Engraving Tier List, AKA why are so many of them so bad?

[Galap]

Lazy link to engrave descriptions:

https://serenesforest.net/engage/somniel/engraving/

 

The best tier engraves are the ones that strictly make the weapon better or the drawback doesn't matter. A lot of them are just crap though, because they decrease the might. If you're decreasing a weapon's might, it's got to have a BIG bonus somewhere else in order to make it usable, but a lot of them just don't.

 

Marth: great engrave. makes the weapon strictly better

sigurd: great, makes the weapon strictly better.

celica: terrible. dodge is not very useful and lowered mt sucks

micaiah: great. You want this because avo + 40 is actually good. decreased might sucks though, but combine this with supports and personal skills like Lapis' and you actually can dodge tank things. This is an engrave with a drawback done right.

roy: OK, but only for things like smash weapons or on characters that already have no speed like louis.

leif: good. Use it if someone has enough build to deal with it

lucina: if you're going for avoid you might as well go all in idk

lyn: unusable. -3 mt?!

ike: decent. better than roy becuase it does what roy does but more so. this will make even the fastest characters get double struck by pretty much anything. I had it on louis' forged spear for most of the game, and now on the S tier lance.

byleth: not very consequential, but use it if they have the build i guess??

corrin: bad. -2 might is too big a cost

eirika: good. +20 crit for no drawback in might or weight is good. use on killer weapons. Making the enemy more likely to crit you is a bit of a significant drawback though.

 

Spoiler

Alear: Bad, if you're decreasing the might, it needs to make the weapon a LOT better at something,and I don't think moderately better at a few things cuts it.

 

 

I don't have the DLC but here's my assessment of the DLC engraves:

 

Edelgard: Good, like Leaf, many units can handle the extra 1 weight

Tiki: Probably good? making the enemy more likely to crit you does seem to be a bit of a drawback though

Hector: like tiki but more so, probably better because of it.

Soren: strictly better than Tiki

Camilla: hard to evaluate. + weight, and - avoid and  dodge is bad but + might and + crit is good. IDK I'd have to play with it.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Galap
accidentally posted before finished writing

[Dark Holy Elf]

Most engraves have a use, I definitely think you're underrating some of them. The only one I didn't really use was Celica's and even then it has use as a "switch to this on enemy phase" backup weapon for someone with low luck, in theory.

More powerful weapons/attackers can easily withstand a small mt loss. High-magic characters can easily hit for 30+ damage with various tomes, lopping 1-3 points off of that isn't nothing but the tradeoffs can easily be worth it. And there only needs to be one weapon in the army for which the tradeoff is a good one.

To specifically defend some of the ones you speak poorly of:

• Lucina: sure, I agree that Micaiah's probably better. But you can have more than one dodgetank, so this is still a major boon. Additionally, it's much better for non-evade stats; Micaiah is pretty much a "for dodgetanking only" weapon, while Lucina's can lead to much better combat overall due to +2 atk and +30 hit on Micaiah.
• Lyn: As I said above, you can survive -3 mt. Personally I put this on Nova to get reliable hit and crit-fishing out of it. That's probably not even its best use because Nova has a lower base mt than many weapons, but it still put in great work, and was absolutely better than an unengraved Nova would be.
• Byleth: Amazing overall stats on a weapon for which weight is not relevant. Plenty of weapons like that (e.g. most daggers, but also basic spells). Patches up any possible problems you might have with dex and/or luck.
• Corrin: Great. Highest crit of any engrave. Use to get reliable criticals, great on someone like Panette who can easily withstand the slight damage loss.
• Eirika: I agree with you on this one, but I'll also add it's particularly nice on thunder tomes; you should almost never be getting hit with that out (making the dodge penalty not so bad), and the +40 hit is appreciated since Thoron's slightly iffy on that. Meanwhile, if you're running Dire Thunder, you can do some great crit-fishing with this.

[hdawgsizzle]

55 minutes ago, Galap said:

Marth: great engrave. makes the weapon strictly better

micaiah: great. You want this because avo + 40 is actually good. decreased might sucks though, but combine this with supports and personal skills like Lapis' and you actually can dodge tank things. This is an engrave with a drawback done right

lucina: if you're going for avoid you might as well go all in idk

lyn: unusable. -3 mt?!

corrin: bad. -2 might is too big a cost

eirika: good. +20 crit for no drawback in might or weight is good. use on killer weapons. Making the enemy more likely to crit you is a bit of a significant drawback though.

I have some thoughts on these. Specifically, I think you're weighing -Mt way too much. Lyn's engrave is actually pretty great, and one of the ones that units will fight over by endgame. +40 Hit is incredible, especially when your party's endgame hit rates start tanking. There are plenty of units that do enough damage that -3 mt won't be missed, especially with forging. Ivy makes good use of this engrave, as does Diamant.

Again, I found Corrin's pretty useful - that +30 crit is great. You can basically turn Silver weapons into super powered Killer weapons or you can put it on a Killer weapon for some insane crit rates.

For Lucina's, the Avo isn't what units are going to want out of it for the most part. That +30 Hit rate is the real draw.

Micaiah's I had trouble with. Without any boost to Hit, there weren't really any units clamoring for its benefits. Dodge tanking is weird on Maddening, where you have to be very careful to not make your Avo too high or else you just get ignored. Oftentimes the +40 Avo can get in your way more than it can help you

Eirika's is an engrave that works best on a Thunder or Thoron. If you are attacking out of a unit's range, you don't see any downsides. Like @Dark Holy Elf said, it works incredibly well in conjunction with Dire Thunder

[Florete]

Agreed that you're underrating some of them a lot. You're focusing too much on not having downsides, but the ones without any downsides also tend to have the lowest benefits. Like sure, Beginnings engraving has no negatives, but its benefits are tiny, leaving it as one of the weaker engravings imo. In every case the drawbacks can be worth it for the right benefit.

2 hours ago, Galap said:

celica: terrible. dodge is not very useful and lowered mt sucks

Uhhh no. 50 dodge is overkill most of the time, but a good chunk of units have low Luck and appreciate extra dodge; consider that Steel weapons have 5 natural crit and the +dodge and +luck skills aren't available until a while later when you eventually get Eirika and Byleth. -1 Mt is going to be negligible most of the time considering you're going to use an engraving like this defensively to make sure someone doesn't get hit by crits. When you think about it, +dodge is the closest thing any engraving gives to being a +def/res boost.

2 hours ago, Galap said:

lucina: if you're going for avoid you might as well go all in idk

1 Mt is often not going to be a big deal, especially if the -1 Wt enables the follow-up. +30 hit is pretty huge for some weapons and +30 avoid is always great.

2 hours ago, Galap said:

lyn: unusable. -3 mt?!

-3 Mt can certainly be a tough pill to swallow and isn't exactly going to be universally useful, but the other boosts do give this one its uses. I've found it incredibly effective on Panette; she has naturally insane Str so the Mt loss means little, she likes crit stacking, and +40 hit is great.

I do think Fates engraving is usually better, though, since it provides a lower Mt loss and a higher crit boost.

2 hours ago, Galap said:

roy: OK, but only for things like smash weapons or on characters that already have no speed like louis.

ike: decent. better than roy becuase it does what roy does but more so. this will make even the fastest characters get double struck by pretty much anything. I had it on louis' forged spear for most of the game, and now on the S tier lance.

You can also use these on player-phase nukes that don't want to be getting attacked to begin with. Thunder tomes (especially with Dire Thunder), brave weapons, etc.

[Shadow Mir]

Honestly, I look at all the DLC engravings and I can only go "bruh". I mean, outside of the rivals one, the negatives on the rest are too extreme for what they offer. Considering that you actually have to work for them, I'd expect them to be better than that...

[lenticular]

The engravings with trade-offs are strong in part because we have multiple inventory slots. If the question were "do you want to have +3mt or +40hit?" then that's a somewhat tricky question and I can see the arguments for both. But in reality, the question is more like "do you sometimes want to have +3mt and sometimes want to have +40hit and you get to choose when you have each one?" to which the answer is "yes, of course I do".

For example, it's pretty common to give a unit both an iron weapon for when you need to hit accurately and a silver weapon for when you hit hard. Let's consider axes as an example. An iron axe has 9mt, 80hit, and 10wt, whereas a silver axe has 16mt, 70hit, and 15wt. This means that if we put a Lyn engraving onto the silver axe, it ends up at 13mt, 110hit, 13wt, and 20crit. This is giving us more accuracy and more might than our iron axe. So we now get to switch over to running an engraved silver axe as our accurate option and an unengraved silver axe as our strong option.

And I'm definitely not saying that that is the best way to use the Lyn engraving. More that this is the most basic use case and should be considered the absolute floor for how good it is. Basically, the bonuses from engravings are typically undercosted in comparison to what we'd have to "pay" (in terms of tradeoffs to other stats) if we were trying to get them just through regular weapons.

[Technoweirdo]

Have to say that it sounds like you didn't use Ivy. Considered a good unit, but notorious for having no aim and for randomly exploding without certain engraves.

[Scaramuccia]

Hit is very good and not easy to get in nearly every FE. Most of engravings you considered weak provides absurd amounts of hit.

[Fabulously Olivier]

I think you're overvalueing Mt in general. I would consider Ike, Roy, and Tiki engravings to be among the worst.

[samthedigital]

5 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I think you're overvalueing Mt in general. I would consider Ike, Roy, and Tiki engravings to be among the worst.

Ike gives +6 attack on forced doubles, sometimes +1 per hit on things like Astra Storm and Marth's engage attack, +9 on effective weapons, and +3 on any random emblem attack that isn't hitting for effective damage. It's pretty good, but the use case is specific. The DLC probably adds too many of these kinds of engravings, but it's definitely strong depending on what it's being used for.

[Palasid]

Bringing up Lyn's engrave, I think its actually really good. Sure -3 might is rough but I have had amazing luck with it on Tomes.

[Tombstone88]

Well, if this is an engraving tier list, then this is roughly how I would categorize them:

 

S-Tier: Sigurd, Lucina, and

Spoiler

Fire

A-Tier: Marth, Leif, Lyn, Eirika, Micaiah, Edelgard/3H

B-Tier: Roy, Ike, Byleth, Camilla, Tiki, Hector, Soren

C-Tier: Corrin, Celica

 

Explanations as for why I'd tier them as such:

Sigurd: The only emblem that increases Might while decreasing Weight, AND it gives +20 Avoid.  It's perfect for Avoid tanks like Lapis or for units with shaky Build stats.

Lucina: +30 Hit and +30 Avoid is an insanely good combo.  Excellent for any and all Avoid-based units.

Spoiler

Fire: Gives good boosts to everything for a minor Might penalty.  Great for lots of late-game weapons.

Marth: Good general-purpose engraving, but the bonuses are pretty minor in comparison to some of the other engraving choices.

Leif: Basically Marth, but it gives slightly stronger bonuses in exchange for a Weight penalty.

Lyn: +40 Hit and +20 Crit is a great combo for killer weapons, particularly killer axes and killer bows.  The -3 Might is a bit harsh, but 3 less damage on someone like Panette is a minor downside, especially when it leads to more consistent crits for triple damage.

Eirika: Basically Lyn, but instead of reducing your damage it makes you really susceptible to counterattacks on enemy phase, so positioning is important.

Micaiah: Excellent for Avoid tanking, but not good for damage or counterattacking.

Edelgard/3H: Almost functionally equivalent to the Marth engraving, except it adds +1 Weight.  Not enough of a penalty to separate them a tier, IMO.

Roy/Ike: Both are situationally good; they pair well with thunder tomes, smash weapons, and brave lances.  Halberdiers get Pincer Attack, which lets them quad with a brave lance regardless of Speed, so the Weight penalties are irrelevant for them.

Byleth: Good engraving for enemy phase weapons like tomahawks, which want the extra Hit for accuracy and also want a little extra Avoid and Dodge for safety.

Camilla: Pretty much a worse Eirika in my eyes; it gives +1 Might and +30 Crit, but it doesn't give any bonus Hit, so your accuracy (and thus consistency) is worse.  It also has the Avoid and Dodge penalties.  On units with Hit-boosting personal skills it could still be decent.

Tiki/Hector/Soren: All functionally the same; they boost damage at the cost of Avoid and Dodge.  Better player phase, worse enemy phase.

Corrin: I find Corrin to be useful on exactly one weapon, and that's a killing edge.  Sword users tend to favor Avoid, and the killing edge has the best accuracy of the killer weapons, so the lack of a Hit bonus is less problematic.  Outside of this, I find it a very "meh" engraving.

Celica: The Celica engraving is more a victim of circumstance.  The bonuses would be quite handy in the mid-game, when you simultaneously start gaining heavier weapons and start encountering enemies with killer weapons.  Sadly, because of... reasons, the engraving isn't available for the mid-game unless you prepare it ahead of time.  In the early game the effect is basically irelevant and in the late-game its effect is too minor.

 

 

 

[joevar]

disagree with Lyn being unusable. weapon MT is not everything in Engage when you can still bump the damage from high STR or MAG and factor in skill inheritance.  Putting it on Killer weapon like killing edge and giving it to Diamant always gives me a success till near endgame. Giving it to Killer axe then having Panette use it would be overkill even. especially with her +crit, add to that skill like Wrath and she would crit non stop. Consistently kill / dealing even better dmg than when using higher MT weapon.

same with corrin. never had big issues with Corrin -MT. Rings and skill can fix that easily. unless you only care about Meta skill

the only near unusable would be Celica due to circumstances, rather than because of its stats. Dodge is useful for certain condition, but only when enemies using killer weapon, which only happen in the middle of the game and scarcely. being not available at the midlle,  and endgame is filled with silver weapon instead that enemy almost never crit make it obsolete. You could actually use the lowered mt a bit but also lower weight for using high rank weapon (that need higher build) in early game, but thats also quite niche.

Edited March 2, 2023 by joevar

[Agro]

Any +Hit is great to chuck on stuff like Hurricane Axe, which will obliterate enemy Wyvern Knights in one hit even on Maddening mode AND even with the damage penalty.

[Shadow Mir]

To be honest... Ike and Roy's engravings are prolly the least useful of the lot. They're only viable if you're using a General, and pretty much garbage otherwise. And as I said above, the DLC engravings with the exception of the Rivals engraving aren't much better.

 

[DaveCozy]

Celica's engraving is niche indeed, but pretty good for Ivy. So she can not be prone to randomly get crit with her otherwise decent-for-a-mage bulk.

[Shadow Mir]

19 minutes ago, DaveCozy said:

Celica's engraving is niche indeed, but pretty good for Ivy. So she can not be prone to randomly get crit with her otherwise decent-for-a-mage bulk.

Agreed. Unfortunately, Ivy doesn't come along until AFTER you lose Celica's ring... which means that it needs to be set up on a weapon beforehand.

[DaveCozy]

43 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Agreed. Unfortunately, Ivy doesn't come along until AFTER you lose Celica's ring... which means that it needs to be set up on a weapon beforehand.

yeah you'd have to plan that before-hand which is... not really great. Forging an Elfire tome ahead of time and later upgrading it to Bolganone would be the way to go I guess, but that's a bit expensive.

If you wait, which is what I lean towards myself, you could just use it more for paralogues instead.

--

Sorry I'm also reading the rest of the topic just now, so posting other thoughts;

I've been running Byleth's on a forged Silver Dagger as well, that seems to work out well for Merrin on Maddening. I suppose Leif's would be good too. I kinda like the ones that add a bit of weight for daggers.

--

Another note on the Mt+ and Weight+ ones (Roy and Ike) those are actually fairly good for not just Smash Weapons + General / Great Knight, but Brave Weapons too. Specially if you're setting up a Pincer Attack Halberdier for e.g. a brave lance with Ike's engrave and Roy equipped at bond level 19 will reach really good might values, and quad with that too!

Both are also fairly niche engraves but their niches are not very contested either, so there's definitely value in using them. Multiple inventory slots luckily, as Lenticular above mentioned, means swapping between weapons with different engraves makes them fit well in situations when you need one more over the other.

Edited March 2, 2023 by DaveCozy

[Galap]

On 3/1/2023 at 9:55 AM, Technoweirdo said:

Have to say that it sounds like you didn't use Ivy. Considered a good unit, but notorious for having no aim and for randomly exploding without certain engraves.

I actually am using Ivy. She is one of my best units. Though, based on some discussion in this thread, I did just put the Byleth engrave on her thoron, and this was a good decision. 

[BloodRonin]

On 2/28/2023 at 9:44 PM, Galap said:

lyn: unusable. -3 mt?!

Use it on an axe

[Viberum]

Lyn’s Engraving would reduce Killing Edge weight from 10 to 8, which is exactly Kagetsu’s base build! I keep the engraving on the killing edge until he gets two build, which then I switch to Corrin’s Engraving lol.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Viberum

[joeygreedy]

For Lyn, and by extension Lucina and the 13th Emblem, imagine trading -3 damage, which with heavier axes are about 20% of their might, for 

+40 Hit ( Or 30/20 ), this pushes you from 60% hitrates to 100% hitrates, which are issues for axe users

+20 crit, great regardless for the odd chance you can oneshot something

-2 Wt, which is functionally +2 speed with how much axes weigh that even near capped units might struggle a little.

I think the hit, which basically changes a unit from dealing 18 damage with a chance to deal 0 damage, to dealing 15 with a chance of dealing 45, is a big difference, even disregarding the relatively speed boost since most axe users can't double. She's solidly S-tier for engravings, especially late game where -1, -2 or -3 Mt are barely as important.

Look at it this way, it's easier to calculate for lower might with a small chance of crit, than it is calculating for someone missing an attack and getting hit back on what should have been a kill, and needing a second unit to follow up and attack or heal. 

Speaking of which, Crit engravings. Corrin and Camilla, and a lesser extent 13th Engraving,  Eirika and the aforementioned Lyn give enough of a crit boost that they can push Killer weapons to have increased consistency with critting, since a small mt loss doesn't matter as much when you can just OHKO non-armors with an increased amount of efficiency. +30 and +20 crit is a LOT when most weapons max out at 30 or so, sure it won't make crit go even further than 60% unless you give it to someone with Wrath, or Panette, or Terrain Yunaka, but the loss of not critting is more easily accounted for. 

Hell, Ike, Roy and to a lesser extent, Hector give insane increases to weight, which can be looked at as -5 speed, at minimum. Armor knights might not care, which is a niche they can have, but it doesn't help patch up bad hitrates, but might occasionally help push the extra 2/3 mt needed to have someone else follow up with a kill. Ditto the avoid bonus, which might matter more, or matter less to some units, but they're solidly relegated to someone who either can't double already, or brave weapons since they need the mt boost.  

Overall, most emblems are pretty good. 

Marth, Sigurd, Leif and Byleth have no or almost no downside, so they're great ( +1/+2 weight doesn't matter as much when given to a lighter weapon, or the small speed loss doesn't get you doubled/make you lose doubling )

-1 Mt is a very negligible loss for Lucina and 13th engraving, ditto Corrin's -2 on a innately high hit weapon with high crit and mt ( Killing Edge, Peshkatz, Dagger )

Micaiah gives the single biggest avoid bonus in the game, which is more niche but great on whoever you want to dodgetank ( I personally put it on Support Alear, so they can attack freely to farm up engage meter with a small bit of avoid bonus from a Marth skill inheritance to trigger Byleth engage. 

I'll put the second worst at Roy for a very marginal Mt increase for enough weight to cripple anybody, while I can at least give Ike props for having the second biggest Ike boost, since Hector's +3 weight and avoid loss are more easily mitigated by comparison. 

Celica... No, she's the worst, no avoid or hit, and 50 dodge is overkill when even something like 20 Dodge is enough to push crit rates to 0 from anything not a Killer weapon. The -1 mt for -1 wt is something, being at most 1 speed, but almost negligible, leading to her just... not really doing anything. Ivy might appreciate it, but the lack of a Hit bonus is painful for such a do-nothing engraving.