Getting a Tier List on this bad boy

[Vykan12]

Seth lv --/4 (B Franz): 33 hp, 18 str, 14 skl, 13 AS, 14 def, 10 res, 45 avo

Franz lv 18/0 (B Seth): 34 hp, 16 str, 12 skl, 16 AS, 12 def, 6 res, 46 avo

I'd say Franz is hitting lv 16-20 somewhere around midgame, and look how comparable they still are. I'm also cutting Seth's level a bit short.

[Colonel M]

If you need HM stats as far as helping Cormag > Colm, I'm on 5X and can likely reach C9 by tommorrow. Then I'll record and whatnot.

[Jaybee]

Great, that means I can just do Chapter 5. Good luck with Chapter 6!

[Yojinbo]

I'm kinda late to the party but Eir. Innes isn't that bad...he has a very good player phase and OKish supports ... not outstanding but not low tier either.

[Dat Nick]

Enemies are pretty much getting raped here with just crummy 1-2 range weapons, so uber player phase isn't really an asset in this game. Low tier seems fine.

[Colonel M]

Perhaps it is easy to answer but... why is Niemi so low?

I understand the "Archer syndrome" and her "eh" bases mixed into this, but it's not like she's totally useless. She can at least obtain Swords upon promotion, which is better than what Innes was doing in the first place. Actually has decent supports, etc.

Maybe I'm missing something really important.

[Reganis]

Seth doesnt need a tier all to himself

[Ether]

Seth doesnt need a tier all to himself

This was discussed already.Yes he does.

[Reganis]

This was discussed already.Yes he does.

I was lazy and skipped the discussion. But... whatever.

[Colonel M]

Hope I get that answer to my question though. *Sigh*.

I'm pretty sure people are kind of ticked at me for not submitting Ephy HM stats yet. I'll attempt to get C9's up by tommorrow or Thursday at the earliest. Maybe today if I'm lucky. Blame Shadow Dragon and its awesomeness on top of other things.

[Xort]

Perhaps it is easy to answer but... why is Niemi so low?

I understand the "Archer syndrome" and her "eh" bases mixed into this, but it's not like she's totally useless. She can at least obtain Swords upon promotion, which is better than what Innes was doing in the first place. Actually has decent supports, etc.

Maybe I'm missing something really important.

Not to mention she gets an awesome support with Colm. Sure, she's bad and all, but bottom is too extreme, IMO. Lower-mid, maybe?

[Jaybee]

I agree with Eir. Innes going up to mid. His stats are okay-ish, but he can tank pretty well, especially since he doesn't counter. He can also support the pwn that is Gerik, take out pesky gargoyles/deathgoyles easily, and he can get to Nidhogg quick.

You aren't the only one with problems. I restarted my file since my Gilliam got spd screwed so I'm only on Chapter 1. I also needed to recheck some reinforcement stuff.

Edited July 1, 2009 by Joshybear25

[Vykan12]

Enemies are pretty much getting raped here with just crummy 1-2 range weapons, so uber player phase isn't really an asset in this game. Low tier seems fine.

That's a pretty huge exaggeration. This isn't true at all for a good first half of the game, and it'll only ever pull a 2RKO against more durable enemy types like wyverns, knights and promoted enemies, if that.

[Yojinbo]

Eir. Innes has pretty good bases, even for a pre-promo...in fact they are almost identical to Seth. By the time he joins he will have way better stats than Kyle/Forde and a better player phase. He can tank pretty well with 31HP/10Def and his 9 con allow him to use pretty much any weapn without AS loss...something Neimi suffers from.

He will stay stronger (statistically) than a good bunch of your army for a good while and since he starts with A-rank for bows he can use the Nidhogg a lot faster than Neime, who starts with D-rank.

His support with Gerik gives him another nice durability boost....

[Mekkah]

I don't care whether Innes' stats are "good" or "bad". What I'd want to know is why to put him above any of these:

Garcia

Tana

Duessel

Cormag

Myrrh

Ross

[Dat Nick]

I actually imagine he has a very good case against Ross.

[Mekkah]

Innes wins when Ross is a detriment (which is until he hits basic tier), and from there Ross wins until Innes joins. I'd imagine this cancels each other out. But then Ross has some kind of support lead that continues when both are there, so he only has to tie Innes at overall combat imo.

I imagine Ross hits Fighter before Ch5 at least (Ch3 and Ch4 are both very easy to pour enough EXP into Ross), and from there he's still gaining EXP like a madman, especially since he is one of your best guys to combat lance dudes with (and those are common in the upcoming maps). I can see him being 10/10/0 when Innes joins.

10/10/0 Ross

Iron Axe: 24.0 atk, 8.4 AS, 100.9 hit, 4.4 crit - - 32.0 avo, 29.6 hp, 7.5 def, 4.6 res, 15.2 critavo

--/1 Innes

Steel Bow: 23.0 atk, 15.0 AS, 102.8 hit, 6.3 crit - - 44.0 avo, 31.0 hp, 10.0 def, 9.0 res, 14.0 critavo

Innes wins player phase offense due to doubling a lot more + being able to use Silver Bow, but Ross wins enemy phase offense due to...existing. On durability, Innes can't really capitalize on his win since he doesn't counter most things, and Ross also has WTA on lances, gets attacked less...and they essentially tie avo if Ross has B Garcia.

I'm not finding Innes winning here anywhere close to comparable to:

10/20/1 Ross

Iron Axe: 28.4 atk, 13.4 AS, 113.9 hit, 7.2 crit - - 46.0 avo, 40.6 hp, 12.0 def, 8.6 res, 19.2 critavo

--/5 Innes

Steel Bow: 24.6 atk, 16.8 AS, 106.9 hit, 7.0 crit - - 49.4 avo, 34.0 hp, 10.8 def, 10.0 res, 15.8 critavo

where Ross is decimating on the defensive end by so much that Innes' 3.4 AS lead almost doesn't matter as much anymore (since he can attack so much more often). And then we all know about what Garm + 2 Brave weapons do for Ross in lategame...

Bringing supports into this only helps Ross' case further. Fire > Ice, they both support Gerik (Innes faster, but Ross gives him better bonuses), but considering jointime and selectiveness of partners, I think supporting Lute/Garcia helps more than supporting Tana/Vanessa/Joshua/Eirika does for Innes (look at how much other options these have, and how much earlier they activate).

Edited July 1, 2009 by Mekkah

[Progenitus]

Sorry Mekkah, I just start raging when I see that a sniper is being debated, and I KNOW that people are not going to judge the sniper fairly.

So just as a reminder to people...

Being able to counterattack on enemy phase is overrated. It hardly matters unless you're actually semi-decent at it. There's a reason why healers and dancers are ranked so highly despite having a non-existent enemy phase, and that's because their player phases are awesome/unique/useful/etc. If my sniper with no enemy phase has a player phase that is heads and shoulders above a vast majority of the cast (like really good offense), that's obviously something good and useful. It seems people like to use this double standard for snipers. "Healers and dancers are fine with crappy enemy phases, but we won't let snipers get away with that!"

Simply because some random paladin X can 1-range and some random sniper Y can't doesn't give paladin X a free ride to being better than sniper Y. We're not gonna go "hey let's throw them both into a group of enemies. Oh look, paladin X damages 5 guys and sniper Y doesn't, thus paladin X has the damage output" and then stop the comparison there, not look at anything else, and automatically give paladin X the win. If that sort of ridiculous argument was allowed, healers and dancers would be in bottom tier. "Oh look paladin X countered 5 guys and our healer Z didn't, and our healer probably died in the process too, paladin X >>>> healer Z".

You can obviously see how silly the whole issue is. If the sniper has no enemy phase, then he just has to be used differently from a normal combat unit, much like how we treat dancers and healers as different units from the rest of our fighters (sometimes thieves too, such as Volke in FE9 who sucks at fighting). Of course it's a problem for us that our sniper can't do anything on enemy phase, but it's certainly not nearly as bad as some people make it out to be, which they like to exaggerate as "wow this sniper is absolutely useless".

Units who should be doing the counterattacking on enemy phase is like determining what units are making the team. Top/high tier units are making the team more often than low/bottom tier units, since that's just how to do things efficiently (though we don't always assume only top/high tiers are played). Similarly, we want our best units to be doing the counterattacking on enemy phase more often than the worst ones (though again we don't always assume our best units are always doing the countering). There's a reason why we don't care that a unit like Amelia can 1-range, and that's because she's just awful at it. The amount of times she can actually use the advantage of counterattacking on enemy phase is like, 0.

Now I'm not necessarily saying Innes' player phase is awesome (for it to be so, he'd have to have significantly better offense against a large majority of the cast), nor am I saying that enemy phase doesn't mean anything, but then again Ross isn't really turning any heads on either player or enemy phase. I'm just saying this whole issue needs to be looked at with more detail than simply "Ross can counter and Innes can't, Ross wins".

Let me take an extreme case (which isn't representative of the actual Innes vs Ross matchup). let's say we had a sniper who was 1-rounding everything he attacked when the rest of the team was 2-rounding. Now being a sniper, he obviously has no enemy phase usefulness. Now let's say we have a knight. His offense is garbage; he's 3-rounding in this team that's 2-rounding whatever they attack, with the same durability.

Far too often I see this argument used: "the knight only has to counter 2 enemies on enemy phase plus attack something on player phase to have the same damage as my sniper. The sniper 1 rounds an enemy, which is 100% damage, and my knight hits 3 enemies at 1/3rd damage, which totals up to 100%."

Unfortunately, the reason why the sniper > the knight is because the sniper is actually doing something useful and unique for the team (1-rounding in a team that's 2-rounding), much like how my dancer and healers are doing something useful and unique for the team. No one cares if my knight could counter enemies because I could just have any other fighter in the game to do the same thing, only better because their offense is superior and with the same durability. The only time the knight would be comparable is if I needed every single unit on the team to be tanking on enemy phase, or I could not avoid exposing the knight/sniper to enemy attacks at all.

Or let me make another example. let's say in this specific chapter, we have to block a chokepoint. It is only 1 tile wide, and thus we only need 1 guy to plug it up. However, we have 5 fighters to do so (with fighter A being clearly better than B, who's clearly better than C, etc.), and one sniper. Is the sniper the worst unit because he can't plug the chokepoint? Hell no. We can only use 1 unit to block the chokepoint, but the sniper will always be able to fire over the tank's head while the other fighters who aren't blocking the chokepoint are just sitting around doing nothing. The sniper is probably worse than fighter A, who'd be the best unit to plug up the chokepoint, and plugging up that chokepoint is a higher priority than just damaging enemies. He has a case against fighter B though, since the only times we'd want to use fighter B to plug the chokepoint is if fighter A isn't in play, since if A was in play, I'd just use A to plug the chokepoint, not B (it would depend on how much better A is than B, but that's beside the point). By the time we reach fighter C, the sniper should easily be superior, since now the only times we'd want fighter C to plug the chokepoint is if neither A or B are in play. In all cases the sniper is the only unit that's going to be firing over the tank's head.

So basically, the worth of Ross' ability to 1-range on enemy phase is dependent on how often he'll actually be able to use it without getting in the way. This usually will depend on the chapter layout, as well as how many people are better than him at countering.

- Is the chapter a wide-open field and you're being flanked from all sides (or clearly getting swarmed)? In this case, Ross' 1-range would be a very big advantage, since nearly everyone is going to be subject to attack, which means everyone will have an enemy phase.

- is the chapter a narrow pathway with tons of chokepoints? in this case, Ross 1-range wouldn't mean much unless he happened to be one of the best, since you can just make do with a few select tanks. If we only need, say, 4 tanks, but we have 8 available, and Ross is our 8th best tank, no one cares if I have Ross tank in place of the 7th best tank, or the 6th best tank, etc.

- Is the chapter a huge lance fest? In this case, Ross would get a lot better at 1-ranging relative to the rest of your team due to his near-constant WTA when most of the units in this game are sword or lance users (Eirika, Franz/Kyle/Forde, Joshua, etc), which means he might suddenly be better than a lot of them at tanking.

etc.

tldr

The whole enemy phase ordeal is much more complicated than "my guy can counter and yours can't".

btw, as for my actual opinion on Innes vs Ross, I don't, really. At least, when I looked into the matchup several years ago, I recall them being about equal, and since it's been so long since I've actually played this game I don't feel like defending either unit at the moment. I just wanted to make sure that people looked at Innes (and snipers in general) from a correct viewpoint.

Edited July 4, 2009 by smash fanatic

[Jaybee]

Would it be okay to have a "mid" tier where the top 1/2 and bottom 1/2 of Upper Mid and Lower Mid are taken and put into them?

Also, as a brief question, have you played this game yet, Smash?

Edited July 4, 2009 by Joshybear25

[Rodykitty]

Snipers have a very strong case on FEDS H5 since most units in the game have a limited enemy phase, but if it's a game where simple Javelins and Hand Axes are capable of doing the Sniper's job with ease (not going to speak for Sword users), then that's when having an existing enemy phase would be a significant advantage.

[Mekkah]

Do not worry smash, I am quite aware of pro and con arguments of Snipers.

[Dat Nick]

Snipers have a very strong case on FEDS H5 since most units in the game have a limited enemy phase, but if it's a game where simple Javelins and Hand Axes are capable of doing the Sniper's job with ease (not going to speak for Sword users), then that's when having an existing enemy phase would be a significant advantage.

Unfortunately, since this game is only playing second fiddle to HHM for most failure enemy stats ever [lol lategame enemies can't double 10/1 Barte with 6 AS] it's much closer to the bolder portion, so while I do agree with Smash that no enemy phase does not automatically equal suck, I also have to agree that if the enemies suck ass, then being a sniper isn't doing you any favors :/

[Progenitus]

Also, as a brief question, have you played this game yet, Smash?

several years ago.

Do not worry smash, I am quite aware of pro and con arguments of Snipers.

I know. I'm just talking to no one in particular, but I know there are some people who overrate enemy phase.

Unfortunately, since this game is only playing second fiddle to HHM for most failure enemy stats ever [lol lategame enemies can't double 10/1 Barte with 6 AS]

I don't recall FE8 enemies being that much of a joke. Well, I know a lot of the monsters are (like those revenants), but I remember enemies actually using silver weapons towards the end.

[Jaybee]

Should Eir. Joshua really be below Saleh? Josh comes pretty strong and fast, and he has a rather large availability lead - 6 1/2 chapters, with C5 counting as 1/2. Josh is pretty damn fast as well, along with a support advantage - he can support Artur, Innes and Gerik for a defense boost he really needs while Saleh's only good choice is Myrrh (he can also support Gerik, but Gerik wants Tethys and Josh). As for weapons, Joshua can use Audhulma, while Saleh can go with Excalibur (Lute wants it), Ivaldi (Artur wants it), and Latona (Moulder). He's got pretty stiff competition for these, and he has fail mag (21.7), which is only better than Moulder.

[CT075]

Should Eir. Joshua really be below Saleh? Josh comes pretty strong and fast, and he has a rather large availability lead - 6 1/2 chapters, with C5 counting as 1/2. Josh is pretty damn fast as well, along with a support advantage - he can support Artur, Innes and Gerik for a defense boost he really needs while Saleh's only good choice is Myrrh (he can also support Gerik, but Gerik wants Tethys and Josh). As for weapons, Joshua can use Audhulma, while Saleh can go with Excalibur (Lute wants it), Ivaldi (Artur wants it), and Latona (Moulder). He's got pretty stiff competition for these, and he has fail mag (21.7), which is only better than Moulder.

Joshua starts out rather frail, and his avo isn't so godly yet, whereas Saleh comes good and ends rather well. And who says he needs an S ranked weapon? Joshua has to compete with any Paladin (Since Vidofnir is probably going to a General), Marisa, Colm, any Great Knight, any Hero, etc.