Zapp Branniglenn Posted October 20, 2023 Share Posted October 20, 2023 (edited) Quote "Is this the thread with Marth or Roy in it???" The answer to that question is finally YES. Just like how we covered dancers, this is going to be a lot of head to head matchups. BUT some fire emblem games do indeed have more than one Lord character. How you decide to rank them is entirely up to you. If you ask me, a "Lord" is any character who causes a game over on death on every map. But I know even that's got some funky grey area. What about Lucina, who is in the literal Lord class, but is allowed to die? I dunno, and I'm not ranking that particular game anyway to have to interrogate this question! Here's how I would rank the Lords. Only games I've played/replayed since 2017, which I suppose excludes a lot of the best Lords Spoiler FE4: Sigurd is the MVP of Gen 1. His stats are great, he's handed some great weaponry, he has no issues blitzing the arena, and provides 10 Hit and Avoid to allies within 3 spaces. Always put him wherever the toughest fights are and consider his canto placement carefully around that bonus. Seliph is not so great at the get go, but he gets Sigurd's class on promotion. Seliph doesn't really end up as a bad unit. In an average, blind playthrough, odds are good Sigurd gained a lot of levels and items but Deirdre did not, and it won't impact him very much if you tried to sabotage him on purpose via Sigurd. He's got a lot of lucrative Talk conversations, even by Gen 2 standards. And he doesn't have some gross Substitute version dragging him down. Three Houses: The Lords' high Authority rank lets them get first crack at C and above batallions. This not only lets them get those boosts early, but get a head start on leveling up those batallions for when more of your students are ready for them (consider equipping Model Leader as well). Byleth can Support everyone and has exclusive access to Faculty Training, but it comes at the direct cost of not benefiting from Instruction and Study skill exp like any other unit. Byleth has the hardest time of anyone gaining Riding, Flying, or Armor exp. And pushing for it early means not raising your professor rank and motivating your other students, making the game harder for them down the road. After the Time Skip, Advanced Training opens up which should shorten the gap between Byleth and the Students. But only for weapon skills. As for the House Leaders, they’re all excellent. Claude is the only one I’d hesitate to put into top tier because he spends the whole first half of the game being Good instead of Great. He’s the lowest skill exp investment of the three since his optimal class is given to him for free. Not enough people seem to notice this strength and try to certify him into Wyvern Rider, what a colossal waste of investment. FE1: No Pants Marth is a top tier unit and easily the best long term EXP dump of your Chapter 1 crew. The only other units I would vouch for top tier are Xane, Tiki, and Bantu. The Rapier matches the MT of Ridersbane and Armorslayer while having better stats everywhere else. And it’s buyable in nearly every armory in the game. Marth’s boss killing potential is only really matched by Merric’s Excalibur. But remember you can’t Hammerne Excalibur so those 33 uses are all you get. Marth also has exclusive access to the Miracle (Mercurius) Sword, and his high luck stat make him a good user of the Devil Sword too. Fighting Medeus without Falchion is so unreasonable that this is the only Archanea game where I'd recommend getting Falchion over keeping the Starsphere. The Falchion’s attack negation sounds busted on paper, but the truth is it doesn’t apply to any enemy you’d face in chapter 24. It’s only relevant in the final map as he works his way up to Medeus. Marth gets all of these tools and a universal passive taunt. If enemies see an open space to attack Marth, they go straight for him. Marth’s presence on the frontline allows squishy/injured units to just hang around and attack from wherever they want. The only issue with Marth are his stats. His growths are excellent by FE1 standards, but he’s not going to take off very quickly. He’s a prime candidate for stat boosters, but there are other units (Ceada, Bantu) that could also make excellent use of them for long stretches of the game. Echoes: Every character in Echoes is performing better in some way compared to their Gaiden counterpart, but to keep things in perspective we need to assess their new, unique tools. Alm’s Double Lion is on par with Hunter’s Volley damage output (and the sword’s passive healing lets you spam it more often). Promoted Alm can also lift a bow from his convoy on any turn you want to shoot, so you’ve got to really want a 3 range attack to justify Scendscale’s HP cost. Celica got a new prf sword, but it’s only available with a 1G, 10S investment into the Golden Dagger. Ragnarok Omega takes a lot of work, but you could easily grind that out faster than she’d learn regular Ragnarok. It can’t benefit from Mage Ring, but It’s also not 14 Wt (then again, why would you Ragnarok an opponent that retaliates if it isn’t going to kill?). The Last Promise: I suppose this game has four Lord characters since they all cause a Game Over and all have unique classes. Anakin would be MVP among them while the worst is probably just Siegfried. He’s pretty transparently meant to be a Jagen, but his very high growths would suggest to a blind player to stick with him. Not worth it. Shon is a high investment unit, and he’s too depressed to be deployed in some of the later maps, but the infinite use brave sword he gets makes for a huge payoff when you can use him. Kelik’s first map gives you the impression of a bad unit, but he’s very powerful and gets the most outrageous prf weapon for the final maps. FE2: A lot of what you know and love about these two was there in the original. It’s not advisable to raise Alm until after promotion – since there is no way he’s feasibly beating those promotion bases. The only stat he’d take with him is more Luck. He’s best used as a Jagen until then so that the other guys get more levels. I know SF and other sources claim that Celica gets 36 HP on promotion, that’s a lie. There are a few minor advantages over their remake counterparts. Alm’s Royal Sword has slightly better stats all around (though I doubt anyone would trade for that over Double Lion). If you give Alm a Bow he can fire up to 5 spaces away (bow range is tied to the bow itself, not the class). That’s pretty neat, but it would be way more powerful if Alm had personal convoy access to pull his royal sword back out. Or if there was more than one Steel Bow for him to share with your archer(s) for most of the game. Celica’s Ragnarok is as strong as Omega Ragnarok in the remake, but its damage and accuracy is equal to Angel against Monsters – which is nearly every enemy she fights that late in the game. FE8: Eirika is pretty mediocre and your exp investment won’t change that very quickly. She doesn’t contribute much at all in Eirika route due to the general lack of cavs and armors in favor of monsters. Her promotion only offers her better Rescue utility, and comes remarkably late. But the Sieglinde is 54 damage against Monsters assuming she never leveled Strength, so there’s a pretty great set of final chapters waiting for her at no investment. Ephraim is excellent from the get go. The Reginleif is a 24 Mt weapon against a huge proportion of enemies in Ephraim route. His high base stats and low starting level help him keep up on Hard mode too. He’s not one of the best units in the game, but I can’t think of any bad maps for him. Let’s say that FE8 and 9 are a tie when all is said and done. FE9: Ike has historically been the most overrated Lord in terms of gameplay, but I’ll admit his Lows are not as low as most Lords of that era (and he’s not dragged down by a Lyn). He supports a lot of excellent units, and Earth Affinity is extremely potent on the easier difficulties. He also enjoys a lot of early maps where it’s easy to feed him a ton of exp that no one else really needs or wants (thanks for baiting, Shinon and unequipped weapon Titania). Ike soaring ahead in levels won’t turn him into a monster, but it saves you bonus exp to spend on someone better. Ike has the best Occult skill in the game, but unfortunately makes his late game performance super unpredictable when you rely on it. The only guarantee being that he can’t do anything about those 2 range attackers until he gets Ragnell and becomes God for two whole maps. FE11: Forgeable Rapiers can potentially be pretty powerful, but that money could have gone to the Wing Spear instead. And it would be another 10000G or so to hit the same combat benchmarks required of the Wing Spear in H5. If Ceada died in chapter 1-3 of an iron man I would definitely reset consider speccing into Marth instead. And there are enough buyable rapiers that he could use that weapon exclusively unless it’s a Marth Solo. What really sets him back is the lack of promotion bonuses. FE11’s are identical to FE3, but with an extra 6-10 HP tacked on. Marth’s stats have never had such a discrepancy with other units granted the same exp investment. And it doesn’t help that stat boosters have been nerfed to the modern standard and stat caps are raised past 20. Marth’s level cap was raised to 30, but in my experience, the EXP scaling gets pretty harsh. A level 20/10 Cain is about as much experience as a level 27 Marth. Marth never needs good combat because warp skipping is as free as it was in FE1, yet unlike FE1, killing the boss shuts off reinforcements. Marth-specific objectives are never anything he specifically needs to rush. FE3: Book 1 and 2 are both Mars’ worst outing, in my opinion. The only point in his favor is that this is the game that invented convoy access on the Lord. They removed his universal taunt. If a unit of yours can be targeted and killed by the enemy, Marth can’t provide them that safety net. His personal weapons were nerfed. The armor slayer and dragon killer swords were both buffed. The argument in favor of keeping the Starsphere is stronger when the final boss has been made easier (maybe not “easier, but you can attack with way more units at a time and surpass his passive healing). Miracle Sword is no longer a prf weapon so that too should go to someone better. The Rapier went from being the most buyable weapon in the game to being a real commodity like in most games. Promotions now have stat bonuses, so Marth can’t help but fall behind in stats compared to Heroes. And finally the Warp access has dried up from 100 uses down to just 14 in Book 1 and 7 in Book 2. Less warp skipping means he has to see more combat on the way to objectives. FE3 Marth might score higher, proportionally, on a tier list compared to FE11, but it would be purely due to how much worse mounted units are. FE7: For what its worth, I do think Lyn and Eliwood are individually worse than Roy under their worst conditions (skipping Lyn Mode, Eliwood in Eliwood mode, etc). They just don’t get very good very quickly with high investment. But Hector is the counter weight. The Wolf Beil consistently one shots the appropriate enemies in those early chapters, making him a serious asset. 2X10 damage is better than the 3x5 damage of most rapiers in Fire Emblem. He gets worse as the game goes on, and his promotion is pretty lame. Providing no extra Mov and sword access he does not need. His 50 Def growth is the second highest in the game so at least he’s likely to get bulky with investment. FE6: Those early maps are not a huge threat to Roy and there’s not a ton of good long term projects at that point of the game. Might as well feed him a few levels for survivability. His rapier isn’t pulling the one shot on Chapter 4’s cavaliers but certainly with Wolt’s help first. It’s the mid game and beyond where Roy is a serious drag on the army. Bolting can take him out in one go if you didn’t give him a seraph robe, and status staves can knock his chauffeur out of commission. Then when he promotes he’s...not especially good? The nicest thing I can say about Roy is that he'll contribute more in the game's finale than any of FE7's lords. The Binding Blade is excellent, but is best saved for the Dragon hallway penultimate map. I noticed on Normal Mode he can nail them on his level 1/1 base stats from a safe distance, so feeding him more exp shouldn’t be a priority so late in the game. If I put these into tiers, 1-3 are S tier, 4-6 are A tier, 7-9 are B tier and the rest are C Edit: I somehow forgot about FE4 Next week we're doing Troubadours / horse mounted healer units Edited October 21, 2023 by Zapp Branniglenn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted October 20, 2023 Share Posted October 20, 2023 7 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said: If you ask me, a "Lord" is any character who causes a game over on death on every map. But I know even that's got some funky grey area. What about Lucina, who is in the literal Lord class, but is allowed to die? I dunno, and I'm not ranking that particular game anyway to have to interrogate this question! Nailah and Zelgius confirmed as lords! To be real, I think not only should Lucina be counted, but she's one of the most meaningful characters for a discussion like this. Because at least Dancers have the same role in each game, a comparison of Lords is going to just be which individual characters are best. At least Chrom and Lucina share the class, so we can actually talk about the class as a class. Ditto for the Three Houses lords...and that's pretty much it. Course we can't make a comparison out of two games (well we could, but we won't), so in an attempt to make this actually be class focused, I think it'd be fair to not judge characters on their ability to reclass here. We can't say "Edelgard is great because she can class change into Wyvern Knight", because that's losing the point. Paladin isn't great in the DS games because Jeigan and Arran can class change out of it into Wyvern Knight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samthedigital Posted October 20, 2023 Share Posted October 20, 2023 Top: FE4 Sigurd and Seliph belong a tier above everyone else in my opinion. Sigurd can practically solo his own campaign, and the best course of action in part 2 is to get Seliph a horse ASAP so that he can rush objectives and practically do the exact same thing. High: Fates, FE10 I don't want to create a separate tier for Ike alone, but he's definitely worse than Corrin. He's overshadowed by Haar, but he can comfortably kill just about everything that Haar doesn't. I seem to remember transfer bonuses being important for him, but I don't know that he'd be a whole lot worse without them. Corrin can do just about everything, but they're also slightly overshadowed by another unit depending on the route. Mid: FE5, FE9, Engage Leif is pretty useful as a combat unit through Manster, but he kind of falls off after that when Thracia becomes more about spamming staves. Alear has a fantastic personal, but they're otherwise unimpressive. I am pretty sure I'd think much less of Alear if it wasn't for the fact that they're the main character. It's what I like to call lord privilege; Alear is force deployed in a game where deployment slots are valuable, so it's a good idea to provide them with resources so that they can contribute. It also helps that they're required to complete chapter 11, so I always have them in a class to help clear the chapter more quickly. Alear also has a fantastic personal; it's often 6 additional damage, and it can even be more with a good engage attack. Ike is similar to Alear in a way. He's the best option for dealing with Ashnard at the end of the game, and he's also required in order to seize several maps. There's also no real downside to feeding him a ton of bonus experience to help him along since FE9 is a resource rich game outside of the Japanese version. He might not technically have great attributes, but he's the only footlocked unit that's going to see any combat (even if it's just at 1 range) if we're going at the pace of mounted units. Low: FE7, 8 Eirika is pretty bad from what I remember. I don't remember exactly how good Ephraim is, but I'm assuming that it's easier to just focus on the carries and avoid using him as a primary combat unit. If that's the case he kind of gets left in the dust even if his growths are good. The lords in FE7 are mostly awful. Lyn is one of the worst units in the game. Eliwood is alright with his personal for a while, but I usually bench him unless he's above average and starts snowballing a little. He's also limited with his lack of 1-2 range until promotion. Hector has mobility issues even if his combat is good. I don't actually know that his combat holds up anyway since he promotes rather late. Bottom: FE6 Roy is really bad and promotes late too; I don't feel the need to elaborate. I find this to be a fun strategic component to FE6 to be sure though. Awakening: I am not sure if Robin counts or not, but they probably belong below Sigurd in the top tier or at the top of the high tier. They are one of the best carries for Lunatic (I'm of the opinion that Freddy is a little better for a Lunatic solo, but Robin is a close second), and they're probably the best unit in Lunatic+. Robin is also the best parent for just about anyone. Lucina depends a lot on her mother, but she can be anywhere from a top tier unit after a paralogue or two to being a little too annoying to train without copious amounts of stat boosters. I have no idea about Chrom; he's just too good as a backpack, so I've never trained him seriously. I'm guessing that he can become a Lunatic carry without too much effort, but I have no idea about Lunatic+. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted October 20, 2023 Share Posted October 20, 2023 3 minutes ago, samthedigital said: Low: FE7, 8 Eirika is pretty bad from what I remember. I don't remember exactly how good Ephraim is, but I'm assuming that it's easier to just focus on the carries and avoid using him as a primary combat unit. If that's the case he kind of gets left in the dust even if his growths are good. The lords in FE7 are mostly awful. Lyn is one of the worst units in the game. Eliwood is alright with his personal for a while, but I usually bench him unless he's above average and starts snowballing a little. He's also limited with his lack of 1-2 range until promotion. Hector has mobility issues even if his combat is good. I don't actually know that his combat holds up anyway since he promotes rather late. Oh, no, Ephraim is a fantastic combat unit. He'd have the reputation of Ike or Hector if it wasn't for the fact that he joins later and exists in the same game as Seth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samthedigital Posted October 20, 2023 Share Posted October 20, 2023 (edited) 29 minutes ago, Jotari said: Oh, no, Ephraim is a fantastic combat unit. He'd have the reputation of Ike or Hector if it wasn't for the fact that he joins later and exists in the same game as Seth. That's kind of what I was getting at. He might have fantastic combat stats, but he doesn't have a mount until chapter 16 where we have Warp and carries with better stats to clear the game with. He's also even less likely to get going on Eirika route. edit: I can definitely see him being higher up if you play the game differently and/or value different things too. I remember people praising him as the next coming of Sigurd on a few websites back in the day, and it's not hard to see why. Edited October 20, 2023 by samthedigital Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark Holy Elf Posted October 21, 2023 Share Posted October 21, 2023 More than any other class this one just ends up feeling like a unit rating thread to me. I'm just gonna use the "a lord is a unit whose death always causes a game over while also having very high availability on at least one path through the game" to avoid weird corner cases like Lord Zelgius. And is also provides two reasons to exclude Lucina. Anyway I'm ranking based on the average score I would give lords in each game. 1. Three Houses: The lord class sucks but I'm not rating that (fine if anyone else wants to do it! It's just not the list I'm making). Edelgard and Dimitri are the best units in their routes, and Byleth is the best unit in Silver Snow. Claude... is extremely good too. There's a case to be made that these are the four best units in the game, period, and no other game manages that for lords. 2. Fates: Corrin varies from "one of the best" (Birthright, Conquest) to "probably outright best" (Revelation) due to immense flexibility, good stats, and an easy ability to snowball. Corrin isn't the second best lord in the series, to be clear, but there's no other lord in Fates to lower the average score. 3. Genealogy: Sigurd is the best lord in the series. Seliph is... decent? Mediocre before promotion, great after. Yes it's the objective best plan to get his mediocre unpromoted phase over quickly, but this doesn't reflect well on him as a unit IMO. This probably averages out to about here. 4. Awakening: Very similar to the above, there's one OP lord and one "pretty good I guess" one. My own personal tiebreaker is that I don't personally consider Robin to be as good as Sigurd. 5. Radiant Dawn: And Ike10 isn't as good as Robin. Micaiah's weird and hard to rate, I consider her decent enough but she's not going to go above Seliph or Chrom so this is the obvious spot. 6. Engage: Alear definitely isn't as good as any one lord from the above games, but they're pretty good and there's nobody to drag them down either. 7. Sacred Stones: Ephraim is certainly very good for a unit who is infantry-locked for half the game. Eirika is okay, held back by a weak start and no 1-2. 8. Path of Radiance: I consider Ike9 to be pretty comparable to Eirika: shaky start, but supports later prop them up to have good durability and good speed, held back by being sword infantry. Ike9's supported durability grows better/faster, but on the other hand he never gets a horse. Anyway, what was my point again? Oh yeah, if Ike9 is comparable to Eirika he's obviously behind avg(Eirika,Ephraim). This is quite a drop actually. 9. Blazing Blade: Well. Lyn is a worse Eirika, and Hector is way worse than Ephraim. And Eliwood is IMO worse than any of them. 10. Binding Blade: Roy bad. From what I recall Shadow Dragon/New Mystery would be near the bottom and Shadows of Valentia would be pretty high, but I'm not confident enough to say where exactly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted October 21, 2023 Share Posted October 21, 2023 (edited) 50 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said: 1. Three Houses: The lord class sucks but I'm not rating that (fine if anyone else wants to do it! It's just not the list I'm making). Edelgard and Dimitri are the best units in their routes, Edelgard is certainly one of the best units in the game, few people would argue that. But as I said in my first comment, we shouldn't really be judging Edelgard, we should be judging the classes, which for her means Lord, Armoured Lord and Emperor. Which are very far from the best classes in the game. And on the other side of the coin, Claude's exclusive classes actually are some of the best in the game. Edited October 21, 2023 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samu_77 Posted October 21, 2023 Share Posted October 21, 2023 (edited) I suppose everything with Reclassing onwards will be mostly a unit ranking. My list of games I've played is very scattered but I'll go Fe1, Fe6-8, 11, 13-17 1: Awakening I factor in all three "lord type" units. Robin as we all know breaks the game, but the pivotal point here is that Chrom is the best way to support Robin breaking the game by way of removing your more problematic lose condition, and the bonuses that Chrom gives as a Stat backpack are pretty high. In addition, it's mainly strength that is need when you are paired up because it's the most relevant stat when you are the backpack for the other unit to boost your dual strikes, which Chrom also does with his Dual Strike + skill, and the others stats used even puts Chrom favorably as well because his skill is pretty good and the growth for it is also good, this helps Robin even more in the long run because it adds more consistency to your ability to destroy everything with Robin. When played in this "path of least resistance" way of playing Awakening the gap between using these two characters as your character compared to actually raising your army is absurd and breaks the game way harder then any other lord does for any other game (except seemingly Fe4, but I can't personally speak on that note), even 3H Lords don't break their games as much as the pair of these two do. Lucina would drag this down quite a bit which is impressive because she's far from a bad unit, just not as game breaking. If you aren't doing the "path of least resistance" way of playing Awakening, and trying to play this game like an actual Fire Emblem game, you are going to find that Robin is still your best unit for most of the game because of Veteran (eventually, not initially with Frederick), and Chrom is still far above average with his honestly absurd growths and ability go to go Cavalier and provide Cav stat backpack is also insanely good as well as giving really good skills. Lucina, if given the ability to grow, can also eventually turn out to be very good like the rest of the children, although she still is easily the weakest out of three. 2: 3H Stats, great weapons, easily reclassable into Wyverns, are the characters least likely to get destroyed in Early Game Maddening, high Authority. Byleth has unlimited support options. These units have realistically no weaknesses, have arguably the highest potential and are just insanely good. I don't have much to say about these ones because their reputation is so well known. 3: Fates Corrin acts as a watered down Robin, which is still pretty damn good. Notably their EXP is almost completely uncontested for the Prolouge, so if you want you can basically have them be at level 9 (that's what mine got the last few times I played this game) by the end and have them promoted by the end of the next chapter. One of the best parent units due to Nobility being cracked. Corrin is the easiest unit to use Fates' most broken strategies due to the amount of control you have to accessing their class and support lines, like Life and Death Vantage, high skill Ninja Sol Builds, or extreme Nosferatu tanking with an incredibly magic invested Corrin. Draconic Hex for Con or Rev can be really good for boss killing but the Hoshidan Lord and Nohrian Lord classes are relatively middling comparatively. Corrin does always take effective weapon from Dragon-Buster weapons like Wyrmslayers, but this is a very rare occurrence. 4: FE1 Only character that gets you villages, constant taunt is incredibly exploitable, Rapier does a lot of damage and there's a fair amount of them in this game, somewhat higher movement that lets him keep up with the other high move units. Eventually gets some nifty tools in Mercurius, the FIRE EMBLEM and Falchion. Marth feels a lot like "the rich get richer" type of unit because just raising him makes it easier for other enemies to target him and then he just keeps getting more and more experience. 5: Engage Alear is actually kind of cracked. EXP in early game is very easy to give them due to him having the most convenient access to Marth Emblem Mercurius and other then Chloe not as many of the early game units hold up long-term, so feeding them when they are force deployed is easy to do. There's all kinds of fun stuff Dragon-type units get but the most flashy is by far Goddess Dance and Instruct, which more or less just gives you the easiest way to circumvent the Boss Health Crystal system by making all of your units cracked and extra turns. Emblem Corrin is also very solid on them due to your pick of Dragon Veins. In a game where your units can feel relatively homogenous and where sometimes it feels as if you are deploying Emblems instead of actual characters, being the best character at using the Emblem is really good. 6: Echoes Alm is the best unit in Act 1, as he takes like no damage from everything and doubles everything with his higher speed (don't give him lightning sword though, that shit is heavy and your other Merc will like it a lot more). Act 3 Alm is much worse then his other performances, as Ridersbane Paladins start to dominate the maps where you have to fight those and Alm simply can't keep up. The higher presence of Mages also doesn't bode well for him, and honestly the fact that he more or less can promote the second you reach Act 4 if you just do Celica route first means leveling him up isn't even that good of an idea since his Hero bases are so good he will rarely pull ahead of them without allocating a lot of exp the rest of your army. Those Hero bases are so good though that he becomes cracked again in Act 4 and he starts to destroy everything if given a Killer Bow, and is arguably your best unit again. Celica is definitely worse, but healing utility is nice, early Seraphim is great, Thunder is good chip and I find Celica almost always does something useful on her turn. Her higher res also lets her deal with Witches better, although they are unlikely to be attacking her compared to others. Seraphim lets her fight throughout the whole game on a good level too. 7: FE8 Ephraim is a very solid combat unit, has very good one to two range, is easy to give a ton of EXP in his map, and will generally carry you well throughout his route, while noticeably still being very good when he rejoins on Eirika route. His promotion is very good, being lance-locked in this game isn't so bad when your hit rates are still very good and Axe units are a little less common and Siegmund makes him the best boss-killer for late game assuming he hasn't been speed screwed. Canto Rescue is always a good bonus as well. Eirika isn't nearly as good, and drags down the viability of both. Her durability is absolutely atrocious, she does little damage to anything that isn't a cavalier, who will likely hit her very hard with a lance in return if they aren't sword cavs. She does get a very good, fast-building support with Seth notably and she gets a second copy of her high-durability Rapier early as well, but yeah, this unit just doesn't have a good time in this game. Her Promotion is decent with Canto Rescue and a delete button against most Monsters but this still isn't anything spectacular FE7: Hector is just a solid unit all around, good enough 1-2 range, can survive a lot of hits, has a fast building support with Eliwood that is pretty solid. It's the others that drag down this ranking. Eliwood feels incredibly useless until promotion because there is nothing that he provides that other characters can't do better, not enough speed to double, not enough damage with his rapier even on effective units. Swordlock is terrible in this game where you can throw Marcus or Raven or whoever into the fray with a Hand-Axe and expect them to come out on top and accuracy isn't in the least bit in demand in this game. His promotion is the saving grace here because it turns him into a glorified cavalier which is still good because it gives him solid 1-2 range in Javelins and Canto Rescue. He's just nothing spectacular really. Lyn... yikes. The Mani Katti is the one truly good thing about her, weightless, effective damage with crit and high accuracy is really good. Everything else is terrible. Terrible survivability, swordlocked until promotion, the Mani Katti isn't even likely to kill because she's usually at weapon disadvantage against the ones she's supposedly good at fighting. Unlike Eirika who at least has Canto Rescue upon promotion, Lyn get's... Bows, which may be even worse then Swords. Lyn is literally a worse Nomad Trooper class with high res. At least she's usually optional, and she does have a fast support with Florina with solid bonuses. FE6: Swordlocke isn't as bad in this game, and for what it's worth in a game with accuracy problems, Roy actually usually doesn't have to deal with them because of the high accuracy of Rapier and his supports build fast and give good bonuses. And then you see that Roy dies from almost everything in the entire game until he promotes, doesn't kill anything even with supports, basically NEVER doubles anything that isn't an armor knight, and you have to ferry him around every single chapter to the throne. Upon that Promotion he goes kinda crazy with that +7 defense and +10 res, and the Binding Blade is up there for one of the best personal weapons in the series as it lets him play FE7 by giving him hard-hitting 1-2 range with very good accuracy and survivability. If you've been training him like mad than Durandal is also an option I guess to although removing the Durandal from Rutger is a sin in my book. The thing I hate about most with this character is that he eventually becomes very good to the point that you should probably train him but he's so unbelievably useless from like 7-21x that I want to cry. FE11: Marth is just not it in this game. Rapier is good but man in a game where he can't reclass and there are clearly other better units from nearly the start of the game like Ogma he's just sad in this game. Being unable to actually use the Falchion Properly to kill Medues on higher difficulties is also just sad, even though it isn't relevant for most of the game it's just telling of how good Marth is. Any resource you allocate to Marth is much better spent on units like Ceada. Edited October 25, 2023 by Samu_77 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KMT4ever Posted October 21, 2023 Share Posted October 21, 2023 Finally going to post in one of these topics. I'm going in order for the games I've played, keeping in mind that it's been a while for a lot of them. Binding Blade: Roy is bad. His growths are meh, he's foot-locked in a game with big maps and lots of good mounted units, there are wyverns everywhere that eat him for breakfast, and he promotes hideously late even if the true ending is unlocked. He doesn't even have convoy access. Easily bottom of the barrel, with the Binding Blade itself being his one saving grace. Blazing Blade: I personally never understood the hate for Lyn. She's not fantastic, especially if you compare her to Raven who comes immediately afterwards, but if you play her mode (which you should IMO) she can get plenty of experience to give her a leg up and she becomes perfectly functional. Her promotion isn't great, but bow access lets her do something at range. Eliwood isn't as bad as his son, but that's in part due to being in an easier game. He can turn out good at everything, but he can also end up terrible at everything, where Lyn can at least be counted on to have good skill and speed. At least his promotion is really good, gaining lances and a horse. Hector is definitely the best thanks to axes and being overall beefy, but his promotion is pretty bad. He mostly doesn't need swords, he gains zero movement, and he's harder to rescue. I'd say Eliwood and Hector are better in Hector mode, since the former wants to promote ASAP and the latter doesn't really need to. Sacred Stones: This game has the complication of the route split massively changing each lord's viability. Eirika suffers less since she gets the first third of the game to herself regardless, but on the other hand she needs as much help as she can get to even try to compare to Ephraim. She's like if Lyn had a lot more competition for EXP during her story, which is a problem considering how many good units show up early in FE8. All in all she's only okay in her route and plain bad in Ephraim's. Meanwhile Ephraim has awesome bases, growths, and weapons, but if you take Eirika's route he's barely even in the game. By the time he comes back there's not much point in raising him, good growths or not. On his route he can get enough EXP to actually grow to his full potential, at which point he becomes incredible. Overall I'd say the two are similarly bad if you didn't pick their route, but Ephraim is much better in his route than Eirika is in hers. At least both of them get good promotions, gaining horses and the Renais Sacred Twins. Radiant Dawn: Micaiah suffers from being a slow, squishy mage in an army that's already squishy in general. She is the Dawn Brigade's sole source of magic aside from Part 1!Ilyana, who's a terrible investment, so she at least has some relatively unique utility. Thani's also very handy, plus stave access later on. Her second promotion does come with the problem that it's difficult to get her much experience in the measly five chapters she's playable in before that point. She's not completely awful, but she struggles to achieve much without dying. Ike on the other hand is extremely strong and has a much easier time getting to level 20, especially given how enemy-dense RD is. Definitely on the higher end of lords. Shadow Dragon: Marth is pretty awful here. He has less room for growth than regular units, he's sword-locked in an extremely lance-heavy game, and he's badly overshadowed by fellow starting units. His growths and caps aren't good enough to make up for any of this, and he has to spend so much time visiting villages that he has even less chance to grow. He doesn't even get a promotion to help him get a leg up. Overall he starts okay, then gets progressively worse until he's just...ugh. New Mystery: Marth's not as bad as in the previous game, but he's still not great. Sword-lock isn't as bad as it was, but it's still not ideal. He still has the village problem, and despite amazing growths his caps are pretty low for someone who's expected to beat the final boss. Okay at best. Awakening: Robin is god-tier, with an amazing class, perfect availability, and immense build flexibility. Literally no downsides. Chrom is also very good, with strong growths and a nice reclassing option in Cavalier/Paladin. Lucina isn't amazing in a non-grinding run, but she's still got a lot going for her between her class, growths, and strong personal weapon. Really great all around. Fates: Corrin's amazing. Not as good as Robin due to only getting one reclass option by default, but they still have great stats and perfect availability. Nohr Noble is definitely better than Hoshido Noble thanks to Draconic Hex, but neither is really outstanding. If there's one advantage they have over Robin, it's having a strong personal weapon. Final comparison: Awakening > Fates > Radiant Dawn > Blazing Blade > Sacred Stones > New Mystery > Shadow Dragon > Binding Blade Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eltosian Kadath Posted October 21, 2023 Share Posted October 21, 2023 (edited) On 10/19/2023 at 8:19 PM, Zapp Branniglenn said: If you ask me, a "Lord" is any character who causes a game over on death on every map. Hmm... I think I will specifically restrict it to the classes that are either unique, or uniquely sourced by units that are game over units, and if a game over unit doesn't have one (I am looking specifically at Kris with this one), I am not counting it, as this is supposed to compare classes, not simply units. Admittedly which units have that class available can be rather important, especially with such limited classes like this one, but this is primarily about the class. Also fuck Radiant Dawn and its innumerable absolutely stupid game over conditions (I am glaring at YOU innumerable Any Allied Unit dies defeat condition of the Dawn Brigade maps), so I will have to limit it further for that game. S Tier: One of the Best Classes in the Game Genealogy of the Holy War: Sigurd is amazing, easy S tier all on his own, and while Seliph needs to promote first, he can get onto the same level as his father easily, especially with some very basic inheritance on him. Awakening: Tactician's Vetern skill is one of the things that breaks this game wide open, which earns it an easy S Tier, and the Lord class is almost up there as well, with some excellent skills to it like the +10% dual strikes, that really helps to support the classic Robin solo (or just be a better backpack than other units, and in all likelihood half your units will be backpacks in Awakening), or the +10% skill activation to make those more viable paths to power. Lord on its own might simply be A tier, but it is close enough to S tier that I don't think it can drag Tactician down a tier. Fates: I have gone back and forth multiple times on whether this should be an A, or S tier class, but in the end, I think it eked its way into S tier. The quality of the class varies a bit by version (with the Nohrian version being better), and the power of Corrin obfuscates things a bit, especially compared to the more underwhelming Kana, but it just barely makes the cut. The ability to transition from the tanky magic chip of the dragon stone (a great lure for enemy phase), to the more deadly sword (great for grabbing player phase kills) makes for a potent dynamic. The extra experience of Nobility is excellent, but this is no Awakening where the minimum experience can break the game with a boost like this. Draconic hex is the main reason I consider the Nohrian version better, it synergies really well with the tanky nature of the D-stone, although the healing utility of the Hoshidan version shouldn't be ignored and is arguably more useful than the gain of tomes the Nohrian version gets (although if you are building a magic Corrin/Kana, it is fantastic, and just grinding tome rank up to D to get access to the very useful stat boosts of the Horse Spirit scroll for a far more offensive enemy phase option is good even without that kind of focus, or for just hitting key speed ranges...). A Tier: A Good Class New Mystery of the Emblem: If I were including Kris, they would push this into S tier, but they have no personal class to them, and these lists are comparing classes. That leaves us with just Marth, who fares far better in this game than in the other DS. This game is way more balanced with enemy weapon types, so while being Sword locked isn't great, it isn't as awful as in Shadow Dragon. Marth gets great availability, and has solid stats for the early game, gets thief utility from the Fire Emblem fairly early on, and solid personal weapons. While Lord can't promote, the +2 to all stats that breaks caps that the completed Fire Emblem gets is enough to make Lord surprisingly competitive statwise for the late game, and getting the only effective weapon against Medius is another solid boon, and there are plenty of runs where he is vital to victory in the end because of it. He isn't one of the best units, but definitely a good one all game through. Engage: The thing that pushes this to A tier is the Dragon class typing. That class type gets so many great bonuses from emblems, that it becomes the best user of multiple different, very powerful Emblems, and the Divine Spirit skill it gets feeds into that even more. Otherwise it is a bit underwhelming, Swords aren't a great weapon type in this game, and it doesn't really get the stats to work with the brawling it gets, but those setbacks are only enough to push the class out of S Tier. Echoes Shadows of Valentia: For once the multi-Lords aren't in vastly different tiers, as I feel both fit solidly in A tier. Celica is basically just anoter mage, and while its a bit of a spoiler for future class ranking, A rank is where I feel the mages stand. Alm is great early game, and gets some excellent personal weapons to carry him through the mid (and some archery access to help out as well), keeping him solidly in the A-tier. Thracia 776: Lief has a lot of quirks going for him. First he never has to worry about fatigue, as well as perfect availability, so he has by far the best availability. Second he has one of the largest support lists [16 units], with some rather key units in that lists [which means +10 Accuracy/Avoid/Crit/Dodge to supported units within 3 spaces], and gets 0-2 leadership stars (depending on when in the game it is) [so +0-6 to all allies Accuracy and Avoid], which makes him a surprisingly versatile support unit. His personal weapon, the Light Sword is rather useful as well, with magic being rather important for this game. One final odd boon is how closely enemy staff priority is tied to deployment number makes it incredibly unlikely for him to be statused. As I have said multiple times, utility matters a lot more than combat in Thracia, especially when you can abuse the scrolls anyway, and being the only unit able to be deployed on every map makes him the best unit to over invest in, so despite him having the worst promotion, and slightly late story one at that, I don't think the weaker combat that entails really sets him back all that much. I have debate a fair bit whether this is all enough for him to be in A or B tier, but I think I will let my boy sit in A tier B Tier: An OK Class Path of Radiance: Ike is fairly solid unit, despite being locked to one of the worst weapon types in the game, and not having a horse in such a horse emblem game. Despite all the things going against him, his stats are usually solid for this game, he has perfect availability, he gets the potent Earth affinity to boost his and an ally's avoid, unlike most story promotion his is almost perfectly timed, and his personal weapon fixes the weapon type issue a little, but comes far too late to bring him into A tier. Sacred Stones: Eirika is rather underwhelming, with her solid promotion just enough to get her into C tier, but Ephraim is good enough to pull the lords of this game up into B tier. Radiant Dawn: It was tough to decide who even counts in this case, as Radiant Dawn has a lot of very stupid game over conditions, but I went with all the units specifically named as game over conditions in part 4 with unique classes so Ike, Micaiah, Elincia, Sanaki, and TIbarn (Sothe is excluded, as Heather is also a Rouge/Whisper). This leads to the issue of this group being all over the place, from the easy D tier Micaih, to the obvious C tier unit Sanaki, the pair somewhere in B to A tier of Ike and Elincia, and the easy S tier Tibarn. Usually a class having some excellent units would outweigh having a few stinkers, but Lord like units generally being force deployed, and with no way out of the class in these early games really changes that dynamic, so I decided to average them out. Three Houses: Classwise, this is another mixed bag. Byleth's Enlightened One class is more in the B-tier range, Claude's persona classes are excellent, somewhere in the S-A tier range, Edelgard's are kind of terrible more in the C-D tier, and my instincts are that Dimtri's goes more in the B tier. C Tier: A Subpar Class Shadow Dragon: Being locked to swords sucks a lot in this game where lances abound, but Marth makes up a bit of ground with a forgable personal dual effective weapon (that is mitigated by always fighting the weapon triangle with it), and with his Fire Emblem based thief utility. Also despite having an effective weapon against Medeus he doesn't have the stats to deal with things in the higher difficulties. I have waffled a fair bit on whether he should be in B or C tier... Blazing Sword: The three lords of this game are such a mixed bag. Lyn is really bad, stuck with the two worst weapon types, a late promotion and is way too squishy, easy D tier on her own. Eliwood would be in this tier, and is in the weird spot of being a growth unit with extreme variance, and in my experience has roughly 50-50 chance of being good or bad, with a promotion that is solid, but too late to really save him from C tier. Hector is a low B, or high C Tier unit, with the right kind of stats, and weapons to do far better than the other lords in the early game, but his promtion comes too late, and doesn't give him what he needs to compete later into the game for a higher tier. Binding Blade: If poor Roy promoted at a time that was even slightly reasonable, he would probably be in the A tier. The accuracy of swords is really useful in Binding Blade, and the effective damage of the Rapier is a boon in some of the scary early game maps, and before all your units promote, he can hold his own and really help out. Once he finally promotes, he gets an amazing personal weapon to try an salvage what is left of the game. The issue is he is force deployed on a lot of maps which he is simply unable to handle with unpromoted caps, let alone stats, which really undermines that early game performance. Ranking him as high as I am is probably controversial, but there are sections of the game where he does well. D Tier: A Bad Class Edited October 21, 2023 by Eltosian Kadath Accidently published a little early Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whisky Posted October 21, 2023 Share Posted October 21, 2023 I’m going to try to rank by the classes themselves rather than the characters in the class. Some games having multiple different lord classes makes this difficult. I’ll try to take an average I guess but as always, I consider the write up more valuable than the ranking. Engage Alear’s dragon class is pretty good, mainly for support rather than combat which is interesting. In some FE games, the lords are really strong. I like seeing a bit so strong lord that is good at supporting his troops. The dragon class can provide a variety of neat bonuses depending on what Ring you give him. He can boost all stats to team members with the Byleth Ring or use any terrain altering effect from the Corrin Ring. I feel like Engage is the only game where the class itself actually offers unique bonuses that you can’t get from other classes. Three Houses Claude’s personal classes are really good, Dimitri’s are medicore, and Edelgard’s are kinda terrible. Feels weird putting it this high then but the lord classes are often kind of bad. Claude’s classes are really what is carrying this game here. Flying Bow Wyvern is great. Both of them are really good. Dimitri can do well enough in his classes, at least with Great Lord. High Lord is pretty bad with only 5 Mov. Great Lord isn’t great either despite the name, but it’s not terrible. Dimitri can make pretty much any class work with his high Str and Vantage/Wrath build. Edelgard’s Armored Lord and Emperor classes are really bad. Edelgard is the best unit in the game as a Wyvern Rider but she really wants to get out of her personal classes. Why would you complete stump her mobility and Spd with these classes? They’re terrible. Radiant Dawn Ike’s class is kind of mediocre I think. Ike himself is really strong but I think that’s despite his class rather than because of if. Can you image Ike on a Wyvern? Though depending on whether you consider Ragnell exclusive to Ike or to his class, that could give it some points. Macaiah’s class is kind of a support class with Staff utility after promoting. Before that she can hit pretty hard with magic, especially with Thani against Cavalry/Armors, but is very frail so you need to be careful. She’s a glass cannon, but the class has some useful features to it. Elincia’s class is actually really good, even if she isn’t very strong. A flying Staff user is always appreciated for the utility. She’s actually the main reason this game is ranked this high for me. I don’t know if it makes much sense, she has some issues, but like I said, the class itself is great. Sacred Stones Erika’s class isn’t great, being sword locked infantry for most of the game is actually pretty bad. At least she gets a horse later, and you could argue that her special Sword is exclusive to her classes. Ephraim is really strong and his class is decent with using Lances. He’s still infantry force most of the game, but unlike some lords that stay infantry forever, he gets a horse later on. Not too shabby. He’d almost certainly be better if he could just be in a different class from the start though, like Cavalier. Blazing Sword Hector is pretty strong but is honestly kind of over rated, since he does start to fall off when every one else is promoting and he can only watch. His promotion super late. The class itself is pretty terrible, aside from the stats, tied with General for lowest mobility in the game and no utility. Still, it’s not the worst class to be in in this game. At least it has 5 Mov unlike Armor Knight, and isn’t Sword locked or especially Bow locked. Eliwood’s class isn’t too bad, but isn’t great either. Like I said with Erika, at least he gets a horse eventually, and he gets Lances too. The promotion comes late though, so he’s a Sword locked infantry for most of the game. Worse than other Sword locked infantry because of the late promotion, and obviously worse than other classes like Cavalier. Lyn’s class is also bad with being infantry for the whole, being Sword locked for most of it, and only gaining Bows when she promotes. She uses the two worst weapon types in FE7. Lyn has her only problems stat wise, but the class isn’t doing her any favors. Binding Blade First of all, I’m going to say that Roy is very underrated, and is definitely better than Eliwood and Lyn. He actually does have moments where he shines. He is particularly accurate, especially early on, which makes him very good at finishing off weakened enemies. This is a useful trait in FE6 early game. He has some other strengths as well, but I won’t get into that now. Him having some strengths isn’t really because of his class, unless you attribute the Rapier and Binding Blade to his class, but other wise it’s nothing special. Being Sword locked in FE6 isn’t as bad as it is in a lot of other games, but he remains Sword locked and infantry for the whole game and promotes late. Path of Radiance Ike himself can become pretty strong, but it’s not because of his class. Sword locked infantry for the whole game, with a late promotion is never a good combo. I’ve said before that I think the disparity between infantry and mounted units is at its greatest in this game. Ike would be much better if he was in a mounted class. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowFire Posted October 21, 2023 Share Posted October 21, 2023 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanty Pete's 1st Mate Posted October 21, 2023 Share Posted October 21, 2023 My ranking is primarily going to be based off of Lord classes, rather than Lord units. However, traits which are class-independent, such as Convoy access, will be considered. Of course, in games without reclassing (and some games with), they're one and the same. So, going worst to best, let's get into it! Spoiler 11. FE7. Three big disappointments, right in a row. They all have issues with promoting late, 2x effective signature weapons, and weirdly heavy legendary weapons. Lyn doesn't get a good weapon type, Eliwood has no good growths, and Hector forgets to gain any Mov on promotion. Plus, since a lot of maps aren't Seize, you don't even have to do anything with them. You don't even need them for the final boss, as Athos with Luna gets the job done. They can work if invested in, but otherwise, they're dead weight. 10. FE6. In a vacuum, sure - Roy looks worse than any of the prequel's Lords. At least until he gets the Binding Blade (which makes him great, albeit not required, for the final bosskill). But for various reasons, swordlock isn't as bad in this game. Beyond that, every map is Seize, so at least he's doing something necessary to progress the game in every chapter. 9. Path of Radiance. Ike is swordlocked infantry in a game where both of those are "pretty bad, actually". The Regal Sword is "just okay" in a game with 2x effectiveness. There are lots of non-Seize maps, and he has no Convoy access. So, what gives? Well, his stats are pretty good, his promotion comes at the right time, and his Earth affinity is the best he could ask for. Moreover, he's (almost) required, when it comes to beating the final boss. He's a valuable unit whose contributions matter. 8. Three Houses. Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude, and Teach are all highly-regarded as among the best units in their respective routes. But the Lord classes? Eh, not so much. The Intermediate "Lord" class is pretty basic, just offering the Charm skill and the chance to grow Authority slightly quicker. Teach's Enlightened One is... actually a pretty solid glow-up forcomingpre-skip, combining Swordfaire with 6 move and spell access. Edelgard's signature classes are only worth it if you want her to go out defensively tanking. Dimitri's are "fine, I guess", but getting stuck in chapter 13 as 5-move infantry is not the best first impression. As for Claude's, they're... actually really good! Barbarossa might be the second-best class in the game, by merit of being an ersatz Wyvern Lord. All told, while the units are great, the classes are a mixed bag. 7. Sacred Stones. Likely the best showing of Lord classes in GBAFE. Eirika takes a lot of flack, but she does as well for herself as a swordlock could in FE8. The Rapier and Sieglinde are both very solid weapons, and the horse she gains upon promotion is a welcome boon. Same for Ephraim, except that his weapons are even better, and he can also use Javelins. Oh, and his stats are excellent. He doesn't pick fights he can't win, after all! Oh, and before I forget, your chosen Lord will have the Convoy with them - no Merlinus needed. 6. Fates. On any given route, Corrin will be one of your best units. But how much of that is due to the class, actually? Well, Dragonstones can be nice for magical or more defensive builds. Nohrian Hex is a great skill on the Nohrian promotion, too. Uh... not a ton more to say here. I'm not counting Dragon Veins, because the other Royals get them, too. 5. Awakening. This is me counting Tactician and Grandmaster as "Lord" classes, which is pretty debatable. Anyway - Veteran good. Even if you reclass Robin, they'll always be benefiting from it. As for the Lord classes, exclusive access to forgeable Rapiers is pretty nice. The glowed-up Falchions are strong weapons in their own right, too, although you can reclass into them. There's no Seizing, but Chrom (or was it Robin? I forgor) carries the Convoy. 4. Radiant Dawn. There are two Lords to consider here, in Micaiah and Ike. Micaiah, the first one you get, is pretty balanced. Thani is a powerful weapon, and Sacrifice is nice utility, while having 5 extra skill inventory is a goddess-send. But she's slow and frail, and won't get her first promotion until more than half her chapters are done with. Ike, on the other hand, is strong from the moment he joins, with Ettard in hand. Low Luck and Res aside, it's not long until he gets Ragnell, making him a force of nature. And that's good, because he's necessary to defeat the Black Knight and finish off Ashera. Just an insanely good unit. 3. Echoes. Alm's biggest boon, early on, is the simple act of having 5 movement, when all his allies are stuck with 4. Just as his allies are starting to surpass him, he gets the Royal Sword. Then Double Lion. Then a promotion, with Bow access. There areno Seize mals, but the fact that he has to go through his own gauntlet - and finish off the final boss - gives him a central importance. Celica is, unfortunately, less of a standout unit. She starts as a solid Mage, who also has Swords, and then gains healing. A lot of cool options come to her later on, like the Ladyblade, Beloved Zofia, or the Mage Ring. But being stuck at 4 move is miserable. Oh, and they both have Convoy, which is especially good in a game with 1 inventory slot. 2. Shadow Dragon. Yes, I'm as surprised as you are by this ranking! Marth's combat is "just okay" - forgeable Rapier is nice, but swordlock really sucks past the earlygame. His caps, and lack of a promotion, let him down. That all said, his utility is immense. Every map is Seize, giving him a necessary function - and not only that, he's your only unit who can visit villages. Add on to that Convoy access, and the ability to break open Chests, and you have the most centralizing unit in the game. On any given turn, the most important question you can ask is - "what am I going to do with Marth?" 1. Genealogy. Speaking of "centralizing", every map in FE4 is not just one Seize, but a series of Seizes. The entire game revolves around what move Sigurd - and later, his son Seliph - makes onany given turn. Sigurd starts with everything he could ask for - a horse, great combat stats, the ability to double (not a given) - and adds a Silver Sword in the middle of the Prologue! He's pretty consistently your best unit throughout Gen I. Seliph is much more a case of "you get out what you put in". He starts with no horse, but with the right Swords and Rings, he can still be a force to be reckoned with. Easily the strongest showing of Lord classes in the series. Lot to say on some, not so much on others. Let me know what you think! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samu_77 Posted October 22, 2023 Share Posted October 22, 2023 13 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: Hide contents 10. FE6. In a vacuum, sure - Roy looks worse than any of the prequel's Lords. At least until he gets the Binding Blade (which makes him great, albeit not required, for the final bosskill). But for various reasons, swordlock isn't as bad in this game. Beyond that, every map is Seize, so at least he's doing something necessary to progress the game in every chapter. Is it fair to credit the necessity of Seizing a map as a positive for a unit? Because I personally only see it as a negative thing. If the objective was anything else then Roy I feel would become a lot better because he is free to do other things then make his way to the Throne each time, for example a defeat boss map would give him a lot more freedom on the battlefield. I agree that it makes them more important but I wouldn't necessarily say that makes them better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted October 22, 2023 Share Posted October 22, 2023 1 hour ago, Samu_77 said: Is it fair to credit the necessity of Seizing a map as a positive for a unit? Because I personally only see it as a negative thing. If the objective was anything else then Roy I feel would become a lot better because he is free to do other things then make his way to the Throne each time, for example a defeat boss map would give him a lot more freedom on the battlefield. I agree that it makes them more important but I wouldn't necessarily say that makes them better. Kind of calls into question what is "good". As there's two types of good when ranking which different people have approached differently, mostly people have seen good as "How broken is this class". But there's also good in the design sense. Alm is, almost no doubt, a better unit than Celica. But personally I just like Celica as a unit more. Because she can kind of do everything. She can attack from range, she can heal, she can blow away dracowyverns and she can even get close and personal with a sword. And while she's not a tank, she isn't that frail either. Meanwhile Alm just...kills everything. He eventually gets bows which is marginally more interesting but held back by the solo weapon slot (in terms of fun, not in terms of usefulness because Hunter's Volley). Alm is just boring good. Sure it's fun to blow away things with Double Lion or Scendscale, but he's probably one rounding every enemy in the game not named Duma or Rudolf anyway. It feels like Celica is a better designed unit while Alm is just statistically better. So through those lenses, yes, Marth is a fantastically designed unit. You are always using him and trying to accomplish goals with him. But from a "How much can he Kill Every Last One of Them" perspective, he's barely worth even giving levels to (at least outside of Fe1, where he genuinely is one of the best units in the game at killing things). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samthedigital Posted October 22, 2023 Share Posted October 22, 2023 48 minutes ago, Samu_77 said: Is it fair to credit the necessity of Seizing a map as a positive for a unit? Because I personally only see it as a negative thing. If the objective was anything else then Roy I feel would become a lot better because he is free to do other things then make his way to the Throne each time, for example a defeat boss map would give him a lot more freedom on the battlefield. I agree that it makes them more important but I wouldn't necessarily say that makes them better. "Lyn is a better unit than Robin because I need her to progress the game" is an argument I could make if I chose to ascribe value to the seize mechanic when ranking units. I don't do this primarily because I find that it's a lame way to compare units, but it's also not really clear how much credit we should give a unit for this. On the other hand the combat contributions or resources allocated to a unit in order to achieve that goal are all fair game for me; Seliph probably being the best example of this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samu_77 Posted October 22, 2023 Share Posted October 22, 2023 1 minute ago, samthedigital said: "Lyn is a better unit than Robin because I need her to progress the game" is an argument I could make if I chose to ascribe value to the seize mechanic when ranking units. I don't do this primarily because I find that it's a lame way to compare units, but it's also not really clear how much credit we should give a unit for this. On the other hand the combat contributions or resources allocated to a unit in order to achieve that goal are all fair game for me; Seliph probably being the best example of this. This is generally how I feel about it. Seizing is never a benefit to me, and if anything it drags down a unit, especially if there is a turn-count pressure on the map like there is for a fair amount of FE6 maps for Gaiden Chapters (although the turns given for these gaiden thresholds are very generous). I think if you give the character the benefit of saying that "because they are the lord they can seize and that makes them important because it's something nobody else has" I feel like that isn't judging much of the character so much as it is a mechanic of the game, even if the Lords are the only ones who benefit. 8 minutes ago, Jotari said: Kind of calls into question what is "good". As there's two types of good when ranking which different people have approached differently, mostly people have seen good as "How broken is this class". But there's also good in the design sense. Alm is, almost no doubt, a better unit than Celica. But personally I just like Celica as a unit more. Because she can kind of do everything. She can attack from range, she can heal, she can blow away dracowyverns and she can even get close and personal with a sword. And while she's not a tank, she isn't that frail either. Meanwhile Alm just...kills everything. He eventually gets bows which is marginally more interesting but held back by the solo weapon slot (in terms of fun, not in terms of usefulness because Hunter's Volley). Alm is just boring good. Sure it's fun to blow away things with Double Lion or Scendscale, but he's probably one rounding every enemy in the game not named Duma or Rudolf anyway. It feels like Celica is a better designed unit while Alm is just statistically better. So through those lenses, yes, Marth is a fantastically designed unit. You are always using him and trying to accomplish goals with him. But from a "How much can he Kill Every Last One of Them" perspective, he's barely worth even giving levels to (at least outside of Fe1, where he genuinely is one of the best units in the game at killing things). I mean, this is an old debate as to what qualifies "good" because every unit in FE is usable, but generally I rate a units on merit of "does this character accomplish what I need to do in this game". Miledy for example is "good" because she goes in and barely takes damage and destroys everything, and she does it with much less effort then most characters, therefore accomplishing my goals with the least amount of complications and risks. Sophia is "bad" because she takes forever to raise, constantly needs to be kept safe at all times and isn't that consistent due to her accuracy issues even when raised a fair amount. I agree that game design sense for how good a unit can be is important but generally I'm not factoring that into how I see the characters here, and even so I wouldn't actually say Roy is designed well because it doesn't feel like he should ever be as useless as he actually is in game until you get the Broken Blade and he is a chore up until then. But this is getting very off topic. I just personally don't see how Seize mechanic can be a boon to a character personally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow Mir Posted October 22, 2023 Share Posted October 22, 2023 On 10/21/2023 at 12:36 AM, Samu_77 said: 2: 3H Stats, great weapons, easily reclassable into Wyverns, are the characters least likely to get destroyed in Early Game Maddening, high Authority. Byleth has unlimited support options. These units have realistically no weaknesses, have arguably the highest potential and are just insanely good. I don't have much to say about these ones because their reputation is so well known. I'd say the bolded is missing the point of what this thread is about. Anyway... F tier in Binding Blade. Roy sucks harder than Little Mac's recovery for almost the whole fucking game, is an active liability, and promotes too fucking late to boot. His only good points? He gets the Binding Blade... which, like his promotion, is much too little too late to make up for everything else about him. E tier in Shadow Dragon. Marth fell HARD from his other games to this; swords were the best weapon type in his prior appearances, but they're the worst here. The addition of the weapon triangle was really clumsy here, as axes don't make much appearances past the first third of the game. It doesn't help that he is the only unit that can visit villages, which means he has issues improving because he has to go after side objectives. C tier in Blazing Blade. Hector is excellent, the other two less so. B tier in Three Houses. While one can argue the multiple main characters' unique classes are wildly different quality wise, and I would agree, even the worst one is miles ahead of the cream of the crap. A tier in Fates. For all the traction that reclassing Corrin gets, their default classes are great too. In fact, I generally never leave them and if I do, it ain't for long. More later Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted October 22, 2023 Share Posted October 22, 2023 1 hour ago, Samu_77 said: This is generally how I feel about it. Seizing is never a benefit to me, and if anything it drags down a unit, especially if there is a turn-count pressure on the map like there is for a fair amount of FE6 maps for Gaiden Chapters (although the turns given for these gaiden thresholds are very generous). I think if you give the character the benefit of saying that "because they are the lord they can seize and that makes them important because it's something nobody else has" I feel like that isn't judging much of the character so much as it is a mechanic of the game, even if the Lords are the only ones who benefit. I mean, this is an old debate as to what qualifies "good" because every unit in FE is usable, but generally I rate a units on merit of "does this character accomplish what I need to do in this game". Miledy for example is "good" because she goes in and barely takes damage and destroys everything, and she does it with much less effort then most characters, therefore accomplishing my goals with the least amount of complications and risks. Sophia is "bad" because she takes forever to raise, constantly needs to be kept safe at all times and isn't that consistent due to her accuracy issues even when raised a fair amount. I agree that game design sense for how good a unit can be is important but generally I'm not factoring that into how I see the characters here, and even so I wouldn't actually say Roy is designed well because it doesn't feel like he should ever be as useless as he actually is in game until you get the Broken Blade and he is a chore up until then. But this is getting very off topic. I just personally don't see how Seize mechanic can be a boon to a character personally. Well I'd agree Roy is bad at seizing because he's bad at surviving. If he had better defenses then you wouldn't have to worry about a stray bolting or javelin one shotting him, and that's why Binding Blade +5 defense and resistance is part of what makes endgame Roy good, he also gets a whopping +5 res on promotion gains, which puts me of the opinion that they should have made him a res tank from the start, that would have been more interesting. But I'm getting distracted, yes, Roy is bad at seizing, Marth is good at seizing, and Sigurd is great at seizing. Since the units are so similar, and isn't that what comparing the manifestation of classes in different games is all about, it feels like it should be considered relevant to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanty Pete's 1st Mate Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 13 hours ago, Samu_77 said: Is it fair to credit the necessity of Seizing a map as a positive for a unit? I would say so, yes. Like, imagine FE6's maps were all "Defeat Boss" instead. As a result, you could leave Roy in his starting position, not moving him once, and still clear the map. In that case, he's not adding any value to the player's army. Even if he's "free" to do whatever he wants, this "freedom" doesn't really matter. His combat isn't good enough to make a difference, and he doesn't have Staff or Dance utility. He's just dead weight. (Yeah, I know there's other stuff Roy does - like recruiting certain characters - but this is a simplified comparison.) Now, compare to vanilla FE6, where every map is "Seize". Leaving Roy put is not an option. You're gonna have to move him, eventually, to clear the map. Perhaps this limits his freedom. But, it also gives him a base level if "contribution" that he's providing every map. He's doing something that no other unit can replicate, amd that's needed to progress the game. That's a pretty big deal, as far as making the Lord worth something. Like, let's compare to the Dancer class. In almost every case, when you have a Dancer, they should be using the Dance command. Yes, even when they have Swords, or Healing, or Rallies. This is because Dancing is (again, almost always) the best thing they can do. Perhaps this is a "limiting" playstyle, but it's also the way they produce the most value for the player. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samu_77 Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 11 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: I would say so, yes. Like, imagine FE6's maps were all "Defeat Boss" instead. As a result, you could leave Roy in his starting position, not moving him once, and still clear the map. In that case, he's not adding any value to the player's army. Even if he's "free" to do whatever he wants, this "freedom" doesn't really matter. His combat isn't good enough to make a difference, and he doesn't have Staff or Dance utility. He's just dead weight. (Yeah, I know there's other stuff Roy does - like recruiting certain characters - but this is a simplified comparison.) Now, compare to vanilla FE6, where every map is "Seize". Leaving Roy put is not an option. You're gonna have to move him, eventually, to clear the map. Perhaps this limits his freedom. But, it also gives him a base level if "contribution" that he's providing every map. He's doing something that no other unit can replicate, amd that's needed to progress the game. That's a pretty big deal, as far as making the Lord worth something. Like, let's compare to the Dancer class. In almost every case, when you have a Dancer, they should be using the Dance command. Yes, even when they have Swords, or Healing, or Rallies. This is because Dancing is (again, almost always) the best thing they can do. Perhaps this is a "limiting" playstyle, but it's also the way they produce the most value for the player. The problem with the way I see it is that seizing isn't really contribution in my eyes because it's mandatory, yes it gives him something to do, but he's also force-deployed anyways and because it's something that you need to do to proceed through the game. It's really more of a formality then anything else, but what Jotari also pointed out is that Roy is also bad at Seizing anyways because he is bad at surviving. The problem here is that Roy is not an optional character to use, he's mandatory every single time, and if he wasn't it'd be doubtful that as many people would train him as they do because he only becomes a good, self-sufficient Unit in Endgame (he can do stuff like reliably hit with Swords and provide Fast Fire Supports, but it's not enough to argue him being a "good" unit compared to the myriad of other problems). I don't know if I'd keep Roy at the start of the map each time if I had the option because he does do some things that are valuable, but his status as being the only one who can seize when he's so bad at it makes him worse in my opinion, even if it is contribution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanty Pete's 1st Mate Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 27 minutes ago, Samu_77 said: The problem with the way I see it is that seizing isn't really contribution in my eyes because it's mandatory, yes it gives him something to do, but he's also force-deployed anyways and because it's something that you need to do to proceed through the game. It's really more of a formality then anything else, but what Jotari also pointed out is that Roy is also bad at Seizing anyways because he is bad at surviving. The problem here is that Roy is not an optional character to use, he's mandatory every single time, and if he wasn't it'd be doubtful that as many people would train him as they do because he only becomes a good, self-sufficient Unit in Endgame (he can do stuff like reliably hit with Swords and provide Fast Fire Supports, but it's not enough to argue him being a "good" unit compared to the myriad of other problems). I don't know if I'd keep Roy at the start of the map each time if I had the option because he does do some things that are valuable, but his status as being the only one who can seize when he's so bad at it makes him worse in my opinion, even if it is contribution. I find myself half-agreeing, half-disagreeing. I follow your logic, but it leads me to the opposite conclusion. Picture this: every map is "Defeat Boss", but Roy is still a forced deploy. Even if Dieck, or Fir, or Ogier would be better, you're stuck fielding... Roy. In my opinion, that'd be an even worse scenario for him. You're forced to bring him, but he's contributing nothing unique. Why force deploy him, if you don't need him to complete the chapter? It's a wasted slot. At least in the vanilla FE6, he's doing something important. As for the survivability issue, I generally don't see it on Normal Mode. This is probably a more serious concern on Hard Mode, which I haven't played yet. So I won't speak on it, other than to say that I agree with the "Roy's combat is bad" argument. That includes both in an offensive and defensive sense. And in fact, it was part of my argument about why losing Seize utility would make Roy worse, not better. Even if he's "bad at Seizing", he's the only one who can do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 If asked what the most important piece on a chess board is an amateur will say it's a queen. Someone who thinks themselves a philosopher will say it's the pawns. But most seasoned chess players will unhesitatingly say it's the king. Because that's where victory and defeat truly lie. ...idk it's a genuine set of conversations I had that felt relevant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samu_77 Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 21 minutes ago, Jotari said: If asked what the most important piece on a chess board is an amateur will say it's a queen. Someone who thinks themselves a philosopher will say it's the pawns. But most seasoned chess players will unhesitatingly say it's the king. Because that's where victory and defeat truly lie. ...idk it's a genuine set of conversations I had that felt relevant. There's a difference between important and good, Roy is unquestionably the most important unit in the game but does that make him good when every boss except for like Yahn and Idunn are going to destroy him without effort, which is as necessary as everything else is to getting through the game as getting Roy to that seize point. Importance can't equal good because these are nuanced games to a certain extent every deployment is equally important because we are facing an army that on average outnumbers us like 1-3 or 1-5, so everything counts here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whisky Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 In regards to Roy’s survivability, I’m sorry but that’s kind of a skill issue. In most maps it’s really not hard at all to keep Roy safe. Just lead with your strongest units and have Roy trail along behind them. Dancers are usually very frail but are always considered very good. Keeping units alive isn’t hard to do. Roy is not a liability, he is an asset. He can help finish off an enemy that a stronger unit failed to kill even in the mid game when he’s at his weakest. In the early and late game he’s actually pretty decent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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