FE9 Tier List

[CATS]

Yes, that was simply an oversight and a poor choice of words on our part. I will edit the OP.

[Colonel M]

Yes, that was simply an oversight and a poor choice of words on our part. I will edit the OP.

Cool.

Also, Keiran > Mordecai. A team with Keiran has no technical restrictions to using him aside from Chapter 15. With Mordecai, you have gauge problems to deal with (0 gauge to start with unless you band him). Speaking of that Band, Kieran's team can use another unit with the band (like Maurim) without hurting the rest of the laguz on your team. Might expand more on this later if necessary.

[Narga_Rocks]

I'm also going on a limb and asking how Mia is two tiers under Zihark.

Enter: Flamewar

I wouldn't bother with that. Apparently being rather comparable to the guy up until he gets a B Brom even if you assume them to be at equal levels doesn't mean much. Still, having Stefan >> Zihark on the list seems consistent with the rules and some of their other placements, so while I disagree with Stefan >> Zihark and especially Stefan >>>> Mia and Zihark >> Mia, the list has a lot more internal consistency than certain other lists.

On the other hand, Stefan > Marcia seems questionable. Stefan has crit issues. It's easier to see that some enemy dude has a bow than it is to constantly check which units are going to have crit on Stefan and making sure he doesn't risk getting crit-blicked, so one would think that Stefan is a higher-risk unit than Marcia. Also, since lots of people say "lolluck", it seems like the average player doesn't care about that stat too much. Meaning one would think they'd decide selling Ashera Icons is a better idea than using them to raise luck.

Hey look, it's Narga.

Thank god he's flaming rather than doing anything constructive.

Aww, I like your first statement more. The one about a post that can fit in just one page of Word. So much nicer.

Anyway, why is it good that it's (allegedly) a flame rather than something constructive? Doesn't that imply that sometimes my posts are constructive and that you are happier when they aren't? Also, I'm not sure what your definition of flame is, anyway. I'm just stating an observation. Sometimes instead of posting content you post titles about the other person's post, and I find it pointless (and I claim that your stated fallacies are often incorrect). Then after I noticed you had made another post and that it was above mine and that your post had real content I editted my post and stated that you are clearly capable of making meaningful posts.

Also, it can be argued that my post was constructive, since I was answering an implied question.

[CATS]

That isn't necessarily a loss. If we don't include storyline battles, for example (so Ashnard battle), Ike's earlygame does make him pretty mediocre at life to drop. It's been proven many times how it's usually Ike's rough earlygame that keeps him from being a Top Tier unit. Even in the situation that he gives you a free unit, how necessary is that unit in situations such as...?

- Chapter 1 and 2 where we have Boyd, Titania, Oscar, (and Rhys)?

- Chapter 3 where we have Gatrie, Shinon, and Titania?

- Chapter 4 where we have Titania, Shinon, Gatrie, Rhys

- Chapter 5 where we have Titania, Shinon, Gatrie, Oscar, Boyd, and Rhys.

- Chapter 6 on where we have Titania, Oscar, Boyd, and Rhys

Etc. Ike is not necessarily needed for any of those earlygame chapters whatsoever. He's not even much of a positive here in the first place.

Sure, it may give you a free unit to use, but in earlygame it barely matters anyway. He's not doing anything so special in these chapters that make him stand out. It isn't even until later on in the game when he makes a good stand as a unit.

Of course, if we include the storyline-pendant (like killing Ashnard), then I would take my stance back on it for sure.

Do explain how an extra unit does not matter or is insignificant. I fail to see your line of reasoning on that subject. Ike himself may have a poor performance, but is it so poor that even Ike + another unit together is still worse than Boyd or whoever individually?

[soundecho]

Is the free slot thing really that useful?

Chapters 1-9 you have forced units. Chapter 10 is better done as stealth so you only need 6~ units which Titania is one of.

Chapter 11: 13 Units

Chapter 12: 10 units

Chapter 13: 12 Units

Chapter 14: 13 units

Chapter 15: 14 units

Chapter 16: 11 units

Chapter 17-(1/2/3/4): 10/12/14/16

Chapter 18: 13 units

Chapter 19: 13 units

Chapter 20: 11 units

Chapter 21: 13 units

Chapter 22: 11 units

Chapter 23: 13 units

Chapter 24: 11 units

Chapter 25: 12 units

Chapter 26: 19! units

Chapter 27: 11 units

Chapter 28: 12 units

Endgame: 14 units

Ike + 11 is the perfect number for a team,Ike + 9 is better but for this example we'll use 11. So the perfect number for a team is twelve, a problem only occurs when we want to use 12 units but there are only 11 spots (if we go higher than 12 units, the exp gets spread even more thinly than it already is e.g 12 units land at endgame around 20/15). So this problem with the unit slot, only occurs when we use 12 people and NOT use Ike, but Ike isn't in play so it's pointless to give him the pro of not taking a slot.

Edit: Or you may want to use fillers, but there are barely any fillers in this game at all and the ones that are actually good, they need to be trained for a couple of levels, so if you want to use them you may as well just give them a permanent slot in your team (I'm assuming one plans their team from the start and RNG screwage can be fixed by stat ups and inflated levels and such).

I hope that made sense, it made sense in my head but not when I typed it out and I tried my best to make it make sense.

Edit 2: TL;DR No use of a unit slot only occurs when we want to use 12 units and not use Ike, or we try and use 13 units which basically never happens.

Edited February 22, 2010 by soundecho

[Narga_Rocks]

Do explain how an extra unit does not matter or is insignificant. I fail to see your line of reasoning on that subject. Ike himself may have a poor performance, but is it so poor that even Ike + another unit together is still worse than Boyd or whoever individually?

Well, his first point was about the early chapters where dropping Ike is no different from dropping any other unit (in terms of unit slots).

Later on, Boyd can be better than Ike + another unit because if you use the other unit too much the team's level drops. The player could be raising a full team, or it could be raising a smaller team.

In the case of a smaller team, comparing Oscar to Ike + Calill (or whatever) means that on the one turn where you can't kill everything nearby without Calill, she does something (It's a small team, so someone not part of that team is clearly not being used fully). Otherwise, she does nothing. If Oscar > Ike, then surely Oscar > Ike + one attack from another unit. The gap couldn't be that close.

Now, in the case the player is using a full team, then Calill (or whoever) is obviously doing a lot more than that.

On balance, one would think that a unit shouldn't have to be that much better than Ike alone to be better than Ike + random 12th string unit that in some playthroughs acts each turn but in other playthroughs only acts once every 7 or 8 turns. Especially in the case of the mounted units. That 12th string unit may not even see much combat anyway given the possible mounted rushes. Then consider that your team of 11 without Ike vs team of 11 + Ike means that the team of 11 has a higher overall level. So while you might suggest Oscar vs. Ike is more like Oscar vs. Ike + extra unit, don't ignore that Oscar's entire team is now at a higher level than Ike's team. They all do better. Boiling down the comparison to Oscar vs. Ike + extra unit doesn't describe the situation as accurately as it could be. How about Ike + 11 units with average level X vs. Oscar + 10 units with average level X+1 or something like that?

[Colonel M]

Do explain how an extra unit does not matter or is insignificant. I fail to see your line of reasoning on that subject. Ike himself may have a poor performance, but is it so poor that even Ike + another unit together is still worse than Boyd or whoever individually?

I would say so. Boyd + Titania clears more than Ike + Titania for most of the game.

[Narga_Rocks]

I would say so. Boyd + Titania clears more than Ike + Titania for most of the game.

Except Boyd isn't allowed Titania in this comparison. It's Boyd vs. Ike + nth best, where the number of deployment slots in a given chapter is n-1 (including Ike's slot). Of course, both teams can take Titania, but they are boiling it down to just (Boyd) and (Ike + extra unit), rather than their teams, which drastically increases the relative utility of the extra unit. Eliminating the team makes it look like you have twice as many units when you have Ike compared to when you don't.

[Colonel M]

Except Boyd isn't allowed Titania in this comparison. It's Boyd vs. Ike + nth best, where the number of deployment slots in a given chapter is n-1 (including Ike's slot). Of course, both teams can take Titania, but they are boiling it down to just (Boyd) and (Ike + extra unit), rather than their teams, which drastically increases the relative utility of the extra unit. Eliminating the team makes it look like you have twice as many units when you have Ike compared to when you don't.

Hrrk, guess I'll keep my trap shut on that one.

EDIT: Or in short Ike just gets a lopsided advantage. :/

Edited February 22, 2010 by Colonel M

[Reikken]

Indeed, if the first 7 chapters were the whole game, Ike would be far from top tier. However it's not. His poor performance starts getting much better after that.

Stefan does have crit issues. However, he doesn't get crit-blicked. He can eat a crit and remain standing. He has 38 base hp and 12 base def. and 5 luck. Steel bow archers in the chapters not too long after he joins have around 17 atk (and 7 crit). 15 damage if he takes a crit. Myrmidons are similar. Things with more atk can't crit him due to having 5 or less crit. The one exception is soldiers, which have 0~1 crit on him and about 20 atk, 21 after WTA, for 27 damage on crit.

After enemies promote, now everyone not named Mist faces crit from snipers and swordmasters, so Stefan being critted by them is no longer unique. As for halberdiers, his luck generally increases faster than their crit, so that 0~1 crit tends to drop to mostly 0. Of course there's also the chance that his luck deviates below average, in which case he'd be taking more crits, but that pretty much only serves as lessening his RNG proofness advantage he otherwise would have over non-prepromotes.

In short, yes, he has some issues, but it's few enemies, and he's not getting OHK'd anyway, so it won't necessarily kill him instantly even if it does happen, so it's not too huge of a negative.

As for Mia vs Zihark, Mia sucks when she joins. Zihark saves you the trouble by giving you basically Mia + a free ~6 levels. Yes, he's only 4 levels higher, but his bases are better than her average lv 10 stats.

Edited February 22, 2010 by Reikken

[Colonel M]

As for Mia vs Zihark, Mia sucks when she joins. Zihark saves you the trouble by giving you basically Mia + a free ~6 levels. Yes, he's only 4 levels higher, but his bases are better than her average lv 10 stats.

That's fine in a situation in which you argue Zihark > Mia, which I have no qualms about.

It's with a two tier gap where I find it a little unjustified.

[Narga_Rocks]

Indeed, if the first 7 chapters were the whole game, Ike would be far from top tier. However it's not. His poor performance starts getting much better after that.

Even still, he doesn't have the move of the mounted units and it takes a while before he'll be ORKOing and then as he nears his promotion time he stops again. When you consider how frequently Oscar or Kieran can ORKO something and yet Ike 2RKOs, that "extra unit" is frequently just letting the team kill the same number of enemies. Then it gets in the way on enemy phase since enemies that would have attacked Kieran and died are instead attacking either Ike or 12th string dude, and thus live. Getting above Ike is then dependent on how often Ike himself is ORKOing, since if he is then your 12th string can go and hide. But then he's not doing much, so he attacks stuff on player phase and you need to make sure he's not present on enemy phase unless he's also strong enough to ORKO. It's just a lot more complicated than:

Kieran can do 5 more damage than Ike to this enemy? Ike's presence allows you to field "backup" as you call it; surely someone such as Largo or w/e will be able to do more than 5 damage to that enemy in addition to Ike's own damage, overriding Kieran's advantage.

Because even if Largo does more than 5 damage, what does it matter when frequently that 5 damage already killed something that Ike wouldn't have?

Stefan does have crit issues. However, he doesn't get crit-blicked. He can eat a crit and remain standing. He has 38 base hp and 12 base def. and 5 luck. Steel bow archers in the chapters not too long after he joins have around 17 atk (and 7 crit). 15 damage if he takes a crit. Myrmidons are similar. Things with more atk can't crit him due to having 5 or less crit. The one exception is soldiers, which have 0~1 crit on him and about 20 atk, 21 after WTA, for 27 damage on crit.

After enemies promote, now everyone not named Mist faces crit from snipers and swordmasters, so Stefan being critted by them is no longer unique. As for halberdiers, his luck generally increases faster than their crit, so that 0~1 crit tends to drop to mostly 0. Of course, there's

In short, yes, he has some issues, but it's few enemies, and he's not getting OHK'd anyway, so it won't necessarily kill him instantly even if it does happen, so it's not too huge of a negative.

Don't forget thunder mages. Elthunder mages have crit on some of your units anyway, though. Even still, some of your units will get enough luck for them. And it's not just a matter of whether he survives a single crit (since even elthunder doesn't 3HKO him, I think). There's also having him face multiple enemies because you don't think he'll get criticaled. If two enemies + crit kills him, and generally 3 enemies will not kill Marcia, he'll randomly die more often than Marcia.

[soundecho]

I feel ignored, but probably because my post was the last one on the page before.

From chapter 11 onwards, you are allowed to have Ike + 11 slots. A team will generally consist with 8~12 people (any higher and the exp is distributed more thinly and you risk losing efficiency, e.g 10 good units > 13 average units). With an average number on of people on a team being 10 or Ike + 9 people, you will not run into any issue of wanting to field more people. It's the same thing for Ike + 10 people.

However, Ike + 11 units is when we hit the 12 unit cap, of where you will probably get the most efficiency (Ike + 7/8/9/10 is better but that's irrelevant). So if we wanted to field a filler, they wouldn't have a spot on the team on generally they'd kick someone out so they can have a spot.

The problem with most fillers in this game, is that they suck or are pretty meh e.g Hawks, Tauroneo, Ranulf or they required to be trained a bit before they are good e.g Geoffrey, Calill, and if you train them for a few levels, you might as well give them a permanent slot on your team beforehand (this is assuming the player isn't a retard and actually plans his team before starting the game).

[Reikken]

Don't forget thunder mages.

True. Though Stefan has good res. They'll have more crit than a soldier but do less damage.

When you consider how frequently Oscar or Kieran can ORKO something and yet Ike 2RKOs

This is actually extremely infrequent. Indeed, I would say the opposite is more frequent early midgame.

Average 13 Ike,

Steel Sword: 19 atk, 12.6 AS

Regal on effective: 25 atk, 13.6 AS

Average 13 Oscar,

Iron Lance: 17.5 atk, 11.5 AS

Steel Lance: 20.5 atk, 9.0 AS

Edit: Or you may want to use fillers, but there are barely any fillers in this game at all and the ones that are actually good, they need to be trained for a couple of levels,

I'm not seeing this at all. Every few chapters, you have a few new sufficiently powerful units join.

Edit:

or they required to be trained a bit before they are good e.g Geoffrey, Calill

They need no training. Edited February 22, 2010 by Reikken

[soundecho]

I'm not seeing this at all. Every few chapters, you have a few new sufficiently powerful units join.

Yes and you have enough slots for them. This advantage only occurs when you want to use 12+ units (not including Ike). And you can't exactly consider them fillers since most of them will stay on your team e.g Kieran, Neph, Mak.

Edited February 22, 2010 by soundecho

[Reikken]

Now the real issues. Who are you suggesting is better than Stefan? His crit issues weren't ignored in his intial placement.

and on Zihark/Mia: Well, comparing them to each other isn't going to do much good, as it's pretty clear that Zihark is quite a bit better than Mia. Assuming that they should indeed move, how would you have them move? Then we can actually get somewhere.

EDIT: @above post. I don't really follow you.

Edited February 22, 2010 by Reikken

[Colonel M]

Now the real issues. Who are you suggesting is better than Stefan? His crit issues weren't ignored in his intial placement.

and on Zihark/Mia: Well, comparing them to each other isn't going to do much good, as it's pretty clear that Zihark is quite a bit better than Mia. Assuming that they should indeed move, how would you have them move? Then we can actually get somewhere.

EDIT: @above post. I don't really follow you.

To be honest, I'd think it would be obvious. But, the general answer is Mia up. If it's a tier difference, I probably won't blather too much about it.

[soundecho]

Ok, i admitted myself that I had trouble explaining but I'll try and do it clearly this time.

Say we wanted to use Ike + 7 units. After chapter 10+, there are 11+ units slots except for chapter 12. There's 4 extra slots for people.

Same for Ike + 8 units, except there's 3 extra slots for fillers and such.

Ike + 9 there's 2 extra slots which is still more than enough.

Ike + 10 and one extra which is still more than enough.

Ike + 11 (any higher and you lose a lot of efficiency) and you have no unit slots for fillers.

The first real filler, is Stefan. Chapter 16 is a movement based map so not fielding him here is not really a detriment to our team. Chapters 17/18/19 all have 13 unit slots+ (except 17-1 which has 10 and 17-2 which has 12).

Extended use of a filler hurts our team, our team is now weaker in the long run but have done better in the short run. If we wanted to use Stefan for real we'd give him a place on our team before even starting the game.

Next filler Tanith, joins in the chapter IIRC so she doesn't need a unit slot.

Hawks + Ranulf are pretty bad, ranulf resembles some semblance of usability but whatever.

Calill is a bad filler, but makes a good unit if trained, so if we were to use her, we'd use her seriously which means we'd have given her a slot before this game started.

Tauroneo is meh, and has low movement.

Haar + Geoffrey join in the middle of their respective chapters. Haar is pretty meh as well, and Geoffrey needs to be trained a bit before he becomes good (similar to Calill and Stefan).

So Ike's team being able to field fillers or something, doesn't really matter. I hope you were able to understand that, made much more sense in my head.

[Reikken]

Ok. Well I'm not seeing how Mia could be better than Tormod or Sothe. Mia doesn't really have anything. Those two at least have something. Tormod has the highest bases on a magic user until Calill, and with all the advantages of being a magic user (1~2 range, res) without the disadvantage of reduced move. Indeed, he has increased move. In the absence of Volke (Maybe you just aren't using him. Maybe you didn't recruit him. Maybe he died! Hm, I didn't think of this. Sothe should probably go up.), not having Sothe either is quite a loss. Even if you do have Volke, having Sothe as well can be helpful in certain chapters.

[Colonel M]

Ok. Well I'm not seeing how Mia could be better than Tormod or Sothe. Mia doesn't really have anything. Those two at least have something. Tormod has the highest bases on a magic user until Calill, and with all the advantages of being a magic user (1~2 range, res) without the disadvantage of reduced move. Indeed, he has increased move. In the absence of Volke (Maybe you just aren't using him. Maybe you didn't recruit him. Maybe he died! Hm, I didn't think of this. Sothe should probably go up.), not having Sothe either is quite a loss. Even if you do have Volke, having Sothe as well can be helpful in certain chapters.

Sothe has the problem of Mia's team can still have Volke, so it's quite irrelevant. Sothe would lose there.

For Tormod, you'd have to sandbag her quite a ways up until Tormod's joining chapter in order to consider her bad. Even then, Tormod doesn't even look that good. He's severely underleveled (Level 7 in Chapter 16 is pretty absurd while Mia's level was at least a little bit closer to the average team). Not to mention Tormod's shitty start (10 Mag | 9 Spd with 2 Str, 20 HP, and 4 Def). He has 13 Atk and 4HKOes Soldiers. Uh...

Edited February 22, 2010 by Colonel M

[Reikken]

The first real filler, is Stefan.

Titania, Mordecai, Lethe, Kieran, Brom, Zihark, Jill, and Muarim all serve as good filler units at least for a short time. Even Marcia and Tormod can at least help out semicompetently. Oh and Rhys or Mist if you're not already using both of them would make excellent fillers. For units that join before or at the same time as Stefan. Then you also missed Devdan since the next you mention is Tanith. A filler unit need not be god incarnate.

[soundecho]

Titania, Mordecai, Lethe, Kieran, Brom, Zihark, Jill, and Muarim all serve as good filler units at least for a short time. Even Marcia and Tormod can at least help out semicompetently. Oh and Rhys or Mist if you're not already using both of them would make excellent fillers. For units that join before or at the same time as Stefan. Then you also missed Devdan since the next you mention is Tanith. A filler unit need not be god incarnate.

Chapters 11, 13~15 all have more than 11 units slots (13/12/13/14 respectively) which gives you more than enough slots for fillers. Then after that we have chapter 18/19/21/23/25/26/28 that have more than 11 unit slots. And you shouldn't need a filler by chapter 27 anyway

Chapter 22 is spent most of the time shoving priests, Chapter 24 has several units that join in mid way so they don't require a unit slot.

And this is all assuming we're say using 12 units including Ike. If we use 8~10 units, we have more than enough slots for the occasional filler or so.

And I'll get to the units performance as fillers later.

Edited February 22, 2010 by soundecho

[Reikken]

Sothe has the problem of Mia's team can still have Volke, so it's quite irrelevant.

It can, but it's very very far from a guarantee, for reasons already mentioned. Volke is only one unit. It's very possible that he died or wasn't recruited. Aaaand, even if Volke were a forced game-over-on-death unit, I would still say that not having access to Sothe hurts more than not having Mia. Getting chests faster, getting desert items faster and/or having a better chance of even finding them in the first place beats having Mia to...do what, now? considering that Sothe doesn't even necessarily need levels to do this. You can just throw him in at X chapter and have him do stuff.

For Tormod, you'd have to sandbag her quite a ways up until Tormod's joining chapter in order to consider her bad. Even then, Tormod doesn't even look that good. He's severely underleveled (Level 7 in Chapter 16 is pretty absurd while Mia's level was at least a little bit closer to the average team).

Of course if you've been using Mia up until Tormod joins, she'll be better than he is at that point. But that's only because she's already been reducing your efficiency for several chapters by you having to field and level such a bad unit.

Instead, look at how Mia does on joining as compared to how Tormod joes on joining. Mia's only advantage is that she doubles. She's frail, takes counters, and has low damage per hit. Tormod, however, can use anything from Meteor to Elwind at base (no Elthunder though..and do you even have any Meteors?), and his damage isn't even terrible because 10 base mag is pretty good. He does generally >1/3 enemy's hp without taking a counter. Generally plenty enough to let others OHK what's left if it's a myrmidon or 2HK if it's something else. Mia does little more damage but takes counterattacks, with the one exception of the fighters on the beach in ch 9. Well, archers too. She doesn't get countered by those. But she also has the disadvantage of not countering things that are ranged.

@soundecho: 11 isn't some magic number. But you do have a point in that some chapters do have quite a few unit slots, and each additional "filler" unit is worth a little less than the last. How many deployment slots does each chapter have?

Edited February 22, 2010 by Reikken

[soundecho]

Chapter 11: 13 Units

Chapter 12: 10 units

Chapter 13: 12 Units

Chapter 14: 13 units

Chapter 15: 14 units

Chapter 16: 11 units

Chapter 17-(1/2/3/4): 10/12/14/16

Chapter 18: 13 units

Chapter 19: 13 units

Chapter 20: 11 units

Chapter 21: 13 units

Chapter 22: 11 units

Chapter 23: 13 units

Chapter 24: 11 units

Chapter 25: 12 units

Chapter 26: 19! units

Chapter 27: 11 units

Chapter 28: 12 units

Endgame: 14 units

I think the ideal number would be 10, where you would spreading your exp evenly, such as everyone getting to 20/17~20 at endgame and you have enough people to wall people such as Reyson.

Eight would be harder, since you don't have that much to wall Reyson and maybe your healer, but your units are substantially better due to their inflated levels.

I honestly never play with 12~ units, but most people do, however I think that's pushing it a bit. With everyone ending up at about 20/13~15.

Edited February 22, 2010 by soundecho

[Colonel M]

Only Calill comes with Meteor. The rest would require using something like Sleep + Disarm in order to get it (or somehow force them to switch to their other tome and steal it). The first one is 17-4 which is full of swamp terrain to where he is (you have to go through the swamp or around the trees in a U shape).