ITT I rank the characters

[Rodykitty]

Negative/positive utility should be based on how much they're helping the team.

If a unit is doing awesome early on and helping your dudes become better, then that's positive utility, but if later on in the game he's not doing much to help, but at the same time isn't demanding everyone else's EXP and weapons, then it's neutral for that time period.

Edited July 28, 2009 by Chainey

[Mekkah]

I always thought the Black Knight should get a spot on the FE10 tier list. I mean, I usually tier even FE8 Orson seriously, even though his availability pattern is unlike anyone else's.

It's perfectly arguable Black Knight is as at least as good as Giffca, for instance.

[Zkirsche]

If you're not in the top or high tiers, then other people can be deployed in your place while giving higher returns. Including opportunity cost of deployment (among other resources) gets the debater to the conclusion that fielding anyone outside of the top x units is an inefficient and therefore impossible choice. After excluding opportunity cost, every character in the game has a positive contribution.

However, someone like Oscar is displacing less superier characters than someone like Lyre is, which means that the negative utility acquired from using Oscar is less because he displaces less superier units. Futhermore, his performance in the chapter actually makes up for this displacement, Lyre's doesn't.

@Bold: Actively using Fiona is hard due to fail durability. Being forced to protect a unit is bad.

[Interceptor]

Can you elaborate on this please? As in, your view on +/- utility, not how you interpret "smash's theory".

My personal feelings on positive/negative utility are not at all germane to this discussion. In general, I am fine with going along with whatever the agreed-upon metric is, although I will complain if I think that it is too unrealistic.

I agree with you that a hypothetical trash unit with zero positive utility compared with another in a situation where you "cut off" deployment at the peak of their usefulness one gives us an awkward scenario where you compare two empty slots. But: I already said that I am fine with making ground rules for the purpose of making tiering argument more interesting. Also, I don't think that anyone in this game other than Fiona and perhaps Lyre actually fit into your hypothetical, since every other unit has some modicum of ability to do something useful, even if it's as silly as making potshots.

The only thing that I am adamantly opposed to at all times, is ranking by lowest common denominator. Or, in other words, tiering units based on the idea that the person using them is a fucking moron. I don't think that lends itself to any interesting discussions, so I always assume that a tier player is a tactical genius.

I always thought the Black Knight should get a spot on the FE10 tier list. I mean, I usually tier even FE8 Orson seriously, even though his availability pattern is unlike anyone else's.

Precisely. It is, in fact, ridiculous to rank Lehran and not the BK, since the latter has a larger effect on efficient game completion than the former does. BK is a blue unit three times, and anyone honest about 3-6 is going to admit that he's pivotal. Definitely ought to be on any list that Lehran manages to get onto.

[Vykan12]

The only thing that I am adamantly opposed to at all times, is ranking by lowest common denominator. Or, in other words, tiering units based on the idea that the person using them is a fucking moron. I don't think that lends itself to any interesting discussions, so I always assume that a tier player is a tactical genius.

You have to account for some human error though. We cannot completely ignore backliner durability just because a tactical genius would never allow them to get attacked.

[Interceptor]

You have to account for some human error though.

No, I don't "have to" account for the possibility that the player screwed up (RNG-considerations aside, obviously), because you have as long as you want to make your moves, and near-perfect information on which to base your decision. Please feel free to make an argument as to why it's a useful exercise for character ranking to posit that the player is a retard. I suspect that you won't get anywhere.

We cannot completely ignore backliner durability just because a tactical genius would never allow them to get attacked.

We're not ignoring backliner durability, and I never claimed it. Consider that a "tactical genius" is protecting his backliners by putting things in their way, aka his frontliners. But, making walls necessarily has the effect of constraining the movement of your beefcakes, which can slow down killing speed, or introduce risky situations that have to be dealt with elsewhere.

Thusly we have the ability to account for the impact of Rhys' durability even in the cases where he never gets attacked: we have to either have him hang back, or give him bodyguards.

[Narga_Rocks]

No, I don't "have to" account for the possibility that the player screwed up (RNG-considerations aside, obviously), because you have as long as you want to make your moves, and near-perfect information on which to base your decision. Please feel free to make an argument as to why it's a useful exercise for character ranking to posit that the player is a retard. I suspect that you won't get anywhere.

I'm not quite sure I'd call it the player being a retard. I agree with you that character ranking shouldn't include human error, but you don't have to be a retard to screw up every once in a while. I got Laura killed once in 3-6 because I somehow thought a thicket was a tree (oops) and sometimes I plan on moving a character or healing a character and just forget. I make mistakes, and the character ranking should not account for the player making mistakes, but I take issue with calling the player retarded when making simple errors.

[Interceptor]

My point is that it's a slippery slope (someone please respond to me by claiming that Slippery Slope is only referring to a fallacy, and I will laugh at you heartily), and that admitting small errors weakens a argument to keep out the bigger ones, which can have a cascading effect on tier placement. Easier, I'd say, to just assume that the player always acts with perfect knowledge.

It sounds like you agree with that, and only disagree with my choice of words, but since my choice of words was intended to make the point in the first place, in the end it isn't important.

Edited July 28, 2009 by Interceptor

[Narga_Rocks]

My point is that it's a slippery slope (someone please respond to me by claiming that Slippery Slope is only referring to a fallacy, and I will laugh at you heartily), and that admitting small errors weakens a argument to keep out the bigger ones, which can have a cascading effect on an argument. Easier, I'd say, to just assume that the player always acts with perfect knowledge.

It sounds like you agree with that, and only disagree with my choice of words, but since my choice of words was intended to make the point in the first place, in the end it isn't important.

Yeah, I agree. I don't see the value in assuming the tier player is going to think a thicket is a tree so it suddenly matters that Laura is ORKOd. And for the point itself your choice of words don't really matter.

The thing some people don't seem to get though is the difference between perfect tactics when it comes to playing a map and perfect tactics when it comes to picking your units. Whenever you or I start saying that given a list of units the player should do certain things to maximize their usefulness a bunch of other people start saying we should then maximize our team by choosing better units. As if that changes what we should do with them once we've chosen them.

[dondon151]

However, someone like Oscar is displacing less superier characters than someone like Lyre is, which means that the negative utility acquired from using Oscar is less because he displaces less superier units. Futhermore, his performance in the chapter actually makes up for this displacement, Lyre's doesn't.

The first point is true, but the fact remains that Oscar is still displacing superior characters, which results in negative utility. Lesson in economics: if opportunity cost is greater than revenue, then economic profit is negative. The second point therefore is completely false. Let's say that Oscar displaced Haar or Titania or something. If Oscar doesn't perform as well as Haar or Titania, then how does he make up for his opportunity cost?

This argument is purely from a philosophical point of view (I may have admitted to this earlier, not sure). There really is little difference between comparing which units are more negative and which units are less positive, but it's much more effective to compare units as if they were entirely positive because then it's consistent with the basic principles of the tier list.

Edited July 28, 2009 by dondon151

[Narga_Rocks]

The first point is true, but the fact remains that Oscar is still displacing superior characters, which results in negative utility. Lesson in economics: if opportunity cost is greater than revenue, then economic profit is negative. The second point therefore is completely false. Let's say that Oscar displaced Haar or Titania or something. If Oscar doesn't perform as well as Haar or Titania, then how does he make up for his opportunity cost?

I don't know why the others don't agree with you.

After excluding opportunity cost, every character in the game has a positive contribution.

Seriously, since you say this, what can be done?

You aren't saying everyone's positive contribution is equal, just that everyone is positive. Some are less positive than others, and for units like Lyre and Fiona it is very little positive, but if you don't exclude opportunity cost, then lots of upper mid units are displacing better units, and thus have negative utility their entire life. Or most of it, anyway. There is precisely 1 unit more than the number of slots in 3-5, for example, so only one unit would have negative economic profit if deployed. Still, the point is with the negative utility thing an argument could be made for sticking Lehran above a lot of units, because all those other units will have to displace better units most of their entire life. Which is the main issue with negative utility done badly.

[sirdangolot5]

I don't understand the point of these tier lists anyhow.

There's a few characters that are tougher than fuck to raise and therefore aren't worth it (really the whole bottom tier is those people) and those that really come in handy throughout almost the whole game.

And utility. Why are character's ratings partially based off availability? There are some cases where it doesn't even make sense, such as Lehran or the royals. No shit they're only in 4 chapters. For me, availability only determines who I train hard and level up, etc. Not whether the unit is actually good.

And when you said that in order to rank somebody's usefulness, you have to put them in the endgame. Why the hell is that? You only get, like, 7 nonrequired units to bring in there (which is fucking gay) and I'm pretty about 3 of those will be laguz who you just got. That's a grand of total of maybe 3-5 people you have leeway with. If that many people

To me, the tier list should determine who should be used to make the game the easiest, but that's not always easy to arbitrate. Besides, there are different ways of coming at the game, from Vykan's insane speedrun to MarthKoopa's obsessive low turn counts to LeopoldStotch's obsession with making 90% of the game a pain in the ass just to rape Deghinsea in 1 turn. (I downloaded his file on WiiSave, he spent 1500+ FUCKING TURNS on Daein, Arise)

Really, the tier list is meaningless and far from helpful unless you lay out what the point of it is.

Is it for low turn counts? For the lowest turn counts, you'll use different characters in different chapters. For the easiest runthrough, again, it's different. You can't really judge a character throughout the entire game with a single number.

Also, what's with your rating of Volug? Basically, your rating said that he was better than Nolan. That's all he has to do to be the 3rd best character in the game?

This whole tier list and character ranking stuff has gotten to the point where it's a little removed from the actual point of the game. In the other American Fire Emblem games, your units stayed with you straight to the endgame (with a couple of exceptions.) Your party stayed with you and you went through each chapter together. That's why Jeigans were bad and why Ests (like Nino) had SOME kind of a POINT. You could sit down and say, "Yes, Hector is awesome, Lyn is okay, no the trainees aren't worth the effort bla bla bla" but in FE10, shit changes every chapter and the only one who's ALWAYS useful is Haar.

Ike is required because you CAN'T FUCKING BEAT THE GAME UNLESS HE CAN KILL THE BURGER KING and do at least 1 point of damage to Ashera.

So, Haar and Ike, their 10's make sense. Everyone else is... less certain.

[Interceptor]

I don't understand the point of these tier lists anyhow.

It's purely to give people a reason to argue with each other, for entertainment purposes. Tier lists are not character guides, they lack the proper context. It's nice to model a tier list based on something resembling reality, but it's hardly necessary.

[sirdangolot5]

In fact, I propose a new tier list. Here goes.

THE TIER LIST FOR MAKING THE GAME REAL EASY WITH BATTLE SAVES

=========================================================================

PEOPLE YOU SHOULD FUCKING USE

These will either be amazingly useful, be necessary late in the game, or just make Part 1 less hellish

Haar, Ike, Herons, Gatrie, Royals, Lehran, Healers, Elincia, Shinon, Volug, Titania, Nolan, Zihark, Sothe, Taureneo

PEOPLE YOU CAN USE WHEN THEY COME IN HANDY

You've got more choice in this group. Do you want one trueblade for endgame? Do you want to pick Mia because she's hotter? Fucking go for it. This characters are all useful, and you shouldn't be afraid of using any one of these. Other ones have special abilities that are insanely useful in situations that are too specific to merit being FUCKING DO IT tier.

Janaff, Ulki, Mordecai, Aran, Oscar, Mia, Ranulf, Cain, Micaiah, Jill, Heather, Mist, Neph, Brom, Nasir Skrimir, Muarim, Lehran, Boyd, Geoffrey, Kieran, Tormod, Stefan, Volke, Soren, Marcia, Ena, Kurth, Gareth, Rolf, Edward.

PEOPLE I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND USING

Most of these people are units who come with shit bases and never really make up for it. That, or they're ridiculously difficult to train.

Vika, Nealuchi, Tanith, Ilyana, Oliver, Bastian, Leo, Lucia, Calill, Danved, Makalov, Renning, Sigrun, Lethe, Kyza, Meg, Pelleas, Sanaki, Fiona, Lyre

WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU EVER USE THIS ONE

This tier consists of Astrid. Hard as hell to train, shit bases and growths.

Astrid

[Rodykitty]

Tier lists analyze every character in the game as if they're being used, so we can find out why we're not using them.

[Progenitus]

So, let me ask the question again, with a bit of an add-on: If Tormod had a storyline death, and you still decided to rank him, would Lehran still be > him?

This doesn't accurately portray Tormod vs Lehran, though. Since there's a difference between "we can't field Tormod because the storyline killed him off and we can't field him even if we wanted to" and "we can't field Tormod because he's the worst guy on the team".

I knwo what you're going to say in response to this. "but you're punishing availability!" But I'm not. I'm punishing poor performance.

For example, would you punish poor GMs like Lyre for not being available in DB chapters? Of course not. That makes no sense. They don't even exist. But would you punish poor GMs like Lyre for being bad in GM chapters? Of course.

Although in hindsight, I suppose Tormod would be better than Lehran even if we dragged him into 4-E. As prog said earlier, a bad fighter would theoretically only drop our efficiency by ~10%, and most likely lower because not every unit contributes equally and Tormod would most likely replace one of our bad fighter rather than one of our good ones. We don't even have 10 good fighters in part 1, so Tormod would already be increasing our efficiency by >10% in part 1, and then he's actually one of our better fighters for 1-7, 1-8, and 1-E, so it's actually greater.

We only assume the player will use them so we can rank them.

Actually, it's more assumed that the player WILL sometimes use low tiers, but not often enough to make a difference (so, for example, if we were comparing Zihark to Nolan, we're generally not fielding someone like Edward often enough to be serious competition for things like brave sword). The player isn't only using them just so we can make comparisons with them and we can tier them.

I'm kind of wondering really if calling something negative utility is just semantics.

Negative utility is when not fielding the unit and giving the resources/kills/etc. to other units is superior to fielding the unit to "help" out with beating the chapter but consuming those resources/etc. This is assuming that, as a member of the team, the unit is getting the same number of kills as everyone else on the team (for example, if the GMs were fielding 7 units, Ike would get 1/7th the kills, Haar would get 1/7th the kills, etc.)

For example, a crappy unit like Rolf in early part 3 is negative utility because he's terrible at fighting and he has to be spoonfed kills, rather than someone like Ike who's so good you have to actually stop him from soloing the map, so Ike is positive utility. For people who are neither good or bad, like Boyd, they're about neutral.

I'm assuming that, for people who think negative utility doesn't exist, they're using units in such a way that they wouldn't be negative utility. For example, if Rolf was only potshotting and getting only a kill or two, rather than trying to get the same number of kills as the other teammates, he wouldn't necessarily be negative utility since the number of kills he obtains is relative to his performance (though since he's still taking hit/kill exp, that's resources gone, so he's not necessarily positive utility either). Of course you can see this doesn't really help Rolf in the long run, though, since this gives him less levels anyway.

And one reason why I don't like this idea is that it gives an unfair advantage to units who have lots of availability and are also in chapters where you have so few fighters, they're fighting anyway because you need helping hands. For example, we all know Leo sucks. But in early part 1 he still might see a little action because we're just short on units, not necessarily because Leo's actually good. We could say that Leo potshotting/shoving/etc. makes him accumulate some arbitrary amount of positive utility and then we never field him again and he'd be better than people like Stefan and Volke who have decent stats but are limited to only 4-E, which is pretty ridiculous. I feel that Leo's only "useful" in early part 1 because of "storyline" reasons; the game forces us to use him because of how few fighters we have available. He's one of the worst fighters on the team, but under the idea of no negative utility existing, he manages to accumulate some sort of positive utility because the game only gives us a few units.

It's like if the game gave us only one unit in the entire chapter. This unit is the only fighter on the team, so regardless of his actual performance he would be helping us "beat the game". This is obviously silly. It's like Ike getting credit for killing the BK/Ashera because he's the only one who can do it.

We obviously never have a chapter where we only have 1 unit (other than like, prologue in FE9, but no one counts that, mainly for this reason), but we have chapters where we only have 2 units, 3 units, etc., and they're damn close. The idea of no negative utility gives crappy units like Leo a free ride to positive utility despite them being the worst fighter on the team.

I suppose this may contradict some things I've said earlier in my rankings, but meh, people and ideas change.

The trouble is this makes it very hard for units that are merely okay for 20 chapters to be better than a unit that is great for 1 chapter, when those units that existed for 20 chapters were clearly more useful to us throughout the game. So the system of negative utility punishes availability for units that aren't so great, or at least it punishes them for being 5th best out of 8 or something similar.

And that's how it should be.

You're forgetting that the unit fighting for 20 chapters and killing stuff was also consuming exp/resources/etc. that could have gone to other units.

"but that disadvantage applies to all other units", but not to the guy who exists for only 1 chapter. He's not consuming anything for the other 19 chapters that the first unit existed in, which is why the first unit has this particular disadvantage and the second unit doesn't.

I always thought the Black Knight should get a spot on the FE10 tier list. I mean, I usually tier even FE8 Orson seriously, even though his availability pattern is unlike anyone else's.

It's perfectly arguable Black Knight is as at least as good as Giffca, for instance.

I don't know how much positive utility you'd assign to his chapters. In 1-9, we're basically forced to use BK regardless of his actual performance, since our other unit is Micaiah who gets one rounded by the entire map unless you're extremely RNG blessed, and she's getting 2-rounded at absolute best (I think even Micaiah with max stats and resolve wouldn't be able to take on 1-9 without help from BK). I wouldn't assign him much positive utility here because we *have* to use him, much like we *have* to use Ike to kill Ashera. I'd say it's more "it's a cool tiebreaker".

This largely leaves 1-E and half of 3-6. As awesome as he is, that doesn't leave a lot of time to accumulate positive utility.

[-Cynthia-]

The point is though, that Giffca and Caineghis aren't useful for very many chapters themselves, only 4-E.

I'm not really seeing how Giffca= Naesala. Naesala can double auras without Nasir and doesn't have to waste turns in 4-E using a Gem (this equates to roughly 5 more Player Phases for Naesala). It's somewhat debatable which one is even better for 4-E, let alone the fact that Naesala has 2 chapters where he's maybe the best unit or close to it before Giffca even shows up.

Giffca and Caineghis are overrated IMO. Counting 4-E as two chapters, they're available for roughly 1/20 of the game. And though they're good when they're available, there are a lot of good characters by 4-E, they aren't completely destroying the competition. This pattern continues with all characters available only in 4-E(or 4-E and one Part 4 chapter), but it's most evident with Giffca and Cain.

[Florete]

This doesn't accurately portray Tormod vs Lehran, though. Since there's a difference between "we can't field Tormod because the storyline killed him off and we can't field him even if we wanted to" and "we can't field Tormod because he's the worst guy on the team".

I knwo what you're going to say in response to this. "but you're punishing availability!" But I'm not. I'm punishing poor performance.

Actually, what I'm really going to say is "You're avoiding the question." No shit my question didn't accurately portray Tormod vs Lehran, a completely accurate comparison wasn't the purpose of it.

And you kind of are punishing availability. He's there (and sucks), so he gets ranked lower. If he weren't there, he'd stay higher where he was. Maybe it isn't perfectly accurate to say "punishing availability," but you're punishing him for poor performance he doesn't actually have to go through to be ranked, and that wouldn't happen if he wasn't available.

For example, would you punish poor GMs like Lyre for not being available in DB chapters? Of course not. That makes no sense. They don't even exist. But would you punish poor GMs like Lyre for being bad in GM chapters? Of course.

I don't see how that has anything to do with this discussion. Lyre is punished for failing as long as she exists. She doesn't have a period of good where she can say "Hey, I'm giving a positive contribution to the team" like Tormod does, and even if she does in late part 4 or something, Tormod did it without going through massive suck. For this discussion, you can't really compare a character who goes good -> bad to a character who goes bad -> good (or whatever Lyre becomes).

Eh, I'm not sure if that worked. In any case, we don't punish characters for not existing, but we also shouldn't force punishment on characters simply because they do exist.

Actually, it's more assumed that the player WILL sometimes use low tiers, but not often enough to make a difference (so, for example, if we were comparing Zihark to Nolan, we're generally not fielding someone like Edward often enough to be serious competition for things like brave sword). The player isn't only using them just so we can make comparisons with them and we can tier them.

I don't think we actually disagreed here. You basically just said what I meant.

[dondon151]

I don't see how that has anything to do with this discussion. Lyre is punished for failing as long as she exists. She doesn't have a period of good where she can say "Hey, I'm giving a positive contribution to the team" like Tormod does, and even if she does in late part 4 or something, Tormod did it without going through massive suck. For this discussion, you can't really compare a character who goes good -> bad to a character who goes bad -> good (or whatever Lyre becomes).

This is like what I was saying earlier. An initially poor unit is used with the long term goal of being a productive unit. If this long term goal is impossible, then the unit shouldn't be used.

[Rewjeo]

I agree that Tormod shouldn't be punished very much for his poor part 4. If we have a unit who is exactly as good as Tormod compared to the team for the exact same time, and sucks exactly as much and for exactly as long, but goes from bad to good, you would give them the same score. However, it is quite obvious that Tormod is better because he is good for a while and then sucks later, but he doesn't have to do anything. Our other unit is required to suck to become good.

[Vykan12]

No, I don't "have to" account for the possibility that the player screwed up (RNG-considerations aside, obviously), because you have as long as you want to make your moves, and near-perfect information on which to base your decision.

The problem is no player is an infallible robot. On HM you have to count spaces for enemy ranges, and you're bound to make an arithmetic error somewhere along the way, even if you double check frequently. Then you could've accidentally pressed end turn (certainly happened to me on far too many occasions) or didn't account for an enemy in FOW (eg/ a longbow dude standing just outside of your vision), or forgot about the meteor tome user in 1-E that ORKOes Micaiah, or a million other things that can only be avoided if you're painfully meticulous.

Tier lists are supposed to reflect real play reasonably accurately, and thus I don't see why human error should be disregarded. It happens, and so it needs to be accounted for. Overlooking something that's clearly an aspect of the game is willful ignorance.

[Progenitus]

I agree that Tormod shouldn't be punished very much for his poor part 4. If we have a unit who is exactly as good as Tormod compared to the team for the exact same time, and sucks exactly as much and for exactly as long, but goes from bad to good, you would give them the same score. However, it is quite obvious that Tormod is better because he is good for a while and then sucks later, but he doesn't have to do anything. Our other unit is required to suck to become good.

If Tormod went from bad -> good, he would get an even lower score. I have people like Rolf at ~4.5 or lower, who do exactly that; start off bad and end up good (although, the magnitude and duration of his being bad outweigh his magnitude and duration of being good so that's why he's below average, not necessarily because he went from bad to good).

Anyway, I was thinking of maybe raising Tormod's score to a 5.5 (consequently, Muarim and Vika would also go up slightly). But I'll do that later.

I'm not really seeing how Giffca= Naesala. Naesala can double auras without Nasir and doesn't have to waste turns in 4-E using a Gem (this equates to roughly 5 more Player Phases for Naesala). It's somewhat debatable which one is even better for 4-E, let alone the fact that Naesala has 2 chapters where he's maybe the best unit or close to it before Giffca even shows up.

The scores are rounded to the nearest 0.5. I actually think Naesala > Cain/Giffca, but they all end up getting a 8.0.

Giffca and Caineghis are overrated IMO. Counting 4-E as two chapters, they're available for roughly 1/20 of the game. And though they're good when they're available, there are a lot of good characters by 4-E, they aren't completely destroying the competition. This pattern continues with all characters available only in 4-E(or 4-E and one Part 4 chapter), but it's most evident with Giffca and Cain.

Why? Units who are slightly lower, such as Jill, aren't even necessarily better than the royals in 4-E, and then we had to deal with her mediocrity for the entire game. More availability doesn't immediately mean the other units are better.

Edited July 29, 2009 by smash fanatic

[-Cynthia-]

The problem is no player is an infallible robot. On HM you have to count spaces for enemy ranges, and you're bound to make an arithmetic error somewhere along the way, even if you double check frequently. Then you could've accidentally pressed end turn (certainly happened to me on far too many occasions) or didn't account for an enemy in FOW (eg/ a longbow dude standing just outside of your vision), or forgot about the meteor tome user in 1-E that ORKOes Micaiah, or a million other things that can only be avoided if you're painfully meticulous.

Tier lists are supposed to reflect real play reasonably accurately, and thus I don't see why human error should be disregarded. It happens, and so it needs to be accounted for. Overlooking something that's clearly an aspect of the game is willful ignorance.

I agree. This came up in a discussion of FE9 Devdan, where it was claimed that Devdan could be given the KW for every levelup because whoever is currently holding would in trading range and we could calculate Devdan's exact EXP gain so that he would only get as he went up a level. While this is theoretically true, it's pretty clumsy in practice.

If we're going to raise Tormod/Muarim/Vika, Kieran/Geoffrey should probably go up for similar reasons.

The units below Cain/Giffca don't necessarily have to be better than them in 4-E, they just have to amass more overall positive utility IMO. I would say Jill is pretty useful before Cain and Giffca arrive and only marginally worse in 4-E, but I suppose it's your criteria.

Edited July 29, 2009 by -Cynthia-

[Progenitus]

If we're going to raise Tormod/Muarim/Vika, Kieran/Geoffrey should probably go up for similar reasons.

I find it a lot harder to raise Kieran/Geoffrey, since they're good units... when you have fewer units to actually choose from. You have, like, 7 guys to choose from in 2-3 and 3-9, and one of them doesn't even count because lolastrid. Winning when your competition is that little is weak. Basically, the storyline forces you to choose Kieran/Geoffrey, moreso than Tormod/Muarim/Vika.

Basically, just read this.

And one reason why I don't like this idea is that it gives an unfair advantage to units who have lots of availability and are also in chapters where you have so few fighters, they're fighting anyway because you need helping hands. For example, we all know Leo sucks. But in early part 1 he still might see a little action because we're just short on units, not necessarily because Leo's actually good. We could say that Leo potshotting/shoving/etc. makes him accumulate some arbitrary amount of positive utility and then we never field him again and he'd be better than people like Stefan and Volke who have decent stats but are limited to only 4-E, which is pretty ridiculous. I feel that Leo's only "useful" in early part 1 because of "storyline" reasons; the game forces us to use him because of how few fighters we have available. He's one of the worst fighters on the team, but under the idea of no negative utility existing, he manages to accumulate some sort of positive utility because the game only gives us a few units.

It's like if the game gave us only one unit in the entire chapter. This unit is the only fighter on the team, so regardless of his actual performance he would be helping us "beat the game". This is obviously silly. It's like Ike getting credit for killing the BK/Ashera because he's the only one who can do it.

We obviously never have a chapter where we only have 1 unit (other than like, prologue in FE9, but no one counts that, mainly for this reason), but we have chapters where we only have 2 units, 3 units, etc., and they're damn close. The idea of no negative utility gives crappy units like Leo a free ride to positive utility despite them being the worst fighter on the team.

I suppose this may contradict some things I've said earlier in my rankings, but meh, people and ideas change.

[Vykan12]

Jill is quite easily below average in part 1: She gets 1-3HKOed at high hit rates in her joining chapter, and also comes at a high base level so it's not a problem that's easily corrected. In 3-6 she'll only get 3HKOed if we got her to a high enough level in 1-E, and that's questionable given she only has 1-6, 1-7 and 1-E to rack up 5+ levels, and 2 of those 3 maps also hinder one of her main advantages (high move).

So then whatever she does in 3-12, 3-13, 4-P and 4-3 have to outweigh the chapters where she struggles. In light of that, Jill vs Cain/Giffca is more debatable than you'd expect.