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Recruitment Tier List


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Tables of Content:

  1. Motivation
  2. Criteria
  3. Za Listo
  4. In-depth explanation (WIP)

1. Motivation

I once said this in a different topic but I don't think the current Tier List thread works well because a unit's viability is influenced by many factors that need to be properly segregated.
One of these aspects is the recruitment itself. In 3H non-recruited units will auto-level to the recommended level of the current chapter. This means they automatically gain skill EXP in their set preferences (e.g. Sylvain raises his Lance and Axe rank) but also their base level increases. It's important to note that instead of the player's class growths these units will benefit from the enemy growth rates which offer higher values.
Therefore a unit recruited from other houses might perform better or worse compared to when they start as a student from your own house. I think this is a good criteria to build a 3H tier list on which motivates this.

2. The tier list criteria

  • Assume Maddening difficulty
  • Assume efficiency, fast-play or whatever you want to call it (just not hardcore LTC that simplify the list to "use, not use")
  • No New Game+
  • Monastery activities will be factored in but no amiibo, online or paid DLC interactions
  • Automatic recruits or house-specific units will not be evaluated
    • So no Byleth, Lords, Dedue, Hubert, Flayn, Seteth and Gilbert.
  • While it's better to recruit units early on I will look at them based on their entire lifespan, meaning I will factor in how well their usefulness age the longer you put off their recruitment. Being still good despite a late recruitment is a pretty good quality to have, especially since early resources are very limited.
  • A unit will be rated on their performance only. Paralogues or Items they unlock will not flow in their evaluation.
  • Technically you would have to divide the list for each house's perspective (especially with the Black Eagle routes) but considering how similar the units are I don't think it's necessary.

3. Tier List

Spoiler

-A-

  • Lysithea
  • Catherine
  • Ingrid
  • Hilda
  • Sylvain
  • Ferdinand
  • Leonie

-B-

  • Linhardt
  • Shamir
  • Felix
  • Petra
  • Marianne
  • Mercedes

-C-

  • Manuela
  • Dorothea
  • Annette
  • Ignatz
  • Ashe
  • Bernadetta

-D-

  • Raphael
  • Cyril
  • Caspar
  • Lorenz

-E-

  • Hanneman
  • Alois

4. Below you will find a detailled review of each unit. (WIP)

Spoiler

Lysithea: This is a no-brainer really. Warp is the single most busted element in every Fire Emblem ever and it's no exception here. She gets it significantly earlier than the other two users and very likely boasts more range thanks to her absurd Mag growth. To be fair it's relatively unlikely that she manages to learn it in Ch.5 but it is very much available in Ch.6 and onwards which significantly cuts turns.
Even combat-wise she is respectable as mages go. Her Dark Magic unfortunately slows her down a lot but thanks to her fast access to Fiendish Blow its high damage is fairly useful for setting up kills and Death Spikes annihilates mounted in one go.

Ingrid: She is the only default Flier among all the other recruits. That automatically makes her stand out from the other students. No other unit auto-levels Flying and even though some have better stats than her Ingrid they require heavier investment during lessons to reclass. She ignores that process and still retains a respectable performance which is further boosted by the many Relic lances in this game. Flying + Stride trivializes this game hard (if not borderline required for some Paralogue objectives) and Ingrid being available at any point of time to do makes her very much one of the best recruits.

Catherine: So by Ch.5 (4 is impossible since the B support is locked and you don't that much EXP either) you can have this unit with Advanced class stats with a Brave Sword on steroids. That's pretty good in my books and makes the earlygame a lot easier which is the hardest part of Maddening. It's highly recommended to support and recruit her as early as possible.
Her only downside are her garbage skill preferences. Sword and Brawling are awful and she has no other revelant strengths. That means if you don't recruit her early she will get a flying mount very late and her midgame can still be suspect if she has to remain a Pegasus Knight past Level 20.
Even so Catherine is probably the best combat unit in the game for a long time and remains decent throughout the game.

 

Linhardt: This guy can be recruited whenever and he will do his job mighty fine. Early on he can serve as a Physic bot and you can focus on his Faith rank for eventual Warp access. Recruit him later and he still does that which is very valuable.
Compared to Lysithea he won't have as much range and his combat is unsalvageable. Despite this his non-combat utility is extremly good, making him of the best recruits in the game.

 

Hanneman: On paper Hanneman isn't that terrible. Strength in Riding is always welcome and allows him to reclass into a Dark Knight for mobility. With Meteor and Thoron he also has a decent list of offensive spells to fall back to.
But unfortunately the Dark Knight is a Master class so you are still stuck with a unit that has low MOV for a long time and with low MOV you're not getting to fight that much. That's pretty bad for a pure combat unit. Putting the final nails on the coffin he is only recruitable after Ch.7 and has painfully low Spd, taking away his only strength. Ouch.

Alois: Being the last recruit (or second-to-last for BL) doesn't do him any favors as he misses out a lot of potential skill EXP. Add a flying weakness to it and Alois takes his place as the worst recruit in the game. He has the least amount of time to contribute and his stats at this point are mediocre at best. There is very little reason to really use him and by the time he shows any result the run is probably over.

 

Edited by Shiki
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2 hours ago, Shiki said:

This is especially painful on Maddening where Class Exp gain is reduced compared to the lower difficulties.

I'm fairly sure this isn't correct. You still get the normal 1 Class EXP per battle, raised to 2 Class EXP with the statue (and multiplied by 2/3 if you have a Knowledge Gem or Mastermind / Both of those). As a result, considering you are likely to be in significantly more fights due to enemies being harder to kill and more plentiful, if anything I'd say Class EXP is significantly higher in Maddening. I've had no trouble mastering classed.

 

You may be getting mixed up with Skill EXP, which has one minor penalty in Maddening: Weekly study gives 4 EXP less per week compared to hard mode, per skill per character. This sounds like you're going to gain a lot less EXP, but in reality I've found all it does is partially offset the significantly increased skill EXP you'll gain from battles. You still end up way ahead overall in skill EXP due to how many more rounds of combat you enter. The only downside is that in battle, what you can train is a little more constrained since you need to actually kill enemies and cannot train movement types your class doesn't have, but I'd say that's overall a fairly minor issue.

 

Anyway, looking at the list the big thing that jumped out at me was how low Lorenz is. You can never use Lorenz once and he's incredibly valuable to recruit, purely for obtaining Thrysus. +2 range is a big deal. Granted, a few mages don't have crests like Hubert or Dorothea, but the majority do and so can make use of the staff with no penalty (and even the ones who don't have crests, -10 HP on your squishy units you want to keep out of danger isn't really as bad as it sounds).

Edited by Tables
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Evaluating combat units, I think the best recruits are clearly: 

Ferdinand, Sylvain, Hilda, Catherine, Leonie, Ingrid, Petra, Felix

Roughly in that order, give or take a few positions.

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

Sylvain and Ferdinand are some of the best cross recruits. They're pretty good recruits early, as they have respectable base stats, with Sylvain being better here because he comes with an extra point of Str as well as a damage boosting personal, which is very good in the early game. Early recruitment on Sylvain also gives you access to Lance of Ruin early on, which can be important for some strategies.

They both end up in the Cavalier class by default, which provides excellent boosts in +20 HP, +20 Str, +15 Def, so if you recruit them any time after Ch 5 their stats will be very competitive.

They both train Lances + Axes by default, which is an optimal choice. The axe training gives them easy access to Wyvern Rider. The lance training is eventually required for Wyvern Lord and puts them closer to learning Swift Strikes, which is one of the best combat arts in the game and when combined with a Wyvern class makes them ridiculously useful.

Sylvain has the better early game (as mentioned before), whereas Ferdinand is slightly better later due to getting Weight -3 more quickly and having the better late game personal. Both are excellent units.

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

Hilda is very similar to Sylvain and Ferdinand. She trains Lance + Axe by default (meaning an easy path to Wyvern Rider/Lord), and is a great combat unit whenever you recruit her. Her early and midgame are even better than the previous two, due to her better bases, damage boosting personal, and relatively easy access to Pegasus Knight. Like Ferdinand, she has an armor strength that helps getting Weight -3 easier. Her late game is less good than the previous two though, since she has an Authority weakness and does not have Swift Strikes.

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

Catherine has busted stats with an early recruitment, due to her stats being at the very worst the minimum for the Swordmaster class. She will still have competitive stats with a late recruitment, because her personal growths + swordmaster growths are excellent, but her lack of good weapon ranks means that the later you recruit her, the harder it will be to get her into an actual good class. Her most realistic "good" path is probably reclassing into Pegasus Knight ASAP, as not only does this give her more mobility, it also lets her start working on her weapon ranks for an eventual Falcon Knight reclass.

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

Leonie is an all around solid unit at every point. Her early game bases are some of the best (outside of Byleth + Lord) and she has a damage boosting personal. Lance and Bow proficiencies means that she can easily access Pegasus Knight in the midgame and either Falcon Knight or Bow Knight later on. Neither of these classes are as good as Wyvern Lord but they're still excellent. Point Blank Volley is a great combat art for later in the game (though not as good as Swift Strikes due to the abundance of powerful lances in this game). And her stats are competitive at all recruitment points. 

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

Ingrid really benefits from Pegasus Knight growths. Her early game recruitment is actually kind of disappointing. She is kind of prone to getting strength screwed if you recruit her before Ch 5 due to her 35 Str growth. Recruiting her after she has already reclassed to Pegasus Knight makes her bases much better, because the enemy Pegasus class has absurd growth bonuses. She ends up with respectable attack and defensive stats, along with blazingly high speed.

Her proficiencies are very well suited for Falcon Knight and she can probably reasonably access Wyvern Lord, though the extra work to do so is probably not worth it.

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

Petra's big downside is that she default trains Sword + Axe, meaning that half of her pre-recruitment study is wasted. Her early game is fairly good due to her good bases. Her midgame recruitment is slightly weak compared to most of the girls on this list because she doesn't naturally train lances, so it takes a little bit to put her into Pegasus Knight, but if you have to reclass to Brigand it isn't the worst thing in the world. And her axe rank and flying proficiency makes turning a late recruit Petra into a Wyvern Rider very trivial. She is even faster and stronger than Ingrid when cross-recruited, and also potentially has a bow proficiency as a minor upside.

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

Felix is somewhat similar to Catherine. He has monster stats whenever you decide to recruit him (though worse than Catherine's stats), so he should be able to contribute in combat at any point. Like Catherine though, his default training is mostly wasted, so getting him into a good class for later on is actually kind of a struggle. This is especially true because Felix doesn't have access to Pegasus Knight, which is a big saving grace for Catherine as it is a top tier class that allows her the ability to immediately start working on valuable weapon ranks for the future. Additionally Felix's weakness in Authority also holds him back a little.

His Brawling proficiency does make him a reasonable War Master if you recruited him late, which is a nice consolation prize if you deem Wyvern Rider/Lord to be too far out of the picture, but you can really feel his weapon rank struggles.

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

Utility recruits should basically all be recruited early if possible as they benefit a lot more from weapon ranks than from autoleveled stats, and the best ones imo are:

* Lysithea: Earliest Warp.
* Annette: Rally Strength + Speed is a great combination and very important early, Authority strength makes her a good utility battalion carrier later on.
* Linhardt/Mercedes: Physic access, plus eventual Warp/Fortify access.
 

Edited by Silly
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I'm not sure there's that much of a point to listing the non students here, considering their recruitment has no opportunity cost and there's no, you know, other version of themselves. Basically they're at the exact same place as on a regular tier list really.

Hilda could actually use a split positioning, considering she can only join late on Church, one of the only two routes she's recruitable in. Granted she's not bad if obtained late, but you kind of want death blow on her so that she keeps killing with braves for longer, and in Church that's not really an option.

Lysithea is too high. She's good but she's not the best recruit in the game. Keep in mind you get a free warp recruit in Manuela, and early on stride covers most of the utility warp would in other games. Ch 5 aside, but as you said she will likely not get there by then as a recruit. Recruiting Lysithea alone also implies Lysithea without Thyrsus, and that's considerably less impressive.

Ingrid's a bit high.

Marianne is way high, she provides no utility your resident healer doesn't(unless you build her for lance combat but I don't think that's a thing in this community yet)

Mercedes is quite a bit too low. She's the best healer in the game, plain and simple. She has a place on almost any team.

Annette is too low, and I don't just say that because she's Annette. She was a meh recruit on hard, but rallies help a lot on maddening, and she's the best rallybot in the game.

Ignatz is a comparable case. Worse as a rallybot, but still a valuable one, he's too low.

Ashe is in twice. Also I'd argue he's too high, but I guess his passive is nice to have around, and his focuses are in the right places.

Bernadetta is too low. She gets one of the best arts in the game, vengeance. She becomes extremely good at killing stuff once you get to abuse blessing to inflate its damage.

Cyril is too low, but considering I said he doesn't belong in the list in the first place, eh.

If you want the Thyrsus, you need Lorenz, no way around it. That being said, as far as performance goes he's about right where he belongs, if only because he spends a third of the timeskip unavailable on 2/3 routes. So, it's your call.

In general I think paralogue access should factor into this, though I didn't take it into account myself here.  It's not that rare for me to recruit primarily for that, since they grant exp, loot, and among the best battalions in the game.

 

Edited by Cysx
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Ferdinand is really high. He's a good recruitment but, it's also important to note that his B support is time-locked to Part 2 which means his recruitment is already harder and you have to invest into Byleth's armor rank to C (personally don't think Byleth needs Weight -3 if they go EO/Falcoknight/Warmaster, maybe it's beneficial as a WL). If you're talking efficiency, it's not worth it to recruit Ferdinand just because you're better off investing those valuable activity points into improving Byleth's skills that he will use, meals and cooking. Same goes with Caspar, though he isn't the best unit anyways so I'd bump him down to E (as a cross recruit). Both their Part 2 paralogue rewards or (Aegir Troops, Scythe of Sariel, etc.) aren't too worth it imo.

Hanneman/Alois are free units albeit both join rather late, they can replace units that are falling behind (considering Maddening mode is the basis of this TL where it's harder to salvage stat screwed units) so I don't see them as E recruits. I'd bump them up one tier up (maybe 2 for Hanneman personally since he can still have valuable chip with Meteor/Thoron with his high Magic stat).

Edit - I'd bump Ashe up, he is the only way you can get Boots early on in SS route (or at all in CF route) since Part 1 paralogues only require 1 of the 2 units to unlock them. Same with Lorenz being bumped up to B tier, he unlocks Thyrsus which a lot of LTC runs use and go out of their way to do since his paralogue only needs 1 turn to complete.

Sylvain bumped up since he's free if you're female Byleth, nets you early Lance of Ruin, solid early personal (especially in waifu houses of GD/BE), and early bullion means more training weapons/bows

Hilda bumped down imo due to her incredibly late join time in Church route but still a great recruit for BL house

Edited by Lunarly
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@Tables Pretty sure you and I are on the same page except I screwed up the terminology (this game has so many labels for EXP it's ridicilous). My bad. I will have to update it properly.

Also skill EXP reduced to 4 is still a massive difference because early on you don't get EXP for your mobility skills which are always major requirements for your classes. Not to mention for some units you have to train them in different weapons, meaning you don't always get EXP for that weapon type you need. Some units like Sylvain who prefer a flying class as their advanced class doesn't get EXP for flying during battle either.
It makes strengths a lot more relevant than before (which is why I highly prefer Maddening for a critical evaluation).

I took it for granted that units are not rated by the items they bring. Maybe I should clarify that (and no New Game+ of course).

@Silly tbh Authority weakness is a lot more stomachable than other flaws. The best battalions are usually at B rank and fliers don't have the greatest selection to begin with (best is Cichol or the BE exclusive Pegasus). It is also one of the few skills where Byleth is guaranteed to have proficiency at, meaning it's a lot easier to raise than say specific weapon skills.

In general I would say the females tend to be a lot better because a better earlygame matters more. Flying on some of those early paralogues makes it much easier to get the full rewards and the males can't do any of it until they reach the threshold for Advanced classes (which is significantly later). Darting Blow is a good boost to their offensive and allows them to carry heavier weapons.

Lategame performance is not that big of a deal considering at that point you have so many options to kill enemies despite them still being pretty scary. Of course Sylvain and Ferdinand with Swift Strikes can eliminate some of the more egregious enemies on Maddening but such enemies also usually get stomped by Brave weapons (unless it's War Masters which ... are a different beast all together).
Only Petra is the exception because as you said no Lance strength is already bad but she auto-levels Sword and Axe which is a lot worse. Not to mention she promotes to Thief which utterly destroys her durability in the long run. That is the reason why I put her below the two Cavaliers.

I would say aside from Lysithea either of the Physic users can be recruited at any point of time (which is why I put them higher than usual). They peak at C anyway and it is reached very quickly either way.
Same could be said for Linhardt though if you want another Warp user it's definetly more advisable to get him early. That being said he is one of the few students who ages like fine wine and can be recruited basically at any point during Part 1.

EDIT: Also why are my Tiers suddenly smileys?

Edited by Shiki
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Just now, dragontamer said:

 

I'm pretty sure that Hilda can't be cross-recruited.

She can join Church Route (recruit option opens in Chapter 12) and can join the BL house around Chapter 4. She's only blocked in CF route.

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41 minutes ago, Lunarly said:

Edit - I'd bump Ashe up, he is the only way you can get Boots early on in SS route (or at all in CF route) since Part 1 paralogues only require 1 of the 2 units to unlock them.

That's absolutely fair, I forgot about that.
Apparently it's not in the rules anyway, but yeah, I agree for what it's worth.

 

 

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52 minutes ago, Cysx said:

Lysithea is too high. She's good but she's not the best recruit in the game. Keep in mind you get a free warp recruit in Manuela, and early on stride covers most of the utility warp would in other games. Ch 5 aside, but as you said she will likely not get there by then as a recruit. Recruiting Lysithea alone also implies Lysithea without Thyrsus, and that's considerably less impressive.

Ch.5 is generous considering as a recruit she doesn't get much time to focus on her Faith rank.
That being said Manuela's Warp is not available for a long time either. She has B rank Faith when she is recruited and reaching A rank isn't trivial at all (especially on Maddening). Considering that Lysithea has warp monopoly at minimum for 4 chapters that puts her far above her.

The fastest skips require Stride and Warp so that doesn't say much. Not to mention early on you only get a single Stride battalion which makes earlier Warp access even more important for efficent clears.

Considering recruiting past Ch.5 is a trivial matter I don't see why are you assuming Lysithea has not Thyrsus. Until Ch.7 (when the first paralogues unlock) you have a lot of time to recruit other students.

59 minutes ago, Cysx said:

Marianne is way high, she provides no utility your resident healer doesn't(unless you build her for lance combat but I don't think that's a thing in this community yet)

That's a nice pitfall you have here. So because you already have a unit that covers a niche makes a similar good unit worthless. Wat.
Guess Franz is trash because Seth exists. That's obviously not true.

Not to mention Physic is the only important healing magic, everything else is "nice to have" at best. Restore is mostly niche and Fortify has low range which doesn't bode well with mages having gimped move.
Marianne trumps the other two Physic users in regards of utility because she gets Thoron for 3 range chip, Silence against siege tomes and has an easy time to get a mount thanks to her strength in Riding and eventually Lances.
Mercedes only offers healing spells while her offensive spells are very basic. She just gets different 1-2 range spells which doesn't do much.
Dorothea suffers a lot from the recruitment mechanic because her preferred skills are Swords and Reason. Aka she stars with E Faith. Despite having a budding Talent that weakness in Faith makes it a lot harder to get Physics access early on which is why she is an entire tier below the other two.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

She was a meh recruit on hard, but rallies help a lot on maddening, and she's the best rallybot in the game.

Rallying is very good on Maddening but actual units are simply better. Annette doesn't do anything beyond that as her stats are bad and her spell list offers nothing.
Ignatz is similar. He has only Rally Spd but Deadeye + his talent can be fairly useful to trigger the boss in Ch.5 or aggro the AI.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Bernadetta is too low. She gets one of the best arts in the game, vengeance.

Other units can kill without relying on elaborate setups. Vengeance is very overrated and without Blessing her lack of durability will get her killed.
Bernadetta is more carried by her good skill affinities in Lance, Bow and Riding. There might be some niche setup where Vengeance Bernadetta can kill bosses in conjunction pass but Flying + Stride + Warp is a lot easier to pull off.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Cyril is too low

He is a student who has a recruitment lock till Ch.5 and his stats aren't even that great either. That's pretty bad.
PBV is good and so are his many skill preferences but compared to everyone above him there is very little he brings to the table in exchange for his downsides. At the very least Raphael has some uses with Rally Str and being rather bulky (though much worse than Dedue or Catherine).

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31 minutes ago, Shiki said:

Ignatz is similar. He has only Rally Spd but Deadeye + his talent can be fairly useful to trigger the boss in Ch.5 or aggro the AI.

Ignatz learns Deadeye?

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I don’t think it’s fair to place Dorothea in the same tier as CF/SS early boots access and 2 rally bots(who will eventually fall off later on), she still has Thoron at base for 3 range chip and it only takes 2-3 chapters to get her Faith to C rank for Physic which isn’t terribly late considering you can recruit her as soon as chapter 7 and once Dorothea gets Meteor she’ll outclass Mercedes who learns nothing valuable but Physic.

 I feel like Marianne should be 1 tier higher, Dorothea should be in the same tier as Mercedes, Hilda and Ferdinand should be lower considering their recruitment conditions and Sylvain should be way higher (literally free if you’re playing F!Byleth and his paralogue is one of the best in the game: early Relic, Speedwing, Energy Drop and Magic staff along with many useful items in one chapter)

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3 hours ago, Shiki said:

@Silly tbh Authority weakness is a lot more stomachable than other flaws. The best battalions are usually at B rank and fliers don't have the greatest selection to begin with (best is Cichol or the BE exclusive Pegasus). It is also one of the few skills where Byleth is guaranteed to have proficiency at, meaning it's a lot easier to raise than say specific weapon skills.

In general I would say the females tend to be a lot better because a better earlygame matters more. Flying on some of those early paralogues makes it much easier to get the full rewards and the males can't do any of it until they reach the threshold for Advanced classes (which is significantly later). Darting Blow is a good boost to their offensive and allows them to carry heavier weapons.

Lategame performance is not that big of a deal considering at that point you have so many options to kill enemies despite them still being pretty scary. Of course Sylvain and Ferdinand with Swift Strikes can eliminate some of the more egregious enemies on Maddening but such enemies also usually get stomped by Brave weapons (unless it's War Masters which ... are a different beast all together).
Only Petra is the exception because as you said no Lance strength is already bad but she auto-levels Sword and Axe which is a lot worse. Not to mention she promotes to Thief which utterly destroys her durability in the long run. That is the reason why I put her below the two Cavaliers.

I would say aside from Lysithea either of the Physic users can be recruited at any point of time (which is why I put them higher than usual). They peak at C anyway and it is reached very quickly either way.
Same could be said for Linhardt though if you want another Warp user it's definetly more advisable to get him early. That being said he is one of the few students who ages like fine wine and can be recruited basically at any point during Part 1.

Authority weakness is actually a reasonably big deal because a sizable portion of your authority rank comes from combat (your units should never not have a battalion), and the weakness literally cuts your combat wexp in half. Units with a strength in authority can realistically hit B around the middle of the game without any training whatsoever. If you're neutral you can hit B with some training. If you're weak then boosting authority up to that point will come at a significant cost to your other ranks. This is especially relevant to Felix, who already requires more wexp to hit the good classes due to his suboptimal proficiencies.

Also, in the context of an efficient playthrough, Swift Strikes is an incredible tool, as it allows you to hit ORKO thresholds on strong units (especially bosses) significantly earlier. For reference, Swift Strikes + Lance of Ruin deals 12 more damage than Brave Axe+, even after factoring in an Axefaire boost, which goes a long way towards being able to kill bosses and other difficult enemies, especially since in an efficient playthrough your units will be gaining less exp than if you grinded through every map killing all the enemies. Versus a Brave Lance, the damage difference is even larger (relevant against enemies that have Axebreaker, such as Swordmasters).

Also you are completely wrong about Petra's thief class, as it has one of the better class growths. The enemy thief bonuses are +20 HP, +15 Str, +10 Dex, +15 Spd, +10 Def. This is an incredible stat spread that makes cross recruit Petra's stats pretty great. Many cross recruited students would be a lot better if their default class was thief.

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Annette would be easily in top five for me (A-tier) because of her strength, speed, resistance rally. 

The only units I usually recruit in maddening (aside of the free ones) are Ingrid, Annette, Petra, Hilda and Linhardt. 

 

Edit: If we take paralogues into account, then Lorenz and Sylvain are top too. 

EditII: Have not played Black Eagles yet in which Hilda is not recruitable. 

Edited by Ingrid Brandl Galatea
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I guess I'll weigh in as well. I'll start with the structure. To me, there appear to be too many tiers imo. The units in S and A aren't really that far apart, and the same can be said of D and E, so I think cutting down the number by 1 would help. That being said, I'll make my own adjustments and justify them as necessary: 

-S- 

  • Catherine, Sylvain, Ferdinand, Leonie, Hilda

-A-

  • Ingrid, Felix, Petra, Shamir, Lysithea

-B- 

  • Marianne, Mercedes, Lindhardt, Annette, Ignatz

-C-

  • Dorothea, Ashe, Bernadetta, Manuela, Cyril

-D-

  • Raphael, Caspar, Lorenz, Alois, Hanneman

S-Tier: Sylvain and Ferdinand are almost the same unit. In relevant stats, Sylvain has 1 more Strength at base, and their growths are nearly identical. The important bit is that they both get Swift Strikes, probably the best Combat Art in the game. They're basically pre-packaged Wyverns with a Brave Combat Art, and whether recruited early or late, they're fairly solid. Sylvain is slightly better since he has Ruined Sky and more Strength, but both of them should be able to meet necessary benchmarks. If you recruit them early, you can grab Death Blow as well, which is really strong with Swift Strikes. Leonie is slightly worse, but she makes up for the lack of flight with 4 range and +1 more Move as a Bow Knight. Also has Break Shot for debuffing and a Brave Combat Art in Point-Blank Volley. Pegasus Knight Hilda is probably the best early flier you can get, but she's on the low-end here imo.

A-Tier: I moved Ingrid down because I don't think she's in the same tier as those above. She doesn't auto-level Flying, and being able to use Relic Lances means nothing when that's true of any unit in the game. She's solid, but not top priority by any means, especially considering she should stay unrecruited as long as possible to circumvent her garbage Strength growth. I think Lysithea is incredibly overrated. You're basically forced to early recruit her to take advantage of Warp, and you only have 1 use until 20. After that, Lysithea lags behind the rest of your units at 4 Move, so her offensive potential is limited on larger maps. Her Warp is long-range enough to make up for it, but it's not enough to make her top-tier imo. 

B-Tier: Lindhardt, Mercedes, and Marianne are mostly the same, give or take a few. Their primary use is Physic, and anything on top of that is just a bonus. Lindhardt gets an alright-ranged Warp, Mercedes has a pretty nice AOE heal, and Marianne has the best Reason list (but no Strength in it, unfortunately). I can't justify putting them above the other units, but they're not bad. The next two are those with Rally Speed. The idea that Annette is bad because of her Reason list holds no weight whatsoever because she doesn't need it. Her Magic growth isn't much different from the other units (-5% compared to Hubert, -10% compared to Lysithea) and has more or less the same base Mag (same as Lys). Her Speed issues are negligible in the beginning since she also has significant lower Weight spells in comparison to Lys and Hubert. Her Lvl 10-20 is a bit worse, but this is also one of the easiest points in the game, so her Rally Strength/Speed utility more than makes up for it. At Level 20 though, she can go Wyvern and abuse Lightning Axe to great effect. Here's a comparison of Lysithea vs Annette in damage output. Both should have Fiendish Blow, and this is assuming they're recruited at Level 10. 

  • Level 20 Wyvern Rider Annette: 18(+3) Str, 21.5 Mag, 14(+3) Spd, 11.2 Res
  • Level 20 Bishop Lysithea: 8 Str, 23.4(+2) Mag, 16.5 Spd

Annette: Lightning Axe + Silver Axe+ - 21.5 Mag + 17 Mt + .3 * Res (11.2) + 5 Faire = 46.5 Mt (+6)

Lysithea: Hades Omega - 25.4 Mag + 18 Mt + 5 Faire = 48.4 Mt (+6) at 2 AS

As you can see, Annette isn't significantly worse in damage, but as a flier, she has far more capability to actually attack. This also gives you a flier with Rally Speed and Strength, so Annette is an incredibly versatile unit in this sense. I don't have much to say about Ignatz, but an early Rally Speed is nice, and as an Assassin, he doesn't have to worry about being attacked while using his utility (Break Shot, Seal Strength, Ward Arrow, or whatever else). He's at least better than the other Archers.

I don't have much to say on C or D tier, but I think Cyril is at least better than the jobbers in D because of his Skill Proficiencies and Point-Blank Volley. It's just enough to push him to C for me. 

 

 

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10 hours ago, Shiki said:

The tier list criteria

  • A unit will be rated on their performance only. Paralogues or Items will not flow in their evaluation.

Definitely 100% disagree on this notion, a recruitment tier list should 100% take this into consideration, considering quite a few units (SS route Hilda, Ashe, and Lorenz come to mind) are recruited either for their paralogue items or battalions. You might as well just call this a regular tier list (which only considers a unit's performance exclusively) and not a recruitment tier list, and there's already a thread for that.

Also re: Hilda, her performance in SS route is pretty poor due to her late join time, which imo should also be taken into consideration with her ranking, in addition to her great performance in BL route.

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11 hours ago, Shiki said:

Considering that Lysithea has warp monopoly at minimum for 4 chapters that puts her far above her. 

It does. But not at the top.

11 hours ago, Shiki said:

The fastest skips require Stride and Warp so that doesn't say much. Not to mention early on you only get a single Stride battalion which makes earlier Warp access even more important for efficent clears.

I think this deserves a chapter by chapter analysis. Let's assume Warp is obtained before ch6 for Lysithea, while Manuella can get it before ch 10(she needs 536 wexp if recruited early, that's between six and seven weeks with a solo focus. There are two weeks she gets access to on month 8, two on month 9, and 3 on month 10. So recruiting Lysithea provides warp for:

Ch 6: Allows jumping straight to the DK, genuinely useful. However, you likely at least want the march ring in an average run, and there are two stealable magic wands + a levin sword scattered about. Getting the march ring at the very least will take a handful of turns considering how out of the way it is. Depends where your priorities lie.

ch 7: Considering how wide the map is and there being two bosses, ~5 range warp only provides a marginal improvement. Two warpers can be a different story on BE; if my math is correct, this is close but unlikely unless you save scum Linhardt's tutoring.

Ch 8: Dancing + Stride provides a straight shot to the boss for any flier. Warp isn't needed.

Ch 9: Demonic beast chapter, pretty short no matter what. Warping can potentially save a turn, but it's not guaranteed. It makes very limited difference.

Then looking at the available paralogues:

Dedue: Haven't played that one on maddening. Warp gives access to the left part, but so does flying, and the best reward requirement is relatively lax. Can't say for certain though.

Lorenz: Boss is 13 spaces away from your closest deployment range. By that point you should have several reposition skills. Stride is enough and Warp does not serve any meaningful purpose.

Dorothea&Ingrid: Wide map that cannot be 1 turned, and where Lysithea will struggle to get in a position where she can provide the push to end the map due to low move. Difficult to say for sure, but initially I'd say very limited utility.

Sylvain: Rout map, only marginal utility from Warp.

Alois&Shamir: Boss is 16 spaces away from the closest deployment slot. Warp saves 1 turn as a result; there is a caveat however; you need to have Shamir recruited by ch7 for this paralogue to be accessible before you get a dancer. If you don't, then dance + stride is enough.

----
From that point on, you have a dancer
----

Sothis: Boss kill with three health bars. I'm unsure whether or not this one can be one turned with the use of warp. 2 turns without it seems reasonable. Can't say.

Ignatz&Raphael: Boss is in reach of flying + stride.

Felix: Pretty good one time utility to clear the south or southeast boss before the reinforcements start popping. Not indispensable but can save a turn or two.

Manuela&Hanneman: Boss is in reach of flying + stride.

Seteth&Flayn: Can be useful to reach the top left boss on turn 1. Dance + stride should be able to reach the other one, ie warp allows a 1 turn clear as opposed to a 2 turns one.

Catherine&Ashe: Actually unsure if this one is rout or defeat the bosses. If it's the latter, top left boss is ~12 spaces away with no obstacles, lower right is 13 spaces away, +1 for both if you want to stride them at once by targetting Rhea. With a dancer for the lower right and torches for vision, warp isn't necessary to 1 turn.

----

So overall, does early warp have utility, yes, definitely. But it very rarely saves more than one turn strictly in an ltc context, which is very specific. Could also have counted Flayn for the times where rescue + stride is enough, eh.
Outside of ltc, it's mostly a slight convenience at that point in the game. Thus I still say you put her too high.

11 hours ago, Shiki said:

Considering recruiting past Ch.5 is a trivial matter I don't see why are you assuming Lysithea has not Thyrsus.

It's interesting because my question instead is: why would she? Especially if she's primarily used for warp. It's in no way tied to her and Lorenz is not a free recruit. Assuming she gets it is an unfair advantage.

11 hours ago, Shiki said:

That's a nice pitfall you have here. So because you already have a unit that covers a niche makes a similar good unit worthless. Wat.
Guess Franz is trash because Seth exists. That's obviously not true. 

It's not hard to understand that certain niches don't need to be filled twice, especially not in a context where you can have fortify. If your question is "does Marianne add a lot to any team(as a healer)", my answer is a straight no.
Fortify doesn't have low range. Your average Mercedes starts with 6 fortify range(when she gets it), meaning she covers 82 spaces around her at once, and grows to about 10 range over the course of the game. If you keep her positioned in between units, she covers your entire team in a majority of situations, not to mention fortify heals more. Thinking Physic is better past the early midgame makes no sense to me. It remains useful to reach stragglers, but Fortify covers a massive part of its utility and also provides a lot more, as well as twice the exp per use to increase its own range faste. If you have a choice between spending a deployment slot on a unit with Physic or one with Fortify, in my mind there's no question, and frankly I don't see how there is in yours.
Thoron access is nice but 3 range chip isn't that special(four once you get the Caduceus is another thing, but will she get it over your main magic users?). Siege tomes are exceedingly rare and by the point they show up you have Manuela for free for a long time.

11 hours ago, Shiki said:

Rallying is very good on Maddening but actual units are simply better. Annette doesn't do anything beyond that as her stats are bad and her spell list offers nothing.
Ignatz is similar. He has only Rally Spd but Deadeye + his talent can be fairly useful to trigger the boss in Ch.5 or aggro the AI.

Considering I rarely use rallying myself, I'm in no position to argue against this, even though I see the benefits.
Ignatz doesn't get Deadeye.

11 hours ago, Shiki said:

Other units can kill without relying on elaborate setups. Vengeance is very overrated and without Blessing her lack of durability will get her killed.

Others, but not all of them, I'm not asking you to put her at the top, just recognize her ability as a combat unit, which her current placement doesn't reflect at all. And there is nothing elaborate about using a gambit on turn 1. Vengeance is factually the strongest art in the game by miles, and a majority of characters lack durability on Maddening, getting ORKOed is exceedingly common. It is a weakness that this setup stops her from taking advantage of blessing as a survival tool, admittedly. But in a game with canto it's not that hard to make her kills safe.

11 hours ago, Shiki said:

He is a student who has a recruitment lock till Ch.5 and his stats aren't even that great either. That's pretty bad.
PBV is good and so are his many skill preferences but compared to everyone above him there is very little he brings to the table in exchange for his downsides. At the very least Raphael has some uses with Rally Str and being rather bulky (though much worse than Dedue or Catherine).

Cyril is a free combat unit that kills for almost the entire game assuming you tutor him on his join month, (at worse, he provides 3 range chip for a month). That is not something every character above him can say, so it's inane to put him that low. But again I don't see the point of him even being on the list, so I'll drop this.

Edited by Cysx
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11 hours ago, Ari Chan said:

I don’t think it’s fair to place Dorothea in the same tier as CF/SS early boots access and 2 rally bots(who will eventually fall off later on), she still has Thoron at base for 3 range chip and it only takes 2-3 chapters to get her Faith to C rank for Physic which isn’t terribly late considering you can recruit her as soon as chapter 7 and once Dorothea gets Meteor she’ll outclass Mercedes who learns nothing valuable but Physic.

 2-3 chapters late is a rather big flaw considering either Marianne and Mercedes can have it much earlier with some investment or just come with it at default with. Dorothea absolutely requires you to recruit her early for Physic access otherwise she simply comes too late to be a good healer.
Combat mages ... are just not good.

8 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

If you recruit them early, you can grab Death Blow as well, which is really strong with Swift Strikes. Leonie is slightly worse, but she makes up for the lack of flight with 4 range and +1 more Move as a Bow Knight. Also has Break Shot for debuffing and a Brave Combat Art in Point-Blank Volley. Pegasus Knight Hilda is probably the best early flier you can get, but she's on the low-end here imo.

Death Blow seems a bit of a stretch considering we want to clear the maps fast and Brigand is definitely an inferior choice to the Cavalier. Plus they get more Lance WEXP which helps to get Swift Strikes faster.

8 hours ago, Lunarly said:

Definitely 100% disagree on this notion, a recruitment tier list should 100% take this into consideration, considering quite a few units (SS route Hilda, Ashe, and Lorenz come to mind) are recruited either for their paralogue items or battalions. You might as well just call this a regular tier list (which only considers a unit's performance exclusively) and not a recruitment tier list, and there's already a thread for that.

Here's something you should consider:
Recruiting students in your free time is basically a given anyway as you want the extra items and EXP from paralogues. Past Ch.5 you have full access to all the support-building mechanics that don't require AP and considering the paralogues pay themselves 90% of the time there is very little reason not to do so.

This list mostly serves to highlight which units should be recruited asap while pointing out some who can still perform good enough if recruited later.
Take Lorenz for example. You really don't get anything from recruiting him early and you would have gotten more mileage out of someone else like Sylvain or Catherine. You have plenty of time to get recruit him before Ch.7 anyway so why would someone want to waste the very limited support resources in the earlygame on him?
LoR access is trivial, too, considering Sylvain is thirsty enough to bring it to you for free.

The only real question is whether I should penalize Ferdinand and Caspar for wasting Byleth's skill EXP which does matter and I didn't consider that before. It's basically the same thing as FE7 Geitz and most lists tend to penalize him for that.

12 hours ago, eclipse said:

Ignatz learns Deadeye?

I should sleep more.

10 hours ago, Silly said:

Also you are completely wrong about Petra's thief class, as it has one of the better class growths. The enemy thief bonuses are +20 HP, +15 Str, +10 Dex, +15 Spd, +10 Def. This is an incredible stat spread that makes cross recruit Petra's stats pretty great. Many cross recruited students would be a lot better if their default class was thief. 

I really should sleep more.

Guess the first change will be to move Sylvain and Ferdinand up while dropping Felix. I guess Shamir, too, considering she comes rather late though I would argue that Shamir > Felix for her earlier access to +2 range bows and having actually good weapon ranks to work with.

EDIT:

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Ch 6: Allows jumping straight to the DK, genuinely useful. However, you likely at least want the march ring in an average run, and there are two stealable magic wands + a levin sword scattered about. Getting the march ring at the very least will take a handful of turns considering how out of the way it is. Depends where your priorities lie.

The wands are fairly inconsequential, Levin Sword is buyable later and more of a gimmick.
It's possible to warp someone to the March Ring chest and move towards to the DK with Stride. But tbh the March Ring costs probably too many turns as it is worth.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Ch 8: Dancing + Stride provides a straight shot to the boss for any flier. Warp isn't needed.

... where are you getting the Dancer from? Warp is absolutely relevant to reach Solon.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Ch 9: Demonic beast chapter, pretty short no matter what. Warping can potentially save a turn, but it's not guaranteed. It makes very limited difference.

There are beasts on the NW and NE corner which are not in range of strided fliers. You can reach one with a Dancer but for the other Warp is your best bet.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Dedue: Haven't played that one on maddening. Warp gives access to the left part, but so does flying, and the best reward requirement is relatively lax. Can't say for certain though. 

It's kill boss and warping a strided flier towards the boss cuts at least a turn.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Lorenz: Boss is 13 spaces away from your closest deployment range. By that point you should have several reposition skills. Stride is enough and Warp does not serve any meaningful purpose.

On the other hand Warp enables the same thing as flying + stride so how does that speak against it?

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Dorothea&Ingrid: Wide map that cannot be 1 turned, and where Lysithea will struggle to get in a position where she can provide the push to end the map due to low move. Difficult to say for sure, but initially I'd say very limited utility.

Warping Ingrid towards the escape point save turns regardless though.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Sylvain: Rout map, only marginal utility from Warp.

Actually no. Killing the bosses on the exits makes it easy to manipulate the central thieves to move towards a specific one which will save turns. Bonus points for clumping up and making them susceptible to a gambit wipe.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Alois&Shamir: Boss is 16 spaces away from the closest deployment slot. Warp saves 1 turn as a result; there is a caveat however; you need to have Shamir recruited by ch7 for this paralogue to be accessible before you get a dancer. If you don't, then dance + stride is enough.

I mean either you clear it ASAP (where a Dancer is out of the question) or you might as well wait until Alois is recruited for the extra battalion.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

From that point on, you have a dancer

Every paralogue except Ashe+Catherine and Seteth+Flayn is unlocked by month 8 so you actually don't have a Dancer at this point. Never mind you get your Dancer at Week 3 (pretty almost at end of the month) so technically even those two have not a Dancer for their earliest clears.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

It's interesting because my question instead is: why would she? Especially if she's primarily used for warp. It's in no way tied to her and Lorenz is not a free recruit. Assuming she gets it is an unfair advantage.

On the flip side why should one not take account of it? Lysithea for Warp use doesn't lock her out of Thyrsus nor does she monopolize its use over others.
This doesn't make any sense.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

t's not hard to understand that certain niches don't need to be filled twice, especially not in a context where you can have fortify.

It astounds me that you are not realizing what kind of logic fallacy you're commiting here.

So Marianne is supposedly bad because you have a healer on the other routes. Even though she is capable of doing the same thing as your current healer. Never mind that she will be on a higher level than your current one as the exp gain of healers is low and auto-leveling utterly eclipses it.
Guess I have to demote Mercedes, too, considering she has the same issue.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Fortify doesn't have low range. Your average Mercedes starts with 6 fortify range(when she gets it), meaning she covers 82 spaces around her at once, and grows to about 10 range over the course of the game. If you keep her positioned in between units, she covers your entire team in a majority of situations, not to mention fortify heals more. Thinking Physic is better past the early midgame makes no sense to me. It remains useful to reach stragglers, but Fortify covers a massive part of its utility and also provides a lot more, as well as twice the exp per use to increase its own range faste. If you have a choice between spending a deployment slot on a unit with Physic or one with Fortify, in my mind there's no question, and frankly I don't see how there is in yours.

6 range. Cool.
All the mounted units have already moved 11-13 spaces away from her though. What move have healers again? 4 (5 as a gremory).
Physic is better because of its range. You can actually reach your wounded units which is something mages in this game struggle to do.
Fortify is not that great and you are grossly overestimating its uses.

1 hour ago, Cysx said:

Others, but not all of them, I'm not asking you to put her at the top, just recognize her ability as a combat unit, which her current placement doesn't reflect at all. And there is nothing elaborate about using a gambit on turn 1. Vengeance is factually the strongest art in the game by miles, and a majority of characters lack durability on Maddening, getting ORKOed is exceedingly common. It is a weakness that this setup stops her from taking advantage of blessing as a survival tool, admittedly. But in a game with canto it's not that hard to make her kills safe.

It's perfectly reflected.
Using a gambit wastes a unit's turn and there are certaintly better things to do then to apply a weak safety net so you can enable someone to kill. It is also bold to assume that Vengeance is the strongest art when Swift Strikes with Relic weapons, Atrocity and Raging Storm exists which also require no setup.

Edited by Shiki
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Shamir's best trait is her really good early damage. She starts with 18 Str and Bowfaire, and due to her base A bow rank she will likely be the only unit you have that can use a Silver Bow for a while. She also has the Lance rank to easily go into Pegasus Knight if you want to trade damage for mobility.

Her growths aren't the best though, being below average in both speed and strength, and her base speed of 14 is okay but not incredible for this point in time. I found that she was often missing out on doubling as result, which made her a useful midgame unit but not spectacular. I assume that with a few stat boosters fixing her speed she would be able to remain useful for the entire game (or at least most of it), or alternatively you can keep her in Sniper forever for Hunter's Volley, which would also solve her speed issues (at the cost of only having 5 move).

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1 hour ago, Silly said:

due to her base A bow rank she will likely be the only unit you have that can use a Silver Bow for a while.

That's B rank though, many should be getting close if not already be there; and silver isn't freely available at that point unless you focused on prof level really hard. Unless she comes with one, I don't remember this much.

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

The wands are fairly inconsequential, Levin Sword is buyable later and more of a gimmick.
It's possible to warp someone to the March Ring and skip the right part of the chapter while you stride towards DK. Buttbh the March Ring costs probably too many turns as it is worth.

The wands are really good for people who kill with magic combat arts, and obviously for mages. You do get two more but it's nice to grab those. They're not essential, admittedly.
And yes, warp can be used that's way. It's a slight time saver.
The march ring is probably the best accessory in the game(Thyrsus being another contender)

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

... where are you getting the Dancer from? Warp is absolutely relevant to reach Solon.

Whoops, very true. Let's see then...
... He is 14 spaces away. So no, Warp isn't.
With that being said, you can't attack the boss before turn 3, can you? That's a genuine question.

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

There are beasts on the NW and NE part which is not in range of strided fliers. You can reach one with a Dancer but for the other Warp is your best bet. 

Yes, but a single unit cannot one turn them. Aka you're providing one more attack and it's not guaranteed to save a turn at all.

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

It's kill boss and warping a strided flier towards the boss cuts at least a turn. 

All right then, boss is 17 spaces away... yes, it cuts a turn.

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

On the other hand Warp enables the same thing as flying + stride so how does that speak against it?

?
Because there's no opportunity cost to stride as opposed to recruiting Lysithea early? And we're discussing about how good of a recruit she is?

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

Warping Ingrid save turns regardless though. 

Not necessarily. She needs a boost to movement to reach the goal without triggering reinforcements that are guaranteed to kill her. Giving her an early lead only means she'll have to wait.
She could bait said reinforcements and then go around them I suppose, but that doesn't sound exceedingly faster.
... and it doesn't save "turns". At best it saves one.

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

Actually no. Killing the bosses on the exits makes it easy to manipulate the central thieves to move towards a specific one which will save turns. Bonus points for clumping up and making them susceptible to a gambit wipe. 

I've never seen them not move northeast even when they had a choice and the boss was dead(which obviously is the worst case scenario), but all right, it can reasonably save one turn.

You've kind of jumped right into the trap I didn't intend to put there thus far though; is this an ltc tier list? Does saving one turn on any map actually matter?

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

Actually no. Killing the bosses on the exits makes it easy to manipulate the central thieves to move towards a specific one which will save turns. Bonus points for clumping up and making them susceptible to a gambit wipe. 

No point, the battalion is bad by then. The only question is whether or not your Byleth will be at the appropriate level/ supportrank to recruit Shamir immediately, which is not a given at all.

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

Every paralogue except Ashe+Catherine and Seteth+Flayn is unlocked by month 8 so you actually don't have a Dancer at this point. Never mind you get your Dancer at Week 3 so technically even those two have not a Dancer.

You are absolutely right, I was mistaken on the month in which the contest occurs.
... that being said, let's not pretend for a second people run their paralogues on anything else than the last week.

... though that actually doesn't change any of my points since dancing wasn't necessary, so moving on.

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

On the flip side why should one not take account of it? Lysithea for Warp use doesn't single her out of Thyrsus nor does she monopolize its use over others.
This doesn't make any sense. 

Well, that's fair enough, but now the question is, are the rare times she'll get to use Thyrsus as an underleveled Bishop/Gremory really that much of a positive?

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

It astounds me that you are not realizing what kind of logic fallacy you're commiting here. 

So Marianne is supposedly bad because you have a healer on the other routes. Even though she can basically do same thing as your current healer. Never mind that she will be a higher level than your current one as the exp gain of healers is low.
Guess I have to demote Mercedes too considering she has the same issue where a 2nd healer is not required. 

Yes, the first part is what I am saying. When looking to recruit a character, you want to know how much they bring to the party; the fact of the matter is, Marianne doesn't bring that much, because you'll already have a physic healer and don't direly need two, there's nothing complicated about what I'm saying, whether you agree with it or not.
Exp gain of healers isn't low.
I'm gonna say this once and only once; this is not a battle, I'm not here to fight you.
Edit: I guess I shouldn't just drop that without explanation, though: I feel that ego is taking a larger place than it should in my opinion, in this exchange.
If I'm wrong about that, then that's my bad and I apologize.

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

6 range. Cool.
All the mounted units have already moved 11-13 spaces away from her though. What move have Healers again? 4.
Physic is better because of its range. You can actually reach your wounded units which is something mages in this game struggle to do. 

Fortify is not that great and you are grossly overestimating.

Right, how much does a strided bishop have? 9 move. So that's 15 range on turn one. Next turn? Your riders aren't strided, so they can move 7-8 range away, making it a 18 to 21 total, so at worst, assuming in neither case they cantoed a single space back and went their full move, you may have some of them out of range, at first, until more range comes in. And considering only Paladin has 8 move until master tier, at which point you'll be dealing with a Gremory at ~8 range instead...
Fortify allows the healing of more than one unit as a single action(and again, heals more). That is extremely valuable no matter how you look at it. You do have to push against its max range, but it's completely possible.

 

2 hours ago, Shiki said:

It's perfectly reflected.
Using a gambit wastes a unit's turn and there are certaintly better things to do then to apply a weak safety net. It is also bold to assume that Vengeance is the strongest art when Swift Strikes with Relic weapons, Atrocity and Raging Storm exists which require no setup to begin with.

You can't both say that blessing is and isn't valuable in the same breath, and I think it's generally accepted that it is, but hey, maybe I'm wrong.

I did say strongest, not best. Vengeance is (2 + HP lost) damage. It can easily reach >+40 damage post timeskip, and it keeps going up as you keep getting more HP. No other combat art gets that far, not even Atrocity.

39 minutes ago, Shiki said:

No, she joins with A rank. Yes, her and Catherine are filthy cheaters 

Yeah yeah, I meant the silver bow is B rank.

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31 minutes ago, Silly said:

Shamir's best trait is her really good early damage. She starts with 18 Str and Bowfaire, and due to her base A bow rank she will likely be the only unit you have that can use a Silver Bow for a while. She also has the Lance rank to easily go into Pegasus Knight if you want to trade damage for mobility.

Her growths aren't the best though, being below average in both speed and strength, and her base speed of 14 is okay but not incredible for this point in time. I found that she was often missing out on doubling as result, which made her a useful midgame unit but not spectacular. I assume that with a few stat boosters fixing her speed she would be able to remain useful for the entire game (or at least most of it), or alternatively you can keep her in Sniper forever for Hunter's Volley, which would also solve her speed issues (at the cost of only having 5 move).

Earliest Silver Bow is Ch.7 I think which you get from a side quest involving her. I don't think by Ch.6 you can unlock the option to forge Silvers from Steel.

But I would argue both her and Felix occupy the same bow niche but the latter requires more work and needs to be recruited asap. Question does Felix's potential 2 chapter lead weigh more than Shamir's advantages? I would say no and his few stat leads from his growths are already diminished by his lack of Authority (Shamir even brings along a Fusillade battalion).
iirc it is generally agreed that people grow Speed carrots for gardening so her Spd issue shouldn't be hard solve.

25 minutes ago, Cysx said:

That's B rank though, many should be getting close if not already be there; and silver isn't freely available at that point unless you focused on prof level really hard. Unless she comes with one, I don't remember this much. 

No, she joins with A rank. Yes, her and Catherine are filthy cheaters

Edited by Shiki
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1 hour ago, Shiki said:

Death Blow seems a bit of a stretch considering we want to clear the maps fast and Brigand is definitely an inferior choice to the Cavalier. Plus they get more Lance WEXP which helps to get Swift Strikes faster.

Considering the number of maps that have some form of movement-reducing terrain for Cavaliers, you’re massively over exaggerating how much a Brigand will fall behind in comparison. More Lance WEXP is a drop in the bucket in comparison to +6 per attack permanently, so not sure why it’s relevant here. Since this list specifies this is efficient play and not LTC, I fail to see why this relatively minor detail at the easiest point in the game would matter at all. 

19 hours ago, Shiki said:

A unit will be rated on their performance only. Paralogues or Items will not flow in their evaluation.

 

1 hour ago, Shiki said:

On the flip side why should one not take account of it? Lysithea for Warp use doesn't lock her out of Thyrsus nor does she monopolize its use over others.
This doesn't make any sense.

These two statements conflict. If items are not a part of their evaluation, you should never take into account Thrysus’s extra range for any unit. Therefore, there is no reason to rank Lys assuming that she has it. 

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6 hours ago, Shiki said:

Here's something you should consider:
Recruiting students in your free time is basically a given anyway as you want the extra items and EXP from paralogues. Past Ch.5 you have full access to all the support-building mechanics that don't require AP and considering the paralogues pay themselves 90% of the time there is very little reason not to do so.

This list mostly serves to highlight which units should be recruited asap while pointing out some who can still perform good enough if recruited later.
Take Lorenz for example. You really don't get anything from recruiting him early and you would have gotten more mileage out of someone else like Sylvain or Catherine. You have plenty of time to get recruit him before Ch.7 anyway so why would someone want to waste the very limited support resources in the earlygame on him?
LoR access is trivial, too, considering Sylvain is thirsty enough to bring it to you for free.

Here's the thing, it's not efficient to recruit every single student, since this tier list follows Maddening mode (which means focusing on just a smaller amount of units and recruiting everyone means a lot of units will be neglected) and assumes efficiency. Also there's a contradictory point, you mention that why would you waste limited support resources early game, then you also mention that there's little reason to recruit everyone through supports?

Yes, there is no opportunity cost to recruit every single student but, most paralogues aren't worth doing and they count towards global turncount (efficiency tier lists also do take turncount into consideration fyi) so there is a big reason not to do certain paralogues (Sylvain, Lysithea/Ferdinand, Ignatz/Raphael paralogues come to mind as ones that don't offer enough to be worth going out of your way for).

Also, yeah there is a lot to gain from recruiting someone like Ashe or Lorenz early because you get more mileage off Thyrsus and Boots/Shoes of the Wind (misinterpretation), really the only student that's worth pilling all your support resources on early is Lysithea for Warp for any LTC runs. There literally is not much that separates this list from just a regular Unit Tier List that also focuses exclusively on performance, considering most unit tier lists also bring up recruitment as well (specifically with late-recruit students and KoS units). 

Lastly, if this is an efficiency tier list, it's not even worth going out of your way to recruit Ferdinand and Caspar because they lack a part 1 B support (Leonie's unlocks late but, she's better as a late recruit anyways). Also considering there are other cross-recruits/current house units that can do similar things to both of them.

Edited by Lunarly
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I think you're really overestimating how difficult it is to recruit students. It's not super hard to do full recruitment even of efficiency. Just explore a lot, plant flowers at every opportunity (something you should be doing anyways), and buy the cheap gifts every month.

Sure, you don't need to recruit every student, and it might not actually be worth it to recruit some of the worse ones, but if you wanted to you have more than enough resources to do so. The opportunity cost for recruiting is only significant for the first few chapters.

Also, Ferdinand is not difficult to recruit. Byleth ends up with more than enough free activity points to hit the weapon ranks that you need if you explore frequently, and Armor is a very desirable skill to train. Even if you didn't want to recruit Ferdinand, you will likely be spending spare points there anyways.

It takes 9 faculty training sessions to hit D+ armor (-1 for each two greats you get), which you can definitely spare. If you didn't start working on Armor until Ch 6 and tutor twice each explore, then you should already fill 8/9 sessions you need to hit D+. D+ is also the requirement it takes to recruit Ferdinand via stats (at C+ support), so recruitment in Ch 7 is quite realistic.

Even if you hold off on recruiting Ferdinand, he doesn't get any worse, since his default training is in two good skills and his autoleveled growth bonuses are good. It's very easy to hit C by the time you hit the timeskip (and as mentioned before this is a weapon rank you actively want to hit), meaning it is well within the realm of possibility to recruit Ferdinand anywhere between Ch 7 and Ch 12 without going out of your way at all.

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43 minutes ago, Lunarly said:

Yes, there is no opportunity cost to recruit every single student but, most paralogues aren't worth doing and they count towards global turncount (efficiency tier lists also do take turncount into consideration fyi) so there is a big reason not to do certain paralogues (Sylvain, Lysithea/Ferdinand, Ignatz/Raphael paralogues come to mind as ones that don't offer enough to be worth going out of your way for).

What? Sylvain is easily one of the best paralogues to do, especially on maddening. Early Lance of Ruin, Energy Drop, Speedwing. You cant cheese his paralogue in one turn with warp+stride like a few of the other ones, but it gives you a huge amount of early game benefit in a mode where that's the hardest part of the game.

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