Bad units that you still love using!

[Oso_Peluche]

Turns out half of my favorite units are considered bad and "unusable"! Who knew!

My memory of the older games is pretty fuzzy.

FE1:
Darros, I love pirates.
Dolph
Macellan

FE4:
Arden: I just love his character. I got a weakness for brutes with a heart of gold.

FE6:
Wade
Lot
Wendy
Wolt
Gonzales
Lilina
Dorothy
Sophia
Bors
Barthe
Honestly just add half of the cast here, the growth rates tend to just be bad.

Fe7
Lyn heard she was bad units but I always use her.
Nino! I always use her no matter what, always promote her at 20.
The Archers, didn't know the GBA archers were considered bad until a few weeks ago
Dorcas and Bartre! 

Fe8:
The Trainees! Again I always use them, and I always turn them into Super Trainees because I love the animations. The Tower is there, so I'm going to use it!
Forde, I heard people consider him the worse Cavalier ever? Weird, I never had a problem with him.

FE9/10
Brom
Fiona
Rolf
Astrid
Aran
Meg!
Mordercai (Is he bad? I heard some people just hate Laguz no matter what, but Mordecai is my favorite unit)

FE:A
Donnel, I don't know, he used to be seen as the Best UNit Ever, and now suddenly he's a bad unit. I don't keep track of things.

FE:Fates:
Rinkah, not going to lie, she's annoying to level.
Benny! Being the Husband, I force feed him all the stat boosters and turned him into a Dread Knight Was a never ending supply of crits.
Arthur!

Fe: 3 Houses

Are there any characters considered bad in this one? With the way class changes work and how you can just get a giant supply of stat boosters just by gardening you can easily patch up things up.
I guess I'll go with Raphael in this one since he's my favorite cheery pal.




 

Edited July 5, 2020 by Oso_Peluche

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, Oso_Peluche said:

Mordercai (Is he bad? I heard some people just hate Laguz no matter what, but Mordecai is my favorite unit)

Not in Path of Radiance. However, he took a hard hit in Radiant Dawn (as did most laguz, really).

3 hours ago, Oso_Peluche said:

Astrid

She's actually good in Path of Radiance, in case you don't know.

3 hours ago, Oso_Peluche said:

Donnel, I don't know, he used to be seen as the Best UNit Ever, and now suddenly he's a bad unit. I don't keep track of things.

I'd say that's because the hype subsided and people realized that he takes too much investment. Making matters worse, he has to deal with E rank twice, as he initially uses lances, which none of his other class options use.

3 hours ago, Oso_Peluche said:

Are there any characters considered bad in this one? With the way class changes work and how you can just get a giant supply of stat boosters just by gardening you can easily patch up things up.
I guess I'll go with Raphael in this one since he's my favorite cheery pal.

I would say Raphael is often considered bad - his lopsided growths ensure that even with the fact he's guaranteed at least two stats per level up, he struggles to stay relevant.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Since I don´t have many recollections from FE SD, Awakening and SoV and no particular opinion on FE TH units I can only give a few examples form Fates:

Mozu

Orochi

Benny

Hana (Is she a bad unit? I can´t tell whether it´s that or just Ryoma existing in the game)

Edited July 7, 2020 by Imuabicus

[Ultimage]

I've got a soft spot for archers/snipers so...
FE4 Jamke (if you keep his killer bow on him)
and FE9 Shinon (if you are like me and feed him all stat boosters on maniac and let him kill the dragons on the final map with the double bow lol)

[null]

Roger from the Archanea games. I don't know if he's a particularly bad unit, but I like his personality and his recruitment with Shiida in Shadow Dragon is hilarious. They even reference it in New Mystery as well.

Tanith in Path of Radiance. Her growths are terrible (I once had her level up with zero growth), but her ability to call in reinforcements can be useful for keeping enemies off my back when I'm trying to get across a map without being swarmed.

[StartingArcher]

For Thracia I love using Ronan and Callion. In 6 I like using Wolt and Ogier. In 7 I like using Wil. In the Archanea games I like Caesar and Radd. 

[RomanFlour]

Knoll from Sacred Stones. While you get him pretty late, he's your only real option for a Summoner unless you feel like training Ewan. From personal experience, his summons are incredibly useful for drawing enemy aggro, which is a rather useful ability to have in the upcoming chapters, including the first chapter you can use him due to him starting at level 10 and the ability to get a Master Seal near the starting location. Plus he can potentially chip in some nice ranged damage, even with the nerf to Dark Magic, and heal allies with staves. Summoner is also such a unique class, I'd love to see additional classes with unique skills in later games.

[Mylady]

A lot. I love training meh or average characters and turning them gods. Virion, Neimi, Marty, Natasha, Mozu, Donnel, Amelia, Meg, half of FE6 cast ...

 

On 7/20/2020 at 3:49 AM, StartingArcher said:

For Thracia I love using Ronan and Callion. In 6 I like using Wolt and Ogier. In 7 I like using Wil. In the Archanea games I like Caesar and Radd. 

Is Carrion considered really bad? He turned one of my best units...  

[TheChoZenOne]

Odin Dark because he has the best crit quotes ever for me to bench him. Plus hes my favorite FE character!! I always make him a grandmaster so he can be like his dad (Robin).

 

Spoiler

Yes he is my son in Awakening

 

[Whisky]

FE6 Binding Blade

Does Roy count? I like Roy.

Marcus and Zealot - obviously they’re not bad, but I like to use them past the point when they’re good.

Ellen - She isn’t bad, but she is outclassed by both Clarine and Saul.

Thany/Shanna is not bad.

Dieck - He isn’t bad at all, but I like to use him over Rutger

Lot

Tate - I’ve seen some people consider her bad? I don’t know why though.

Cecilia - This one depends on who you ask. I know there are people who consider her bad, though I don’t.

Garret - I don’t know if he’s considered bad or not but I like him.

Hugh - I kind of consider him underrated.

Douglas - Armours are terrible in this game but I love his purple armour (and his beard).

Zeiss - Is he considered bad? I think some people think so.

Yuno

 

FE7 The Blazing Sword

Guy

Lyn

Florina is not bad.

Dart - I don’t know what the conclusion was on him but I like him.

FE8 Sacred Stones

Joshua - I always have him kill Caellach. It feels wrong to kill him with anyone else.

Forde - So is he actually bad or is that just a meme? He’s the worst Cavalier (not counting Amelia) but that doesn’t make him a bad unit.

Tana - Not sure what the conclusion was here but I like her.

L’Arachel

Knoll - Is he actually considered bad? I thought that his summons were considered pretty useful and he can promote as soon as you get him

 

FE9 Path of Radiance

Ike - Apparently he is considered not good?

Volke

Tanith? - Someone else mentioned her but I didn’t know she was considered bad.

Captain Harr - I like him but apparently he isn’t good in this game?

Ranulf - Or was he only considered bad in RD?

Elincia - Not sure if she’s bad actually.

 

FE10 Radiant Dawn

Leonardo

Lucia

Soren

Ranulf

 

FE11 Shadow Dragon

Lorenz

FE15 Echoes

Python

Clive

Clair - I remember seeing her called bad one time and being surprised. Is she considered bad?

 

FE16 Three Houses

Ingrid - Depends on who you ask. I haven’t used her on Maddening so I’m not sure how good she is there but she’s great on Hard mode.

Seteth is not bad at all. He starts as a Wyvern Rider and learns Swift Strikes. He’s great.

Edited August 5, 2020 by Whisky

[GlitchWarrior]

On 8/5/2020 at 12:37 AM, Whisky said:

Ingrid - Depends on who you ask. I haven’t used her on Maddening so I’m not sure how good she is there but she’s great on Hard mode.

Ingrid is... debatable, to say the least. She's best when poached from the Blue Lions, as when they're not under your control units grow under the stats of their class, not their personal growths. It just so happens that generic Pegasus Knights have a ridiculous strength growth. She's still good on Azure Moon, just not AS good as if you let her grow on her own for a while (note that this is in terms of stats, her skill growths and class mastery won't be as high if poached).

[Lief]

I used Mozu on every single run in Fates, and while I personally don't think she's bad, plenty of people seem to see her as a waste of space. I roll her as an archer, which makes her durability a non-issue for the most part, and also gives her the big broken Quick Draw ability, that is basically a faire skill 15 levels before you get faire skills!. Naturally this turns her into a player phase God that does huge damage and doubles, not to mention the crit bonus in Sniper. Then she gets Bowfaire and it stacks with Quick Draw.

In Three Houses, I use all the in house students, including Ignatz (who's the best 'archer student' between Bernadetta and Ashe), Caspar, and Lorenz (extra mage that can heal, and has good movement and durability). I did drop Dedue though, as he returned a bit too late for my tastes.

[Magenta Fantasies]

On 6/2/2020 at 4:11 PM, Hawkwing said:

Arthur is also my favorite Fates character, thanks to his earnest desire to help others, steadfast attitude towards justice while not forcing his belief upon others, and how he never lets his unluckiness keep him down.

Those are all the same reasons I like Arthur. 😄 It seems life has it out for him, but nothing keeps him down. 

Like you, I never understood why people dislike Ricken (and Hayato by extension) so much. They’re decent in my book.

Shadow Dragon: Rickard. Julian is a much better thief, but I can’t help but be endeared to Rickard. I find him cute and charismatic. I wish he had more dialogue.

Fates: I don’t know if Nyx counts as a “bad unit.” She can be a very good unit, but it takes a lot of work and babysitting to make her one. I like her as a character, so I don’t mind the work.

Same goes for Mozu. I found her easier to level than Donnell, and she turned out to be a much better unit.

I’ve heard Odin’s growth rates are very hit or miss. He suffers from being too well-rounded, which I never thought was possible until Conquest. He has one of the highest stat ratings of any character in my army, but his stats are SO evenly spread that doesn’t deal enough damage to KO foes, and doesn’t have enough defense or resistance to weather hits. Promoting him to a dark flier didn’t help as much as I expected.

I’m surprised to see Virion on this topic. He was a decent unit for me (though I may have good luck with bow knights—Niles was one of my best units in Fates.)

[Shadow Mir]

30 minutes ago, Magenta Fantasies said:

Fates: I don’t know if Nyx counts as a “bad unit.”

I would say she absolutely is a bad unit. She has magic and speed as her only good growths, which doesn't do much good when you're Stormtrooper levels of inaccurate - after all, how hard you can hit means jack shit if you miss. Hell, I'd go so far as to say some of my more gimmicky child setups produced better mages than Nyx, because they could actually hit things. These reasons are why I consider her an absolute bottom-of-the-barrel unit, even in Conquest.

 

Edited August 17, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Magenta Fantasies]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

I would say she absolutely is a bad unit. She has magic and speed as her only good growths, which doesn't do much good when you're Stormtrooper levels of inaccurate - after all, how hard you can hit means jack shit if you miss. Hell, I'd go so far as to say some of my more gimmicky child setups produced better mages than Nyx, because they could actually hit things. These reasons are why I consider her an absolute bottom-of-the-barrel unit, even in Conquest.

 

Her skill is an issue (I have that issue with many of my magic users, including Odin and Dwyer) but it’s not insurmountable. Nyx’s defense is poor, but she defeats her opponents often enough that she rarely takes hits. She’s definitely at her best in player phase. I have her as a dark knight, and she’s a surprisingly good unit. This class helps balance her stats, gives her more movement, and when you get her to C-rank in swords, she makes excellent use of a Levin sword.

[Shadow Mir]

4 hours ago, Magenta Fantasies said:

I’m surprised to see Virion on this topic. He was a decent unit for me (though I may have good luck with bow knights—Niles was one of my best units in Fates.)

Simply put, archers in general tend to get the short straw because they're locked to bows, and the ones that join early tend to have crappy stats (Virion is not an exception to this).

2 hours ago, Magenta Fantasies said:

Her skill is an issue (I have that issue with many of my magic users, including Odin and Dwyer) but it’s not insurmountable. Nyx’s defense is poor, but she defeats her opponents often enough that she rarely takes hits. She’s definitely at her best in player phase. I have her as a dark knight, and she’s a surprisingly good unit. This class helps balance her stats, gives her more movement, and when you get her to C-rank in swords, she makes excellent use of a Levin sword.

Still, I find it very hard to justify investing in Nyx when her lack of accuracy haunts her forever, as though she's a magical Gonzales (in case you don't know, Gonzales is a character in Binding Blade that, while powerful, has TERRIBLE accuracy, since he's axe-locked [note that axes are really inaccurate in Binding Blade] and has low skill on top of that). That's not a gamble I can justify when Ophelia (Odin's daughter) is a much safer bet, as she can actually use stuff other than Fire without her accuracy plunging to the accuracy level of a Stormtrooper.

Edited August 17, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Magenta Fantasies]

35 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Simply put, archers in general tend to get the short straw because they're locked to bows, and the ones that join early tend to have crappy stats (Virion is not an exception to this).

Yes. I like that Fates turned that and some other typical FE unit expectations on their heads (Pre-promotes are actually great units? Archers are great units? Archers are better units than mages?!)

[Shadow Mir]

4 hours ago, Magenta Fantasies said:

Yes. I like that Fates turned that and some other typical FE unit expectations on their heads (Pre-promotes are actually great units? Archers are great units? Archers are better units than mages?!)

Exactly. That said, in general, archers tend to be less useful in enemy phase heavy games. They were also more useful than mages in Radiant Dawn, but that was more due to the nerfs mages got (most mages in Radiant Dawn were rather slow, both in terms of speed cap and growths; it doesn't help that most tomes are rather weak and that enemies in RD have higher resistance compared to the prior games). I honestly feel like Fates took cues from Radiant Dawn with regard to mages - most of them are lackluster for one reason or another, and as a result, magic isn't nearly as dominant as it was in Awakening. Going back to Fates and archers, I find Setsuna and Niles to be rather lackluster. High speed is helpful, but it alone does not a good unit make. Those two tend to not have enough power behind their hits (shockingly, Setsuna also has issues with accuracy).

[Whisky]

6 hours ago, Magenta Fantasies said:

Yes. I like that Fates turned that and some other typical FE unit expectations on their heads (Pre-promotes are actually great units? Archers are great units? Archers are better units than mages?!)

Hold up. Pre-promotes were great long before Fates. I’d say there are great pre-promotes in more games than not.

[Benice]

6 hours ago, Magenta Fantasies said:

Pre-promotes are actually great units?

Hold the phone, aren't they great in most games? When I think of "Best units" in most games, a prepromote comes to mind; FE4 has Sigurd, FE6 has Perceval, FE7 has Marcus, FE8 has Seth, FE9 has Titania, FE10, deprending on your opinion of prepromote, has Ike and Haar, FE11 has Wolf and Sedgar, FE12 has Etzel, FE13 has Frederick, FE14 has Camilla/Reina/Ryoma, FE15 has Deen... I'd presume that FE5 has a host of great prepromotes too, if Dagdar and Eyvel are any indication.

If anything, in most games, the only thing that can make a prepromote bad is class; their base stats usually are good enough to justify using 'em even if they won't grow super fast. (Of course, Archanaea has some prepromotes with low bases, but that's more of the exception than the rule.)

Edited August 18, 2020 by Benice

[whase]

14 hours ago, Whisky said:

Hold up. Pre-promotes were great long before Fates. I’d say there are great pre-promotes in more games than not.

 

14 hours ago, Benice said:

Hold the phone, aren't they great in most games? When I think of "Best units" in most games, a prepromote comes to mind;

I believe whether a pre-promote is good or not also depends on what mode you're playing, the amount of units you want to use, and various other playstyle options. It might sound counter-intuitive, but pre-promotes are worse on lower difficulties, since you get plenty of experience your other units are usually quick to level and usually have surpassed the pre-promote before you get them. The fact that I usually don't use more than 8 units in my teams makes pre-promotes even worse. Units like Saleh and Perceval usually have lower stats than the rest of my team by the time I get them. And every point of experience I give to Marcus, Seth or Titania in the early game seems like a waste, because my lvl 1 unit would have gained so much more.

So yeah, depends on playstyle. I will admit that for higher difficulty or ltc runs they probably have far more value than most lvl 1's.

[Benice]

1 hour ago, whase said:

I believe whether a pre-promote is good or not also depends on what mode you're playing, the amount of units you want to use, and various other playstyle options.

The thing is that regardless of difficulty, higher base stats can still contribute more than less base stats-I do agree that in easier games, such as PoR or Sacred Stones, you  hardly need good units unless you're playing efficiently, but if you are, higher bases generally mean less investement, which means that you can instead feed more kills to a good unit like Keiran or Oscar, for example.

1 hour ago, whase said:

And every point of experience I give to Marcus, Seth or Titania in the early game seems like a waste, because my lvl 1 unit would have gained so much more.

The thing is that if I'm using five units, (Ike, Mia, Boyd, Oscar, Kieran) and I give each of them an equal amount of kills, they will all level up fairly quickly. If I replaced one of those units with Titania, though, then I wouldn't have to feed her as many kills because she's already good, so I'd be able to allocate more kills to, say, Kieran so he can promote sooner.

1 hour ago, whase said:

Units like Saleh and Perceval usually have lower stats than the rest of my team by the time I get them.

But they can still contribute to the team if there are enough deployment slots-They require literally 0 investment to be an asset, even if they're not MVPs.

1 hour ago, whase said:

I will admit that for higher difficulty or ltc runs they probably have far more value than most lvl 1's.

I'd agree- although usually when I'm talking about good/bad units, I'm talking about it in the context of an efficient playthrough-I.E, I wouldn't consider Lute really good because she can arena abuse until level 20 then promote in chapter 6.

 

[Whisky]

3 hours ago, whase said:

 

I believe whether a pre-promote is good or not also depends on what mode you're playing, the amount of units you want to use, and various other playstyle options. It might sound counter-intuitive, but pre-promotes are worse on lower difficulties, since you get plenty of experience your other units are usually quick to level and usually have surpassed the pre-promote before you get them. The fact that I usually don't use more than 8 units in my teams makes pre-promotes even worse. Units like Saleh and Perceval usually have lower stats than the rest of my team by the time I get them. And every point of experience I give to Marcus, Seth or Titania in the early game seems like a waste, because my lvl 1 unit would have gained so much more.

So yeah, depends on playstyle. I will admit that for higher difficulty or ltc runs they probably have far more value than most lvl 1's.

I disagree for a few reasons. Not all pre-promotes are good obviously but I think almost every game has at least one pre-promote that can’t be considered anything but great, on any difficulty and any play style. Your play style might be that you don’t prefer to use them (which is fine), but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t still be good if you did. I think the only play style that would result in pre-promotes not being good is if you grind all of your units to high level early on.

On lower difficulties, pre-promotes should perform even more effectively against enemies for longer with their base stats alone, without gaining any levels.

I think that using pre-promotes actually helps with experience, rather than hurting. I don’t recommend only using pre-promotes or only un-promoted units, but a mix of both. Pre-promotes don’t need any investment to become good. I think it’s a big advantage for a unit to join already good without needing any investment. If you use a pre-promote and an un-promoted unit instead of two un-promoted units then you can give more experience to the un-promoted unit making them more likely to be as good as the pre-promote. If you used both un-promoted units, then they would need more experience (and promotion items), which means they won’t be able to be as good in the long run.

You mentioned Percival which is just confusing because he’s arguably one of the best units in the series. Like I said earlier, there are pre-promotes that aren’t good, but most games have a few great ones. FE7 has Marcus, Hawkeye, Pent, and Harken. At the very least, I don’t think anyone would argue that Pent isn’t great on lower difficulties (or higher). FE8 has Seth and FE9 has Titania. And FE6, I would consider a few other pre-promotes very good as well, but it has Percival. I don’t think it’s possible for one of the Cavaliers to be as strong as him when he joins. He can join in Ch 13 or 15. A level 20/1 Allen or Lance still won’t be as good as base level Percival. You don’t even get a second Knights Crest before getting Percival. You can train up one of the Cavaliers and use Percival once you get him, or even if you use two Cavaliers, you can then use all three. Even if the Cavaliers were better than Percival (which they’re not, even without HM bonuses, Percival has amazing base stats), Percival still joins with good stats in a good class without needing any investment. Percival is always great in any context.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Whisky

[ping]

I think a good way to put it is that early prepromotes are less important on lower difficulties. First few chapters of FE6 without Marcus are a shitshow on HM - but on NM, your initial scrub squad measures up to the enemies well enough. Marcus obviously does better than on HM, too; I think he one-rounds pretty consistently with iron weapons, but compared to HM, you're hardly punished for not using him.

And higher XP gain does make mid- and lategame prepromotes less stand-out than they are on HM. If your growth units have like 5 level-ups more under their belt when the likes of Saleh and Pent join, those prepromotes will be a lot less impactful than they are on hard difficulties.

[Whisky]

2 hours ago, ping said:

I think a good way to put it is that early prepromotes are less important on lower difficulties. First few chapters of FE6 without Marcus are a shitshow on HM - but on NM, your initial scrub squad measures up to the enemies well enough. Marcus obviously does better than on HM, too; I think he one-rounds pretty consistently with iron weapons, but compared to HM, you're hardly punished for not using him.

True, the game is easier to beat on lower difficulties without the help of pre-promotes, but it’s also easier to beat with pre-promotes. If pre-promotes are good on higher difficulties, they will only be more effective against weaker enemies and requiring no investment, instead joining for free with good stats, still makes them good. In fact, the argument could be made; why bother investing into and training low level growth units if you get pre-promotes for free with good enough base stats to dominate most enemies?

Quote

And higher XP gain does make mid- and lategame prepromotes less stand-out than they are on HM. If your growth units have like 5 level-ups more under their belt when the likes of Saleh and Pent join, those prepromotes will be a lot less impactful than they are on hard difficulties.

I’m not sure I agree with this point. All of the games from FE6-9 have some pre-promotes with very good base stats that will be hard for growth units to catch up to. Like Pent? What do you mean he’s less impactful? He joins for free with no investment and and amazing base stats and weapon ranks. A few extra levels won’t give Erk as high stats as Pent. If the argument is that you don’t need Pent because Erk is good enough, the same argument could be made in reverse, you don’t need to bother giving exp and a promotion item to Erk because Pent is good enough and joins for free without needing investment.

 

edit:

Not all pre-promotes in FE6-9 were good though. There are some I would consider bad. Maybe the difference is that all pre-promotes are good in Fates?

Edited August 18, 2020 by Whisky