kid; more units get to snowball if Miriel goes Sage. If he inherits Tomefaire he ends up being a much better version of what his mom could be if she went the Sorcerer route instead both because his stats should be better after the initial training arc and because he will probably have inherited a good second skill. I went with Sol in the one playthrough where I used him which was situationally useful, but in retrospect I would probably have gone with Armsthrift so that he can spam forged tomes with impunity. I'm sure that there are other ways to build him though.

It does help some units for the people that do memorize and/or look up the spawns while playing though. I'm not going to argue that it's good game design or anything like that, but it is technically a skill that can be acquired. I would be more inclined to assume no DLC personally, but I also didn't find Lunatic+ to be as bad as advertised, so take that for what it's worth. I used some of the kill boss maps to farm exp for some of the more elaborate kill boss and route maps later on in the game. Yeah, RNG from Anna, event tiles, and Barracks are certainly not one of Awakening's highlights in my opinion.

It's also a Renown reward. It takes two playthroughs or so to get it if I remember correctly, but I could be off by a bit, and it would depend on a few factors I guess. Notably it's a good option for Robin in a solo/carry to help against Grima. It's also great for Miriel so that she can have another source of exp and get Tomefaire relatively early for Laurent. Her Rescue range is noteworthy too; if I remember correctly it ends up being practically map wide eventually. On Lunatic and lower the path of least resistance is probably just to not field frail units, but it is deterministic, so you could look up or memorize when they spawn. It's almost necessary to do that for Lunatic+ because enemies can spawn with nasty skills and kill bulky units too.

Not necessarily, no. There are some maps where we want to use a ton of staves. The map before rescuing Eyvel for example is one where we want to disable nearly a dozen enemy staff users as soon as possible, and that requires nearly as many staff uses. Sometimes it's a thief staff use and a few warps for various objectives to clear the map in one turn. The fatigue mechanic can be trivialized with proper money management; iirc it's chapter 14 that has buyable stamina drinks that we can use to cheese the mechanic for the rest of the game.

I like to give her a skill book and scrolls to fix her skill more quickly, but I usually delay the former so that missing is purely advantageous as long as I don't need to rely on her. edit: The Thief staff gives like 50-100exp? I'm forgetting right now since it's been a while, but she usually has the luxury of being able to steal during any turn from what I remember.

Tina is the first unit that comes to mind for me, but you can use it to your advantage to get more exp and wexp since staves don't lose durability with a miss.

Thracia>FE11>Awakening>FE8>Engage>FE6>FE7>FE9>FE10 S Tier: Thracia: Easily the best showing in the series. Safy alone trivializes a lot with her personal Hammerne and earliest access to an infinite Warp range, and that's only scratching the surface because there are so many things that staff users can do in this game. There's also Sleep, Silence, Rescue, and Tina's personal thief staff off the top of my head, and they all do their part in breaking the game. FE11: I don't remember this game that well, but a lot of the "meta" is to warp a unit into kill the boss and then Marth to seize, and that's pretty busted. This is also true of FE12 outside of higher difficulties I think, but I don't play these enough to be sure of anything. A Tier: Awakening: This one is a little awkward because of the branching promotion for Clerics and Priests. For the sake of ranking the classes I'm going to consider Cleric/Priest and anything they branch into on promotion to keep it simple, so that means that a Cleric's contribution as a Sage is something I'm considering, but not a Mage if they promote into that class. Anyway, Serra and Libra are the two main representations for this class, and they're an integral part of Awakening's combat flow on Lunatic+ while also being useful on lower difficulties. It's really common to use Rescue on any given turn to reposition a unit, heal them, dance them for something else, or get them out of range of attacks when player phasing enemies. This is something I relied on a lot in Lunatic+. It's not quite as useful on lower difficulties, but it depends on playstyle to some degree. Rescue is also really nice for some one turn strategies, but I find that this happens more towards the end of the game where I'm more likely to have the unit doing that in Falcon Knight. Flunky kids are also good candidates for this, and I guess that they could grind levels pretty fast too if that's your thing. B Tier: FE8: This is here almost exclusively for Moulder's Warp access. Healing utility is always useful too, but we don't get Warp that late in this game, and Moulder is one of the best candidates for that strategy. Engage: I'm including Martial Monk, Master, and High Priest here. High Priest isn't particularly good since a unit can reclass into anything and fists aren't a strong selling point over better class bases in Sage or an offensive class like Mage Knight. Framme is the only Martial Monk of note, and she is the only available healer for a while. She can work as a low investment Bonded Shield spammer if she gets to promotion too. There are better options, and she might have troubles getting enemies not to target her, but it can work to some extent. Other units with good defenses can make great use of the class for the Bonded Shield strategy though; Alear and Goldmary are the two that come to mind first for me, and if we're not using a wyvern/Ivy as our primary Bonded Shield target it's a great class for that strategy, and it can be preferred anyway depending on the situation since they can target anyone with 100% success rate instead of just wyverns. Staff utility is nice from time to time too, and Engage has access to some great staves, but I find myself using other classes for this more often than not. FE6: See FE8 but replace Moulder with Saul. I haven't really messed around with early Warp in this game though. FE7: Serra really doesn't have the movement to keep pace with mounted units or to have useful heals outside of the early game when playing at a relatively fast pace. On the other hand I've always liked Lucius a little more as a staff spammer and occasional combat unit a little more than Canas and Erk (both of which I'm not including) since he starts with the higher staff rank to use things like Physic earlier. I've never used Warp much in this game, so I can't speak to how effective Lucius could be with it, but staves just aren't as broken in this game as the games I've ranked above it. C Tier: FE9-10: Rhys feels very similar to Serra to me; he's useful for a few heals early on before becoming irrelevant. Technically speaking he could use Physic I guess, but I don't find myself healing very often, and I'd much rather use Mist or a Sage if I needed healing as the game goes on. FE10 has a similar dynamic, and it's more common for juggernauts to use healing items rather than get healed from what I remember anyway.

Who said anything about reducing them to pairup fodder? It's just as easy to heal them or use it as a temporary measure for specific sections of the early game which is what the people that do like the strategy use it for. It becomes less relevant as the game goes on and Silas starts to grow out of his bases. I don't use the strategy myself because I never play as male Corrin, but I've seen people use it to success even if you haven't. I do use Rally Skill and Skill Tonics. If you care about reliability it's fantastic even if we're not talking about Sol. As for units that go over caps... An average Xander can go over his 29 dex cap as a Paladin at level 12 with a Rally, Tonic, and a pairup, and I'm going to guess that units like Corrin (who I'm probably giving stat boosters anyway) and Soleil will also go over cap fairly comfortably. Xander can tank that whole section with Sol and a good build. Physic (or Rescue if you have one available) works if he gets low (or do the LTC strat and skip it all with a more aggressive Rescue), but he really doesn't need it. Xander can trivialize so many things like this. You're free to play the way you like to be sure, but it's not the only reliable way to play. If you have the numbers to back up your claims then show me. You could for example look at the video I provided earlier and do a better job than him of calculating the chance of success for his strategy. Thus far you've given me the chances of a single Sol proc which is just one variable that you'd want to use. Otherwise I'm not sure what you're getting at; a reliable strategy will live and die by the RNG just as much as an unreliable one. I'm not sure exactly what your point is here. It takes some setup, but this "setup" is something that we can do over the course of the game naturally. It doesn't really require any extra effort to pair units together for marriage or friendship. It also doesn't make the strategy less reliable, and I assume that the player knows what they're doing generally speaking.

Nah, I've played it, but I completely forgot that he was applicable because I've used him exclusively as a staffbot. I agree with your assessment of him, though.

Awakening>FE6>FE7>Conquest>FE8 Awakening: Nosferatu, Hex, Anathema, good caps, etc. There are a lot of different ways to break Awakening, so I wouldn't put it on a pedestal exactly, but it is a fantastic class regardless. Robin, Laurent, and Tharja are the three units that come to mind as the traditional nostanking units. Robin is the best at everything, so while Sorcerer is a good option there are also a lot of other things that they can do like grabbing Armsthrift/Sol, Galeforce, etc and be just as good (depending on difficulty). Laurent has been a great Sorcerer for me in my Lunatic+ playthrough. His mom has a "free" source of experience once she promotes, so it doesn't take much to get him Tomefaire and start snowballing him. I'm not as much of a fan of Tharja because of her poor luck and skill. I haven't actually used her yet (maybe soon), but it seems to me that because of that she would have a rough time getting to the point where she starts snowballing, and Nosferatu isn't buyable until after chapter 13 iirc. FE6: I have the game this high exclusively because of Niime. She has a fantastic Warp range and the A rank to use it instantly, and it doesn't take too much for her to get S dark compared to the other Dark Mages to use Apocalypse at the end of the game. The other two (Sophia infamously so) have a poor start and would drag FE6 down if I was averaging the units out. FE7: Canas is good especially when promoted early since he gets staves and what is effectively +4 speed. I want to say that he stands out more without Lyn mode since he only takes 2 levels to promote compared to the other mages, but I tend to prefer the other two if we're including it. I might be remembering wrong though; it's been a while. I guess that Luna and Nosferatu are worth mentioning here, but Nosferatu is heavy and the tomes are only situationally useful. Conquest: I haven't used Nyx much for a similar reason to Tharja; I don't like her poor hit rates. I would probably early promote her to Dark Knight and keep her around for as long as her stats are relevant if I really wanted to use her, but I prefer Odin and Ophelia. I've never used Odin in a long term context, but I do rather like the Nosferatu utility in a few situations until I marry him off and permanently bench him. I have had a lot of success with Ophelia, but I vastly prefer Malig Knight because of the mobility, so I wouldn't count that as much of a positive for the class. Camilla makes any kid good too, so maybe there's some bias there. Leo is also worth a mention too if we're counting him, but there's not much to say there. He has good bases, has a mount, and his prf weapon is pretty good. FE8: Summoner is probably good in a vacuum, but Ewan has a training arc, and I don't remember Knoll's summons being useful more than a handful of times in a playthrough using Warp and the like.

Yeah, even if it wasn't for her bases (which are actually really good if she ever wants out of Fell Child) she's a Dragon when the Byleth Instruct related bonuses start becoming a little more compelling. I don't like to think of Engage in this way since anyone can reclass into anything. Warrior Amber for example can do just about anything that Etie can do, and since they ideally want Lyn either of them is going to have access to Mulagir anyway. If we're comparing Alcryst to Etie in particular though it depends on how much you value the short term utility. As a long term prospect I'd agree that Etie is clearly better because of the difference in strength. If I remember Alcryst's class skill amounts to giving him the same strength as Etie on average, so Etie can more consistently take advantage of her strength while having the freedom to be in any class she chooses. Alcryst could technically choose to have more consistent damage in another class, but then he deals less damage than Etie anyway. Etie does require some babying and/or Micaiah/Marth to get going on Maddening though (I want to say that this isn't so necessary on Hard mode, but I haven't played it in a good while, and it was my first playthrough), and those are emblems everyone wants for exp. Alcryst can fill in for a few chapters and promote if we want him to stay relevant for a little longer before the busted mid-game units come along, and that's where I see him being a better unit than Etie.

I wouldn't say any given type of playthrough exactly, but if the metric we use to rate units is well defined there is an answer to that question. If the criteria used is vague enough then I'd say that there isn't a lot to take away from rankings (or debates for that matter) in the first place. Engage complicates things by making emblems more of a focus than units themselves, and there are a lot of options to replicate Lyn's doubling utility with another emblem, so this is fair. I don't always have an exact unit in mind either. It depends on what the debate/argument is to be sure, but I actually wouldn't find an argument a unit to be very compelling unless it's within a specific context (unless they're talking about easily reachable benchmarks or something to that effect; I'm not saying that there is nothing to gain). If someone has a different idea about where to allocate their resources then I'm just not going to be able to have a proper discussion about how to use Seliph (admittedly this one isn't very interesting or difficult, it's just an example that's topical) for example since they're using him completely differently. It might affect discussion of every other character in the cast too because it changes quite a lot. That's a limitation of that kind of discussion; I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but it is what it is.

I am free to rank units based on how much time they save in a speedrun if I like though since I am allowed to use any criteria that I want. For example I could say that Sigurd and Seliph save the most time out of anyone relative to the other units in their cast and they are therefore the best lords. That being said I didn't say that I was interested in ranking units this way; my original post here had little to do with a speedrunning mindset. You might find that a speedrunner wouldn't be interested ranking units that way either. The point was to show that there is an objective best use of a resource in a given type of playthrough. I'm not trying to use a more generalized approach; the problems I have are specific to my rating system. gnip summarized the problem and his solutions to it in his post, my solution isn't necessarily the same, but there are also some other complications because it's my ranking system isn't strictly defined. If you mean that the rating system someone uses is subjective then yes, I agree. What I was saying was that a statement made within that system is not subjective. I would assume that people aren't making broad assumptions that should be applied to everyone ranking units, though. I agree with Whisky here. There's a lot of interesting discussion to be had even if it's a solvable problem as long as the problem is complicated enough.

RNG aside is there a reason why you guys aren't mentioning the Paralogue 1 rescue staff? Maybe I missed something here.

It's not subjective, but maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying. If I tiered units based on how much time they save over the course of a speedrun then the best way to allocate resources would the one that results in the fastest time. For example Marcia in FE9 is the best recipient of the early game bexp and Seraph Robe because this is what we do if we want to beat the game as fast as possible. I would rate her as one of if not the best unit in the game in this context. We're not giving Soren this same preferential treatment when rating him simply because that's not what we're measuring. I don't have as stringent a rating system as a speedrun that I mentioned above, but the problem then is how to compare units when not as many things are guaranteed.

I find that the class is just in an awkward spot in Awakening. Maribelle can do her job for a few maps, but I've never deployed her in the desert maps for obvious reasons. After this we get quite a few healers with more magic, and I value the rescue range much more than the movement. Eventually units will start snowballing and don't need the support (on Lunatic), so I find bringing healers along to be a liability at that point with ambush spawns being what they are. A Falcon Knight would seem far more desirable anyway (after getting Tomefaire) for the cheese possibility on boss kill maps and better movement. The skills don't seem that useful outside of the level 15 promoted one either. Healers seem to be a lot better on Luna+ (at least so far; I'm working my way through it slowly), but it seems like the class runs into the same two issues: Maribelle isn't the best showing, and it doesn't seem like a strong reclass option even if I want a handful of units with Rescue. I guess a positive is that in a vacuum the class isn't terrible; staff access is good. It's just that I find the other options to be better. Overall I'd go with FE4>FE5=FE6=FE7>FE9>Awakening=FE10>FE8 I'll keep this short since people have covered my thoughts on the class already. Everything I rated above FE9 is really good at the very least. Mist has kind of niche utility in both of her games while not being particularly useful, and L'Arachel just joins far too late at a low level in an unprompted class.

We've gone off track a bit discussing units in other games. Another thread is probably more appropriate for that.