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What bothers me with FE community - labelling GBA units "bad"


Garlyle
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A few days ago I had a few posts and discord chats where people started calling units bad, and no matter what my opinion was, they just tried to convince me that they are indeed bad. Whatever I say doesn't matter, because personal experience never matter when it comes to characters and how good/bad they are. But you do need experience to make a good judgement on the character, and just how do you label them bad? In Hard Mode? LTC? Draft? Or just in general? What if some people have different playstyle and in different playstyle they are actually better? You can train up your character, or you can go with units with good bases, or you can go with units with high movement + canto, in all scenarios some units are worse then the others, but in other plays they are actually not bad.

For reference I do like to train up units, and the only unit I found absolutely bad is FE6 Sophia. Keep in mind it's been a long time since I played FE7, and FE8 is so easy, you can make any unit good with enough time on your hand. But I'm going to make a few examples of what really bothered me.

Rutger is the only good myrmidon - well, I am not going to argue, Rutger is the best myrmidon in the gba games, Binding Blade is really good for myrmidons, higher crit rates, probably highest evasion thanks to their stats, defensive growths are hard to rely on in Binding Blade anyway. So what about Fir? She's not as good as Rutger, but I think she can become another great myrmidon you can rely on. She starts on low level, but her starting stats are really good for a Lv1, especially on Hard Mode. I run 2 Swordmaster in my games and they make a good job. But it doesn't matter to people, because you only need Rutger, because he kill bosses. On the other hand people say you should use 2 Troubadours(Clarine and Cecilia), but that's not my playstyle - which is judged as why am I hindering myself like that. (because I'm ok with 1 high level staff user, my promoted mages can support in healing later)

Then there's the mages in... again FE6. The only mage you need is Lugh, because Hugh is expensive and Lilina is bad. I'm telling people how useful Lilina is for me, she one-shots some enemies for me, has great supports, and fully heals with a single Heal staff. But she's bad, and they say it not because of her Def, but because of her Speed. Because Lugh doubles and Lilina doesn't, and her bases are bad. Dudes, you need them to level up in both, Lugh has better availability, but while Lilina can get screwed in Spd, Lugh can get screwed in Mag. Whatever, they just try to convince me that Lilina is bad, not worth using her. And then they post screenshots of her performance in Ch10, because that's really the point where she's going to shine.

The list could go on, yet when you reach the late game, the only truly bad units are going to be your benched ones... and Sophia.

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1 hour ago, Garlyle said:

A few days ago I had a few posts and discord chats where people started calling units bad, and no matter what my opinion was, they just tried to convince me that they are indeed bad. Whatever I say doesn't matter, because personal experience never matter when it comes to characters and how good/bad they are. But you do need experience to make a good judgement on the character, and just how do you label them bad? In Hard Mode? LTC? Draft? Or just in general? What if some people have different playstyle and in different playstyle they are actually better? You can train up your character, or you can go with units with good bases, or you can go with units with high movement + canto, in all scenarios some units are worse then the others, but in other plays they are actually not bad.

For reference I do like to train up units, and the only unit I found absolutely bad is FE6 Sophia. Keep in mind it's been a long time since I played FE7, and FE8 is so easy, you can make any unit good with enough time on your hand. But I'm going to make a few examples of what really bothered me.

Rutger is the only good myrmidon - well, I am not going to argue, Rutger is the best myrmidon in the gba games, Binding Blade is really good for myrmidons, higher crit rates, probably highest evasion thanks to their stats, defensive growths are hard to rely on in Binding Blade anyway. So what about Fir? She's not as good as Rutger, but I think she can become another great myrmidon you can rely on. She starts on low level, but her starting stats are really good for a Lv1, especially on Hard Mode. I run 2 Swordmaster in my games and they make a good job. But it doesn't matter to people, because you only need Rutger, because he kill bosses. On the other hand people say you should use 2 Troubadours(Clarine and Cecilia), but that's not my playstyle - which is judged as why am I hindering myself like that. (because I'm ok with 1 high level staff user, my promoted mages can support in healing later)

Then there's the mages in... again FE6. The only mage you need is Lugh, because Hugh is expensive and Lilina is bad. I'm telling people how useful Lilina is for me, she one-shots some enemies for me, has great supports, and fully heals with a single Heal staff. But she's bad, and they say it not because of her Def, but because of her Speed. Because Lugh doubles and Lilina doesn't, and her bases are bad. Dudes, you need them to level up in both, Lugh has better availability, but while Lilina can get screwed in Spd, Lugh can get screwed in Mag. Whatever, they just try to convince me that Lilina is bad, not worth using her. And then they post screenshots of her performance in Ch10, because that's really the point where she's going to shine.

The list could go on, yet when you reach the late game, the only truly bad units are going to be your benched ones... and Sophia.

Agreed somewhat. There are just some things that don't make sense when arguing units and it's usually because people don't bother using them or because they think one of those is usually enough, which is fine, if the other units work, it works, but that doesn't mean the other ones are bad.

I rarely use Canas at all, but I can tell that he's a good unit. Why don't I use him? Because in HHM, deployment slots are limited and I have other units that take priority when leveling. 

Edited by DiogoJorge
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When using a unit, RNG is going to factor in.  So when evaluating them, we judge them by how good they are, on average, relative to the amount of investment they need put in.  This is what "personal experience means nothing" is all about, it accounts for the RNG factor.

Yes, Lilina can do crazy amounts of damage in one attack thanks to her magic growth, but she requires more investment than Lugh to be useful thanks to joining later, and she's also slower than him so so long as he's not magic screwed he can out damage her by that alone.  Guiding Rings, like most promo items, are also super hard to come by in FE6's first half, so it can be difficult to use both, particularly if you're also using a healer you'd like to promote.  While Lilina on her own isn't too bad of a unit, babying her can be a bit rough but not too bad, but she's competing with a better one you obtain earlier for a promo item.

Same deal with Rutger vs Fir.  

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@Glaceon Mage That'd be a lot of RNG in a playthrough to make the final results unreliable random. Healers can promote later, but Guiding Ring is a limited resource as you said. Fir and Rutger doesn't have that problem with promotional items I believe, you don't want to promote too many axe users anyway(accuracy). Also Lilina's training is only bad in her joining chapter, but if you have her, 8x is a good training ground to get a bunch of level ups - I even got a strategy to beat the boss with her too. With Fir, I only worry about her strength growth.

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5 minutes ago, Garlyle said:

@Glaceon Mage That'd be a lot of RNG in a playthrough to make the final results unreliable random. Healers can promote later, but Guiding Ring is a limited resource as you said. Fir and Rutger doesn't have that problem with promotional items I believe, you don't want to promote too many axe users anyway(accuracy). Also Lilina's training is only bad in her joining chapter, but if you have her, 8x is a good training ground to get a bunch of level ups - I even got a strategy to beat the boss with her too. With Fir, I only worry about her strength growth.

Fir's also competing with Dieck for a promo item, though the second Hero Crest is much less sought after than the first.  After the second one you don't get another for a while.

A healer who can fight is generally much more useful than a mage who can heal, because in comparison to staff ranks weapon ranks in FE6 might as well be Usain Bolt.  

I never said her training was too hard, I said it was harder than Lugh, who gives similar if not more payoff due to his better Speed and she's competing for a rare promo item with.  Lilina on her own is mostly fine, she just loses out from a pure gameplay standpoint due to FE6's stinginess.

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4 hours ago, Garlyle said:

A few days ago I had a few posts and discord chats where people started calling units bad, and no matter what my opinion was, they just tried to convince me that they are indeed bad. Whatever I say doesn't matter, because personal experience never matter when it comes to characters and how good/bad they are. But you do need experience to make a good judgement on the character, and just how do you label them bad? In Hard Mode? LTC? Draft? Or just in general? What if some people have different playstyle and in different playstyle they are actually better? You can train up your character, or you can go with units with good bases, or you can go with units with high movement + canto, in all scenarios some units are worse then the others, but in other plays they are actually not bad.

For reference I do like to train up units, and the only unit I found absolutely bad is FE6 Sophia. Keep in mind it's been a long time since I played FE7, and FE8 is so easy, you can make any unit good with enough time on your hand. But I'm going to make a few examples of what really bothered me.

Rutger is the only good myrmidon - well, I am not going to argue, Rutger is the best myrmidon in the gba games, Binding Blade is really good for myrmidons, higher crit rates, probably highest evasion thanks to their stats, defensive growths are hard to rely on in Binding Blade anyway. So what about Fir? She's not as good as Rutger, but I think she can become another great myrmidon you can rely on. She starts on low level, but her starting stats are really good for a Lv1, especially on Hard Mode. I run 2 Swordmaster in my games and they make a good job. But it doesn't matter to people, because you only need Rutger, because he kill bosses. On the other hand people say you should use 2 Troubadours(Clarine and Cecilia), but that's not my playstyle - which is judged as why am I hindering myself like that. (because I'm ok with 1 high level staff user, my promoted mages can support in healing later)

Then there's the mages in... again FE6. The only mage you need is Lugh, because Hugh is expensive and Lilina is bad. I'm telling people how useful Lilina is for me, she one-shots some enemies for me, has great supports, and fully heals with a single Heal staff. But she's bad, and they say it not because of her Def, but because of her Speed. Because Lugh doubles and Lilina doesn't, and her bases are bad. Dudes, you need them to level up in both, Lugh has better availability, but while Lilina can get screwed in Spd, Lugh can get screwed in Mag. Whatever, they just try to convince me that Lilina is bad, not worth using her. And then they post screenshots of her performance in Ch10, because that's really the point where she's going to shine.

The list could go on, yet when you reach the late game, the only truly bad units are going to be your benched ones... and Sophia.

I think the thing is that the metric of unit comparison is a general loosely defined "efficiency".

when someone like Mekkah or dondon talks about unit performance, it's often in terms of efficiency since LTC/Drafts aren't for everyone. However, the better a unit is within drafts/LTC, the better they are for general use.

I.E. a lot of folks wouldn't think about it much, but fe6 Shanna/fe8 Vanessa are really stupidly good if you funnel experience into and snowball into super strong units. This comes from a drafting perspective. However a 0% growths perspective reveals that, in a vacuum, they're still great due to class and timing.

 

and yeah, FE game balance has never been good.

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Another point is how unit growth is technically random. An "amazing" unit may get rng screwed, while a "terrible" unit may become beastly if the rng gods will it. It all comes down to the individual playthrough.

6 hours ago, Garlyle said:

A few days ago I had a few posts and discord chats where people started calling units bad, and no matter what my opinion was, they just tried to convince me that they are indeed bad. Whatever I say doesn't matter, because personal experience never matter when it comes to characters and how good/bad they are. But you do need experience to make a good judgement on the character, and just how do you label them bad? In Hard Mode? LTC? Draft? Or just in general? What if some people have different playstyle and in different playstyle they are actually better? You can train up your character, or you can go with units with good bases, or you can go with units with high movement + canto, in all scenarios some units are worse then the others, but in other plays they are actually not bad.

For reference I do like to train up units, and the only unit I found absolutely bad is FE6 Sophia. Keep in mind it's been a long time since I played FE7, and FE8 is so easy, you can make any unit good with enough time on your hand. But I'm going to make a few examples of what really bothered me.

Rutger is the only good myrmidon - well, I am not going to argue, Rutger is the best myrmidon in the gba games, Binding Blade is really good for myrmidons, higher crit rates, probably highest evasion thanks to their stats, defensive growths are hard to rely on in Binding Blade anyway. So what about Fir? She's not as good as Rutger, but I think she can become another great myrmidon you can rely on. She starts on low level, but her starting stats are really good for a Lv1, especially on Hard Mode. I run 2 Swordmaster in my games and they make a good job. But it doesn't matter to people, because you only need Rutger, because he kill bosses. On the other hand people say you should use 2 Troubadours(Clarine and Cecilia), but that's not my playstyle - which is judged as why am I hindering myself like that. (because I'm ok with 1 high level staff user, my promoted mages can support in healing later)

Then there's the mages in... again FE6. The only mage you need is Lugh, because Hugh is expensive and Lilina is bad. I'm telling people how useful Lilina is for me, she one-shots some enemies for me, has great supports, and fully heals with a single Heal staff. But she's bad, and they say it not because of her Def, but because of her Speed. Because Lugh doubles and Lilina doesn't, and her bases are bad. Dudes, you need them to level up in both, Lugh has better availability, but while Lilina can get screwed in Spd, Lugh can get screwed in Mag. Whatever, they just try to convince me that Lilina is bad, not worth using her. And then they post screenshots of her performance in Ch10, because that's really the point where she's going to shine.

The list could go on, yet when you reach the late game, the only truly bad units are going to be your benched ones... and Sophia.

 

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8 hours ago, Garlyle said:

A few days ago I had a few posts and discord chats where people started calling units bad, and no matter what my opinion was, they just tried to convince me that they are indeed bad. Whatever I say doesn't matter, because personal experience never matter when it comes to characters and how good/bad they are. But you do need experience to make a good judgement on the character, and just how do you label them bad? In Hard Mode? LTC? Draft? Or just in general? What if some people have different playstyle and in different playstyle they are actually better? You can train up your character, or you can go with units with good bases, or you can go with units with high movement + canto, in all scenarios some units are worse then the others, but in other plays they are actually not bad.

The highest difficulty is used to judge units as that's where you'll start to see their strengths and weaknesses. How much effort they you put into units and your rewards for doing so. The usual playstyle that's considered is no turtling and babying. Also, no grinding.

8 hours ago, Garlyle said:

FE8 is so easy, you can make any unit good with enough time on your hand.

I'm assuming you mean the tower since you mentioned time. Apologies if it's not the case. Anyways, the tower is basically a cheat code

8 hours ago, Garlyle said:

Rutger is the only good myrmidon - well, I am not going to argue, Rutger is the best myrmidon in the gba games, Binding Blade is really good for myrmidons, higher crit rates, probably highest evasion thanks to their stats, defensive growths are hard to rely on in Binding Blade anyway. So what about Fir? She's not as good as Rutger, but I think she can become another great myrmidon you can rely on. She starts on low level, but her starting stats are really good for a Lv1, especially on Hard Mode. I run 2 Swordmaster in my games and they make a good job. But it doesn't matter to people, because you only need Rutger, because he kill bosses. On the other hand people say you should use 2 Troubadours(Clarine and Cecilia), but that's not my playstyle - which is judged as why am I hindering myself like that. (because I'm ok with 1 high level staff user, my promoted mages can support in healing later)

The bar wasn't that high for a footlocked unit with no means of counterattacking to begin with. Is he a good unit? From what I heard he's okay, but his strength growth might become an issue. There's the dilemma of hand axes having bad hit, but I'd take that over being unable to do anything against ranged foes so I'd say Dieck probably deserves it more. Any other units that needs that promotion will fall behind since the next Hero Crest comes late. Fir makes a decent case of having a good chapter to join in. You face axe users in the chapter she joins so if you put her on a forest tile she should be able to easily kill her foes and reach a high level. Don't be shocked if her Str is low

2 troubadors are mentioned because of their range of healing. They're good for that reason. Correct me if I'm wrong, Cecilia can use Physic after like 50ish staff uses so there's that as well

8 hours ago, Garlyle said:

Then there's the mages in... again FE6. The only mage you need is Lugh, because Hugh is expensive and Lilina is bad. I'm telling people how useful Lilina is for me, she one-shots some enemies for me, has great supports, and fully heals with a single Heal staff. But she's bad, and they say it not because of her Def, but because of her Speed. Because Lugh doubles and Lilina doesn't, and her bases are bad. Dudes, you need them to level up in both, Lugh has better availability, but while Lilina can get screwed in Spd, Lugh can get screwed in Mag. Whatever, they just try to convince me that Lilina is bad, not worth using her. And then they post screenshots of her performance in Ch10, because that's really the point where she's going to shine.

You can have bad def and have good spd on a mage, but you can't have both be bad because then you'd risk taking double the amount of damage that could've almost killed you. Yea, you can have a high magic growth, but her base magic is 5 (1 more than Lugh). And she won't double. A pain to use reliably. KS isn't exactly what'd I'd consider as "I'm doing my part". But to be honest, Lugh is very mediocre. The unpromoted mages in FE6 aren't that astounding to begin with. I guess you could say that Niime is everything Lilina wants to be along with incredibly good weapon ranks, especially staves. Who am I kidding, Niime is a staffbot

Edited by silveraura25
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2 hours ago, Joe Cool said:

I think the thing is that the metric of unit comparison is a general loosely defined "efficiency".

when someone like Mekkah or dondon talks about unit performance, it's often in terms of efficiency since LTC/Drafts aren't for everyone. However, the better a unit is within drafts/LTC, the better they are for general use.

I.E. a lot of folks wouldn't think about it much, but fe6 Shanna/fe8 Vanessa are really stupidly good if you funnel experience into and snowball into super strong units. This comes from a drafting perspective. However a 0% growths perspective reveals that, in a vacuum, they're still great due to class and timing.

 

and yeah, FE game balance has never been good.

We can say to Mekkah that calling a unit bad is a pitfall - he did have to take 4 hours to argue with a guy about Amelia, even I didn't watch the whole thing. It was just 2 guys having different viewpoints on a unit in Fire Emblem.

Funny thing is Shanna and Vanessa doesn't start strong either (and Florina), so you do need to baby them too, but because of good starting speed and advantage of flying they get much bonus points. Because you have to be fast... (personally I do give extra points for potential)

1 hour ago, LordlingCale said:

Another point is how unit growth is technically random. An "amazing" unit may get rng screwed, while a "terrible" unit may become beastly if the rng gods will it. It all comes down to the individual playthrough.

Most of the things are random in Fire Emblem, so it's really come down to personal playstyle to make the team choices - even if you have a strong team, you might have some room for the characters, where you feel like you need to take a risk. Maybe the bases are bad, but some reasonable growths can fix everything; don't be surprised if your character becomes better than what their average should be.

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FE6's tiers come up due to the lack of promotion items. You basically get two of each, and Rutger's basically a shoe-in for one of the Hero Crests, Miledy for Elysian Whips, and you'd have to be doing a challenge run to not use the Knight Crests on Cavaliers. This makes it really easy to classify units as "Bad", since not only do a good portion of them have bad growths and bases, most of them won't ever even promote. It's also why nearly every premmie in the game is considered a "Good" unit, because they aren't locked to tier 1 stats.

Sophia, oddly enough, isn't quite hard-locked by her promotion items like most other characters. She's definitely near the bottom of the list for candidates, but there's really nobody who is "guaranteed" a Guidance Ring like there is for almost everything else. Most people would argue Lugh, but he's not crazy good like Rutger or the Cavaliers, and you don't really need to promote healers. Lilina's not that good, Hugh's the game's last effort to give you a usable Mage if you didn't pick Lugh, and Reigh's probably Sophia's biggest competition for the second Ring, but I don't think the end result is that different. Sophia at least has the best growths among the mages that gives her some payoff. She's still bad, though. Compared to somebody like Gwendolyn, who is not only just a bad unit, but she actively makes good units worse if you try to promote her instead of Lance and Alan. There's almost no metric where Gwendolyn can't be considered "bad". Bad class, bad bases, insane competition and you make the game harder by using her.

Similar arguments could be lobbed at units like Ogier, who is made completely redundant by Dieck, and absolutely bottom tier units like Wade, whose abysmal speed all but locks him out of contention for the second Hero Crest. Fir, Gonzales, Geese and Lott can all be "good", but it's really hard to make a case for any of them over giving the second Hero Crest to Dieck.

The lack of promotion items in the game really reinforces a hard tier list. Some units are just bad in FE6.

FE7... pretty much everyone is usable and there are enough promotion items to go around. Some units are definitely better and worse than others, but you can beat the game with almost any composition. Even Nino's not crazy difficult to get to a level where you can use her without babying.

Ewan might be the single worst unit in all of the GBA games, but the game has risk-free grinding, so it really doesn't matter.

Edited by Slumber
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@silveraura25 Hmm, those are some harsh conditions for FE6, basicly cut 3/4 of the roster I'd say. Forget to say tower, that's basically a ticket to win the game for anyone. 

Ok, I just went back to check my Lilina units from my previous games. 18 was the lowest I had on my finished Lilina, which is still ok honestly. Also if Lilina doesn't cap Mag, something must went horribly wrong. Niime is great, just give her an Angelic Robe (also that joining time).

14 minutes ago, Slumber said:

FE6's tiers come up due to the lack of promotion items. You basically get two of each, and Rutger's basically a shoe-in for one of the Hero Crests, Miledy for Elysian Whips, and you'd have to be doing a challenge run to not use the Knight Crests on Cavaliers. This makes it really easy to classify units as "Bad", since not only do a good portion of them have bad growths and bases, most of them won't ever even promote. It's also why nearly every premmie in the game is considered a "Good" unit, because they aren't locked to tier 1 stats.

Sophia, oddly enough, isn't quite hard-locked by her promotion items like most other characters. She's definitely near the bottom of the list for candidates, but there's really nobody who is "guaranteed" a Guidance Ring like there is for almost everything else. Most people would argue Lugh, but he's not crazy good, and you don't really need to promote healers. Lilina's not that good, and Reigh's probably Sophia's biggest competition for the second Ring, but I don't think the end result is that different. Sophia at least has the best growths among the mages that gives her some payoff. She's still bad, though. Compared to somebody like Gwendolyn, who is not only just a bad unit, but she actively makes good units worse if you try to promote her instead of Lance and Alan. There's almost no metric where Gwendolyn can't be considered "bad". Bad class, bad bases, insane competition and you make the game harder by using her.

Pre-promote growth rates are basicly nothing, so I look at them as bases only. Klein and Igrene is a different story, I think Klein does come with some growths, but Igrene is already built. I know cavs are fan favourite, but since I prefer variety, I'm not abusing them - let's just say they have a competition between them with the 7 of them.

Sophia and Wendy are famous for being bad, and the difficulty to level them up comes with the 3 Skl they have. Wendy's growths are spread across and has good promotional gains, but her time of joining is also terrible for her. Sophia? Her growth specializes in a few stats, but needs more to be a true Est. Thanks for the Guiding Ring from your premiere chapter, now go and sit on that bench until the end of the game. If I want to limit myself with the guiding ring, it's one mage and one healer.

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44 minutes ago, Garlyle said:

@silveraura25 Hmm, those are some harsh conditions for FE6, basicly cut 3/4 of the roster I'd say. Forget to say tower, that's basically a ticket to win the game for anyone. 

Ok, I just went back to check my Lilina units from my previous games. 18 was the lowest I had on my finished Lilina, which is still ok honestly. Also if Lilina doesn't cap Mag, something must went horribly wrong. Niime is great, just give her an Angelic Robe (also that joining time).

Pre-promote growth rates are basicly nothing, so I look at them as bases only. Klein and Igrene is a different story, I think Klein does come with some growths, but Igrene is already built. I know cavs are fan favourite, but since I prefer variety, I'm not abusing them - let's just say they have a competition between them with the 7 of them.

Sophia and Wendy are famous for being bad, and the difficulty to level them up comes with the 3 Skl they have. Wendy's growths are spread across and has good promotional gains, but her time of joining is also terrible for her. Sophia? Her growth specializes in a few stats, but needs more to be a true Est. Thanks for the Guiding Ring from your premiere chapter, now go and sit on that bench until the end of the game. If I want to limit myself with the guiding ring, it's one mage and one healer.

thing is that when units are being compared within their game, you take everything into account.

For example, Alan and Lance share a spot on HM tier lists since it's recommended to funnel experience into one of them more and leave the other one benched for Noah if he doesn't perform well enough. I.E. focusing mostly on one cav while having the other one trail along in levels. Noah's got solid bases and weapon ranks, so using him over one of Alan/Lance at an equal level is a fine enough choice if the more neglected cavalier was not performing well.

in the case of Rutger, he's pretty much essential to fe6 HM due to bullshit bossfights with high throne buffs. The second hero crest generally has Dieck as the biggest contender. However if he's statscrewed, which is possible, the other hero crest users barring Ward are generally fine enough. Gonzo gets HM buffs as does Fir. Ogier is basically just a shitty version of Raven, and Lott's an average dude with average stats that just has a lot of availability. If he's blessed then he's great because FE6 warrior promo gains are stupid good. 

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13 hours ago, Joe Cool said:

thing is that when units are being compared within their game, you take everything into account.

For example, Alan and Lance share a spot on HM tier lists since it's recommended to funnel experience into one of them more and leave the other one benched for Noah if he doesn't perform well enough. I.E. focusing mostly on one cav while having the other one trail along in levels. Noah's got solid bases and weapon ranks, so using him over one of Alan/Lance at an equal level is a fine enough choice if the more neglected cavalier was not performing well.

in the case of Rutger, he's pretty much essential to fe6 HM due to bullshit bossfights with high throne buffs. The second hero crest generally has Dieck as the biggest contender. However if he's statscrewed, which is possible, the other hero crest users barring Ward are generally fine enough. Gonzo gets HM buffs as does Fir. Ogier is basically just a shitty version of Raven, and Lott's an average dude with average stats that just has a lot of availability. If he's blessed then he's great because FE6 warrior promo gains are stupid good. 

FE6 first half heavily favours the armored or axe-wielding bosses, no wonder Armorslayer and Rutger/Dieck is an early promote. Henning is an obvious exception in this, because he's mainly sword user and doubles everyone(obvious prepromotes or raged rescue drops are the best tactics against him so far). Anyway, when it comes to early game, I'm actually training most of my units, you never know who is going to be blessed early game. Then from Ch7-9 the bench kicks in.

Interesting that the biggest disagreements on how good or bad a unit is comes with gba titles. I see more people agree on units in SNES titles(and community is very helpful, if FEH count).

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1 hour ago, Garlyle said:

FE6 first half heavily favours the armored or axe-wielding bosses, no wonder Armorslayer and Rutger/Dieck is an early promote. Henning is an obvious exception in this, because he's mainly sword user and doubles everyone(obvious prepromotes or raged rescue drops are the best tactics against him so far). Anyway, when it comes to early game, I'm actually training most of my units, you never know who is going to be blessed early game. Then from Ch7-9 the bench kicks in.

Interesting that the biggest disagreements on how good or bad a unit is comes with gba titles. I see more people agree on units in SNES titles(and community is very helpful, if FEH count).

thing is fe6 has a lot of free deployment early on so it's pretty easy.

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The whole argument of "Fir/Lilina/Ogier is worse then Rutger/Lugh/Dieck so Don't use them." Is stupid, it's best to rate units based on how they preform individually, since obviously you would rather an extra Myrmidon/Mage/Mercenary over an armor knight or fighter.

Personally, if Dieck didn't turn out well, i usually promote Fir with the chapter 11 Hero Crest since she's the best of all those units, she may be worse then Rutger, but being a bootleg verison of one of the best units in the game still makes you good. Lilina and Ogier on the other hand have a lot of flaws by themselves. Both of them have horrible bases, and although it is easy to level them in ch 8x (just run an unarmed Jerrot or Marcus up to the enemies and spend 100 turns waiting for them to break their weapons, then spend another 100 killing every enemy with either of them), the payoff for all that wasted time just isn't all that good, and you're honestly better off selling that guiding ring or hero crest then going through the all that wasted time to get a decent unit that will probably be benched anyway because you get units like Percival who has way better combat then Ogier, and Cecelia, Niime and Yodel who shit on Lilinas E staves and even have decent chip to boot. honestly i would rather baby up roy since then he could at least do somethings.

Edited by Geenoble
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@Geenoble Lilina cannot be ranked for her E staves, and I think E staves is enough of her. She's there to hit hard and heal big with the simplest Heal staff, her availability will save her when you look at the other mages (I do like Niime). Ogier is not bad, but having an oddball position with the competition he gets. I did train him up once, but unfortunately I cannot remember if he excels in anything compared to his competition(I should try using him again).

Also who sells Guiding Ring? It's so rare you always have it for someone to promote. Hero Crest is also very flexible.

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12 minutes ago, Garlyle said:

@Geenoble Lilina cannot be ranked for her E staves, and I think E staves is enough of her. She's there to hit hard and heal big with the simplest Heal staff, her availability will save her when you look at the other mages (I do like Niime). Ogier is not bad, but having an oddball position with the competition he gets. I did train him up once, but unfortunately I cannot remember if he excels in anything compared to his competition(I should try using him again).

Also who sells Guiding Ring? It's so rare you always have it for someone to promote. Hero Crest is also very flexible.

I probably shouldn't have talked about her staff rank since its a problem everyone but saul has, but the other reasons i listed still make her a bad unit in my opinion. Mind you i use her every time i play fe6 because she's fun to use, but fun doesn't = good.

Ogier can turn out alright, but you put in so much effort to get a hero that can do a bit of damage and double some enemies.

By selling the items, i meant that if the only hero crest/guiding ring users you're using are Ogier and Lilina, then the 5000 gold could be considered more useful (my lilina bias says otherwise but facts first.) then promoting them. 

Edited by Geenoble
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46 minutes ago, Geenoble said:

I probably shouldn't have talked about her staff rank since its a problem everyone but saul has, but the other reasons i listed still make her a bad unit in my opinion. Mind you i use her every time i play fe6 because she's fun to use, but fun doesn't = good.

I do agree that her Def is a downside and she needs training, but for me the training was never painful, and always paid off. Doesn't seem like she can get too much screwed in speed to be honest, but I'll give it a few extra tries. Still, too much value to put on the bench.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I generally had better luck with Lilina as Lugh generally lacked Firepower, though I never tried Hugh, so I have no idea how she stacks up against him.

As for Fir, I've used her twice as Rutger bit the dust on my two both runs on Chapter 7's arena, but even if Rutger was alive, I would still have used Fir. I say that the the English-speaking fandom are more stringent in terms of characters making the cut, which isn't the most helpful to a newcomer to a particular FE entry. Some of the Japanese guides I've read in the past encouraged arena-grinding, and rate their units accordingly - and I think they also rate their units based on Normal Mode, and how difficult is it to baby units (and whether the babying is worth it or otherwise). And I would rather read that if I had a permanent mental blank and had to start FE6 all over again. In a guide from Mainichi Communications, the editorial team both encouraged using Rutger and Fir, Sue and Shin and so on. And I agree - why not use both when their classes have some of the biggest advantages in the game - particularly avoid tanking, and crit boosts for the Swordies.

And I also say don't be ashamed to arena grind if you need to. I've done that in Binding Blade with the above characters, and grinded both money and EXP (and I've done similar things on Shadow Dragon and Sacred Stones). I've also used that money to get extra promotion items at the Secret Shop in Chapter 16. (The only arena you shouldn't grind in would be Chapter 20 on the Ilia Route, as you'll miss the Gaiden Chapter for exceeding turn counts there.)

Edited by henrymidfields
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  • 5 months later...

When people call units "bad" (at least intelligent people) they generally aren't saying "this unit is never worth using" but "the effort->payoff ratio of this unit is much worse than that of other units". Obviously in a single player game with shareable xp any unit can be "good" if you put the time in, even Sophia, hell Oswin and Louise carried my first every FE7 ENM run. But it becomes glaringly obvious across multiple playthroughs that some units just perform better with less investment.

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, I get your point about phrasing but I feel like it's not that big a deal. New players are just going to use the units they want anyway, and novice players who are easily influenced are more likely to be led astray by "Marcus steals xp" nonsense than never discover a mid-tier gem because somebody on a forum said they were "bad".

 

EDIT: Didn't realize I necro'd, my b

Edited by Trif
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