FE: Awakening Hard Mode Tier List

[Legault!]

I'm already planning stuff like fielding a level 10 Guy and other low level kids in Crazed Beast to get huge EXP and getting the Lloyd map and finishing it in two turns. Stuff like that.

HNM doesn't require Marcus blitzkrieg, at least. Don't forget about the northeast quadrant of Crazed Beast either -- an underleveled Florina or Fiora with a Pure Water / barrier boost can solo those monks.

Tactics is lenient but the rest are hard. It's like the opposite of FE7. But the lenient Tactics rank gives you wiggle room to get more EXP and money, even by using the arena plenty in Ilia or something. Combat is actually hard because the enemies are a lot better and attack at range more.

Sounds like I'll have to try it myself. I've heard that arena abuse makes FE6R pretty easy, but considering how tough the arena is in Hard, I imagine this is overblown.

SF FE discussion in a nutshell, sadly.

Instead of any kind of competent rebuttal, we get a :V face. I am stunned.

[eCut]

Enough is enough. Get back on topic or I will warn you. (If you want to respond to him, PM him)

[Constable Reggie]

So uh, move Frederick down to bottom of S tier if you don't have any objections, please. Several people have already agreed that this is reasonable.

Edited March 26, 2013 by Constable Reggie

[OrangeCrush980]

I agree with Freddy to the bottom of S tier

[Blademaster!]

Valuing cost efficiency is cool. Costing less money is better.

Costing less money has already been taken into account in the list...

Anyway, @inui and Legault, if you guys really want to argue your point, just do a run using Donnel, post your turn counts, explain what you did with them and how they contributed to your run like I did. It's that simple, and yet neither of you had bothered to do so, even after I tried to help your point(since you guys clearly know what to do with Donnel if he's so amazing, you should get better results). If you're worried about your turn counts being too high, just take the turn counts I did and add+1 to them at most, and assume that as your goal for each chapter. For the chapters I haven't done yet, just look at turn counts found in draft runs and add +1/2 to each of those, since that's what I tried to do in general anyway. If really necessary, I'll draft up a required turn count max for each chapter, and we can proceed to argue about whether that is too high or too low and go from there. There's no need to get upset. There's no need to be mad. There is a simple and easy way to solve the problem. And honestly, I'm curious to see your results.

[Florete]

eCut said some good stuff already, but as the mod who has been actively participating in this I want to say something as well. I've got some harsh things to say, so get ready.

There appear to be two camps here: the people who are bitching about how much Awakening sucks to tier (Legault and He Who Must Not Be Named), and the people who are actually discussing and getting shit done. One of these groups should go do something constructive with their time and let people who actually want to talk about the game do so.

This is a good point. Plenty of people have been having discussions without the standards being an issue. My Sumia vs Cordelia, while frustrating, is a very recent example. I don't want to say, "Deal with it or GTFO," but clearly the rules are concrete enough that many of us have been able to follow them this long without an issue.

The fact is, we've had too many tier list philosophy discussions on this forum, sometimes in their own topics, and this is where we are. I've been in a few of the chats with you and I know you all like to make fun of the "SFers" and their style, but really, what makes your style better? What makes you so sure the problem is completely on our side and you are at no fault? We've arrived at our style based on our years of engaging with one another and it makes sense to us. It may conflict with yours. That happens. But that doesn't mean you get to go around telling us we're doing it wrong and we should conform to your standards because what we do is pointless and makes no sense. Multiple times you guys have praised me as the most reasonable of the SF bunch, so I really hope you can respect me enough to see where I'm coming from.

So this is probably sounding like "Our way or the highway," right? As much as I hate to say it like that, that may just be the way it needs to be. SF vs FEF doesn't seem to be dying down anytime soon, but if it ever was, it has stopped being constructive. At this rate it's plain to see that, as much as I'd love it, we will not find a common ground in which all of us can happily frolic together through the flower fields of ordering fictional characters based on subjective criteria. If you've been around all this time, like I know Paperblade has, I'm sure you see what I mean. It sucks, and the last thing I want is for anyone to feel like they've been too restricted to post, but I really don't see any alternative if we want to actually tier instead of just talking about tiers. And I am through talking about tiers.

If you want to continue participating in this topic - and I welcome you all to - my suggestion would be to follow the current rules of the list as well as you can and try to find the flow. If you can't find yourself able to do this or simply don't wish to "conform," then I'm sorry, but this may simply not be the community for you.

However, while Awakening tiering may end up off limits to you (but you seem to think it's pointless anyway), there's an old FE7 ranked list on here you can dust off if you'd like or, if it's just that dead, you can re-enact it completely. Or play a hack with ranks and tier that, I'm sure it would flatter the hackers.

Please do not reply to this post in this topic. A PM, a group PM, hell, maybe even a separate topic would be okay, but let this be the last "tier philosophy" post to grace this topic.

[KitheOfEvrark]

I can see Frederick moving down, but I'm hesitant to put him below Sully. Can someone who's advocating Fred to bottom of S compare the two? I may have missed something, but I haven't seen anyone actually compare Fred directly to the people they're advocating he drop under. Right now it just seems to me that Fred is wrecking things from the beginning and if you use them both to their fullest extent (good supports, leveling up etc.) Sully isn't really catching up fast enough to erase her original deficit. Then again, I could just be biased because of how many times Fred's saved my ass and be overrating him. I'd be happy to take off my Fred-coloured glasses if someone can show that Sully can do better than my expectations.

[Lord Raven]

Fred is pretty good up until Chapter 15, Chapter 16 he's a pure support bot. Sully's decent after a couple chapters, and remains generally really good. Going by that sort of logic, I'd sort of put Frederick above Sully, but the fact is that Sully stays pretty good throughout the whole game and an S Chrom is something really good to have. I'd be hesitant to put Frederick above Sully, but also I'd be hesitant to put him below her. I need someone to nudge me just right before I can agree to it.

[Inui]

Fred is pretty good up until Chapter 15, Chapter 16 he's a pure support bot. Sully's decent after a couple chapters, and remains generally really good. Going by that sort of logic, I'd sort of put Frederick above Sully, but the fact is that Sully stays pretty good throughout the whole game and an S Chrom is something really good to have. I'd be hesitant to put Frederick above Sully, but also I'd be hesitant to put him below her. I need someone to nudge me just right before I can agree to it.

Frederick is god when everyone else is bad.

Sully is good when everyone else is good.

[Constable Reggie]

Everyone else is not bad, get your head out of lunatic mode.

Sully 2hkoes everything except the boss while being 4hkoed in return against everything except the boss in chapter 2. She 3hkoes while being 4hkoed in return in chapter 3, but is able to double fighters if given Chrom (which is likely).

She 2hkoes everything but the knights with an iron lance in chapter 3 with any +str pair up, and orkoes everything but the knights with a Chrom pair up and a point in str, which is reasonable. She's 4-5hkoed in return.

It just goes on like this, Sully's totally competent in earlygame, and she just keeps getting better and better as the game goes on. Fred's great and all, but he's not doing anything of significant value after halfway through the Valm arc.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Constable Reggie

[Interceptor]

I feel that Fred is definitely over-rated here, but it's not really possible to nail down by how much until we have an idea of how he does against the first challenge to his prowess (AKA, promoted enemies) as compared to other people.

[Lord Raven]

He gets doubled and killed in some cases. Chapter 16 is already iffy for him, because I think the Heroes and Falcoknights are the only thing really remotely threatening in that map - they double him and the Heroes maybe 3-4HKO him. Warriors do a shitton of damage to anyone in existence, so Frederick is maybe at a 2HKO here and probably isn't doubled.

The very next chapter though? Valkyries will ORKO him and his only chance of survival is like a 10% Dual Guard. This trend continues through the rest of the game. In Frederick We Trust.

[KitheOfEvrark]

Huh, I didn't realize the dropoff was that bad for him. Is there any efficient way for him to fix those durability problems? I know pairing Frederick with Sumia is a fairly popular option. Does he still get doubled with that? Also, how is he as a pair up partner late game?

[Blademaster!]

Huh, I didn't realize the dropoff was that bad for him. Is there any efficient way for him to fix those durability problems? I know pairing Frederick with Sumia is a fairly popular option. Does he still get doubled with that? Also, how is he as a pair up partner late game?

In my current run, Frederick is a level 3 Griffon Rider with 23 speed, and that's supposedly +1 over average for him at lvl 15 reclass from GK to GR. That's enough to let him not be doubled by anything on chapter 16, where the fastest enemies are Falco knights with 27 speed if they get speed +2. With Sumia, who gives him +8 speed at the moment, he still doubles the map, except Falco knights on the off chance they get spd+2. Hero's only have ~22 speed.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Blademaster!

[Lord Raven]

Yeah I guess if you keep him a GK he has the problems I mentioned. He still has to deal with ass experience gain, which is my honest problem with him (plus his stats are always piss poor for me so there may be bias against him from my end).

[Blademaster!]

In my Lunatic run, Fred never dropped off as a viable unit for me, though that wasn't strictly LTC, just no grind. Then again, I had Avatar solo the rest of the game starting at chapter 23...

[grandjackal]

Yeah I guess if you keep him a GK he has the problems I mentioned. He still has to deal with ass experience gain, which is my honest problem with him (plus his stats are always piss poor for me so there may be bias against him from my end).

His leveling speed is annoying, but really all he cares about is hitting level 10 so he can swap to something like Gryphon. Due to his speed as a GK, his durability is basically going to drop eventually, but you can still keep his offense going. Then deep lategame due to being a Gryphon he can act fully as transport utility thanks to Deliverer and his support granting +1 move so his supporting keeps him and his partner mobile.

Dual Guard+ is also a nice bonus if you have the patience to get it. Otherwise I'd just recommend the faster Deliverer.

[eclipse]

I found that he can continue to be useful as a support bot, because his class allows him to wield the entire weapon triangle (so hack out your favorite of Wyrmslayer, Hammer, or Beastkiller, and off you go). If he's paired with Sumia, he should be able to sneak in a few more hits.

Despite my minor nonsexual crush on him, I won't throw a hissy fit if he's moved to the bottom of S tier.

[Lord Raven]

I'll give griffin Frederick a shot next time I play, sounds like a lot of fun; for now I wouldn't be opposed to Fred > Sully.

[Inui]

In my Lunatic run, Fred never dropped off as a viable unit for me, though that wasn't strictly LTC, just no grind. Then again, I had Avatar solo the rest of the game starting at chapter 23...

Same, he carried me so hard, and carried a long time in my first hard mode run. During this "Fred now sucks" part everyone is talking about, he always still wtfpwned for me since having a high rank in axes was a huge boon and he had the Str and Def to use them. He's like always into his second class by then already too, usually General cuz I want dat Pavise and huge Str/Def.

I can't see him below Sully at all.

[Constable Reggie]

Reclassing him into general pretty much permanently kills his chance to double without an extremely good speed partner (how do we take pair up units into consideration, anyway?) and takes away all his move. You can't seriously think reclassing to general is a good idea for him?

Edited March 27, 2013 by Constable Reggie

[Interceptor]

You can't seriously think reclassing to general is a good idea for him?

Consider the source, here.

As for Pair-up, I've generally been assuming that a unit can take whatever support partner that would suit them the best, as long as the downsides are accounted for. Such as: if Sumia takes Chrom (for auto-S, or whatever), you'd need to adjust for the fact that nobody else can S-rank Chrom now, so Lucina is going to be weaker. Also, being the support partner of a unit that sees a lot of combat, probably is going to result in a hit on that unit's EXP, so combining two powerful units into a Pair is probably going to have a negative impact on your army's strength.

The best candidates for Support units are probably going to be people that aren't all that great on their own.

[Legault!]

I've used General!Frederick on Lunatic challenge runs before, and he's excellent. Speed potions and pairing up exist, and this probably won't even be necessary against lolHard enemies.

[Constable Reggie]

That's nice.

Oh hey turns out Sully can use potions and have a pairup partner too, without having a shitty 5 move.

[Redwall]

His leveling speed is annoying, but really all he cares about is hitting level 10 so he can swap to something like Gryphon. Due to his speed as a GK, his durability is basically going to drop eventually, but you can still keep his offense going. Then deep lategame due to being a Gryphon he can act fully as transport utility thanks to Deliverer and his support granting +1 move so his supporting keeps him and his partner mobile.

Dual Guard+ is also a nice bonus if you have the patience to get it. Otherwise I'd just recommend the faster Deliverer.

Fred's levelling speed actually goes down if he is reclassed at --/10, and for that matter, at any point before --/20. Feeding him a Second Seal at --/10 changes his internal level from 20 + 10 = 30 to something like (20 + 10 - 1)/2 + 1 + 20 = 35.

In the so-called deep lategame, I can't see Fred being used as a lead combat unit other than for occasional Hammer ORKOs on Generals. Getting Deliverer on him requires a lot of kills for the reasons I just mentioned--kills that benefit the team more when fed to his wife, who will get that much closer to either Galeforce or Lancefaire. Typical playthroughs will likely have one of Panne, Lon'qu, or Cherche as a Deliverer with better combat stats by the lategame. Besides, Dual Guard+ is awesome.