Tier List Version Pi (3.141592654)

[ussgordoncaptain]

Oh hey people mentioned me and I just found out today.

Why did Vykan12 post under a different name, you would think he'd prefer the status of being a well known individual.

On 1/30/2022 at 5:03 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

Jill being only in the third tier, and only three spots above Mordecai, jumps out as very wrong to me. Wyvern is broken in this game. Jill has a case to be the best unit in the Dawn Brigade side of the game (I think she probably falls just short due to the extra exp she requires compared to Volug/Sothe, but there's a case).

I do like how the Reddit list just separates out the royals/herons. I don't like how it has Boyd above Gatrie, that seems almost actively nonsensical. I love move, but 1 move is not worth 3 str, 2 spd, and 9 def.

So Wyvern is a totally broken class, but Jill joins about 8 levels lower than she "should" to make up for this. Zihark and Volug each have strictly superior availability to Jill and join 7-9 level's higher.  If Jill joined as a level 3 dragonmaster with 30 Hp/16 strength/4 mag/17 skill/21 speed/19 luck/18 def/8 res there would be no question that Jill is a god. It's also why transfers Jill makes such a big difference, without transfers Jill fails to hit some early benchmarks which make it harder to gain exp, which make it harder to hit later benchmarks and this compounds. With transfers you hit the early benchmarks which let you hit the later benchmarks and snowball the other direction. 
Since flight and move are the only 2 stats you can't rig LTC's like Chiki's who rigs like a maniac are able to get Jill to snowball. if you watch love-death's playthrough you'll see that he got Jill to gain strength in 13 out of 14 levels, and she capped her defense by level 11, something that is exceptionally unlikely given that Jill has an 11% defense growth with 0 stats capped. (If you do GM paragon + don't feed laura you can get Jill to 20/10 instead of 18/11 which still is the same) I contend that if you're not rigging on the level of Chiki/Love death, you aren't going to see a Jill that can actually 1 round enemies in 3-12 without an early promotion, and if you do early promote you aren't going to 1 round in part 4. 

Jill's not merely not the best member in the dawn brigade, she's probably not even top  5, 1. Sothe, 2. Zihark, 3.Rafiel, 4. Volug, 5. Nailah

On 1/30/2022 at 10:40 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I find myself agreeing with the Reddit list more. In particular, I agree with all the top 5 (although, not necessarily in the order presented).

 

I remember a recent YouTube video by Mekkah that looked at "Unit Stonks" - basically, how valuable each unit is on a chapter-by-chapter basis. I have to imagine that sort of approach would be especially suited to a game like Radiant Dawn, with how broken-up the availability is.

There is an approach to that called numerical tiering it produces some interesting results due to the way radiant dawn is structured as a game, many units just end up sucking for large parts of the game. The thing to realize is that radiant dawn is more like 2.5 short games Smashed into one, rather than being one long game. Edward and Boyd both have high availability but they both exist in entirely separate games practically speaking. Part 2 feels like a weird set of trial maps where only some of the units actually feed into part 3, (while others like Kieran just suffer). 
Numerical tiering is roughly equal to a units availability*average quality, so it's really important to be both available and useful, if you fail on either axis you end up falling low.

On 1/31/2022 at 10:05 PM, SnowFire said:

I'm willing to believe that somebody did a Hard Mode LTC that didn't use Jill, that's not weird.  I *might* even believe that the "fastest"  LTC is done without much Jill, although I'm skeptical.  I don't believe that Jill "kinda sucks" in an "LTC tier list" unless the tier list is literally just listing the units that get used in the current "best" LTC playthrough (and that's not a tier list then, that's just a list list IMO).  If someone decides they're LTCing and also trying to make use of Jill, she'll provide good use in maps like 3-12 where throwing a BEXP'd Jill in the middle of a sea of enemies will clear the map objective in no time (especially with some light save/load cheezing if necessary for survival's sake).  Meanwhile a unit like Meg is just flat deadweight that slows your LTC down if you try to use her for some reason, and a unit like Nolan - while solid - has infantry move and thus simply can't provide tricks like Jill flying through the 3-6 swamp.  Basically, even with LTC "rules", you can still tier characters based on whether using them speeds you up or slows you down.  Jill is, at absolute worst, a character who doesn't speed you up enough because the turns spent feeding her XP in act 1 don't pay off with enough turns saved in act 3 - but this is still substantially better than the bystanders of the world that slow you down even more and the laggards who actively hinder the ability to win the map under LTC rules.  So Jill should outpace them even if you want to give whoever ussgordoncaptain used all S ranks, Jill would just be a credible alternate at A rank or the like, and the many actively bad units for LTC will fill up D, E, and F.

---

Also, while I'm here, that Reddit list linked above is overall pretty good, but it used to be better.  They did a set of "resubmissions" where controversial picks could be re-arranged, and they generally went the wrong direction in the resubmissions.  Edward & Rhys both went from D to C.  In Edward's case, I'd have argued D to E myself (and I trained Edward and brought him to the tower!).  The Reddit voters were inexplicably hyping him up for contributing in the pre-Sothe Prologue / 1-1, where you cannot even pick a party, but eh, there's clearly no single definition of what goes in a tier list.

The fastest LTC uses Jill because when you rig her stats to the max she gets to go brr.

My most recent "efficient" run did not use Jill because without rigged stats Jill just isn't able to function. 

Here is what an average Jill with an energy drop 2 seraph robes a dracoshield 3 regular levels, followed by 3 BEXP+promo followed by 8 regularl levels and 1 BEXP level looks like in 3-12

{'HP': 47.666, 'STR': 20.898, 'MAG': 4.433, 'SKL': 19.269, 'SPD': 24.702, 'LCK': 23.361, 'DEF': 21.373, 'RES': 11.523} so rounding to like 47 hp/21 strength/5 magic/19 skill/25 speed/23 luck/21 def/12 RES

we can compare this to Love-death's Jill (who skipped out on the energy drop and both seraph robes) 

HP:35 Str:26 Mag:3 Skill:22 Speed:25 Luck:21 Def 25 Res 12

Basically Love death using the power of Rigging was able to get a Jill that had massively higher Def/Strength than average, and those 2 stats matter a lot,  The strength let's him one round halbs/warriors in part 4 after a promotion which most Jills would not,  and the bulk lets him survive (4 defense is worth a lot more than 12 hp in an Enemy phase rout game) 

On 2/1/2022 at 7:43 AM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I disagree with the notion that tier lists use LTC as a standard. In my experience, they use a more nebuloys "reliable efficiency" standard. A character who helps enable a 9-turn clear (with a 10% chance of success, based on RNG) may not be as useful if you're playing on an 11-turm clear (with a 90% chance of success, again based on RNG). Certainly, you can make a tierlist with a strict LTC in mind, but it's not my assumption when I see one.

IMO that's less due to the underlying theory, and more to the method of presentation. Showing a grid, where each chapter is a column, would probably work better for RD than a line graph.

Interesting, did not know that about BEXP. Still, if Jill hasn't yet capped any stats, I'd imagine the optimal approach to be "bump her to 99, and let her level up naturally". Since she averages 3.6 stat ups from a natural level, as opposed to 3 from BEXP.

There is a non-nebulous version of "reliable efficiency" called expected turn count  it ends up being fairly jank to use in practice, because the strategies that expected turn count ends up using are extremely silly looking, combat ends up becoming the most valuable thing followed by movement, and some runs do explicit grinding to get their units up to snuff. Just a lot of janky strats that don't seem "natural" to an LTC player. I have one of 3 completed ETC's . 

One thing people love about LTC's is finding some cute unit that can do some cool thing, one of the issues with ETC's is that whatever cute unit idea you had you can't do it because all your investment has to go into your super-Juggernaut. 

On 2/1/2022 at 2:45 PM, Florete said:

> Calls her the most overrated unit in FE history.
> Says she's still 8-10th in the game.

This person clearly has not seen many FE tier lists lol. Nino was once considered top tier.

For the record I don't disagree that Jill has seen too much praise by certain individuals in the past (mostly if she doesn't get transfers), but this title is pretty blatant clickbait.

Apologies, I only started playing fire emblem in 2020, so I was mostly saying that based on what I could read about post 2010 FE,  a better statement might be "Most overrated unit by people who are good at fire emblem" but that's a mouthful and not good clickbait for reddit.

I also would put Jill closer to 12th today. mostly due to some new stuff I've found with Nailah/Tauroneo, Energy drop on Nailah allows her to ORKO generals in 4-4, which makes her the ideal candidate. Tauroneo can kill every ike with 4 hp and 4 def procs or 5+hp and 3 def procs. This makes Tauroneo the most reliable ike killer, and lets you skip the 1-2 energy drop, and with the speedwings tauroneo's 3-12 performance is unmatched.Tauroneo falls off super hard after 3-12/3-13, but he's super amazing before then as the only truly reliable killer of Ike that also costs few the least resources to get to good status. (even though speedwing titania is a very good unit, I found a way around this by feeding her more bonus experience and paragon, using Mia as my 3rd GM unit and not having a 4th main GM combat unit). 

 

Also fire emblem units follow a pareto distribution so the difference from #2 to #12 is bigger than #12 to #40. 

 

 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

26 minutes ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

There is an approach to that called numerical tiering it produces some interesting results due to the way radiant dawn is structured as a game, many units just end up sucking for large parts of the game. The thing to realize is that radiant dawn is more like 2.5 short games Smashed into one, rather than being one long game. Edward and Boyd both have high availability but they both exist in entirely separate games practically speaking. Part 2 feels like a weird set of trial maps where only some of the units actually feed into part 3, (while others like Kieran just suffer). 
Numerical tiering is roughly equal to a units availability*average quality, so it's really important to be both available and useful, if you fail on either axis you end up falling low.

That is... a lot of numbers. I think I get the premise, though (figure out each unit's value in each chapter in which they appear, and sum it up). I'm sure I could find endless nits to pick in the table, but I like the premise.

28 minutes ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

Jill's not merely not the best member in the dawn brigade, she's probably not even top  5, 1. Sothe, 2. Zihark, 3.Rafiel, 4. Volug, 5. Nailah

Do people consider Rafiel and Nailah "Dawn Brigade" units? They're only around in I-8 and I-E. When I hear "Dawn Brigade", I assume "playable units in Part I who are also playable in 3-6, 3-12, and 3-13". So Nailah and Rafiel are out, and Tauroneo is an edge case.

That said, there's a reasonable argument that Jill isn't even a "top 3" Dawn Brigade unit. Anecdotally, I've been trying to train her on Hard Mode, and I've found that without BEXP or a Master Seal, I couldn't get her to promotion until 3-12. I'd say a Jill who doesn't come into 3-6 promoted is leagues worse than one who has promoted by that point (no Savior, Beastfoe, Resolve, or Paragon). On the flip side, even as a single-digit-level Dragonmaster, she's been one of my better combat/utility units in 4-P. With only a Steel Forge and Celerity as "investment" goes.

[ussgordoncaptain]

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

 

Do people consider Rafiel and Nailah "Dawn Brigade" units? They're only around in I-8 and I-E. When I hear "Dawn Brigade", I assume "playable units in Part I who are also playable in 3-6, 3-12, and 3-13". So Nailah and Rafiel are out, and Tauroneo is an edge case.

That said, there's a reasonable argument that Jill isn't even a "top 3" Dawn Brigade unit. Anecdotally, I've been trying to train her on Hard Mode, and I've found that without BEXP or a Master Seal, I couldn't get her to promotion until 3-12. I'd say a Jill who doesn't come into 3-6 promoted is leagues worse than one who has promoted by that point (no Savior, Beastfoe, Resolve, or Paragon). On the flip side, even as a single-digit-level Dragonmaster, she's been one of my better combat/utility units in 4-P. With only a Steel Forge and Celerity as "investment" goes.

I'm surprised Jill did anything in 4-P at all, aren't Skrimir(with speedwing)/Haar/Naesala just going to crush that map really quickly? 

The best way to get Jill to good is to promote her in 1-E after throwing as much BEXP as you can into her, she'll likely be level 20 by the time she promotes.

Then you can give her beastfoe in 3-6 and she'll be very good in that map, getting a bunch of levels.

In 3-12 you promote her and she's also very good on this map

then she falls off and sucks.

The other way (if you want her to go brr in part 4 instead) is to accept having a bad time in 3-12 and not promoting her, then in 3-13 clear it with tauroneo, save a bunch of GM bexp for her in part 4 and give it to her so she can go brrr in 4-P/4-3

 

Nailah/Rafiel/Illyana/Tormod/Maurim/Vika/The Black knight are all arguable one way or the other, I choose to count them as "dawn brigade" because for many of them all of their utility is found in the DB chapters. 

Edited April 3, 2022 by ussgordoncaptain

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

5 hours ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

I'm surprised Jill did anything in 4-P at all, aren't Skrimir(with speedwing)/Haar/Naesala just going to crush that map really quickly? 

Suffice to say, I wasn't playing anything like that. I sent Haar to be with Tibarn's group, since he had a support with Ranulf I didn't want to break.

Skrimir was putting in a ton of work for me, but ranged enemies were still a problem, and he basically had to use Olivi Grass every Player Phase. Jill was nice because she could attack foes and move back out of the way, or else Rescue frail allies. In particular, while Micaiah with Thani wasn't one-shotting enemy cavalry, it set them up for Jill to finish off. Have Leanne sing for them, and they can deal with another foe together, or else Jill can cart Micaiah away to safety. Sothe put in decent work too, taking two hits from most enemies, and doing double-digit-damage-doubling with just a Steel Dagger and Micaiah's A-support.

Naesala, I had handling the south and east, coupled with Sigrun and Tanith. Master Crown'd into Seraph Knight, Tanith doubled most foes, and the support I'd started with Sigrun was a nice bonus. Paired with massive Cymbeline chip, they could finish just about any enemy. Naesala was one-rounding just about everyone, but again, he had no answer for ranged enemies (particularly bow users). I also brought Aran w. Laura support, mostly as a pet project. Even though Aran was doubled by everyone, his bulk was good enough that he could survive two rounds against most cavalry enemies.

5 hours ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

The best way to get Jill to good is to promote her in 1-E after throwing as much BEXP as you can into her, she'll likely be level 20 by the time she promotes.

Then you can give her beastfoe in 3-6 and she'll be very good in that map, getting a bunch of levels.

That makes a whole lot of sense. As it were, my Jill was basically just doing Hand Axe chip, or else finishing off reverted laguz. Beastfoe went to Sniper Leonardo - with Lughnasadh, he could finish off beasts who had taken EP chip, or else set up a kill for melee allies like Eddie or Nolan.

5 hours ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

In 3-12 you promote her and she's also very good on this map

then she falls off and sucks.

I'm confused - Dragonlord Jill sucks on 3-13 and in Part 4? Why would that be the case? She'd be able to swoop in, strike hard (one-rounding with Beastfoe), and return to guard key ledges in 3-13. Depending on Ike's Speed as of 3-11, she may even be quadding him with the Brave Axe for the early finish. As for 4-P and 4-3, she'd offer something of a "Haar Jr." role. If you don't want to bring Haar to the Silver Army maps (and wyverns are good on every route!), then Jill's the only alternative for "ranged attacker with flying mobility who isn't weak to bows".

5 hours ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

The other way (if you want her to go brr in part 4 instead) is to accept having a bad time in 3-12 and not promoting her, then in 3-13 clear it with tauroneo, save a bunch of GM bexp for her in part 4 and give it to her so she can go brrr in 4-P/4-3

...Oh, okay, because her early 3rd-tier promotion left her stats lacking in 3-13 and beyond. Got it. Is, say, 20/10 Dragonmaster Jill that bad in 3-12, though? She seems like one of the sturdier frontliners on the southeast front, alongside the likes of Volug, Sothe, and Nolan.

5 hours ago, ussgordoncaptain said:

Nailah/Rafiel/Illyana/Tormod/Maurim/Vika/The Black knight are all arguable one way or the other, I choose to count them as "dawn brigade" because for many of them all of their utility is found in the DB chapters. 

Yeah, I guess so. For me, the definition begins and ends with whoever's playable in 3-12 and 3-13. All the others are "units in DB chapters", but not "DB units". Since if I invest in them, it does me no favors during the "Part 3 DB" sequence.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Shanty Pete's 1st Mate
Typo.

[Dark Holy Elf]

For what it's worth I definitely wouldn't consider Rafiel or Nailah to be "Dawn Brigade" units, they're guests. Heck, they're even forced with Ike's team, and not Micaiah's, in Part 4.

Anyway I'm not opposed to the idea that Jill may be behind all of Sothe, Volug, and Zihark in worth (you could even argue me on Nolan!), but that's a damn good set of units. And I'm not really certain I agree anyway. Canto and flight go a long way in this game, and the arguments against her seem to rely on hyper-specific playstyles which always raise red flags in these sorts of discussions to me.

[♠Soul♠]

On 1/30/2022 at 10:03 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

I do like how the Reddit list just separates out the royals/herons. I don't like how it has Boyd above Gatrie, that seems almost actively nonsensical. I love move, but 1 move is not worth 3 str, 2 spd, and 9 def.

Took years but someone finally gets it.

Today is a good day.

[♠Soul♠]

On 4/3/2022 at 4:51 PM, ussgordoncaptain said:

then she falls off and sucks.

Jill literally never sucks.

[ussgordoncaptain]

On 4/3/2022 at 1:40 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

For what it's worth I definitely wouldn't consider Rafiel or Nailah to be "Dawn Brigade" units, they're guests. Heck, they're even forced with Ike's team, and not Micaiah's, in Part 4.

Anyway I'm not opposed to the idea that Jill may be behind all of Sothe, Volug, and Zihark in worth (you could even argue me on Nolan!), but that's a damn good set of units. And I'm not really certain I agree anyway. Canto and flight go a long way in this game, and the arguments against her seem to rely on hyper-specific playstyles which always raise red flags in these sorts of discussions to me.

yeah so my reply to the hyper specific playstyles argument is that every tier list needs some sort of criteria for how everything is being tiered, which therefore necessitates its own hyper specific playstyle. Therefore any given tier list can only really talk about the specific playstyle the tier list is designed for.

I think my playstyle isn't the most common but it tends to result in a set of goodhart's law considerations that are reasonably close to what most people would accept. Yes there will always be jank, and stuff like "Tauroneo is the best DB carry because he doesn't require an energy drop to kill ike, and Zihark is a much better flunky than tauro" is a bit hard to swallow but at the same time it's hard to find a system that isn't jank because goodhart's law is a thing. 

On 4/3/2022 at 1:31 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

 

...Oh, okay, because her early 3rd-tier promotion left her stats lacking in 3-13 and beyond. Got it. Is, say, 20/10 Dragonmaster Jill that bad in 3-12, though? She seems like one of the sturdier frontliners on the southeast front, alongside the likes of Volug, Sothe, and Nolan.

 

Dragonmaster Jill in 3-12 is ... OK not amazing just ok. You 2 round all the bulky enemies like Halbardiers/Warriors/Armorknights and one round the soldiers/fighters. but you have to realize that the objective of that map is to kill 40 enemies and many have healing items/healing staffs, so it takes a while for the enemies to die. The difference between 1 and 2 rounding something is the largest difference in FE, since a unit that 1 rounds can kill 20 enemies in 2 turns while a unit that doesn't can kill 5. I haven't played through 3-12 without a god (wing tauro/Super zihark/Super Jill) so I don't know how the map turns out, but I imagine it's quite slow. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 4/4/2022 at 6:39 PM, ussgordoncaptain said:

yeah so my reply to the hyper specific playstyles argument is that every tier list needs some sort of criteria for how everything is being tiered, which therefore necessitates its own hyper specific playstyle. Therefore any given tier list can only really talk about the specific playstyle the tier list is designed for.

 

Hmm. Well, I'm not certain if I agree that they're necessary, but I'll accept your argument for the time being. And to be clear, I think if you want to develop a hyper-specific playstyle and create a tier list using it, go for it. If your playstyle is one that interests me I'll participate, and if it isn't I won't; it's cool either way.

What I take issue with is using your own hyper-specific playstyle (or anyone's hyper-specific playstyle) as a tool to describe a character as "overrated". That very word means you care about how other people rate units, and that they may use a different type of playstyle, and hence a different set of criteria. At that point, you would be better off studying whether there is a set of reasonable criteria under which the character in question really is that good.

On 4/4/2022 at 6:39 PM, ussgordoncaptain said:

I haven't played through 3-12 without a god (wing tauro/Super zihark/Super Jill) so I don't know how the map turns out, but I imagine it's quite slow. 

Nah, it's really not. 3-12 with a full team (or nearly full) tends to be bloody and potentially dangerous if you overexpose someone who isn't a super god, but it's not especially slow.

[♠Soul♠]

On 4/4/2022 at 10:39 PM, ussgordoncaptain said:

 I haven't played through 3-12 without a god (wing tauro/Super zihark/Super Jill) so I don't know how the map turns out, but I imagine it's quite slow. 

It definitely makes the difference between it being slow, and just 3 turning it with said "god". If anything, I always saw that your best bet for Part 3 DB is to build at least one of those so they can trivialize these maps, and you can even get away with two of them (i.e Edward Nolan or Nolan Jill etc.). A designated "Ike Killer" just super speeds up 3-13 from turning into a mess, and it's really cool to boot. I always liked having one different character go up to kill him each run.