Fire Emblem Three Houses Unit Tier Lists

[Stroud]

28 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Even though it requires more setup than is reasonable? Get real.

What do you mean with more than reasonable setup? Do you mean that its that difficult to let a unit learn Alert Stance, have an Evasion Ring and having a weapon Lv 4-5 Skill and at least Level D in Authority? It may not come with the beginning of the game, but with the right investment possible in Midgame to Endgame. 

The only thing that may be an unreasonable investment might be Sword Avo +20. Because you might drop your dancer. And as I said I didn't even optimize. Ferdinand may be the most reliable Dodgetank in the game and I did not use him much. A Dodgetank done right can easily get around 110-140 Avoid which makes it almost impossible for enemies to hit you even without using Tiles which increase your Dodgerate. If that is not reliable I don't know what it is. 

The only true unreasonable setup is Defiant Avoid. Which is more difficult to setup. 

Of course I assume that the player using Dodgetank knows from the beginning to target building a unit like that. And preferably Ferdinand is the choice if you want to start as good as possible earlier. He even can look over not having access to Avoid Stance +30 for quite a while. 

Also it might be totally possible for any additional Difficulty to make them not reliable anymore if enemies get way more hit rate. 

Edited August 17, 2019 by Stroud

[Shadow Mir]

4 hours ago, Stroud said:

What do you mean with more than reasonable setup? Do you mean that its that difficult to let a unit learn Alert Stance, have an Evasion Ring and having a weapon Lv 4-5 Skill and at least Level D in Authority? It may not come with the beginning of the game, but with the right investment possible in Midgame to Endgame. 

The only thing that may be an unreasonable investment might be Sword Avo +20. Because you might drop your dancer. And as I said I didn't even optimize. Ferdinand may be the most reliable Dodgetank in the game and I did not use him much. A Dodgetank done right can easily get around 110-140 Avoid which makes it almost impossible for enemies to hit you even without using Tiles which increase your Dodgerate. If that is not reliable I don't know what it is. 

The only true unreasonable setup is Defiant Avoid. Which is more difficult to setup. 

Of course I assume that the player using Dodgetank knows from the beginning to target building a unit like that. And preferably Ferdinand is the choice if you want to start as good as possible earlier. He even can look over not having access to Avoid Stance +30 for quite a while. 

Also it might be totally possible for any additional Difficulty to make them not reliable anymore if enemies get way more hit rate. 

That sounds like a lot of setup for a mediocre result. Compare to the GBA games, where in general it was a hell of a lot easier to dodgetank because of the generous evade formula, a hit formula that made low hit rates even lower than was displayed, and most enemies favoring inaccurate weapons, in addition to enemies having poor stats in the case of Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones. FFS, we're talking about games where sticking a Sage on a forest and letting them tear the enemy army a new one was a viable strategy.

Edited August 17, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Stroud]

48 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

That sounds like a lot of setup for a mediocre result. Compare to the GBA games, where in general it was a hell of a lot easier to dodgetank because of the generous evade formula, a hit formula that made low hit rates even lower than was displayed, and most enemies favoring inaccurate weapons, in addition to enemies having poor stats in the case of Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones. FFS, we're talking about games where sticking a Sage on a forest and letting them tear the enemy army a new one was a viable strategy.

And again, you just compare to the GBA game, without even revering to the way Avoiding works in Three houses and why it is not effective. The only point where Dodgetank really is just RNG try of luck may be against Death Knight in chapter 4, he has a hit rate of 142 and unless you play New Game+ its impossible for you to get the hands on Alert Stance. So you can only hit around 90-100 Avoid on the Tiles which would make him hit to 40%. But that still has to be tested on how far you can get with Avoid at this point. It could be possible to have more Avoid there. In the Mid game to late game, you have the opportunity to stack the right Avoid Buffs. 

The Formular for Dodgetank is really easy in this game. It is Hit - Avoid = True Hit rate. 

Most of the enemies have 90-120 Hitrate at most, in Lategame they even do worse sometimes because of the bad hit rates from stronger weapons. Any Character who is above 120 Avoid has a a good likelyhood to be hit with 0%. Its so easy to stack up Avoid in this game, which is why its so effective. 

I don't need to tell you that with 120 Hit rate the enemies will not hit a Unit which has 140-160 Avoid with Forest even up to 190 or more, which Ferdinand can easily get. You can just put your Falcon Knight/ Wyvern Lord everwhere and Archers do miserable, because they just miss. No protection against Arrows needed.

While the Formular itself may not be that nice compared to the GBA games, the opportunity to stack up Avoid in massive and just overbearing. And I don't know what Dodge rate you want if Dodging with 100% does not satisfy. 

Also you get Jeralts Mercenaries very early in the game which Add 15 Avoid to your unit. Ferdinand can already hit 50 Avoid with investment into Sword just in Chapter 3, which grants him to at least get only hit every second hit. Some enemies only have 90 Hit at this point. In a Forest he gets additional 30 Avoid and already has 80 Avoid. So he gets hit by a mere 20% or less, and this is just the start of the game, without anything of the tools to come. And only Sword Prowess Lv 2. 

 

Edited August 17, 2019 by Stroud

[Flere210]

This is not gba, in gba there were not builds outside of growths and who to give th angelic vest. Here every character will have a build and is very likely to master 3 or 4 jobs. You need a build to do damage, you need a build to not getting killed in 2 hits, you need a build for everything. 

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Stroud said:

And again, you just compare to the GBA game, without even revering to the way Avoiding works in Three houses and why it is not effective. The only point where Dodgetank really is just RNG try of luck may be against Death Knight in chapter 4, he has a hit rate of 142 and unless you play New Game+ its impossible for you to get the hands on Alert Stance. So you can only hit around 90-100 Avoid on the Tiles which would make him hit to 40%. But that still has to be tested on how far you can get with Avoid at this point. It could be possible to have more Avoid there. In the Mid game to late game, you have the opportunity to stack the right Avoid Buffs. 

The Formular for Dodgetank is really easy in this game. It is Hit - Avoid = True Hit rate. 

Most of the enemies have 90-120 Hitrate at most, in Lategame they even do worse sometimes because of the bad hit rates from stronger weapons. Any Character who is above 120 Avoid has a a good likelyhood to be hit with 0%. Its so easy to stack up Avoid in this game, which is why its so effective. 

I don't need to tell you that with 120 Hit rate the enemies will not hit a Unit which has 140-160 Avoid with Forest even up to 190 or more, which Ferdinand can easily get. You can just put your Falcon Knight/ Wyvern Lord everwhere and Archers do miserable, because they just miss. No protection against Arrows needed.

While the Formular itself may not be that nice compared to the GBA games, the opportunity to stack up Avoid in massive and just overbearing. And I don't know what Dodge rate you want if Dodging with 100% does not satisfy. 

Also you get Jeralts Mercenaries very early in the game which Add 15 Avoid to your unit. Ferdinand can already hit 50 Avoid with investment into Sword just in Chapter 3, which grants him to at least get only hit every second hit. Some enemies only have 90 Hit at this point. In a Forest he gets additional 30 Avoid and already has 80 Avoid. So he gets hit by a mere 20% or less, and this is just the start of the game, without anything of the tools to come. And only Sword Prowess Lv 2. 

If you've been paying attention, which I doubt you have, I'm comparing to GBA because the GBA era was the most dodgetank-friendly by far. The fact I could conceivably get away with using a mage as bait in the GBA games speaks for itself, far as I'm concerned. I have yet to see any confirmation that the hit system those games used is back in this game, and that's why I don't trust you for a nanosecond.

Edited August 17, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[MiaMain]

It's sort of hard to make a tier list at this point. I've only played one route, and there is a lot of nuance in this game. All characters are growth characters, so some of mine may simply be products of RNG, but I"ll throw it out nonetheless. Crest skills don't have much value imo as they activate so seldom and have mediocre effects for the most part. 

Main Roster

Petra- Top tier. My best unit. Wanted her to be a swordmaster, but changed my mind after I realized you need to have reason to become mortal savant. So I flipped her into a wyvern lord. She was basically untouchable, and was the only one who could go toe to toe with the death knight. Strength was an issue at times, but she could just rush bosses, and that is how I beat

Spoiler

Edelgard's chapter. I just warped her into the throne room and killed her on the second turn. 

Caspar-A tier. Was shitty until I accepted that he wasn't a warrior. Once I taped gauntlets to his hands he became the best offensive force on my team. Not super dodgy, but always fast enough to get 4 hits. The piece that made him good was that despite his strength being fairly low, he would always have a 25-30% crit rate, basically guaranteeing a crit every round. There may be characters who can fill the brawler role better, but I just followed the archetypes this playthrough. 

Edelgard- Top tier. Basically indestructible from Ch 3 onward. 

Spoiler

I did lose her in the second half, since I sided with the church, so I don't know how she would have faired against the tankier enemies. Would have been nice to have someone who isn't a glass cannon though.

Hubert- Low tier. I was just using him for the -5def spell in most chapters.

Spoiler

He wrecked me in the Brigid chapter though. Just one shoting  everything with bolting. Total BS chapter. 

Dorothea- A tier. Early access to thoron and physic allows her to chip  and heal until she is overleveled. She mastered all white and black magic classes plus the dancer class. She wasn't a good choice for dancer, since she could usually do more damage than the person she was dancing for, so I dropped the class pretty quickly. She started every map with two free kills via meteor, and I had to actively work to keep her from stealing all the xp. Not many units resist magic in this game, so she basically ran over everything so long as you kept her out of range, which is fairly easy.

Bernadetta- B tier. Had parts in the game when she was really good, but was strength screwed for the second half. Dropped all my energy drops on her, and she still struggled to finish people. Access to deadeye mean she was always chipping someone, but she wasn't very dodgy, and struggled to kill bulky enemies in the second half.

Shamir- C tier- When I first got her she was awesome, but she could not keep her speed up and quickly fell to just doing chip damage. Again, even all the speedwings I had didn't get her doubling again. People rave about bow knights in this game, but both of mine were only used for chip damage. 

Ferdinand - B tier. Just a standard cavalier. He could take a couple hits, and would sometimes kill other things. Super useful in this route with all the squishy characters, but I could see him being pretty mediocre in other routes. 

Lindhardt - B tier. Early physic gave him a ton of value and xp. Warp let me cheese some late game chapters. He kills everything as a magic user, but isn't durable, and his spells aren't all that good. 

Byleth - A tier. Struggled in the second half due to being somewhat frail, but was still the wrecking ball he was in part 1. 

Seteth - B tier- Took awhile to get him lances to go wyvern lord, which is where he shines. Struggled to kill things, but could take a few hits. Just doesn't really do anything well apart from having canto and good movement.

Flayn - A or B tier - Started using her in the second half, but it only took a couple chapters to get her going. No physic, but rescue and fortify were super useful. No really good reason spells considering how frail she was. She had high magic, so would kill whatever I asked her to, but she could only attack the last enemy in range. Had to actively work to keep her xp up without physic. I may have actually struggled on some chapters if I didn't have fortify.

Adjutants

Lysithea - A. Kept her as adjutant for most of the game hoping that roster size would increase at some point. She tore through the chapters she was in, but wasn't a good class, so mobility hurt her. I'm positive she is an S in the golden deer route based on how well she did with so little attention. 

[Stroud]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

If you've been paying attention, which I doubt you have, I'm comparing to GBA because the GBA era was the most dodgetank-friendly by far. The fact I could conceivably get away with using a mage as bait in the GBA games speaks for itself, far as I'm concerned. 

You still do this. I don't say that you are wrong with saying that its more viable in GBA Games. But you are not bringing out any point why dodgetanking is ineffizient in Three Houses. You NEED to point out why Dodgetanking is not viable IN THREE HOUSES, not that it is more Viable in other games.

And I can throw the attention phrase right back at you. You totally ignore what I have written about dodgetanks. That they can dodge to 100% and they don't need woods. You are also not forced to use a flier.

At the bare minimum increased weapon skill, with a Battalion which grants 15 Avoid or more and Alert Stance. 2 of these things come almost with the game itself. Anything else is almost flexing on how good the Avoid Skill is compared to the hit skill. Outside of the Death Knight and some Bosses you will not meet many enemies which have a Hit stat over 130. Which is kind of laughable compared to what Avoid can reach.

And there I just wanted to point out to take a look at Sylvain and Ferdinand. Especially Ferdinand skilled right can be a Viable unit and he is potentially the best Dodgetank in the game. He should not be stuck in an Armor he should take the Sword and get the base for dodging everything as early as possible.

Edited August 17, 2019 by Stroud

[Technoweirdo]

1. Alert Stance takes investment.
Flying also takes investment, and flying's widely considered the best movement type.
Unrestricted movement, Canto, no real bow weakness thanks to dismounting.
It just so happens that you can get both at the same time.

2. Enemies get massive upgrades to their weapons and spells over time while also getting -faires.
This makes face-tanking increasingly hard, though not impossible with Battalions.
Equipment can help too, but most face-tanking equipment will weigh you down.
What enemies do not get massive upgrades to is their ability to actually hit things.
Incidentally, Battalions and equipment can help with dodging things too without weighing you down.

3. 1RN doesn't matter when the enemy has a hit chance of 0.

-

If you're not going to look at dodge-tanking because it doesn't work in the early game, you may as well not look at flying because you can't fly in the early game.
Doing that would have...significant effects on low-turn-count runs. People seem to value that a lot for tiering.
Would probably put Dedue at top ti---
You know what? Screw flying.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Have to chime in that dodge-tanking is easily the best it's been since GBA in this game (whether it's better or worse isn't worth debating IMO, the point is that it's good in this game). Enemy hit rates don't get that high, and you have so many tools to boost your own evade: Avoid+10 from flying classes, Alert Stance (though skipping your own player phase is a downer of course), batallions, +Avo skills (though these are character-specific or high investment), prowess skills, breaker skills. I didn't even do crazy-high investment into such a setup but I had Petra (high AS) with high proficiency in both swords and lances (with the appropriate breakers) on a pegasus with the Evasion Ring and she nulled axe hit rates and came close on almost everything else, and was thus my most durable unit as a result because concrete defences just don't go that far against lategame enemies with atk in the 50's (and some have crit on top of that).

And to emphasise, I didn't stack that with Ferdinand's personal or Sword Avo 20, that combination sounds crazy good on paper.

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

25 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Have to chime in that dodge-tanking is easily the best it's been since GBA in this game (whether it's better or worse isn't worth debating IMO, the point is that it's good in this game). Enemy hit rates don't get that high, and you have so many tools to boost your own evade: Avoid+10 from flying classes, Alert Stance (though skipping your own player phase is a downer of course), batallions, +Avo skills (though these are character-specific or high investment), prowess skills, breaker skills. I didn't even do crazy-high investment into such a setup but I had Petra (high AS) with high proficiency in both swords and lances (with the appropriate breakers) on a pegasus with the Evasion Ring and she nulled axe hit rates and came close on almost everything else, and was thus my most durable unit as a result because concrete defences just don't go that far against lategame enemies with atk in the 50's (and some have crit on top of that).

And to emphasise, I didn't stack that with Ferdinand's personal or Sword Avo 20, that combination sounds crazy good on paper.

Yeah. The people who are defined as facetanks (Dedue and Raphael) become better as wreckers with Gauntlets (forges or not. Same for Alois. But movement.

At least Raphael can become a WL easier than Dedue, though. Won’t have to rely on gauntlets at the cost of less movement, but other units will outshine him.

Spoiler

Not even counting how Dedue is absent until Ch. 16 or so if you get the best result for his paralogue. And unlike Dimitri, he needs the time to become the best he can be (while Dimitri is always a beast, mounted or not) because of that, which every other unit has more of.

 

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Stroud said:

You still do this. I don't say that you are wrong with saying that its more viable in GBA Games. But you are not bringing out any point why dodgetanking is ineffizient in Three Houses. You NEED to point out why Dodgetanking is not viable IN THREE HOUSES, not that it is more Viable in other games.

And I can throw the attention phrase right back at you. You totally ignore what I have written about dodgetanks. That they can dodge to 100% and they don't need woods. You are also not forced to use a flier.

At the bare minimum increased weapon skill, with a Battalion which grants 15 Avoid or more and Alert Stance. 2 of these things come almost with the game itself. Anything else is almost flexing on how good the Avoid Skill is compared to the hit skill. Outside of the Death Knight and some Bosses you will not meet many enemies which have a Hit stat over 130. Which is kind of laughable compared to what Avoid can reach.

And there I just wanted to point out to take a look at Sylvain and Ferdinand. Especially Ferdinand skilled right can be a Viable unit and he is potentially the best Dodgetank in the game. He should not be stuck in an Armor he should take the Sword and get the base for dodging everything as early as possible.

Alert Stance takes investment, and a lot of it. it also makes you waste your player phase by not doing something more productive instead. Anyway, all this has an opportunity cost, and one I wouldn't exactly write off as negligible, at that.

[virtu333]

In regards to Weight -3, I think the question you really need to ask is: is it worth going to C armor and taking an ability slot for, at most, +3 speed? Especially if you pump rocky burdocks or your character gets blessed, you may not even need the Weight -3 because your strength goes high enough - e.g., silver bow+ goes to 8 weight, so if you're 30+ strength, weight -3 gives only 1-2 speed 

[Silly]

Just going to chime in and say that I've been trying dodgetanking in my recent run after I claimed that I wasn't sure if it worked, and it seems to actually work to an extent.

I'm a bit into the timeskip on my current run and my Falcon Knights are hitting like 80 avoid before alert stance at the moment, which makes most enemies have sub-20 hit rates on them. I did notice something kind of dangerous though that makes dodgetanking large groups of enemies unreliable though, and that is enemy gambits.

As far as I can tell, enemy gambit accuracy doesn't look at your avoid rate (or if it does, there is some outside factor as well), because enemies with battalions seemed to have uncomfortably high hit rates on my dodgetanks (instead of sub-20 displayed hit they were showing 40-50 hit), and getting hit with a gambit gives you massive penalties to your avoid, which makes the rest of the enemies much more accurate versus you.

One other thing I'd like to point out is that all of the best dodge battalions are ground battalions, and are therefore inaccessible to fliers. Ground battalions get up to 20 avoid at rank 5, whereas flying battalions cap out at 10 (except for Immortal Corps with 15, which is only available on GD route). This actually sort of evens up the difference between flying and ground units, since fliers have an innate +10 avoid.

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

Anyways, my conclusion is that dodgetanking is reasonable if you're building for it. Ideally you want to have someone that is both very fast and does high damage, so that you can fight and kill many enemies at once on EP. Speed is the most important stat here, because not only does it contribute to your avoid, it also is very necessary to kill enemies because you need to be able to hit doubling thresholds without the Speed Ring. Flying units don't actually have too much of an advantage over ground units (outside of Alert Stance, but you're not always waiting), since their natural avoid bonus is made up for by the fact that ground units get better battalions.

Trying to do dumb stuff to optimize for a dodgetank is dumb though. Please don't sacrifice your dancer so that somebody can get slightly more avoid. Please don't put people into classes that don't suit them just to try and gain a dodgetank. For example, unless you already have ~2 other physic users, Marianne should be in a magic class to take advantage of the fact that she has physic. Don't put her in a sword class just to make her a better dodgetank.

[Skell_]

My two cents on dodge-tanks.

You can throw a massive amount of investment into a dodge-tank and you will get a dodge-tank. It costs a lot to train one but you will get a dodge-tank by the end. They are still tanks in the face of archers, hybrid units, whatever.

In contrast, a classic high defense low speed unit will always peak early and fall off hard. Pavise and a goddess ring isn't going to let Dedue survive more than 2 War Masters. Throw in hybrid units like Holy/Dark Knights and he can't do his job anymore. He stops being a tank.

[Silly]

3 minutes ago, virtu333 said:

In regards to Weight -3, I think the question you really need to ask is: is it worth going to C armor and taking an ability slot for, at most, +3 speed? Especially if you pump rocky burdocks or your character gets blessed, you may not even need the Weight -3 because your strength goes high enough - e.g., silver bow+ goes to 8 weight, so if you're 30+ strength, weight -3 gives only 1-2 speed 

It's not too out of the way to pick up C Armor. Once you get your primary ranks up to where you need them (usually it's not worth it to go for something unrealistic like S+), you can divert and start putting extra points into armor and authority.

Also, Bows are on the lighter side. Your Axe users will definitely be weighed down by Silver Axe+ until they pick up weight -3. And even if you're using a lighter weapon, you don't always use the Silver Bow. There are definitely situations where it would be better for you to use a Killer or a Brave weapon or a relic, and not being weighed down by those is a big plus.

It's less relevant for super fast units that have been getting good speed levels, like Falcon Knights. But I find it pretty relevant for Wyverns, who are usually fast but not "I outspeed you by a significant margin so I can do whatever I want" level of fast. Combined with how heavy axes are, sometimes you miss out on doubling if you use a heavier axe. Weight -3 helps a good amount here.

[Shadow Mir]

7 minutes ago, Silly said:

As far as I can tell, enemy gambit accuracy doesn't look at your avoid rate (or if it does, there is some outside factor as well), because enemies with battalions seemed to have uncomfortably high hit rates on my dodgetanks (instead of sub-20 displayed hit they were showing 40-50 hit), and getting hit with a gambit gives you massive penalties to your avoid, which makes the rest of the enemies much more accurate versus you.

Who knows - in chapter 5, Gilbert routinely faced like 20% hit rates from enemy gambits. Anyway, that's another thing that makes me think dodgetanking ain't all it's cracked up to be - if you're unlucky enough to get tagged by an enemy gambit, not only do you get frozen in place, but you lose stats, meaning other enemy attacks are more accurate and more damaging against you.

[Silly]

3 minutes ago, Skell_ said:

My two cents on dodge-tanks.

You can throw a massive amount of investment into a dodge-tank and you will get a dodge-tank. It costs a lot to train one but you will get a dodge-tank by the end. They are still tanks in the face of archers, hybrid units, whatever.

 In contrast, a classic high defense low speed unit will always peak early and fall off hard. Pavise and a goddess ring isn't going to let Dedue survive more than 2 War Masters. Throw in hybrid units like Holy/Dark Knights and he can't do his job anymore. He stops being a tank.

Classic high defense low speed units have very rarely been good in Fire Emblem though.

In a game where its possible for most units to get to the point where they are comfortably ORKOing enemies, not being able to double and therefore missing out on ORKOs is a death sentence for viability later on. The same thing actually applies to dodgetanks. If your dodgetank does not ORKO reliably it's also bad. It's just that dodgetanks usually have high speed, so they can reliably double. If they're a bit strength screwed though then that is also a huge hit to their viability.

The first and foremost thing you want is the ability to kill enemies. Afterwards, you start caring about bulk. Whether that bulk comes from dodging or defensive stats, or a mix of the two, is irrelevant, as long as you can take on groups of enemies relatively safely. But offensive stats are more important.

Basically, a unit that can only safely fight 3 enemies per turn but kills them all is much, much better than a unit that can fight 5 enemies per turn but doesn't kill any of them.

[Silly]

5 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Who knows - in chapter 5, Gilbert routinely faced like 20% hit rates from enemy gambits. Anyway, that's another thing that makes me think dodgetanking ain't all it's cracked up to be - if you're unlucky enough to get tagged by an enemy gambit, not only do you get frozen in place, but you lose stats, meaning other enemy attacks are more accurate and more damaging against you.

Hit and avoid might have to do with charm stats.

In the map I just played (Ferdinand + Lysithea paralogue), most enemies had sub-20 hit rate on my Falcon Knights with actual weapons. Gambit hit rates for them ranged from 30-50 hit depending on the unit. If my unit got tagged by a gambit, enemy weapon hit rates jumped up to about 40ish, which made it very dangerous, since my Falcon Knights could only take 1 hit max without dying post-gambit.

Edited August 17, 2019 by Silly

[Skell_]

Dedicated tanks aren't supposed to really act as a meat grinder. I tend to use them to set up kills for other units which still makes them viable for turtle strats. Having a brick wall that can be used to abuse the AI is a useful niche. Emphasis on niche. Being strength or magic screwed is a far smaller problem than being speed screwed or for a classic tank, defense screwed. You can easily screw up a classic tank but a dodge-tank is consistent. It's your best bet if you really really want a tank.

[Cysx]

8 minutes ago, Silly said:

Hit and avoid might have to do with charm stats.

Yes, exclusively. (Your charm - the enemy's)*5 is your accuracy/avoid bonus(or malus). Both cap at 30/-30, meaning you can't make a 60 hit rate gambit(which is what most enemies have) have a lower hit rate than 60-30 = 30. To my knowledge anyway.

Ideally a dodgetank should also have good charm as a result(which makes going for dancer make even more sense, thanks to the charm +5 bonus), but you'll still be somewhat vulnerable to them no matter what. Adjutants and assistants can help with hit(a lot), but not avoid.

Edited August 17, 2019 by Cysx

[Shadow Mir]

26 minutes ago, Silly said:

Classic high defense low speed units have very rarely been good in Fire Emblem though.

In a game where its possible for most units to get to the point where they are comfortably ORKOing enemies, not being able to double and therefore missing out on ORKOs is a death sentence for viability later on. The same thing actually applies to dodgetanks. If your dodgetank does not ORKO reliably it's also bad. It's just that dodgetanks usually have high speed, so they can reliably double. If they're a bit strength screwed though then that is also a huge hit to their viability.

The first and foremost thing you want is the ability to kill enemies. Afterwards, you start caring about bulk. Whether that bulk comes from dodging or defensive stats, or a mix of the two, is irrelevant, as long as you can take on groups of enemies relatively safely. But offensive stats are more important.

Basically, a unit that can only safely fight 3 enemies per turn but kills them all is much, much better than a unit that can fight 5 enemies per turn but doesn't kill any of them.

I dunno - Fates turned that on its head, since dodgetanking is not nearly as reliable in said game as it was in prior games. It doesn't help that Freeze (locks a hit unit in place and makes them lose 20 avoid as well) is a thing, among other stuff.

16 minutes ago, Skell_ said:

Dedicated tanks aren't supposed to really act as a meat grinder. I tend to use them to set up kills for other units which still makes them viable for turtle strats. Having a brick wall that can be used to abuse the AI is a useful niche. Emphasis on niche. Being strength or magic screwed is a far smaller problem than being speed screwed or for a classic tank, defense screwed. You can easily screw up a classic tank but a dodge-tank is consistent. It's your best bet if you really really want a tank.

Fates says hi. I always had better results having something like an HP boon Corrin tank than using a dodgy unit like Hana and praying that they don't get hit.

Edited August 17, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

14 minutes ago, Cysx said:

Yes, exclusively. (Your charm - the enemy's)*5 is your accuracy/avoid bonus(or malus). Both cap at 30/-30, meaning you can't make a 60 hit rate gambit(which is what most enemies have) have a lower hit rate than 60-30 = 30. To my knowledge anyway.

Ideally a dodgetank should also have good charm as a result(which makes going for dancer make even more sense, thanks to the charm +5 bonus), but you'll still be somewhat vulnerable to them no matter what. Adjutants and assistants can help with hit(a lot), but not avoid.

Wait, so what does Dex do?

[Shadow Mir]

Just now, Azure in a Roundabout said:

Wait, so what does Dex do?

Dexterity increases your hit rate (it's the Skill stat renamed).

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

10 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Dexterity increases your hit rate (it's the Skill stat renamed).

So Dex, Luck, and Charm increase hit rate?

[Shadow Mir]

Just now, Azure in a Roundabout said:

So Dex, Luck, and Charm increase hit rate?

Dexterity increases hit rate with weapons and magic. Luck lowers risk of enemy criticals. Charm affects hit rate of gambits and avoidance rate against enemy gambits. The former two stats affect crit chance, too.