Roy isn't *that* bad, and absolutely isn't the worst lord in the series.

[CornPimp]

Roy would be worse, but he can do more in his own game. In the early game, his good speed growth has usually had him doubling a couple chapters before the western isles, which is primary axe users. Here, Roy can shine as a shitty budget myrmidon. After this arc, he is kinda useless until the end of the game, however, protecting him shouldn't be too difficult. Seize is the only objective in fe6, meaning that many of your units shouldn't be facing combat when playing efficiently. Instead, you can have someone like marcus rescue drop roy everywhere. You get a stupid amount of paladins in fe6 to compensate for the big maps. However, that can also just be ignored with use of the warp staff. If you like actually playing the game, protect roy like you protect your dancer, and he should be just fine. The only thing that roy cannot escape is the bolting mages from chapter 14x. Just warpskip that chapter. I think roy is often compared to eliwood, who can promote earlier and gets a mount + lances. However, in his own game, eliwood cannot shine as much. In the early chapter, particularly the one with erik, he can be helpful with the rapier. However, that is where his utility ends. FE7 constantly showers you with over-powered units that invalidate basically invalidate everyone else once trained, but in most cases are pre-premotes that were made to have the game be easier for the western audience that had never experienced this type of game before. Every paladin will be better than eliwood once he promotes, and will likely actually have weapon rank. On top of that, they will get axes. Paladins can do whatever the hell they want to. They will have better stats, and will be far more favorable to deploy than eliwood, who, btw, has less utility than roy in the early game. In the late game, his promotion is just pathetic compared to the very similar paladin class. You don't even have to train up cavaliers. Marcus and isadora are good paladins who require 0 investment, and when taking the cavaliers into consideration, those are far easier to train up than eliwood. As for the objective being only seize in fe6, fe7 has more objectives. Rout maps will take longer considering eliwood sucks at combat, and defeat boss maps will have you rushing to the boss with actual good units as eliwood sits in the back because they are too much of a liability to use effectively.

 

tl;dr roy is ok against the axe users early game and can get some rapier utility. He also gets the binding blade, which is very good. Eliwood, does next to nothing early game, and is outshined by most other untis in his game at the end or when he can promote. there is no point in using eliwood (and don't even get me started on lyn), whereas roy can do *something*, and is in a game where his weaknesses are not highlighted as much as they are in fe7. if eliwood and roy had their roles reversed, eliwood would be the far superior lord, but in the context of his and lyn's game compared to roy, eliwood sucks 

[Jotari]

*Eliwood is toast. Vanilla, fine. He can contribute and, while a tonne of units will probably end up better, he isn't a liability.

*Lyn does just kind of suck. Doubling doesn't make her special in this game and unless you get strength blessed, she won't be dealing all that much damage...but if we're factoring in Roy's early game performance then it'd only be fair to factor in Lyn mode too. In fact, given its her mode, it almost seems most fair to judge her on her Lyn mode performance and consider the rest of the game some kind of bonus feature for her. And she does pull her weight in Lyn mode as it's very much curated to her and stats are low enough where her doubling is important (plus Mani Katti). So...she's as good as Roy IMO, only without the late game legendary weapon fun Roy gets.

*Micaiah is not that bad people. She can Thani, Sacrifice and use staves. These are all good utilities that make her a worthwhile unit. Stop expecting her to be Ike. Her poor speed and defenses don't matter if you just play well and avoid having her eat attacks. Attack enemies who won't attack her back and avoid letting enemies near her on enemy phase. It's as simple as that.

*Shadow Dragon Marth I honestly don't use. 30 level cap just feels like I'm being robbed and he has the worst legendary weapon in the series. Still though, if we're talking just game design, him having sole village visiting ability does give him a niche and something to do in game which is more than can be said for some lords.

*I object to Leif being on this list. Toss some scrolls on him and his combat is fine, but, more importantly, his utility comes from him being completely immune to status effects and stamina. Which makes him a good unit to bait certain enemies.

*Eirika is the least interesting unit on this list. She is definitely overshadowed by her brother, but it's not like she exactly struggles to kill things herself once you level her up. Overall she'd probably get my vote, not because she has the worst combat performance, either relative to the series or her own game, but because she feels like she has the smallest niche of all the lords.

[CornPimp]

Tbh it has been a couple years since I have played radiant dawn. I remember her being annoyingly squishy, but kinda fun to use. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

I think Roy's probably the weakest lord gameplaywise but you could argue me.

Eliwood: He's pretty similar to Roy; same mediocre stat line that grows reasonably well, same relatively good situation for supports (with Hector as opposed to Alan/Lance). I'd put Eliwood a bit ahead because he can promote either a bit earrlier (his own route) or a lot earlier (Hector's), and gets a horse when he does. But it's close enough that I could see Roy's advantages (weaker competition for unit quality, Binding Blade itself) pushing him ahead.

Lyn: Nah, she's clearly better, she doubles things at base.

Eirika: Nah, she's clearly better, she doubles things at base (and has a much stronger Rapier, also a horse on promo... yeah this one's not close).

Ike-9: I think he's a lot closer to Roy than some people act like, his earlygame is pretty comparable to Roy's IMO. But the super-high-avoid supports are a bigger perk than anything Roy gets, and he promotes at a reasonable time.

Micaiah: Very different but I find Micaiah highly useful in her ability to one-shot armour and cavalry. Her combat would fall off once Thani stops being able to do that, but fortunately she staves and is extremely good at them. Straight-up an above average unit in the Dawn Brigade, and the best one who joins at single-digit level aside from Nolan IMO.

Marth-11: Yeah he's pretty mediocre. I haven't played Shadow Dragon in over a decade so I don't feel like weighing in on him vs. Roy or Eliwood.

[Shadow Mir]

I hard disagree here - it says nothing good of Roy that he's outclassed by Oujay, someone who is generally considered a mediocre unit, just because Oujay can enjoy the perks of promotion for more than like 3 chapters. Well, that, and Roy's liable to be so fucking pathetic his game plays more like a giant escort mission for most of it.

Anyway...
-Eliwood and Lyn are in a game where enemies are pretty pathetic, all things considered
-The same applies to Eirika.
-Micaiah has Thani, Sacrifice, and eventually staff use. The only real gripe I have regarding her is 1-9.

I can't discuss Leif, but SD Marth does have access to forged effective weaponry.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Shadow Mir

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

 

Ike-9: I think he's a lot closer to Roy than some people act like, his earlygame is pretty comparable to Roy's IMO. But the super-high-avoid supports are a bigger perk than anything Roy gets, and he promotes at a reasonable time.

 

Path of Radiance Ike sucks for having Ragnell the entire game, but not letting me use it >.>

[AnonymousSpeed]

10 hours ago, Jotari said:

but if we're factoring in Roy's early game performance then it'd only be fair to factor in Lyn mode too.

FE6 does not have a built-in option to skip to Chapter 11.

[ping]

Hehe, that's a nice hot take to introduce yourself to the forums

Personally, as somebody who thinks that Roy is quite overhated, I still think that he's probably the weakest lord overall. You can probably argue some specifics -

• Lyn might be worse if you skipped her own mode, because she gets two-shot by every non-thief enemy on her joining map and is liable to be one-shot by some enemies very quickly
• SD!Marth might be worse if you don't credit him for getting literally every single village in the game, but I find that if you credit thieves for the items they get, Marth ought to get credit for his village utility, as well
• Eliwood in his own mode is comparable to Roy, but the much more reasonably-timed promotion in Hector Mode, plus the horse, plus the useful high Aid stat, make him a fair bit better there

- but if you look at any lord as a whole, I think they'll come up on top compared to Roy. I broadly agree with @Dark Holy Elf's rundown on the matter. I'd maybe add that PoR!Ike generally gets a bigger XP share than other lords. A "forced" level-up in prologue; only four combat units in ch.1-2, one of which sTeAlS xP ( ), he's the only character that you'd actively want to feed XP in ch.3, then ch.4 only adds Soren as a unit you'd want to invest into, and then he's probably already higher-leveled than Oscar and Boyd when they return for the defense map in ch.5. Not that it does anything but reinforce the point that PoR!Ike is, despite his same-ish base stats, stronger than Roy.

Edited July 8, 2022 by ping

[Whisky]

Yeah, I completely agree with the title. Roy is very over hated and underrated. He actually has a few strengths that help him stand out more so than several other lords in the series. These don’t make him a great or even a good unit, but frankly, his competition sets the bar low.

- Rapier deals effective damage against Ch4 super Cavs. It’s still not great but he deals more damage than most of your other units and these enemies are super strong, being one of the better units against them is pretty nice.

- High accuracy. People like to complain about FE6’s low hit rates. Well it works both ways. Low hit rates being an issue in this game make Roy’s high accuracy particularly useful early on for reliably finishing off enemies.

- High Luck. This is definitely a smaller strength but it is nice to have. Early game Mercs and Thunder Mages often have low Crit rates against your units giving them a random chance to give your units an early retirement. Roy doesn’t have to worry about that as much.

- The Sword of Seals, uhh, I mean The Binding Blade. Very great weapon that actually makes Roy good once he gets it. Yeah it comes late, but not as late as the FE7!Durandal or the Sol Katti which both suck anyway. It still makes him very strong for the last 3 chapters. It also makes him the strongest unit against the final boss. People joke about how easy that boss is but that’s only because of Roy with his flaming sword. (Wait.. The Blazing Blade.. something seems off here). Eliwood and Lyn aren’t anywhere close to the best against their final boss. 

In conclusion, Roy is genuinely a decent to good unit in the early game and late game. He has advantages that stand out over other units in his game and over several other lords in the series. He sucks in the mid game  but so does his competition.

Stronger enemies that force your units to work as a team to take down, make it easier for Roy to help out. Most of the advantages I listed wouldn’t even matter in FE7 or FE8, but in FE6, those things are actually nice to have.  Dealing bonus damage against super strong Cavaliers that all of your other units also need help against is significantly more useful than Eliwood or Lyn dealing bonus damage to weak Cavaliers that your stronger units can 1RKO on their own.

This also applies to the mid game when all the GBA lords are at their worst. Stronger enemies give Roy more opportunities to contribute by finishing off an enemy that your stronger units failed to kill, whereas again in FE7 or FE8, your stronger units simply don’t need the help and all Eliwood or Erika would do is get in the way.

Worse yet is that Lyn and Eliwood and Erika (depending on route) cost a deployment slot that could have been filled by a stronger more useful unit. Roy is deployed on every map for free so any opportunity he gets to help out is free money. Eliwood and Lyn have the opportunity cost of not using a much stronger unit.

I just don’t see what makes Eliwood or Lyn any better. They’re both really bad units. They can promote earlier than Roy but they still promote later than other units that they’re competing for deployment slots with and a promoted Eliwood or Lyn don’t shine as much in their late games as Roy with the Binding Blade does. They don’t shine as much as Roy in his early game either with him being a decent unit in the first few chapters whereas Eliwood is clearly inferior to other units in his early game. And in the mid game their mediocrity (or worse) doesn’t give them anything useful to do compared to stronger units, whereas Roy can occasionally finish off a weakened enemy with his high accuracy, since enemies are much stronger and harder for most units to 1RKO, this seems more useful than whatever Eliwood or Lyn are doing in their Mid games, which is also their worst parts of their games.

I fully believe that Roy is better than Eliwood and Lyn, and maybe Erika.

On 7/7/2022 at 2:45 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

Lyn: Nah, she's clearly better, she doubles things at base.

Doubling doesn’t make her inherently better, especially since they’re in different games with very different standards. A lot of units don’t double enemies in FE6, especially early on where Roy is able to shine, if only a little. Doubling in FE7 is common for a lot of units so Lyn doesn’t stand out much in that regard. She struggles to double particularly fast enemies, and even if she doubles, she struggles to 1RKO most enemies with her low Str. Most other units can start 1RKOing most enemies at a lower level on average than Lyn. Despite being fast enough to double most enemies, I just don’t see what about her makes her shine. She’s just generally weaker than most other units throughout most of the game. On top of having some notable weaknesses. She is extremely frail, getting 2HKOed by a lot of enemies and still 3HKOed by weak enemies. Her lack of 1-2 range hurts more in FE7 than it does in FE6. The two above issues are both amplified by FE7 being a much more enemy phase focused game than FE6. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

10 hours ago, Whisky said:

Doubling doesn’t make her inherently better, especially since they’re in different games with very different standards. A lot of units don’t double enemies in FE6, especially early on where Roy is able to shine, if only a little. Doubling in FE7 is common for a lot of units so Lyn doesn’t stand out much in that regard. She struggles to double particularly fast enemies, and even if she doubles, she struggles to 1RKO most enemies with her low Str.

Not inherently better, no, but given how small the differences are otherwise, it's gonna be pretty decisive here. You say Lyn struggles to 1RKO due to low Str, but anything she struggles with, Roy is struggling with the FE6 equivalent, because his Str is just as bad (technically 1 better, but the Rapier is weaker than the Mani Katti even when the larger weakness multiplier is considered). The difference is that Lyn does double significantly more things than Roy does, and she can one-round some of them (specifics depend on point of the game and difficulty mode, but mages/horses are common, and archers/fighters sometimes too) while having a ~50% chance to kill the ones she doesn't with a crit, except for the very rare enemies she doesn't double. Whereas Roy just pokes all these same enemies for 3HKO to low 2HKO damage, in some cases not even combining for a kill with other weak team members like Wolt. That difference seems more stark than the durability difference to me.

If your argument is "both suck but at least Roy doesn't cost a deployment slot" then that's fair but not a very interesting argument IMO. I'd generally rather debate characters assuming they are used to their potential (not favoured over other team members, but certainly always deployed, given ample exp, and in Lyn's case not skipping Lyn Mode), so please view my comments in that light.

[Shadow Mir]

12 hours ago, Whisky said:

Doubling doesn’t make her inherently better, especially since they’re in different games with very different standards. A lot of units don’t double enemies in FE6, especially early on where Roy is able to shine, if only a little. Doubling in FE7 is common for a lot of units so Lyn doesn’t stand out much in that regard. She struggles to double particularly fast enemies, and even if she doubles, she struggles to 1RKO most enemies with her low Str. Most other units can start 1RKOing most enemies at a lower level on average than Lyn. Despite being fast enough to double most enemies, I just don’t see what about her makes her shine. She’s just generally weaker than most other units throughout most of the game. On top of having some notable weaknesses. She is extremely frail, getting 2HKOed by a lot of enemies and still 3HKOed by weak enemies. Her lack of 1-2 range hurts more in FE7 than it does in FE6. The two above issues are both amplified by FE7 being a much more enemy phase focused game than FE6. 

If Lyn is struggling, Roy's doing worse because he's in a game with stronger enemies. Also of note, she does effective damage vs all horse units (as do Hector and Eliwood), whereas Roy's Rapier is only effective on cavaliers and paladins for whatever reason, and its low might offsets the higher effective multiplier anyhow.

[Whisky]

@Dark Holy Elf @Shadow Mir

I think it's fair to consider opportunity cost when comparing units. I personally find it hard to ignore that I have to actively bench a much better unit in order to use Lyn, espeically since FE7 (HHM) has so few deployment slots in a lot of chapters. I'm fine with ignoring the deployment slot thing though.

My main point is that unit quality is relative. They need to be compared to their competition, to the other units within their own game. They exist in very different context. Enemies are much stronger in FE6 and that applies to all units in that game, not just Roy. Lyn doubling more enemies than Roy as well as being better at killing enemies isn't because she's better than him, it's because enemies are much weaker in FE7, for all of your units. Doubling in FE7 just isn't as impressive of a feat as it would be in FE6. Especially if Lyn still can't 1RKO a lot of enemies even with her doubling whereas most other units in her game are better at 1RKOing most enemies than she is. Of course Roy can't 1RKO most enemies, most other units can't either in that game. Even Marcus can't double or 1RKO Ch4 super Cavs. Roy just being able to chip them seems much more useful to me than Lyn being able to 1RKO weak Cavs in FE7 that other units can also 1RKO without worrying about getting killed by the counter. The stronger enemies provide more opportunities for Roy to actually help out and contribute as a team by working together to finish off enemies that are too strong for your stronger units to kill on their own. FE7 is more about individual elite units 1RKOing groups of enemies at once, something Lyn can't do much to help out with. The stronger enemies of FE6 make weak units more useful than in FE7 because they can help finish off enemies weakened by your stronger units.

Plus like I said in my above post, Roy actually does have moments where he shines above most other units on your team, if only slightly. In the early game he has a few useful strengths that help him stand out and in the late game he has the Binding Blade. He's actually pretty decent at a few points in the game. I find Lyn's strengths to be fewer and less outstanding. Guy and Raven do the fast swordsman thing much better than she does, and most other units (including Raven) have other big advantages like 1-2 range, a mount, utility, access to better weapon types, better durability, the strength to 2HKO more things and therefore 1RKO more enemies because so many enemies in FE7 are very slow. I honestly think Lyn is really bad compared to most other units in FE7. I mean she's far from the worst unit in her game, but so is Roy in his.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Per the original poll, I answered Micaiah. Not because I dislike her as a unit - far from it. I'd call her the most interesting Lord, given her relatively rare support attributes. Still, Chapter 1-9 of Radiant Dawn, "One Survives", is a far more frightening Ironman-stopper than anything the other Lords have to go through. Even putting that map aside, she's frailer than the likes of Roy or Eirika, in a game that removes visible enemy ranges in pursuit of fake difficulty. 

I broadly think Micaiah is a better unit in her game than Roy is in his (again, given her supportive potential), but purely on the metric of "annoying to use/protect", she takes the cake.

[Shadow Mir]

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

Per the original poll, I answered Micaiah. Not because I dislike her as a unit - far from it. I'd call her the most interesting Lord, given her relatively rare support attributes. Still, Chapter 1-9 of Radiant Dawn, "One Survives", is a far more frightening Ironman-stopper than anything the other Lords have to go through. Even putting that map aside, she's frailer than the likes of Roy or Eirika, in a game that removes visible enemy ranges in pursuit of fake difficulty. 

I broadly think Micaiah is a better unit in her game than Roy is in his (again, given her supportive potential), but purely on the metric of "annoying to use/protect", she takes the cake.

Honestly, Radiant Dawn is one of the worst games for ironman runs anyways, even ignoring One Survives. Too many defeat conditions.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Shadow Mir

[Benice]

I voted Lyn, but this is probably personal bias because of my disastrous HHM playthrough where she was cursed beyond belief, and also the self-imposed rule requiring me to deploy her. Still, I feel like she has a pretty good case to being worse than Roy in my opinion; on average, Lyn will have a bad time in the early game because of the boat map followed by the fog of war, then followed by a pretty bad midgame because of her low stats when she starts (Though early promotion can help a little), and a terrible lategame even if trained because she's got low strength and a lack of good equipment or a crit bonus to make up for it- And her prf does her no favours either. She's a bit better if her mode was played, but that leaves us with a mediocre early-midgame and weak lategame.

Roy, comparably, has a mediocre earlygame on HM where he can actually see some use- With a few levels in the earlygame, he can double javelin cavaliers in Ch. 3, some fighters and archers, is a good option against the terrifying cavaliers in chapter 4, and, though it will be touch-and-go, he should be doubling slower enemies such as archers and pirates reliably in this chapter. Chapter 5 enemies are too speedy for him, but Roy's contributions continue on in Chapter 6. He can double most mages in Ch. 6- Only Rutger and Deke can also make this claim. So while he certainly needs investment to be good in the earlygame, he can do some good work- His weakness is mostly in being overshadowed by Deke and, more prominently, Rutger, and from his late promotion making investing into him feel bad. Still, he has uniquely accurate effective damage against cavaliers in chapter 4 (The Halberd works too, but it'll only have about ~50-60 hit against the lancies) and overall decent contribution in the earlygame at a time where every hand needs to take its turn at the helm of the ship. Lyn never really stands above anyone else even with investment, and even when blessed with good growths, that contribution isn't very meaningful.

Eliwood's a unit I find that gets panned more often than he deserves. *Again, this is colored by my Ironman where Eligood was my only calvary unit.* He's got a feeble earlygame, and does pretty fine if trained. Sure, he promotes into literally just Cavalier for some reason, but it does provide him some decent movement in the lategame. Admittedly, I don't know FE7 very well at all, but I definitely got more use out of Eliwood for most of the game than I did Lyn. His promotion is much better, and though he's not exceptional by any stretch of the imagination, he does at least have 1-2 range potential.

[Cysx]

After all these years, I've concluded that I should care a little less about proving to people that Roy is only the second or third worst in the series. Though debating's fun.

... unfortunately Whisky brought up most specific things I had in mind. I'll just add that you generally want all hands on deck early on in FE6HM, thus it doesn't matter that Roy is bad. And also that much to my chagrin, his lategame historically has been given too much credit. He's definitely suddenly much better, but ultimately still only mediocre for the first two chapters, then he has to stop to seize all the time so he cannot be seeing much combat, and then Idun can be dealt with without him, even though there's little reason to bother.

The BB only having 20 uses is also very unfortunate.

I'll add that I don't like to penalize units for dominating their games even if others do it even better, so I can't say that Eirika or to a lesser extent Eliwood are bad. If you use them actively, they deliver. In my opinion that's what matters.

Leif and Micaiah are both much better

Shadow Marth is a loophole mostly, he gets villages, because he does he's important but also he doesn't get many opportunities to grow and is already bad to begin with.

PoR Ike idr. And Lyn... eh. In OG FE7 the Mani Katti had triple effectiveness (also goes for Eliwood), that's kinda nice.

 

Edit: Whoops, this is older than I thought. My bad guys.

Edited August 18, 2022 by Cysx

[AnonymousSpeed]

6 hours ago, Cysx said:

Edit: Whoops, this is older than I thought. My bad guys.

Nah, this is a good thread. Thanks for reminding me of it.