Irysa

Going to spoiler tag quotes to make the post easier to read but still allow me to reference back to paragraphs without swapping between tabs. @XeKr I'm not well versed enough in PoR LTC to really be able to properly answer that. How bad is the efficiency drop if you don't use Marcia until Jill joins? I'm just estimating, but I think in Chapter 11 you only lose like 2 to 3 turns there compared to Marcia. Though, I suppose if you're conserving the BEXP dump for Jill, that'll get worse. I don't know how bad Chapter 12 is without Marcia (although I've done it without a dumped one, never without her entirely). Can you give me a TC estimate for that map with no Marcia? If it's long enough and the later game doubling benchmark stuff is a significant concern, then I'd say Jill deserves a penalty, but this is assuming that there's no real benefit to having Jill on the team if Marcia is, and I'm pretty sure having both is still good. Alance may get more early EXP than Noah but there is an ease of application argument to made with Noah since he doesn't have to work on his Sword Rank as much as they do, along with the fact that if the player is skipping Sue or Cath Alance miss out on a really big EXP dump in Chapter 6. And ultimately, the decision to promote Noah does not negatively impact efficiency as much as Rutger does because Noah's crest is going to be used anyway, and he only requires about 300~400 exp to promote in contexts where he doesn't have chances of death, wheras Fir is asking for rather a bit more. Rutger kills like 7 bosses consectutively after promotion (8, 8x, 9, 10A/B, 11A/B, 12, 13) and is the best unit to utilise against promoted enemies for this segment of the game too. If the player does not have Miledy in play then he is still the best bosskiller for 14 and 14x (costs turns/extra warp use though mind), and is a good choice against Narcian, close to the best if the player is opting to skip the Delphi Shield and is clearing the map faster with Warp. He is by far the most reliable option in 16x. He's also good against the odd Manakete one sees before lategame. All of these serve as a significant injections into Rutger's EXP gain, and this isn't even getting into the fact that he can feasibly be spending time in the arena in maps like 11 or 17. I got Rutger to like level 11/14 by 20I in a slower run I did recently and that was without deploying him or letting him bosskill for quite a few portions of the game, so I feel confident in saying 11/11 is very possible if you care about his EXP gain. I'll concede that you don't actually lose a whole lot of efficiency in a CR run for training Fir, but my point was that unless Rutger underperforms, Fir is actually just sub-par Rutger due to lower skill, lower durability, and lower con. You'd only use her if Rutger fails to do what he needs to do, so even if she hypothetically ups the reliability of an overall playthrough, the fact she's not actively doing stuff on the map to make that happen means I don't feel comfortable giving her full credability comparable to stuff that units like Sue or Noah are ACTUALLY doing typically. I care quite a bit because my more relaxed and typical experience with GBAFE these days is without savestates and with unfixed RNG patches. I'll concede it's not particularly clear now but I am speaking from a degree of personal experience with the game that extends beyond rigged exhibitionist runs. Having said that, I have never done a full, properly calculated expected tc run of the game, because when I play casually I think more about my real time investment WRT reliability, thus 20% is fine for stuff that I reset on turn 2 for in a Warpskip because it takes less than a minute to get there, wheras playing out a 4 turn or so requires a considerable amount more planning and contingencies and the like that is frankly not of a large concern if one is not trying to demonstrate strategic prowess. I also have not rigorously attempted to cut my TCs down in these playthroughs (and in some maps I've taken a bunch of extra uneccessary turns to grab extra loot or train Lilina or whatever), but I'm trying to focus solely on Rutger's ability to gain EXP and how good he is at bosskiling and I believe it still relates well. I misunderstood you then, or got caught up in what I thought you said instead of reviewing it properly (blame the fact I tried to avoid too many direct quotes and thus didn't reread what I was replying to enough), so apologies. I'm going to mostly gloss over this because I think I mostly answered it earlier, but on the Luke/Rody thing, you pick at the start for those two since they have the exact same availability. That kind of comparison doesn't make sense, and Rody does have reliability advantages later over Luke due to his better growths for speed benchmarks anyway. Many warpskip esque clears are pretty problematic if one attempts to do them slower. In 16x for example, a Barrier boosted Rutger is still 2hko'd by a couple of combinations from all the magic nukes flying around in the throne area, and these guys are all in the 40 to 50ish accuracy range. Given that there's like 6 instances of combat (counting the boss twice) that the bosskiller has to face if taking an extra turn, and the fact that Saul will not be able to reach with a Physic, the actual logicistics of trying to basically get in 3 instances of combat with a single unit over 3 turns are already pretty unattractive, and trying to clear the area with just Rutger is also kind of gross due to lack of good 1-2. The best option is to Warp in a decent mount carrying the Swordmaster on T2 and trying to EP the boss with the SM, perhaps not Barriering the mount to try to lure magic attacks off the SM, then Warping in Roy on T3 as both the SM and mount try to combo on the boss. Refusing to reset past this point typically means you sit popping Elixirs till you crit due to the limits of staff range (and Elixirs are worth enough to want to conserve them). I'm pretty sure the Bishops will Physic the boss if he gets too low too, plus he prefers to try to Berserk over attacking on EP a lot which would make more reliable attempts take even longer. You can try blowing more warps to hit the boss with more units but whilst extra warp charges may improve reliability here, eventually we get forced to take longer elsewhere due to a lack of them, so whether we're actually improving efficiency starts to come into question. This is a recurring problem - 20I has an undodgable Berserk Druid in the throne area who doesn't move, which essentially means if you want to not have to reset on not killing the boss you'll have to have a bait unit placed about halfway into the map, which is going to neccessitate having cleared a large group of relatively powerful enemies in order for the bait or the staffers dedicated to restoring them to survive. all before you even make a move on the boss. Furthermore, there's a Killer Bow Sniper and a Killer Ballista in range of the boss, which again are things that Percival (and Miledy, if she has the Delphi Shield and got to D Swords) might not struggle too much with handling, but that Rutger and Fir aren't exactly coping well with in combination with the boss's attacks, even with Physic support. EDIT: Or Warp Saul on T2 I guess as outlined in other thread. The 18S boss can only be attacked from 1 spot at 1 range and has random reinforcements (although I think I figured out soft resetting before ending turn meant none spawned). The enemies in general are pretty unreliable and annoying to deal with due to lack of effective ways to fight them on EP and general dodginess. They don't pose much of a threat to our bulkier units, but we need to press out relatively far in order to Warp Roy into seize range. Additionally, the throne area has a very realistic chance of getting too clogged up to let Roy seize properly, and the boss will use a Brave Sword at 1 range, meaning once again Rutger or Fir are going to be facing pretty real chances of death without being in range of Physic support, limiting potential PP action if they need to keep using Elixirs (which also cost boots...). The Druid also probably Physics the boss. So if you want to improve reliability you'll have to deal with like 10 nomads/troopers before you can even really make a move on the boss, which is not going to go that quick. 19S quick clears are basically completely contingent on if Saul has 14 Mag or not in the first place, and you can't go for a more reliable clear that extends the bosskill with the fast strat since the path to the throne becomes too clogged for Roy to be able to seize on a later turn if the bosskiller fails. Short of Saul having ungodly magic, you'd have to go round the side to have any chance of improving reliability, which basically leaves you in the same boat as a non 14 Mag Saul. Furthermore, there's not really many units other than Percival or Miledy who stand a good shot at handling potential Gel crits + the rest of the chip, forcing you to slog it out even longer whilst still faicing pretty considerable chances of death against the boss when you eventually get to him. Considering it takes like 5 to 6 turns to even get into position to move in from the side for clears that are still hardly particularly reliable, I'm pretty convinced if you have 14 Mag on Saul then you take the 2 turn, meh CoS or not. Speaking of 19, I forgot that since the game is dumb and doesn't let you fly into the city, you can't get the Energy Ring in a quick clear, so I guess Sacae Roartz sort of gives a bit of credence to Fir. 20S is pretty reasonable to slow down in since the ideal strat already aims for 3 turns due to Dayan; warp in a double bosskiller combo into the throne area on t1, then double silence the Bolting Sages on T2 with Niime whilst the Bosskillers attempt to kill the boss by T3. Reliability can be improved decently by taking an extra turn to kill the throne room Sages before committing to the boss, which would allow for Physic support and less CoD on EP. Mind, I've never actually done this so the Knight formations might get problematic, but since one of them attacks at 1 range I figure both bosskillers should be able to start engaging come T3. Although I suppose in reality, the clear was never game over if Roartz wasn't dead by T3, so this strat was already pretty easy to extend, thus more reliable by nature. 20IX is the same; basically just contingent on making sure the Swordmaster is dead so it's not that big a deal to take longer as a failed bosskill by T3 isn't game over. EDIT: The Druids Physic Tick over statusing other units so this is actually worse than I thought. 21 we've already covered that if you even wanted to augment reliability with extra Warp that you need to Warp an Armorslayer mount first to drop Roy so another Warp can be done for the bosskiller assistant next turn, and obviously it also has a hard limit of like an extra 2 turns after entering the boss area lest you start getting completely overwhelmed by Draco reinforcements. 22...this is a kinda tough one. The main pressing concern is that the reinforcements from the starting area on the left will likely cause a lot of problems as the majority of one's force has to be concentrated on the switches and the throne room, leaving the units left to fight there pretty limited, either for pressing in to avoid or defending at the choke. Weakening your forces in the other areas will impede the reliability of handling the throne room itself. Bear in mind, the stairs also need to be blocked to prevent further reinforcements in the throne room on the subsequent turns. I think if you double Sleep staff the Heroes you can reasonably take an extra turn or two to secure the area without it being unreliable to do so, letting you wail on Zephiel for a bit till you can seize. 23 is difficult because there are so many enemies with killer weapons around and Brunya hits VERY hard, and there's only one tile to attack the boss from at 1 range. Clearing out the enemies here in a reasonable timeframe without dying seems pretty difficult given a single errant crit is likely to murder someone. The most difficult enemies are 8 mov fliers in combo with strong Ballista and Siege magic, so limiting exposure and instead going for the 20 to 30%~ CoS 2 turn makes more sense to me, but I haven't done the math, I'm just going off intuition. So having thought about it, only 22 really has a bosskill that's in the 20% area that is worth trying to take longer for I think, but even then having extra sleep staff uses for application elsewhere (particularly 24 and 21) improves their efficiency, so it's a bit give and take. Even if others may appreciate them a bit, generic enemies that absoloutely have to die on any given turn rarely are within a single Energy Ring range of being an ORKO, and covering for a non crit is pretty easy usually. By 19 there's basically no better user for it, and as I've already said, Fir requires other boosters to be competitive with Rutger anyway due to lower con and durability so at best she cancels out her cost rather than having a lead. The point is less about when the speed cap actually happens and more that you need to have +2 to 3 extra speed over 22 (which is what she will probably have in your context), which is a fair amount of promoted levels. Either that or she needs the Body Ring/Speedwings. I see it as more economical to promote when the cap happens (and its going to happen a fair amount before you'd like) to try to limit the dependancy on these other boosters. Bolded, please don't say that...you're the one who's actually used Fir and tried to play efficiently so if anything you're the better judge. Promoted Roy can rescue Promoted Fir, but the time when you'd want to consider combining Roy and Fir to save Warps is well before Roy promotes. You're mostly right anyway, the lack of canto is the real problem with trying to do single Warp strats, but like I said earlier, reducing the amount of Warp we have available elsewhere and basically only using Warp as a reliability buffer/to save 1 turn has efficiency impacts across the playthrough, not just in a single chapter. Really though, if I was going to blow 2 Warps anyway I'd just do the mount + SM setup if possible anyway. It's just this doesnt always work out very cleanly Echidna basically does mostly borderline utility like handling a few enemies to your flanks (even distracting them is fine usually), helping to augment your offence in a few rush scenarios, or breaking walls with the Brave Axe/Wyrmslayering some enemies. Also nice in maps like 12 where your force gets split up. If you have a suboptimal team she slots in instantly and can be one of your better combat units for a while without costing anything. Really it's mostly the "doesn't need to be fed anything" argument that biases her and other prepromotes a lot. Deke is pretty whatever if he promotes that late though yeah, he just does the same stuff Echidna does except generally worse on the utility side and superfluously better on the combat side. He's rated that highly for earlygame contributions and having at least a small chance of being your first Hero Crest promoted unit (which is saying a lot considering how good Rutger is). I would generally say it's not worth using the second crest on him, or anyone for that matter and that it should be sold.

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I'm mostly reiterating what I think XeKr tried to bring up in the last tierlist thread when they explained their tiering philosophy, and I agree that its appropriate for this tierlist. Perhaps @XeKr would like to elaborate or correct me. It is my understanding that we cannot really make a good tierlist unless we consider suboptimal team compositions (otherwise over half the cast never does anything). The main caveat of considering suboptimal team compositions being that we have to consider how inefficient/unrealistic the composition is. In the case of Marcus and Rutger, it has such a large effect on your ability to clear early game chapters reliably that any scenario where they are not in play is really unlikely. It also means scenarios like say, first Hero Crest to Lot or Wade basically don't happen, it really has to be Dieck or Rutger. In the case of Percival, as you've raised, it's actually not that big a deal to not use him; he still helps but you can make do without him because he doesn't actually do anything entirely unique for the time he exists, he's just super reliable with no downsides and improves any team a lot due to great combat parameters and high movement. I believe that the case of Miledy is similar, as long as you have at least 1 flier, the overal efficiency of the run is not impacted massively. There's obviously a large benefit in having two, and pretty good benefit in three, but really you only need 1 flier to not fall way behind an optimal composition (you can see this at play in drafts). Now I'll grant that the run I did without MIledy and Tate had an above average Shanna in terms of Strength (she had +2 on average), but I'm still pretty convinced that Tate would be able to do the same stuff if you gave her the opportunity to (which is to say, ferry important units forward across terrain and killer lance problematic enemies that aren't too bulky like Ballista). And you could always go Bartre route to get the Energy Ring. If Tate and Shanna were lacking so much as to basically be unable to broadly replicate the benefits of a flier on your team, I'd accept Miledy as crucial, but I don't see it so I think it's okay to reasonably weight scenarios where she's not in play.

@General Horace Unlike Rutger, Shanna and Miledy are not nearly as forced in their importance despite how good they are. In complete recruitment, besides 7 and 8x, one can kind of ignore using Shanna altogether and not experience much of a difficulty spike or efficiency loss. Not using Miledy has more of an impact, but still doesn't actually drastically negatively effect you as much as you may think as long as you have other fliers around to ferry combat units, since having flight basically buffs all the other units on your team. For this reason, I think contexts in which the other fliers are being used much more sparsely (if at all) are more realistic than ones where we purposely sandbag Rutger, and the less fliers you have on your team, the better Tate gets. I agree that in an optimal playthrough, Tate is probably worse than whichever of Alance promoted first, but the tierlist does not just consider an optimal playthrough, it weights various contexts by their relevance. I realise I probably sounded too harsh on Alance's early contributions but if I can frame this mathematically, if Alance are typically getting about 1 to 2 points per chapter up till 8x, then get like 4 to 5 per chapter for the Isles, dropping to 3 per chapter following that in Ilia route, then to me in a scenario where even one of Shanna or Miledy aren't being utilised, Tate is getting 1 to 2 points for 12, 3 to 4 for 13, 10ish for 14, 7 for 15, and then something like 6 to 9 for each Ilia map bar 20 and 20x (maybe a 2 there), and a 4 to 5 for 21...maybe this makes it easier to see why I think she's competitive? If you are using Miledy and Shanna then you have to cut those contributions all down by like 1/2 to 1/3, in which case Alance win, but the reality is that the other half of the Christmas Cavs don't get to actually exploit their maximum points every playthrough either, so they can't get full credit for best performance all the time each. On Sacae route Alance get a bit of a lead but they're honestly not very good in Sacae either so Tate doing worse here isn't as big a deal as you might try to make it. Furthermore you're sandbagging Chapter 13 flight, it's actually really handy due to how cramped the the bridge is. An extra unit who can fly and use the Horseslayer is very useful in helping to help clear the way.

@XeKr I think the core point is that Rutger is heavily biased towards being assumed in play due to how much better his bosskilling is than alternatives when it really matters. Basically, it's hard to envision a scenario where we give Rutger bosskills early on, promote him for Henning, then just stop using him once Fir is trained, unless he is RNG screwed. I don't think it is a scenario that is worth considering heavily. The difference with Alance and Noah is that Noah exists before the point the first Knight Crest is actually used, and can reasonably gain 3 or 4 levels in the subsequent Chapters to promote for midgame dominance. Fir basically always exists in a world where Rutger has been killing bosses, is promoted and is still capable fo continuing to do so unless we are purposely sandbagging him or he gets RNG screwed. In a scenario where Dieck gets the first crest, it still statistically makes more sense to promote Rutger with the next crest rather than Fir because he'll have a level lead and less opportunity cost (Fir is pretty good at keeping up but she still isn't perfectly reliable in not dying or making her own kills). You're already doing something inefficient by promoting Dieck first, so now you have to layer on Fir's too. I'm not trying to say there is no scenario ever where Fir can shine, I'm just saying I really don't think we can weight it beyond a 6 or so because Rutger is second to only Marcus for basically being assumed to be in play for a significant portion of the game. If we keep using Rutger and train him and let him do bosskills when he can, Fir is still effectively functioning as a backup unit, one that we're only sinking EXP into in case Rutger performs poorly. I don't see how equal credit for these later kills makes sense; Rutger basically gained exp, promoted and killed bosses early on because we were as close to being forced to use him as you can get and putting on the brakes intentionally despite the fact he can keep going just seems extremely arbitrary. Only the RNG screwed scenario would seem to apply. Also I forgot that there was an Energy Ring in 19S too so Roartz is pretty leniant on both routes, but the reason I was assuming averages was since you were talking about fixed mode in your earlier post. EDIT: To tl;dr this part of the post, I'm trying to say that to consider a scenario where Rutger is not in play or is being heavily sandbagged is quite inefficient in the first place, but since we can't penalise the player for basically having to willfully construct a scenario where Fir is more relevant, the penalty has to fall on Fir herself for requiring this kind of meddling, which effectively waives her actual contributions. The more natural scenario is the RNG screwed Rutger one. I think that Miledy and Percival are a lot more superfluous than Rutger is, and I think you are underestimating how much of an impact it has when he's not on your team earlygame (for the record, I've done this and it sucks). 16 unpromoted FIr levels doesn't make sense as I've outlined because she caps speed and skill relatively early. This is actually a problem because the Armorslayer weighs 11 and Durandal weighs 12, so she loses 5/6 AS even when promoted. She can barely reach doubling vs the General Bosses (assuming no HM bonus fluctuation, a concern if we are playing with an unfixed RNG), but she can't double Zephiel with Durandal without getting to 24 speed. One can argue for her getting a Speedwing or Body Ring post promotion but is this really a useful distribution of resources when there are typically better contenders wheras the Energy Ring isn't really contested much? To me it makes far more sense to promote her a bit earlier and just use Energy Rings, especially since higher avo and hit/crit actually help improve bosskilling reliability (which is the whole reason we're training her in the first place), wheras an extra point of strength or two doesn't matter much as long as you reach the magic number. I suppose for Martel both the SM's are reasonable choices if Miledy is not in play as Shanna or Tate can't really muster up the attack power to ORKO him, and Zeiss doesn't double. Randy perhaps, 15 Str 22 AS is required, so Fir would need to be something like 12/1 with the Body Ring or Speedwings, wheras Rutger would need to be 11/7, but again, Miledy would have to not be in play. 25 speed is also required for Monke, so 16/5 + Body Ring or so, and she can't be under average for her promoted levels or she won't make it there either. I can't really see how if you were able to get Fir 16 unpromoted levels and another 4 promoted ones that Rutger can't have reached 11/11 by then. EDIT: WoD bossdata was wrong, Monke is 15 Def on Reset, means you need 17 Strength. This means both Rutger and Fir would need 20 levels along with 25 AS to ORKO, and Fir would end up needing a Body Ring and Speedwings to be likely pull it off anyway. The only Energy Ring before this point is on Bartre route. Fuck Monke holy shit. 20% or so reliability (and I'm basically waiving survival when I crunch that since Percival and Miledy have a huge durability lead over Fir and Rutger) is about as good as it's going to get for many of the bosskills in this game, and I believe that is reasonable considering these are generally going to be 2 turns. If we are not warping and clearing the areas out more methodically then I can see more of where you're coming from though, as at that point ganging the boss with multiple Swordmasters starts to become a lot more feasible, but in many maps there is only one 1 range tile to attack the boss from and/or it's difficult to actually get two bosskillers + Roy to the seize point due to the extra warps required (ie, Roy likely needs to be danced upon getting into range to be Warped which means you can't double Warp on T2.) Lastly, the 19 Str or so requirement isn't as important to meet as you make it sound because we only need to get that high after the Secret Shop is in play. The actual magic number for most of the lategame is 16, and Rutger can be 2 points behind on average and still reach it with the chapter 19 Energy Ring, which means Monke and possibly Martel (if there is no Miledy to handle the bosskill) are the only two Random thoughts - Fir needs the Body Ring in order to carry Roy, something of a concern in a few strategies if one wishes to conserve Warp.

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its seize so the game is less of a slog, your movement ranges are higher and the maps have more actually in them to meaningfully interactwith, and hitrates are better. enemies aren't as tanky. gaiden has better music I guess.

It's cool for a NES game. But that only gets you so far, esp when even FE1 aged better. In context I think FE7 is a worse game but its a lot more playable than Gaiden is.

Is this meant to be objective? I hate Radiant Dawn so I've put it at 3 for worst but honestly Gaiden is definitely a much weaker game. Best 3 - Thracia 776 2 - Binding Blade 1 - New Mystery of the Emblem Worst 3 - Radiant Dawn 2 - Awakening 1 - Gaiden Haven't played Fates

I don't have the time right now to make a full responses to a lot of posts but I want to address this point here; Roartz is a prime candidate for the scenario you are talking about but neither Rutger nor Fir reach the 21 Str required to ORKO him via crit + hit in any reasonable span of time, so really we're looking at a 2RKO anyway, in which case for a 5HKO (1 crit and 2 hits) Rutger only needs 18 Str (which is achievable at 11/11 with the Energy Ring from 19I), or 6HKO (double crit or 1 crit 3 hits over 4 attacks at 60 disp~, 68.40 True and 27 crit, roughly 20%~ CoS if I did my math right) at 16 Str (which lets you save the 19I Energy Ring or use a lower leveled Rutger). Tick is weaker than Roartz so the calcs are more leniant, and Percival already has a pretty good CoS on Murdock anyway due to WTA. Rutger would also have exposure issues to get to Murdock to bosskill anyway and also can't drop Roy in a safe spot then canto to Murdock for EP + PP, so he'd cost an extra Warp, making the whole thing a bit questionable, though I'll give you that Horsekiller Knights help Rutger's case. Though, doing some back of the envelope math, it's pretty dicey, Rutger needs a Robe or be exactly on his durability averages at 11/14 to not get 2HKO'd by Knight + Murdock, and he also has to face 3 enemies instead of 2 due to not being able to drop Roy safely and EP Murdock. He does have like an extra 10 Avo vs the enemies, but really, Percival's not very far behind reliability wise, and you could use the extra Warp saved from Warping Percival + Roy as a combo to Warp someone else in to help finish Murdock off on the last turn. Fir obviously isn't doing any better than Rutger is here either since her durability is worse than his. The Pereth bosskill reliability only really becomes a concern if you are insistent on a 2 turn in which the bosskiller gets in 2 sets of boots, otherwise the fact he's 4HKOable by Percival (who due to awesome base Res does generally better than many other choices with a Barrier Boost vs his Nosferatu, but I'll grant that many other units are capable here), so the value of the SM bosskill here is also a little questionable. For other bossess...well, neither Rutger or Fir can do well vs Alucard without busting out Durandal (Fir may not have even reached it by then), and the alternative in Horsekiller combos of other units is generally prefferable. Monke requires 16 Str to 4HKO with a Silver Sword or 6HKO with a Killing Edge...Durandal is near impossible for the two of them to double him with due to heavy AS loss so whilst they could oneshot him with a Durandal crit at lower str, that strategy is probably more one of neccessity/desperation. Gel cannot be doubled anyway so their chances vs him aren't particularly better than most other possible units, arguably worse since they die in one crit to him wheras Miledy can feasibly survive a double crit with a robe. 20xS has other reliability concerns if you aren't rigging the correct throne, and if you are then you should be aiming for the bottom right (automatic if you reset and start chapter immediately on the original untampered cart or rom, don't think the fixed mode patch touches the secondary RNG since desert item trick still works with it), which is a pretty reliable bosskill for many units, not just the SMs, plus 10 mov flier can reach him without using a Warp or Dance on T1. For Zephiel, doubling with Durandal isn't too difficult and you probably need Niime's Apocalypse to help finish him anyway so 18 Str (11/11 + an Energy Ring, as we outlined) with Durandal hit + crit and Apocalypse (plus backup Shin Murgleis doubling if neccessary) is about as good as it's going to get for killing him in a single turn. 19 Str (11/14 + Energy Ring, pretty realistic if he's taking the later bosskills, or double Energy Ring) would make it even more reliable since a reasonably leveled Shin would only need to connect one Murgleis, so you basically have a 88% chance of getting at least one of the finishing hits in if the SM pulls off the crit + hit beforehand. So 16 Str is really what we're looking for, and that benchmark requires 11/7 Fir (modify unpromoted levels as you wish), keeping in mind you can't keep her unpromoted for too many of those otherwise she'll cap speed and may not reach the speed benchmarks for doubling. To be entirely honest, considering Fir is promoting in 12 or 11E at best, if you're capable of getting Fir that many levels, you can't argue Rutger isn't capable of reaching the benchmarks too. There's also the option of going Elphin/Bartre route to score an additional Energy Ring. So tl;dr, whilst I agree that SM bosskills are actually still relevant on a bunch of mid/lateish dudes if you're not script rigging Percival's bosskills, Fir really does not have a notable niche over Rutger in terms of achieving them. Rutger even has better skill than Fir does, which is definitely more significant than her marginal luck lead (he has about 5 more hit than her at even equal levels). We basically end up back at the same point of needing to have an RNG screwed Rutger or a run that is not using him for her to relevant.

map design for mid to lategame compared to original, pleaaaase.

She shoud have promoted to a Nomad Trooper thing with 7 mov if she was gonna be Swords and Bows anyway, then Murgleis would have been a perfect fit.

Do you intend to slow down more elsewhere to soak EXP for Robin's kids, and if so, how important would you rate that compared to trying to just bruteforce it with Robin and letting the kids just get piecemeal?

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Marcus isn't "useless" for 2/3 of the game, he's an amazing unit for about 9 maps, then a great one for another 6. He's okay after that if you got to Ilia (Silver and Brave Lance save his offence) before becoming pure utlity come Chapter 21, although he's admittedly terrible in all of Sacae. Still, that's well over half the game and he needs zero special treatment to do that. Lilina comparatively is below average for about 6 maps, then okay to decent for the rest of the game, but she has opportunity cost that Marcus doesn't have. She has no real amazeballs moments at all, and her niche of crit bolting is way too small to be weighted heavily in a rating.

Yodel - 6.5/10 His staff range is better than what Saul is going to have, guaranteed, which matters a lot for the lategame maps. It enables a lot more flexability and speed when clearing 21, can help free up Niime to chug boots in 21x, lets you use infantry units to help get the left switch of 22, and helps with Rescue for 23. He can also status more accurately at range, which whilst less important, is still pretty helpful in the lategame. In an efficient playthrough, it's very difficult for anyone else to reach S staves, so it's basically his Prf, which gives him a big boost again due to how strong it is; it notably helps massively in Chapters 23 (removes all Status) and 24 (makes sure nobody is dying to a Manakete), but has more applications than it has uses really. His combat isnt great but it's not really terrible either...having access to Purge at base is somewhat useful if you choose to buy some with leftover cash. Karel - 1/10 Solid combat with Durandal or Wyrmslayer is typically not something you really have a lack of at the end of the game, but at least his capacity to do that kind of stuff puts him above Wendy and Sophia. Merlinus - 8/10 Yeah man I'm actually going to rate him. Convoywarping and acting as bait are good, but really the main boon he has is that he enables you to sell loads of stuff on the map, which is neccessary since FE6 HM has no base shop. If it wasn't for him you'd basically need to hold people back with full inventories of junk to sell on various maps, and may even have to wait a bunch of extra turns to be able to actually buy as many boots as you'd want.

Agreed on the points made here (besides the nitpick on Silver Swords but I corrected you on Discord already anyway) Broadly agreed besides the fact that tbh the Steel Blade vs the slower enemies in the Isles isn't "shaky" and Lance has a skill lead over Alan anyway so it kinda cancels out. He misses them here and there either way is the point wheras Alan is generaly more consistent. As for Tate...well addressing the counterpoint above I would rank Alance higher than Tate simply because of there much higher availibilty, their weapon flexibility and probably higher movement (you'll have promoted one of them with ch. 8 knight crest). I'd rank Zealot over Tate because he makes ch. 7 a lot easier (if you can recruit him in time), and another paladin is very helpful to save all the villages. This is all true but we have to acknowledge that there is really nothing particularly special about what Alance do for a lot of the earlygame besides exist and not be terrible. Their only niche earlygame is being mounted. Like, we don't really care that Wolt or Bors have perfect availability because they just aren't doing a whole lot ever, and even though Roy is privileged in FORCED perfect availability, he still just doesnt do much most of his existance so he struggles to even stay in mid. Alance's meaningful availability lead is really only like 5 or 6 chapters over Tate, and when flying is clutch as it is in numerous maps afterwards, that easily cancels out I think. I'm in broad agreement although tbh I think we've ranted a lot about Zeiss vs Noah vs Sue in discord so it's kinda tiring for me to regurgitate the arguments...I hope somebody else can offer some talking points. Zeiss joins the latest of these three but I think he has the most potential of them. He joins with sick bases for his base level and has many levels to grow. Sue isn't really needed when you have Shin and Noah is inferior to Alance. I guess I'm the only one who finds Noah overrated. He's even worse than Treck in the longrun due to his poor strength and speed growth. I don't deny that Noah is better because of his base level but I find a gap of 1.5 points between them way too much. Many levels to grow doesn't really do much for Zeiss when he desperately needs to promote to get better weapon rank and more speed ASAP, plus his str starts nearly capped. Zeiss also actually has to compete for his promotion item because promoting Shanna Tate and Miledy is more useful than promoting Zeiss. Sue might not be needed but she can broadly replicate Shin and doesn't compete for a promotion item. She's perfectly capable of pulling off lategame Murgleis shit which is actually nuts and where Nomads shine the most in this game, and her availability is great. Noah's lack of long term is offset by the fact that a 11/1 Noah is basically tied best/second best unit on your team for the entirity of the Western Isles and remains decent throughout Ilia at least. Treck can't reasonably promote for Ch9 in time without slowing down a lot or farming reinforcements. I agree that trained/promoted Fir is significantly more powerful than Bartre but it basically costs you 4/5 of a pair of boots to get a unit that is more than likely going to be relegated to second string infantry duty anyway because Rutger or whoever are going to do the real heavy lifting. Like, Fir is mostly just self improving for at least 2 more chapters after she joins (and she joins at the end of Chapter 9 as it is), and can't promote till the end of either 11A or 10B anyway. Chapter 12 isn't that great for her due to lack of 1-2 and the most reliable bosskilling Weapon in Durandal is definitely out of her weaponrank reach, plus the Wyrmslayer means most units that have a decent sword rank can do fine at killing the boss anyway. 12x boss is an asshole though and she'd be good against him if Rutger's not being used, but after that her general usefulness starts to wane a lot...like, there are so many units that could be bosskilling instead by that point in the game that it diminishes that value a lot. She's better vs mooks and promoted enemies, so you get to be able to save someone else's turn on finishing an enemy off or w/e since Fir probably killed it solo, but that's it really. I think the amount of contexts in which Bartre slots into a team easily and helps out a bunch (he can last a pretty damn long time tbh) are way more numerous and worth more consideration than the scenarios in which Fir actually gets to even really pay off her investment. I think WRT Lilina's advantages it really just comes down to this; both Garret and Lilina are pretty superfluous to efficient runs, so Garret's lack of cost wins it for him, slightly. I'd say Lilina's the better unit once trained but whilst it's not hard to train her, there are opportunity costs here because she really needs to promote asap, which means Saul has to wait till 14/14x to promote, which means Physic/Sleep access later, no combat, less movement, less staff range, etc....sure, finishing units off isn't an uncommon thing, but you could easily be letting Roy take those kills with the Light Brand or something instead, and he's a unit that DOES have to keep up. The gap is def small though.

I lost my shit at Finn destroying in C1 with a fucking Javelin. What a boss. edit: lol the entire arena sequence in C1 is so hilarious too.

Douglas - 2/10 He should have had like 10 more skill, then he would have at least been just a poor choice rather than a bad one. Zeiss - 6.5/10 Bit overrated beacuse he misses a bunch of good maps for flying in and he either neccessitates you spend extra money on a promotion item or don't promote one of either Shanna or Tate (who tend to actually have better combat than he does because they actually double). He also has garbage weaponranks and even after promotion fails to double a lot of the time. That being said, he still flies, and is in fact pretty adequate at chipping in with an Iron or Slim Lance without promoting, as well as not dying, and flight still has a bunch of useful maps left. With a speedwings and promotion he can become a pretty powerful unit too, enough to actually work as a team carry. Niime - 8/10 Godly staffer due to huge mag and near exclusive access to Apocalypse for even more. Apocalypse oneshots Manaketes and can nearly oneshot many regular enemies. With a a few boosters that aren't heavily contested (Body Ring/Robe) she can become a formidable Nostank too, capable of carrying you through Wyvern hoardes and the like in a manner that rivals Percival (granted, she really appreciates some terrain coverage to help). Dayan - 3/10 He has like 2 Chapters of being decent but that's it. If you take 21x really slowly and safely he might get to S bows for the endgame I guess but otherwise is just filler. Yuno - 1.5/10 1 Chapter of being decent. Better than Wendy or Sophia at least. Thats beacuse he doesn't.

I mean FE11 and 12 are still going to fit the general bill if you play them on lower difficulties. FE3 B1 was just an example of the easiest possible one to start with.

Get used to counting squares. It's easier to start LTCing in a game with more easy to see limits. Games without rescue or pair up put a more discernable limit on how far you can travel in 1 turn without using stuff like warp, and seize or kill boss maps can be tile counted too. Basically, FE3 B1 or something is an extremely easy game to try to ease yourself into LTCing, since the lowest possible theoretical turncount on any given map (without using warp) is easy to figure out since you just have to work out how long it takes Marth to walk to the throne. Then you calculate how many turns each Warp would save, and so forth. You also can't Hammerne Warp so the uses aren't as nuts as some other versions of FE1. OTOH, games like FE8 and FE9 have a bunch of rout maps that can be kinda annoying to figure out.

Fae - 3.5 Tanking LRT whilst getting doubled is a pretty great niche but actually having her fight is often more trouble than it's worth. Percival - 9 Autoinclude unit for basically any team. Igrene - 6 Solid filler, struggles to get better than A Bows, but since she's not exactly a primary candidate for lategame Murgleis use that's not terribly important. Klein's availability lead and lategame possibilities make him slightly better in that context, but she effectively replaces him anyway if you didnt train him. Garret - 3 Provides the same niche utility Gonzo or Geese do without costing anything, and can actually be rescued. He's also more accurate and bulkier than both of them. Hugh - 2.5 Saved from total assbaddery by his class, but still a big waste of time and money.

Raigh - 2.5 He's basically a later joining Lilina with less utility. Nosferatu looks good on paper but he doesn't have the stats to actually pull off tanking with it, He doesn't double Wyverns even when promoted and can't use an effective weapon. Eclipse is only useful on 1 Map in the entire game that is better Warpskipped by Niime anyway. Apocalypse is difficult to get to and comes much later than Forblaze. Joining later also means he misses good training opportunities in the EXP rich Isles, and his higher base level means he doesn't level up particularly fast either. So whilst he's not quite total garbage (a promotion and a speedwing do make him perform average at least in combat), there are even less reasons to bother with him than characters who are already having to call on superfluous utility. If he had HM bonuses he'd be a lot better. Cath - 2.5 The earliest point you can recruit her is basically the only map in the game where it was worth to deploy two thieves. I guess in a draft or other suboptimal team comp scenario she can still steal you some money and the Delphi Shield which is good enough utility to save her from being as irrelevant as Ogier. Miledy - 10 Bulky flier with great combat and nice growths, GG. A unit who fufills pretty much every quota to be godlike. Her combat is amongst the best in the game even if you don't give her Speedwings and Instantpromote because she joins at a low enough level to easily soak a lot of EXP in her join map, where most of the enemies struggle to do more than 5 damage to her and she can oneshot most of them with the Horseslayer. Flight is useful in 13, 14, 14x, 15, pretty much all of Ilia, 18 and 20x for Sacae (she's probably the 10 mov flier bosskiller in 20x), 21 and 23. She can reach 3HKO status against Manaketes without any effort. Her high stats even make her a pretty decent bosskiller. The only things she doesn't do is take Magic or Ballista to the face that well, but the Delphi shield patches up the arrow weakness fine and Aircalibur is uncommon enough to not be a big deal. Technically one could argue her rescuing utility is lower than average for a flier given the female mounted unit formula and her higher con, but being able to carry Roy and Warpers is more than enough, since most of the time Miledy is the one running ahead to fight stuff rather than ferrying units across. Cecilia - 7/10 Very solid utility unit with some combat niches and acceptable bulk. Unfortunately her staff rank is kinda just okay rather than particularly good, but her mounted status offers general utility and also means she doesn't really need to use Physic to always be healing at least. Being a free Hammerne user is helpful in scenarios where Saul doesn't have the flexability to Hammerne his own Warp too. Can realistically get to Forblaze without too much effort for lategame, which combined with the fact she needs less boots to reach the movement cap helps you distribute resources better for a stronger lategame team. These advantages help to cancel out the fact she joins a lot later than Clarine, who has been contributing for much longer. Overall I'd give her a tiny edge on Clarine but it's not by enough to get a .5 over, since one does have to acknowledge that Clarine was being helpful since her recruitment and can feasibly replicate the general C staff niches at least. Sophia - 1/10 Can help grab desert items in her join map and also gets a guiding ring (although I'm not a big fan of factoring this in tiering...), but is nearly completely useless otherwise.

Well, having another flier is great for Chapter 13 and 14, and 11B (although she is more trying to self improve there). It's good in pretty much all of Ilia and 18 for Sacae. It's good for 21. I feel that Tate's flying is only really getting hurt by diminishing returns a lot in 14x and 15, otherwise there's generally reason to deploy all your fliers on the maps that demand it, and her combat isn't really terrible, just not that great either. I think in general I'm pretty ambivilant about a unit having meh combat in FE6 because after Chapter 7 there's basically a really big grey area of "okay", where as long as you generally double, don't die that easily and can use a Killer Weapon you don't really have worse or better combat than the next guy. You have to have exceptional stats or a class that privileges you in some manner to be a consistent ORKO machine in this game, and until you get there, the guy who is a bit slower/bit less strong isn't meaningfully different. So like, whilst I acknowledge her combat is pretty mediocre in the grand scheme of things, it's pretty servicable without a lot of attention being given to her and she doesn't really have much difficulty reaching promotion either, along with flying being good in about 4 to 7 of the following maps. Mathematically speaking I'd "weight" the flight options Tate gives on those maps as basically doubling what she contributes relative to a non flier, so in my mind her availability points aren't don't hurt her that bad vs Alance. That being said, I do have to acknowledge that they can basically carry a team, wheras Tate can't ever really do that. This is @-Cynthia- too One can say though that there are plenty of feasible scenarios in which a player has seriously neglected to train Shanna, or just isn't really using her, in which case Tate can end up being relatively more important. There are also going to be the odd considerations for draft scenarios where Tate is your only flier, and her contributions are going to be a big deal then. If we consider these kinds of possibilities, then Tate's flying starts to become a lot more valuable. Basically, Tate can slot into suboptimal team compositions and be a huge help since flying is just a really powerful niche, so even if her impact in an optimal playthrough is reduced a lot (I can totally see Alance being better than her in a best units only run), she's overall got enough strengths to stay even overall. I'm not so much talking about Knight crest competition in the resource area so much as he doesn't even compete for EXP or demand some kind of useful weapon or whatever. He can be thrown onto the team and do whatever you want him to combat wise well with anything. I think to go back to a point I made earlier, because most good units in this game don't even ORKO reliably, Percival's ability to ORKO promoted enemies actually makes him stand out. It's basically just him and Miledy who tend to consistently be able to ORKO whatever they fight. Obv Marcus and Zealot can do it earlygame for a while with Silvers, and Rutger or Fir have very high chances to ORKO if they use a killer weapon, Alan and Shin (vs non fliers I mean) stand a good chance of being able to reliably do it at various points in the game too, but Shin typically doesn't have an Enemy Phase. Regardless, these are selective...sure, having to compensate for a no crit with another unit is not a big deal, but Percival's ability to ORKO effectively means he can free up another unit to be doing things or be a lot safer in handling particular parts of a map by himself.

Okay with the clearing up of the C/C thing that sounds fine. C/D before promotion either way sounds normal to me, just usually I find it's a little bit more biased to Lances (which I admit can be worked around if you put the effort in). It's just that typically I find they only get about another wlevel's worth of WEXP from Chapters 9 to 13, which leaves them about B when Percival joins. In fact overall your stats sound very similar to where mine usually are at that point too, just usually I find Shanna gets a bit more and Dieck gets a bit less. The more I think about it, I think it's more to do with the fact that I give a lot of random "free" Sword WEXP to Shanna if possible since I tend to prioritise improving her Sword Rank over the Cavs (D is already really nice and C is kinda amazing if she gets there). If I did that less then I can see B nearly A by C15 as pretty realistic. But IMO, having a Shanna with better Sword rank is a lot more useful than Alance getting better Sword Rank unless you just aren't using Percival. I think some of this gets into assuming optimal team comps and planning though so it is shaky, I admit. Though the point I address next doesn't fall into that. I agree Tate is too high on the current list, IMO she basically ties with Zealot or Alance overall. I think I'm sort of seeing an argument for Percival out of Top Tier and at the absoloute Top of High, or below the Dancers, but I still feel compelled to point out that he slots amazingly into literally every team, costs nothing, isn't hard to recruit, and competes for zero resources. He is single nearly single handledly capable of carrying anyone through the game. But if you look at it really closely and examine impact on efficiency he has, he isn't super centralising like Rutger and Marcus are, not does he have as strong a niche as Miledy (bulky strong combat flier) or the dancers. I feel that the sheer flexability and prominence he can have in any run means he still deserves top, and I think he can cinch out the Dancers because they're only as good as the units around them. Basically, adding dancers to a suboptimal comp results in a mild improvement, adding Percival to a suboptimal team always results in a massive improvement.