Fire Emblem Three Houses Unit Tier Lists

[Gwyn]

Curious no one looking at Ferdinand. He has decent growths. But most importantly he gets a personal ability that's a free 15% hit and avoidance at full hp(and there are so many tools to keep him at fool hp from skills, to weapons that regen life, he comes with a minor crest of cichol too which you can acquire a easy paralogue silver relic for) that also means he is one of the few units having a combat relevant talent giving him an edge once you build them up.

If you prepare some skills for him to purchase for a ng+ run dude should be able to hit incredibly high avoidance. On paper he seems like he could be a real top tier unit once having someone that can tank matters.

[Technoweirdo]

20 hours ago, Vyniea said:

I see so many people talking about Marianne as a healer, she's really a lot more than that. Her offensive spell list is extremely good and crit oriented, Fimbulvetr and Aura crit very consistently and do ridiculous damage, Blutgang and Beast Fang are also very strong offensive options, or if you decide to go for her lance budding talent you'll get a very strong lance art that scales with her amazing Res.

 

Marianne is built to be a dark/holy knight (both are just as good, depends which you prefer) because of her Riding strength and her budding talent in lances. Her healing spells are just cherry on top of the cake. Yeah she can be on the slow side but it's not that big of a deal when she one shots a lot of things easily, and her slow speed can be somewhat remedied by getting a Paladin certification (super easy with her Riding strength) which will kick her to 17 strength and boost her AS by 1 and even possibly 2. She was one of the best units in my GD playthrough. Lysithea has a lot more raw power, but the mobility that you get from Holy/Dark Knight and her reliable crits made Marianne just as useful for me. Lysithea can also get a horse but considering her spell list, and warp especially, Gremory is better for her.

Huh, hadn't thought of making Marianne train in Reason for a lighter spell until now. lol

Anyways, as a member of Camp "Crits are only reliable for the enemy", it's something I look at as a bonus more than anything,
Where a random crit can free up an extra action for another unit.
Like, you can stack it reasonably high as Marianne,
But I can stack even higher with Sniper Ignatz and still not feel crits are reliable. >_>

Prefer to stack Mag or Res for Soulblade (pretty sure that's the one that scales with Res, not Frozen Lance).
Maybe Res for my situation. Feel Flayn would appreciate extra Mag for extra Rescue / Fortify range while Marianne could do with extra Res.

[jloweis]

20 hours ago, Vyniea said:

I see so many people talking about Marianne as a healer, she's really a lot more than that. Her offensive spell list is extremely good and crit oriented, Fimbulvetr and Aura crit very consistently and do ridiculous damage, Blutgang and Beast Fang are also very strong offensive options, or if you decide to go for her lance budding talent you'll get a very strong lance art that scales with her amazing Res.

 

Marianne is built to be a dark/holy knight (both are just as good, depends which you prefer) because of her Riding strength and her budding talent in lances. Her healing spells are just cherry on top of the cake. Yeah she can be on the slow side but it's not that big of a deal when she one shots a lot of things easily, and her slow speed can be somewhat remedied by getting a Paladin certification (super easy with her Riding strength) which will kick her to 17 strength and boost her AS by 1 and even possibly 2. She was one of the best units in my GD playthrough. Lysithea has a lot more raw power, but the mobility that you get from Holy/Dark Knight and her reliable crits made Marianne just as useful for me. Lysithea can also get a horse but considering her spell list, and warp especially, Gremory is better for her.

Marianne is quite good imo; in my playthrough GD route, I made Marianne a dancer and she really carried. Her decent speed and good mag made her a good magic/Levin sword user whilst also being able to refresh and heal units. Due to her somewhat decent movement as well she can usually catch up to units after she uses Stride, and even if she can't she still has Physic and Silence so she can still be useful from a distance. Her Hero Relic also allows her to do really good damage most units as well. She also has really good avoid if you use Sword Avoid, so she can be decent on the frontline as well, especially against mages.

[Shadow Mir]

16 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Compared to any other bad units in fe history? A lot.

Like Cyril may be one of the worst units, but is far, far easier to use compared to Amelia or Donnel. This game has so many way of improving characters whitout investing anything of note that only RNG screwage or neglecting can make someone bad. And promo gains fix bad rng to an exstent.

Raphael has a trash personal, no crest and very mhe growths. I am not saying that he is amazing. I am saying that bad units are thing like Sophia that require you to go out of your way just to use, not someone that is just outclassed.

Funny you say that, because as far as I'm concerned, Raphael requires me to actively go out of my way just to use. Not to the extent of Sophia, of course, but still! Either he's being doubled by damn near everything because axes are so heavy and he's so slow, or he's struggling to kill because gauntlets have shit for might. Last I checked, both of those are Really. Bad. Things.

3 hours ago, Gwyn said:

Curious no one looking at Ferdinand. He has decent growths. But most importantly he gets a personal ability that's a free 15% hit and avoidance at full hp(and there are so many tools to keep him at fool hp from skills, to weapons that regen life, he comes with a minor crest of cichol too which you can acquire a easy paralogue silver relic for) that also means he is one of the few units having a combat relevant talent giving him an edge once you build them up.

If you prepare some skills for him to purchase for a ng+ run dude should be able to hit incredibly high avoidance. On paper he seems like he could be a real top tier unit once having someone that can tank matters.

I dunno, but honestly, Ferdinand's personal is one I consider terrible, because only working at full HP is a negative, no matter which way you slice it.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Gwyn]

5 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Funny you say that, because as far as I'm concerned, Raphael requires me to actively go out of my way just to use. Not to the extent of Sophia, of course, but still! Either he's being doubled by damn near everything because axes are so heavy and he's so slow, or he's struggling to kill because gauntlets have shit for might. Last I checked, both of those are Really. Bad. Things.

I dunno, but honestly, Ferdinand's personal is one I consider terrible, because only working at full HP is a negative, no matter which way you slice it.

I don't see that given the myriad ways of how you can keep hp full(I already cited them). Also with 15% base avoidance and the myriad ways of gaining extra avoidance(and avoidance is additive?) I wouldn't be surprised 100%  avoidance or close to it ferdinand is possible. And if your avoidance is that high your hp is going to be full anyway.

Depending on how the higher difficulties are balanced it's going to be even more of a non factor if dmg outscales normal mitigation so you're units can only die from a hit or dodge it.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Gwyn

[Shadow Mir]

Just now, Gwyn said:

I don't see that given the myriad ways of how you can keep hp full(I already cited them). Also with 15% base avoidance and the myriad ways of gaining extra avoidance(and avoidance is additive?) I wouldn't be surprised 100%  avoidance or close to it ferdinand is possible. And if your avoidance is that high your hp is going to be full anyway.

AKA, overcompensating. Why in the seven hells should I give that attention to Ferdinand when just about anyone else can be better with the special treatment you're willing to give him???

[Gwyn]

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

AKA, overcompensating. Why in the seven hells should I give that attention to Ferdinand when just about anyone else can be better with the special treatment you're willing to give him???

How is equipping him with an accessory/relic overcompensating lol. If you're speaking about slotting in more avoidance abilities that's more on my guess on what lunatic/infernal balance might be like where normal mitigation might become worthless so better have a good dodge tank and I can see ferdinand as the best in that role.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Gwyn

[Garlyle]

2 minutes ago, jloweis said:

Marianne is quite good imo; in my playthrough GD route, I made Marianne a dancer and she really carried. Her decent speed and good mag made her a good magic/Levin sword user whilst also being able to refresh and heal units. Due to her somewhat decent movement as well she can usually catch up to units after she uses Stride, and even if she can't she still has Physic and Silence so she can still be useful from a distance. Her Hero Relic also allows her to do really good damage most units as well. She also has really good avoid if you use Sword Avoid, so she can be decent on the frontline as well, especially against mages.

I am going to test Marianne with swords in this run, as she's my dancer as well. Magic Swords with Sword Dance sounds like a powerful combination. The effective damage from Beast Fang is also something I consider to test. I am giving more appretiation to magic weapons lately, as Annette wreck things with Lightning Axe + Training Axe combination alone (and she can get something much more powerful).

3 hours ago, Gwyn said:

Curious no one looking at Ferdinand. He has decent growths. But most importantly he gets a personal ability that's a free 15% hit and avoidance at full hp(and there are so many tools to keep him at fool hp from skills, to weapons that regen life, he comes with a minor crest of cichol too which you can acquire a easy paralogue silver relic for) that also means he is one of the few units having a combat relevant talent giving him an edge once you build them up.

If you prepare some skills for him to purchase for a ng+ run dude should be able to hit incredibly high avoidance. On paper he seems like he could be a real top tier unit once having someone that can tank matters.

This got me curious. If I can recruit Ferdinand, I'll try to turn him into a dodgy flier. With Alert Stance+, Avoid +10, Evasion Ring, Batallion and his personal skill he might be the guy who can get the highest avoid rating, plus he has good base speed and growth. Further Evasion might be gained from Prowess, Breaker skill and supports too. I think there's a Crest Weapon he could use to recover some Hp too. It's just people currently find Sylvain to be better because he's easy to recruit.

[Shadow Mir]

Just now, Gwyn said:

How is equipping him with an accessory/relic overcompensating lol. If you're speaking about slotting in more avoidance abilities that's more on my guess on what lunatic balance might be like where normal mitigation might become worthless so better have a good dodge tank and I can see ferdinand as the best in that role.

Because you're actively going out of your way to ensure he is topped off. Duh! Again, why the hell should I go out of my way to do that when others are more important overall???

[Gwyn]

7 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Because you're actively going out of your way to ensure he is topped off. Duh! Again, why the hell should I go out of my way to do that when others are more important overall???

If that qualifies as making sure he is topped off any unit I use is getting topped off? In lunatic I always try to optimize units. Like what kind of qualifier is that? Are you like saying only if your unit isn't garbage with iron weapons and no accessory then it's worth considering as a top tier? That just seems weird. Equipping your best units with your best stuff that they can utilize the best seems like just part of the game. *shrug*

I looked at ferdinand in a possible lunatic setting where you optimized him for it, hope that was clear. And given that he could be a 100% or close to 100% avoidance unit that's going to be always something interesting to consider having in your army repertoire but as I said before it all hinges on certain expectations I have of what the higher difficulties turn out to be.

If they fuck the balancing up the meme meta of just having mass wyvern classes might come to pass and in that case it's not really going to matter.

----------------

Also the main reason why I brought Ferdinand up when I look at all the units proposed so far people are just clearly looking at the game with the current difficulties where glass cannons have 0 draw backs because even glass cannons are survivable as heck, it doesn't matter that they might have low movement or whatever. Within the current difficulties tiers don't even really matter in my opinion nothing really pushes them.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Gwyn

[Gwyn]

23 minutes ago, Garlyle said:

I am going to test Marianne with swords in this run, as she's my dancer as well. Magic Swords with Sword Dance sounds like a powerful combination. The effective damage from Beast Fang is also something I consider to test. I am giving more appretiation to magic weapons lately, as Annette wreck things with Lightning Axe + Training Axe combination alone (and she can get something much more powerful).

This got me curious. If I can recruit Ferdinand, I'll try to turn him into a dodgy flier. With Alert Stance+, Avoid +10, Evasion Ring, Batallion and his personal skill he might be the guy who can get the highest avoid rating, plus he has good base speed and growth. Further Evasion might be gained from Prowess, Breaker skill and supports too. I think there's a Crest Weapon he could use to recover some Hp too. It's just people currently find Sylvain to be better because he's easy to recruit.

Report back how it goes. 🙂

[Shadow Mir]

40 minutes ago, Gwyn said:

If that qualifies as making sure he is topped off any unit I use is getting topped off? In lunatic I always try to optimize units. Like what kind of qualifier is that? Are you like saying only if your unit isn't garbage with iron weapons and no accessory then it's worth considering as a top tier? That just seems weird. Equipping your best units with your best stuff that they can utilize the best seems like just part of the game. *shrug*

I looked at ferdinand in a possible lunatic setting where you optimized him for it, hope that was clear. And given that he could be a 100% or close to 100% avoidance unit that's going to be always something interesting to consider having in your army repertoire but as I said before it all hinges on certain expectations I have of what the higher difficulties turn out to be.

If they fuck the balancing up the meme meta of just having mass wyvern classes might come to pass and in that case it's not really going to matter.

----------------

Also the main reason why I brought Ferdinand up when I look at all the units proposed so far people are just clearly looking at the game with the current difficulties where glass cannons have 0 draw backs because even glass cannons are survivable as heck, it doesn't matter that they might have low movement or whatever. Within the current difficulties tiers don't even really matter in my opinion nothing really pushes them.

Spoken like someone who's ignoring the fact that this game isn't THAT friendly to dodgetanks. *shrug* I don't really care about making sure that my units are ALWAYS topped off before fighting anything - if they have enough HP to not die to whatever attacks they're going to take, that's good enough for me. Also, Ferdinand's personal is a rehash of Subaki's personal, Perfectionist, and last I checked, Perfectionist is far from an amazing personal, so there's no way in hell I'm going to do a complete 180 and start singing the praises of Ferdinand's personal.

[Silly]

Dodgetanking isn't really reliable in this game outside of some corner cases, imo. Sometimes the enemy misses you and that's nice, but are you going to take the 40% chance that they hit you, remove your +15 avoid bonus, and then the rest of the enemies attack you and kill you? Probably not. You're likely going to be putting your unit in a place where they can safely take on only enough enemies that they won't die.

That being said, Ferdinand is a fairly good unit. His stat spread is respectable and skill proficiencies that make it fairly simple to access whatever physical class he wants means that he should turn out well no matter what you do with him (unless he gets stat screwed or something). He just isn't top tier in my book, since the better units just have even more strengths than he does.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Silly

[Technoweirdo]

7 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Spoken like someone who's ignoring the fact that this game isn't THAT friendly to dodgetanks. *shrug* I don't really care about making sure that my units are ALWAYS topped off before fighting anything - if they have enough HP to not die to whatever attacks they're going to take, that's good enough for me. Also, Ferdinand's personal is a rehash of Subaki's personal, Perfectionist, and last I checked, Perfectionist is far from an amazing personal, so there's no way in hell I'm going to do a complete 180 and start singing the praises of Ferdinand's personal.

Sword Proficiency 5: +20 Avo
Alert Stance+: +30 Avo
Brigid Hunters or other high-Avo Battalions: +20 Avo
A-support Adjutant: +10 Avo
Evasion Ring: +10 Avo

That's 90 Avo. All before Spd, terrain, additional support, and Ferdinand's Confidence.
Then you factor enemies switching to less-accurate weapons and spells, their own proficiency never getting as high,
-Breakers if you really want, remembering this isn't Fates where enemies get a free +10 Hit if they're near one of their own,
Remembering enemy lancers can't negate proficiency because there's no weapon triangle...

Dodge-tanking is a viable alternative in this game. Just not one accessible in the early game.
Late-game, getting hit by mages, artillery, magic artillery, pegasi? Useful. Not everyone has Def and Res through the roof.

[Shadow Mir]

24 minutes ago, Technoweirdo said:

Sword Proficiency 5: +20 Avo
Alert Stance+: +30 Avo
Brigid Hunters or other high-Avo Battalions: +20 Avo
A-support Adjutant: +10 Avo
Evasion Ring: +10 Avo

That's 90 Avo. All before Spd, terrain, additional support, and Ferdinand's Confidence.
Then you factor enemies switching to less-accurate weapons and spells, their own proficiency never getting as high,
-Breakers if you really want, remembering this isn't Fates where enemies get a free +10 Hit if they're near one of their own,
Remembering enemy lancers can't negate proficiency because there's no weapon triangle...

Dodge-tanking is a viable alternative in this game. Just not one accessible in the early game.
Late-game, getting hit by mages, artillery, magic artillery, pegasi? Useful. Not everyone has Def and Res through the roof.

Aside from the fact that some of those aren't going to be a thing for a while (Sword Prowess Lv 5, for example), I agree with this:

31 minutes ago, Silly said:

Dodgetanking isn't really reliable in this game outside of some corner cases, imo. Sometimes the enemy misses you and that's nice, but are you going to take the 40% chance that they hit you, remove your +15 avoid bonus, and then the rest of the enemies attack you and kill you? Probably not. You're likely going to be putting your unit in a place where they can safely take on only enough enemies that they won't die.

That being said, Ferdinand is a fairly good unit. His stat spread is respectable and skill proficiencies that make it fairly simple to access whatever physical class he wants means that he should turn out well no matter what you do with him (unless he gets stat screwed or something). He just isn't top tier in my book, since the better units just have even more strengths than he does.

 

[Silly]

24 minutes ago, Technoweirdo said:

 Sword Proficiency 5: +20 Avo
Alert Stance+: +30 Avo
 Brigid Hunters or other high-Avo Battalions: +20 Avo
 A-support Adjutant: +10 Avo
 Evasion Ring: +10 Avo

 That's 90 Avo. All before Spd, terrain, additional support, and Ferdinand's Confidence.
Then you factor enemies switching to less-accurate weapons and spells, their own proficiency never getting as high,
-Breakers if you really want, remembering this isn't Fates where enemies get a free +10 Hit if they're near one of their own,
Remembering enemy lancers can't negate proficiency because there's no weapon triangle...

 Dodge-tanking is a viable alternative in this game. Just not one accessible in the early game.
Late-game, getting hit by mages, artillery, magic artillery, pegasi? Useful. Not everyone has Def and Res through the roof.

So there are a few issues with this.

1. Swords are one of the worse endgame weapon types. They have low might and the worst endgame classes (either you're stuck with a footlock unit or you miss out on +5 damage from Swordfaire when they're already the weakest weapon type). Ferdinand most of the time wants to be using Axes. Especially because you also have Alert Stance in your build, which really, really doesn't synergize with Sword Proficiency 5, as that requires you to spec into A+ swords and A+ flying when that combination leads into no class.

2. Alert Stance is pretty good, but will not be active in many situations because you have to actually do things on player phase.

3. A support Adjutant comes at the opportunity cost of deploying an adjutant on a different unit, and the Evasion Ring comes at the opportunity cost of using a different equipment (granted, the opportunity cost of another equipment is a relatively minor one).

Overall, while it does have its moments where it is useful, dodgetanking is too niche to be something you can rely on.

[Technoweirdo]

If you want me to prove a point...

In the following picture is Claude. He's using a a bow instead of a sword for less Avo.
Immortals have less Avo than Brigid Hunters.
He's not Ferdinand like Gwyn was doing some theorycrafting around, so no Confidence bonus.
The only person supporting him is his Adjutant. He's otherwise alone.

I let an archer shoot at him with a Silver Bow.

Spoiler

The most threatening there was was a Swordmaster with a 2% hit chance. Failnaught's weight was working against him there.

[Silly]

That picture is missing a lot of context, such as what level you/enemies are at, whether you waited instead of taking a player phase action, etc.

[Technoweirdo]

Just now, Silly said:

That picture is missing a lot of context, such as what level you/enemies are at, whether you waited instead of taking a player phase action, etc.

Considering enemies scale as you progress through the game and you can't force low-level encounters, questioning if there's a 20-level difference comes off as way too skeptical.

That said...

Spoiler

Turns out they out-leveled Claude! :V

Additional notes, disclosure, stuff you didn't ask for, and more!:
+1 Spd from food.
Yes, 117 - 75 is 42 Hit. Support bonuses for both allies and enemies and range penalties only show up in the forecast / actual fight.
I'd wait to show 105, but Claude was the only one fielded, making getting a shot of his stats post-wait hard.
Snipers like to abuse the extra range, from what I've seen.
This is Hard.
The following picture is if I attacked:

Spoiler

That's a dozen guys I can wait in front of for +30 Avo. Looks worth it to me. I can Pulse if one of them somehow actually hits me.

[Gwyn]

I don't know man Technoweirdo. Something about this still feels unreliable. 😂

----

Jokes aside I've clearly laid out my framework of why I think the way I do. It just seems incredibly odd to be met with this much rejection that doesn't even consider some assumptions I laid out on what I think lunatic might be like.

It's like yo I already have given room to the possibility to be wrong and dodge being irrelevant depending on what lunatic balance looks like but then being met with some incredibly self assured stances that don't seem to consider lunatic to be even a factor seems really odd and not worth my time to argue about since we can just wait for lunatic and see how this idea turns out. Really the only thing I'm sure about is that a lot of the popular picks in this thread will be devalued in some way because you won't be able to coast on just offensive power alone which most people in here currently overvalue in my opinion.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Gwyn

[Silly]

That's fair. I will note that with those numbers Silver Sword enemies will probably have ~40-50 hit on you if you take a player phase action, given that they have higher base hit, use more accurate weapons, and don't take any hit penalties from range. Also, from what I can tell, archers will attack from 3 range if you can't counter at 3 range but can counterattack at 2, but if the difference between 2 and 3 range doesn't matter then they will usually attack at 2 range for the hit bonus.

But with the right build it does seem reasonable to rely on misses from generics (as long as their weapon isn't too accurate). Though it does necessitate that you use an adjutant and your equipment slot, so it's not something that every unit can do (as you only have so many evasion rings and adjutant slots).

[Vyniea]

If you're willing to lose a dancer you can easily get +20 Avo on a sword user with Sword Avo.  Stack that with Alert + and you can get an easy +50 Avo, +60 if you're a flying class which gets a base +10. Add the +20 from rank and you're sitting at 80, 100 with battalions and 10 more with the ring. That's 100 as a non flying and 110 as a flying class.

 

I'm trying for that on Petra, I'm going to make her a sword master with the dancer skill and see how high I can get her avo.

[Vorena]

15 minutes ago, Vyniea said:

If you're willing to lose a dancer you can easily get +20 Avo on a sword user with Sword Avo.  Stack that with Alert + and you can get an easy +50 Avo, +60 if you're a flying class which gets a base +10. Add the +20 from rank and you're sitting at 80, 100 with battalions and 10 more with the ring. That's 100 as a non flying and 110 as a flying class.

  

 I'm trying for that on Petra, I'm going to make her a sword master with the dancer skill and see how high I can get her avo.

The only thing bad about this is that in order to get that high you are stacking a fair amount of resources into a unit to achieve that. Evasion Ring, Battalion, and Dancer. Of these things honestly I feel there will be little competition for things like an evasion ring compared to some other stuff like Speed Ring, March Ring, and any perm stat items. Battalions are fairly numerous and an evasion focused one is likely uncontested as well usually. The only bad thing is dancer as that's a pretty valuable resource.

[virtu333]

Dodge tanking in HM in this game is pretty viable - most generic enemies top out at 115 (checking Claude's map).

Usually endgame characters have 30-40 natural avoid from their speed.

+10 avoid (Wyvern Lord)

+10 evasion ring

+15 battalion

+10 prowess

and you're at 75ish. Add in alert stance+ and some supports, and enemy hit rates are basically 0-10.

[Shiki]

Just going to drop my 2cents on a preliminary tier list since I completed GD and feel confident in evaluating the whole roster now. Though I do think Lunatic difficulty is going to be a much better scale to rate them on since Hard is pretty easy and that makes it not sufficient as a measurement to properly differentiate the good from the bad.

Spoiler

 

In general if you have a positive affinity for any of the mounted classes you are already in a good spot. Canto + high Mov is very good as always and thanks to dismounting Fliers can even abuse terrain bonuses, making them busted af. The faster the unit can fulfill the requirements for Advanced/Master classes the better they are to excel in that role. That means anyone who has multiple affinities for Lance, Axe and Flying are automically good units to invest in and will bring a greater payoff than other units. Due to the strange progression in the class system all 3 categories are somewhat necessary if you want to progress smoothly from one Flying class to another.

Petra, Ingrid and Hilda are pretty obvious choices and also the best candidates because of the female-exclusive Pegasus Knight class. It's earliest flying class you can access and its Mastery ability in Darting Blow is especially good to improve their combat, allowing them to use heavier weapons to reach more ORKOs.
Btw. Seteth is like FE10 Haar. The guy wrecks the game the moment he joins and he can only get better once he promotes to a Wyvern Lord. BE worst route confirmed.
There are other male candidates that make for good Wyvern Riders but keep in mind that it is an Advanced class, meaning they can't enjoy the boons of flying early on. That being said these guys have a very good alternative which brings me to the next best movement type; Cavalry.

Compared to the Flying classes the requirements here are less steep. You only need to focus on Lance and Riding which opens up space to focus more on Authority for those juicy bonus stats from Battalions later in the game.
That being said having an additional affinity for Bows is going to be pretty helpful because Bow Knight enjoy some absurd range in this game and unlike previous games (sans Echoes I guess) Bows are actually good weapons which makes them worth investing in.

Bernadetta and Leonie have the perfect requirements for the Bow Knight class, both relatively solid units throughout the game (Bernadetta compensating her rather weak stats with her good talent). Ashe has some claim on it, too, since he specializes in Lances and Bows but you will need to heavily invest in Riding for him for him to reliably pass the exam. Actually he is pretty much discount Bernie which is ... sad.
Ferdinand, Sylvain and Lorenz make for solid Cavaliers though Lorenz is definetly the worst of the 3. He has a rather bad start and his growths are weirdly distributed. It's not like he learns some unique spells either to make him a viable hybrid unit either so he is pretty gimped compared to the other two.

About the mages, because of their low Mov and very late access to their mounted options having a magic-exclusive benefit like Warp or Healing helps a unit a lot more than good combat performance.
That being said I would agree with the majority that Lysithea is the best mage in the game. Dark Magic is pretty good with its various debuffs but what imo breaks her is her B rank Warp. Linhardt and Manuela get it at A which is significantly later and requires much heavier focus on Faith. Lysithea laughs at that and can focus on something else to improve herself like Riding (mobility as Dark Knight) or Authority (stats). Gremory shouldn't even be a problem for her and allows her for double warp tactics in the lategame.
Next best is probably Linhardt. He comes close to a traditional FE healer, having access to Warp and good assortment of healing spells like Physics and Restore.

 

tldr; I would sort them like this, assuming:

• Hard, Classic
• efficient run (low turncounts)
• no grinding (no auxilary battles, minus paralogues and sidequests)

Spoiler

Lords:

• Byleth (F)
• Byleth (M)
• Dimitri
• Claude
• Edelgard

Top:

• Ingrid
• Petra
• Hilda
• Seteth
• Lysithea
• Linhardt

High:

• Sylvain
• Ferdinand
• Leonie
• Bernadetta
• Shamir
• Felix
• Catherine

Mid:

• Manuela
• Mercedes
• Marianne
• Dorothea
• Annette
• Lorenz
• Ashe
• Flayn

Low:

• Dedue
• Caspar
• Alois
• Hubert
• Hanneman

Bottom:

• Cyril
• Ignatz
• Raphael
• Gilbert

 

Edited August 13, 2019 by Shiki