Ranking each game by class: Dancers/Refresh Units

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Let's talk about some S tier units. If the S stood for Step Up 2: The Streets

This discussion may have a less broad focus than we’re used to, since there is always one dancer maximum at a time in fire emblem. So it’s more of head to head discussion between units in totally different games. I’ve actually been thinking of a format similar to that, if we were to redo these threads a few years from now. Instead of ranking games, rank the individual members of that class independent from each other. Like a cavaliers list would go #1 FE7 Marcus, #2 Seth, and just keep going down the list to Cav!Amelia, FE3Book2 Roshe, etc. But I also find that format struggles once we move on to more modern titles with free reclassing. If nobody has ever thought to make an armor knight Corrin, why bloat the list to pick on units like him?

Anyway here's my ranking. Only of the applicable games I've played since 2017

Spoiler

1. FE4: These dancers are unique in that they can dance for four units every single turn with no restrictions. The exclusively outdoors FE4 terrain is open enough that it’s not hard to set up, especially with the aid of Canto. That’s 2-4 extra kills in the usual army clash. Sylvia struggles to keep up with mounted units, but the leg and knight rings won’t go to waste on her. Just have to find a way to get her all that gold, build those love points. Even without the rings, reaching the frontline is not necessary if the four dance recipients are mounted units that can reach her after attacking. FE4 dancers are awful in a fight, and level ups won’t change that fact. Sylvia and Lene do have innate miracle, allowing for cheesy enemy phases where they can survive if your on the fly math is good. It really helps that FE4 tends to send squads of one enemy type all possessing the same stats and weapons as each other. You typically don’t have to bet on this or that enemy targeting her first.
2. FE9: Reyson is seriously good. Even if he can’t be permanently transformed with the demi band, he’ll make the best use of your few laguz stones. Even if you are deploying laguz units regularly in FE9, they won’t mind being stuck sharing the demi band. Transformed Reyson gets +3 Mov, flight, and canto. On some maps I moved him into some funky impassable terrain after a dance to try and bait a bolting usage with his 20/25 base Res. There’s not much wrong with him, just minor notes about his fire affinity, his speed and luck growths could stand to be higher, Blessing’s healing occasionally denies promoted mages from getting that sweet sweet staff rank exp they need. I see some players give him the knight ring so that he has canto before transformation. Personally I find that a little overrated. 5 move is not a whole lot to canto with (and now you have to consider who to trade it to once he has transformed). It's not a horrible idea, but I'd rather Rescue Drop him on those early turns, leaving that amazing accessory for an unmounted unit to become way better (as opposed to slightly better in Reyson's case). Reyson's low weight also allows for Shoving, even after transformation. So you've got plenty of options at your disposal to keep him in range of allies.
3. FE7: Nils/Ninian are a big help. Speed cap raised to 30. Nini’s Grace is very very good, especially with the strategy of sending out one unit to deal with a mob of enemies. If said units has good offense but shaky surviveability, it can rng-proof their enemy phase. Pegasus knights, mages, Isadora, and Dart are my favorite recipients. The other rings aren’t very good when you consider they come at the direct cost of dancing a unit and just letting them attack again. One issue unique to FE7 is that only Ninian can build and benefit from supports. So when chapter 28/30 rolls around, Nils doesn’t maintain them. And I don’t believe anyone who supported with Ninian gets those support convos back to spend on someone else. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
4. Three Houses: A unique entry on this list because any of your students could be your dancer. Much has been debated about who makes the “best” dancer, but really there is no bad one. Only bad usage of the dancer. It’s very potent to instantly grant a unit in chapter 9 a 6 mov class with magic access. Think less about all the things a unit can do as a dancer, and more about what Dancer can do for your units. Especially if it’s a draft run and you have no idea how this one unit will meaningfully contribute. Horribly stat screwed units can keep their place on your team if you're dead set on not recruiting a replacement. Dancers have a free source of exp, so you don't have to fuss on how this unit will get kills or certify as a better class. Then again, most Dancers in previous games were able to level indefinitely if the player elected to sit there ending their turn. In Three Houses, a Dancer could be your highest level unit, but climb no further as the exp scaling kicks in. It's the only non-lord class in the game that grants an authority boost from combat, but unfortunately Dancing does not count as combat. Stunting what the Dancer could potentially do for units like Felix and Hilda.
5. FE3 Book 2: Phina’s Rapier access is unique in this version but hardly comes into play when you’re full speed ahead to the game’s second act – no horse or armor knight enemies. For this portion of the game however, a dancer helps lock down tricky objectives – like that thief absconding with a star shard in her join chapter. Not to mention only one unit in FE3 can visit villages and eventually the throne to seize. Her defenses are too frail to fight anything at base (not even the thieves of her join chapter, they’ll kill her in just two rounds and most are not programmed to run away). Someone could dump their four shards in her inventory before she predictably levels up on her next Dance. Don’t fuss on stats like strength or speed, her growths are already needlessly good in those areas. Just HP is what she needs to survive a round against the dragons (whose attacks are 2 range and cannot be defended against). One could argue that Phina is the earliest recruited dancer on this list (Map #7 of 24 total), but it still doesn't feel quite early enough with so many of the early game chapters functionally being Escape maps with treasure to collect. The sub objectives get less crazy after she joins, and eventually you're finished with hunting star shards.
6. FE8: There’s not a whole lot to say about Tethys. Fire affinity is pretty unfortunate for a dancer, as she herself does not benefit from the attack related boosts. She has better availability in Eirika route, but she’s no less useful in Ephraim’s route.
7. FE6: Binding Blade starts a long tradition of non-combat dancers, not that the combat potential of previous dancers was all that remarkable. The big shift is the brand new Rescue command. Now any of your units can forcibly move someone that already attacked, or even serve as a temporary chaffeur. Rescue is not a full substitute for Dancing, but it is a large chunk of its utility. Being able to rescue drop dancers alleviates their difficulty in keeping up with the pack but that’s about the only positive (that and really low access to warp compared to kaga era I guess). Larum and Elphin have extremely low HP, and only average Res. They very likely need pure water to survive a bolting in late game (even on normal mode). And the speed cap of 20 keeps their avoid rate from climbing too high, even if you were the sort of player disregarding turn count and grinding at the arena.

If this were in a tier list format, I'd offer #1-2 S tier and the rest solidly in A. We're talking about Great to Excellent units here.

Honorable Mentions

• The Last Promise: I’m usually excluding unique Lord classes from these rankings, and this game’s dancer is incidentally one of the four Lord type characters. Consider this an honorable mention because Anakin is a contender for best unit in his game. He fights with light magic, and he has about as much of a monopoly on this weapon type as Micaiah. His stats are very balanced, more durable then you’d expect from a “light mage”. He’s the only dancer in fire emblem that I’ve ever seen promote. It’s obnoxiously a forced promotion, unlike the other Lords that get a Heaven Seal. Getting him to level 15-20 by the end of chapter 18 from 11 is not likely, but You can do it if you purposely play slow. He also gets a hidden 20% renewal skill on promotion, and E rank staves. He really doesn’t need the extra utility, but staff usage exp in this hack is double, so he just starts skyrocketing in levels without taking any combat exp away from other units. If he were on the list, #3 is the lowest I’d rank him.
• Another not as honourable mention is Faye in Echoes. Anew comes so late that the main campaign is surely over before you've unlocked it. That’s a very hefty HP cost too. Faye herself is a fantastic unit, and we will get to her in the Clerics thread one day. But for now I’m not impressed with her as a “dancer”

Next week will be Pegasus / Falcoknights. And on that thread we'll run the poll again to see where to go from there

[samthedigital]

I was going to do a more in depth analysis, but how useful dancers are relative to one another has a lot to do with how strong the available player phase actions are and how much of the game's combat takes place on enemy phase, so I found myself repeating the same talking points when doing a more in depth analysis.

Strong player phase tools / heavy player phase focus:

Engage, Three Houses, Conquest, Thracia, Binding Blade

That is roughly the order where I'd rank them. Lara is probably the most interesting of the bunch to me because she is useful as a capture bot throughout the game besides being a dancer. Conquest is also worth mentioning for being able to get Azura to dance more often. It's just that it's not a net positive in terms of action economy and requires a bit of planning to make it useful. Conquest can be turned into a more EP heavy game too, so I'm not sure on my ranking.

Multi move dancers:

Genealogy, Radiant Dawn, Path of Radiance

I could see them being placed anywhere in this tier. In theory these should be stronger than everything else, but enemy phase is a lot more important in these games. You can do some funny things with a Leif Rescue staff in Genealogy, but I found this to be difficult to maintain. I haven't played the game that much though.

Weaker player phase tools / heavy enemy phase focus:

Sacred Stones, FE7

It's probably a little unfair to have Sacred Stones here. Seth leaving everyone behind to reach the objective is pretty common, but I find it to be a lot less common than in FE7.

I didn't list Awakening, but tiering there depends a lot on the difficulty. Lunatic and Lunatic+ show the two extremes of dancers. On Lunatic they're not that useful because we can just EP absolutely everything with one carry and a backup. They're a lot more valuable on Lunatic+ because dealing with some skills requires a lot more planning and player phasing.

Lastly, it should go without mentioning, but even the worst dancer is still a fantastic unit relative to almost any other class, so the separate tiers are more to compare them relative to one another. I can't think of any dancer that isn't an auto deploy in any game besides Awakening for me.

[SnowFire]

I feel like there's almost two ratings here - how good each Dancer is on pure merits, and how good they are within the context of the game.  I'm mostly going by the second here, so a "boring" dancer that is extremely relevant is better than a busted but unnecessary dancer.

Engage - Seadall isn't THAT special in isolation, but...  see the Engage rank-the-characters thread on him, for various reasons he ends up the most important character in the PC cast by a healthy margin.  Notably, he doesn't really need in-demand Emblems; he's in the same game as Emblem Byleth, which allows very busted plays; he can learn Canter (or possibly some other degenerate skill); he can Dance for Engage'd characters and get more actions out of an Engage'd Emblem, notably Corrin for multiple waves of Dreadful Aura / Draconic Hex / etc., but also just "the character who hurts the boss the most."  

Radiant Dawn - Rafiel gets a 4x Dance...?  Okay then.  Reyson & Leanne have Canto'd Dance which is also very nice.  The only "problem" is just that Radiant Dawn has a reputation as an enemy-phase centric game, so if your strategy is something like "Drive Dracoknight Haar / Jill into the middle of a bunch of enemies, listen to a bunch of buzzsaw whirring noises", then Dancers don't matter that much.

Path of Radiance - Reyson flies, has Canto, and sometimes offers a 4x Dancer which is extremely busted.  Same issue as above about PoR being a bit enemy-phase centric though.

Three Houses - Given how strong dodgetanking is in this game - a strategy that get proportionately better in Maddening because it's affected less - if Dancer only offered Sword Avo +20, I'd be interested.  But letting the character also be an infantry mage, so they can do things like have linked attacks with Meteor/Bolting for the like of Dorothea / Hilda?  I'm down.

Fates - While still frail, Azura is a marked improvement on Olivia, being fast and strong at least.  Also, Conquest has much "fairer" map design than Awakening, meaning that it's much easier to keep Azura safe if you play tightly.  Even has a mildly useful passive vs. Vallites in Foreign Princess, which comes up a lot in Revelation.

New Mystery of the Emblem - Phina / Feena dies pretty easily, but this is a game where both on her join map and a few other maps have fun mechanics like "chase after escaping Thieves carrying items you need to get if you want the Good ending" or "kill the boss ASAP or deal with hordes of ninja reinforcements."  It's pretty player-phase focused, too, so dancing a Sniper to get a second shot can be handy.  So... turns out okay anyway.  (Slightly hurt by competition with the Dance-staff, but charges are rare for that.)

Blazing Blade - The ability to turn a unit into a nuke briefly is cool, even if you're still usually doing vanilla dances.  Game can be a bit enemy-phase focused which devalues dancers some though.

Binding Blade, Sacred Stones - Very, very vanilla Dancers.

Awakening - This has to be one of the worst showings for Dancers of all time.  At endgame (& postgame), other units can replicate the effect with Galeforce.  Olivia is extremely frail and in a game that has ninja reinforcements, so using her safely means really knowing your reinforcement timings and locations.  You don't really want to pair Olivia up, either, since it'd mean whoever is the other side of the pair isn't really doing anything while she dances, and her stat boosts and linked attacks aren't great if she's the backup side of the pair.  Despite all this, she has some purpose in that if you're doing some sort of fast boss rush clear in the second half of the game on Lunatic, merely having her hide in half of a Pair-up so she can dance the Galeforcing flyer on the way to the boss since you have no plans of surviving all the reinforcements.

N/A - I'm not considering Cleric Faye in Echoes an honorary Dancer here.  Anew is learned way too late, it's basically post-game only.  Sorry!

Edited September 29, 2023 by SnowFire

[Jotari]

Before reading what anyone else has to say, I'll just go outright and say that refreshers are some of the best units available in any game. As they're essentially a second version of you're strongest unit and a second version of you're highest utility or support unit rolled up into one. The number of options you have open to you is much greater with a dancer on your team. Their worst game is probably Mystery of the Emblem and even there they're still great.

[ping]

For me, the games where Dancer utility stood out the most were Binding Blade and Path of Radiance (Maniac), both because player phase is much more important in those compared to the games between them. Ninils's added utility with the rings is pretty neat (especially on Ranked, where you'd like to make use of underleveled units), but I generally found that second action on your strongest units more universally useful in BinBla.

In PoR, I found MM to be much more PP focused because enemies become too bulky to be one-rounded by Jav/HA forges eventually. Clearing up a group of enemies on PP with Silver forges becomes much more relevant than it is on Hard. And, of course, Reyson's choice to go into 4-way dance mode at the cost of a Laguz stone and his turn 1 dance is very strong in some chapters. A pretty cool choice to give to the player, too, honestly.

[Jotari]

48 minutes ago, gnip said:

In PoR, I found MM to be much more PP focused because enemies become too bulky to be one-rounded by Jav/HA forges eventually. Clearing up a group of enemies on PP with Silver forges becomes much more relevant than it is on Hard. And, of course, Reyson's choice to go into 4-way dance mode at the cost of a Laguz stone and his turn 1 dance is very strong in some chapters. A pretty cool choice to give to the player, too, honestly.

But is that (and two other playable characters) better than a Renewal Scroll?

[Eltosian Kadath]

Honestly this is probably one of the boring-est class to rank, as it is difficult for me to justify putting them below S tier in every game, but here we go

Again with the theoretically useful image..

S Tier: One of the Best Classes in the Game

Genealogy of the Holy War: Much as I want to drop it a rank for not having a horse, being able to refresh four units, and the way you can use super canto to setup those multi-dances are just too much for even a high version of A tier

Thracia 776: Even before the dancer promotion, Thracia's future dancer puts in some work with minor thief utility, and as solid capture bait unit. As for dancing, letting you use your high rank staffers multiple times a turn is definitely worth a top tier ranking

Binding Blade: With enemies being tough enough to make this a more player phase focused game, not to mention the key aspect of helping your units carry Roy to the seize point, dancers can really shine in this game

Path of Radiance: Much like Genealogy, the lack of horse, and how enemy phase focused this game is both make me want to drop it to A-tier, but even time limited multi-dances (on top of the other bonuses Reyson gets on transforming) is just too powerful to keep out of S-tier.

Engage: With Byleth's power letting you refresh your dancer, and being able to give them canter in general for better position, that lets you use you best unit up to four times in a single turn, which is ridiculously powerful.

Fates: Its more difficult to setup a multidance in Fates, but being able to shelter-transfer-switch to get your dancer to fully refresh a unit multiple times in a turn is still ridiculous.

Radiant Dawn: Multiple herons get to dance more than one unit a turn with their refreshing, although its a bit complicated which, and when they can, that is still a S-tier power. I suppose I should mention in passing that they also get other utility chants, but they are either mostly useless, or require more grinding than anyone should ever want, or need to do on a dancer.

New Mystery of the Emblem: With how difficult positioning is in the DS games (no canto, or rescue...), and how player phase focused that game tends to be, its dancer definitely earns its S-tier

Three Houses: Having so much control of who can become your dancer lets you build them into a unit that you don't have to treat as gently as in other games, especially with them getting the skills to become more of a dodge tank, letting them far more safely remain on the front lines, plus dancing helps to setup the quick boss kills that seem to dominate so many maps of this game.

Blazing Sword:  At first I had this placed in the A-tier, as this game is far more enemy phase focused, where the Jav Cavs can charge ahead of the dancers as the battle goes on, but when I remembered about Ninis Grace, and Filla's Might, I figured that was just enough to push it over the edge, as both facilitate enemy phase action far more than the more player phased focused power of a refresh.

 

A Tier: A Very Good Class

Sacred Stones:  The ability to refresh is strongest as a player phase focused tool, and while it can help with setting up enemy phase action, it doesn't shine as much. Sacred Stones is the just the major enemy phase focused game where dancers weren't given anything extra to compensate for that.

Awakening: With Galeforce giving your best units easier access to extra actions late into the game, it feels like the power of dancing falls off a bit later into the game, but its still really useful in general to refresh units. I am somewhat tempted to drop this down to B-tier, but I am letting it live in A tier for now.

 

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

 

Sacred Stones:  The ability to refresh is strongest as a player phase focused tool, and while it can help with setting up enemy phase action, it doesn't shine as much. Sacred Stones is the just the major enemy phase focused game where dancers weren't given anything extra to compensate for that.

 

Kind of weird they didn't include the dancer Rings in Sacred Stones. They were right there from Binding Blade. And Path of Radiance which was made at the same time certainly gave its dancer some nifty additional features.

[ping]

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

But is that (and two other playable characters) better than a Renewal Scroll?

Darn, got me there. That 3-4 HP/turn really would've saved my bacon in so many instances that I unfortunately can't quite recall right now.

[lenticular]

Most of what I would have to say has already been said and there's not much point in repeating it. So instead, just a few random extra comments.

• I'm surprised that nobody else has brought up availability yet. Since you're only getting one Dancer per game, availability is both important and easy to measure. Is Reyson a better unit than Azura? Almost certainly. But if I'm playing Birthright then I get Azura in Chapter 5, whereas Reyson doesn't show up in Path of Radiance until chapter 18. So a hypothetical "Birthright without Azura" run probably feels more negatively speaking than a "PoR without Reyson" run. Seadall is also a fairly late recruitment, coming in at Chapter 15. Both Reyson and Seadall are exceptionally good units once you get them, but availability is probably at least a bit of a knock against them.
• Awakening is the only Fire Emblem game where I've ever permanently benched my Dancer (outside of stuff like challenge runs). I just got too frustrated at seeing Olivia getting killed by ambush reinforcements. What she contributed just wasn't worth how much of a liability her fragility was. I definitely agree with everyone who has said this is the lowest point for Dancers in teh series.
• Three Houses Dancers also have some of the same advantages that Seadall has in Engage. For one, there are battalions and gambits. Just as it's powerful to have Seadall dance for someone with an engaged Emblem, it can be powerful to dance for someone with a strong gambit. There are very few predicaments you can get yourself into which can't be solved by "what if I just use Ashes and Dust twice?" Second, there's the Dance of the Goddess gambit that can dance for your dancer and allow for your best unit to get 4 actions on a single player phase.

3 minutes ago, gnip said:

Darn, got me there. That 3-4 HP/turn really would've saved my bacon in so many instances that I unfortunately can't quite recall right now.

I have a truly marvellous proof for why the Renewal scroll is objectively better that this margin is too narrow to contain.

[Dark Holy Elf]

One interesting thing about dancers is that they have relatively low move, but they make such good use of move boosts (since it effectively amounts to a move boost for whoever they dance for, too) that I tend to assume they will receive them.

1. Genealogy of the Holy War: Being able to refresh four units is very good. The only knock on them is that 6 move isn't very good in this game, but the Leg Ring is +3 so that fixes that. Pretty good availability, especially in gen 2.

2. Engage: Seadall can only refresh one, but the concentration of power due to emblems and his free access to canter make him exceptionally good anyway.

3. Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn: Like Sylvia/Lene/Laylea, Rafiel has four-person refresh, which is very good, although he pays for it with even lower base move and being made of paper. The other two dancers can refresh less (though Reyson can reach four if you give up a turn or two to use items). Throw in availability concerns in a blender and I have a hard time separating these two games, but they're around here.

4. Three Houses: Unlike FE4 and Tellius, it's only a one-person dance. Unlike Engage, they don't have canter... sure, I always give them Fetters of Dromi, but that means someone else isn't using it, which is obviously a negative. But beyond that, extremely good. Still, they have more move than the average dancer, and potentially ridiculous durability by dancer standards... sword avoid +20 can lead to some big avoid numbers, letting them draw in dangerous foes without using an action. They can also provide linked attacks which is very nice.

5. Fates: Azura can only refresh one unit, and doesn't have canter. But she has great availability, and her dance shenanigans feel particularly useful in this game, due to Shelter and the lack of other movement options. She really enables some strategies you otherwise don't have.

6. Blazing Blade: While it's similar enough to Sacred Stones, with about half a game's availability and one-person refresh, the access to rings is a nice little boon. +10 def/res can make someone a super-tank for one turn, like a better Impregnable Wall.

7. Sacred Stones: Your bog standard, generic dancer. Can take one hit in a pinch, dances for one person, nothing shiny but certainly effective.

8. Binding Blade: So one thing worth emphasizing is that dancers have low durability, but it usually doesn't matter much due to their role. When does it matter? The games with ambush spawns. In these games, unless you memorize all ambush spawns (which is not how I'd rate things), you run the risk of getting your dancer killed, and the dancers in this game are absolutely squishy enough for that to be a risk. Not too often, and they are certainly worth deploying, but it's still a negative that the games above don't have.

9. Awakening: Agree with others that this is the pretty clear low point for dancers, and the only one I sometimes bench even when playing "optimally". The ambush spawn thing I mentioned in BB returns with an absolute vengeance here.

[Florete]

I know this won't be relevant to a lot of players here, but one thing I think needs to kept in mind for more recent entries is casual mode. This is especially notable for Olivia, because it means she can be downed by the ambush spawns but not lost by the player, unlike Larum and Elphin, who also happen to be in a game with bigger, longer maps.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Are we human? Or are we Dancer? This class is vital, let's rank 'em all!

Spoiler

9. Awakening. A player more clever than me could probably figure out how to use Dance and Pairup/Switch/Transfer to get some quick clears in. But I'm not that clever, and when Olivia shows up, she feels like a questionable bit of filler.

8. Sacred Stones. Tethys is the most "Dancer/10" on this list. There's not much more to her. She's only around for the latter half of the game, joining notably later on Ephraim's route. She works, but that's about it.

7. Path of Radiance. Reyson joins at what feels like the "midway point", even if most of the chapters are behind us. No Canto (as in, re-move) yet, but flying mobility os still nice. Singing for four allies is excellent, but he won't be transformed most of the time. 

6. FE7. The Rings are pretty cool, even if I'll only use Ninis' Grace and Filla's Might asingle-digit number of times. And the other two... never. Still, a powerful effect, and a cool option. The big shame here is, you guessed it, availability. Ninian joins after the vague halfway point (of Eliwood or Hector's Story), then disappears, until Nils comes back right before the end. A good bring when they're around, though.

5. Radiant Dawn. Three, performing very differently, but also not overlapping. Rafiel is Sylvia, Reyson is Reyson (again), and Leanne is an odd in-between. Flying mobility (now with Canto) is excellent on the two who have it, as is singing for multiple targets. But in a world where crossbows exist, frailty is an all-time issue. Combined, they're in 21 of 43 maps, and the times they aren't around tend to be the hardest. Not sure if that's to their credit, or detriment.

4. FE6. "Chapter 11" sounds almost halfway through, but most of the paralogues are yet to come. Even if they're "just Dancing", units are unbalanced enough to render "my best unit moves twice" much better than "my best and second-best units move". Same-turn reinforcements are a threat, yes, but Larum or Elpphin always have their uses.

3. Fates. Depending on route, you have Azura for "all" or "most" of the playthrough, making her a consistent contributor. She's got the Strength growth to do some damage via Attack stance, but her frailty is an issue. She eventually gets Special Dance, for further appreciated boosts.

2. Three Houses. Very different from most titles, as you get to choose your Dancer. The class has great mobility (for infantry, at least), access to spells, and a built-in Sword Avoid +20. Also gets Special Dance at mastery. It synergizes pretty well with Dance of the Goddess, especially for quick bosskills. Useful and versatile, whoever you put into it.

1. Genealogy of the Holy War. Being able to Dance for four targets, all the time, is just absurd. And super-canto synergizes with this, for great positioning. You've got a Dancer for about two-thirds of the game, and while getting them the Leg Ring can be tough, it's doable via the Arena. They're all S-tier units here.

There we go. There's not a huge breadth between positions here, and I only feel confident in my "first" and "last/ninth" placements. Dancing is such a powerful tactic to have, but the games always find a way to balance the ones who offer it.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Lotta people saying Binding Blade is a more player phase focused game. Not about to argue the point, as I believe with some games it involves the player's playstyle and unit selection just as much as what's in the game itself. FE6, classic example. With that game, there's a large, open ended roster of units with varying degrees of strength (yes, very diplomatic way of saying "unbalanced game" wouldn't you agree). For me, FE6 is player phase focused only in the chapters before I promote Rutger. And then later in the game when I'm throwing indestructible units like Miledy, Percival, at mobs of enemies. Planting a berserker on the mountain to the side to safely lure all the wyverns/nomads in a different direction from the pack.

FE6 enemies are spongier than the rest of GBA era, that's true. But the best argument for player phase game is showing off everything you can get done with Rescue/Mini Canto - also in FE7.

On 9/29/2023 at 6:32 AM, lenticular said:

 

• I'm surprised that nobody else has brought up availability yet. Since you're only getting one Dancer per game, availability is both important and easy to measure. Is Reyson a better unit than Azura? Almost certainly. But if I'm playing Birthright then I get Azura in Chapter 5, whereas Reyson doesn't show up in Path of Radiance until chapter 18. So a hypothetical "Birthright without Azura" run probably feels more negatively speaking than a "PoR without Reyson" run. 

I definitely thought of it, but only found it worth mention with Phina. Every other dancer I chose to rank was around for 40-60% of the playtime, so splitting hairs didn't feel worthy of the extra word count. Sylvia/Lene is closer to Phina's availability, but Sylvia's initial chapter 2 performance isn't exactly making her case when she's trudging through forests, dancing for exactly one unit, and soaking up village rewards instead of regrouping with the army (she needs the gold that bad). It's a miserable situation that muddies the point about availability.

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

Are we human? Or are we Dancer?

I'm on my knees looking for the answer

On 9/30/2023 at 12:54 AM, Florete said:

I know this won't be relevant to a lot of players here, but one thing I think needs to kept in mind for more recent entries is casual mode. This is especially notable for Olivia, because it means she can be downed by the ambush spawns but not lost by the player, unlike Larum and Elphin, who also happen to be in a game with bigger, longer maps.

I will try to keep casual mode in mind when we get to healers. Losing the little healer girl may very well be the catalyst that prompted players to reset and flip on casual. As for dancers, part of their perceived value is the fact you can only have One. Could it be that older, pre-Casual Mode fire emblem players have a warped perception of units like this? May be worth examining.

[samthedigital]

45 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

For me, FE6 is player phase focused only in the chapters before I promote Rutger. And then later in the game when I'm throwing indestructible units like Miledy, Percival, at mobs of enemies. Planting a berserker on the mountain to the side to safely lure all the wyverns/nomads in a different direction from the pack.

45 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

FE6 enemies are spongier than the rest of GBA era, that's true. But the best argument for player phase game is showing off everything you can get done with Rescue/Mini Canto - also in FE7.

I'm throwing my units into hoards of enemies on occasion in FE6 too. The main difference for me is in the objectives and how strong Warp is in FE6. Boots spam (so side objectives like stealing later on in the game are more valuable) and the higher enemy quality also help give the dancer more value.

Edited October 1, 2023 by samthedigital

[Shadow Mir]

Abstain. Not much to say here other than some miscellaneous comments. 

On 9/28/2023 at 7:35 PM, SnowFire said:

Even has a mildly useful passive vs. Vallites in Foreign Princess, which comes up a lot in Revelation.

Even ignoring it being a level 35 skill, it does jack in the main game. It only works in pvp castle battles

[ARMADS!!!]

On 9/29/2023 at 12:59 PM, Eltosian Kadath said:

Honestly this is probably one of the boring-est class to rank, as it is difficult for me to justify putting them below S tier in every game, but here we go

Again with the theoretically useful image..

S Tier: One of the Best Classes in the Game

Thracia 776: Even before the dancer promotion, Thracia's future dancer puts in some work with minor thief utility, and as solid capture bait unit. As for dancing, letting you use your high rank staffers multiple times a turn is definitely worth a top tier ranking

I still haven't played FE5 yet so pardon me if I'm being ignorant, but doesn't that game have a fatigue mechanic that would stop you from being able to use your dancer in a bunch of chapters? Wouldn't that possibly lower her tier?

 

On 9/29/2023 at 2:12 PM, Jotari said:

Kind of weird they didn't include the dancer Rings in Sacred Stones. They were right there from Binding Blade. And Path of Radiance which was made at the same time certainly gave its dancer some nifty additional features.

 What? There were dancer rings in FE6 too???

 

On 9/30/2023 at 3:30 AM, Dark Holy Elf said:

8. Binding Blade: So one thing worth emphasizing is that dancers have low durability, but it usually doesn't matter much due to their role. When does it matter? The games with ambush spawns. In these games, unless you memorize all ambush spawns (which is not how I'd rate things), you run the risk of getting your dancer killed, and the dancers in this game are absolutely squishy enough for that to be a risk. Not too often, and they are certainly worth deploying, but it's still a negative that the games above don't have.

 I think they have enough avoid to barely ever get hit anyway so that's hardly a problem, they can even be used as avoid-tank bait for possible ambush spawns that could easily kill someone that is squisjy AND has a mid/bad avoid... like Lilina but instead will choose to attack the dancer because they're disarmed.

 

 

 

 About the ranking though, I've only actually played the GBA games until now (only very small parts of FE4 and 5 but not enough to get the dancers yet) so I'm pretty astonished that some dancers can refresh multiple units per turn (makes me wonder when FEH will implement this...), but either way I think I can only rank the ones from the games I played right? In this case, its:

 1) FE6: Simply because FE6 is harder than FEs 7 and 8 and the units in FE6 are a lot more unbalanced, so getting to use one of your great units (like Rutger, Lilina, Lugh, Melady, Percival, or maybe a healer to heal a dying unit...) is particularly more valuable. Also Lalum/Ephin is SPECIALLY more useful on a bunch of very particular ocasions such as: on the desert map, even more if you want all the treasure, because in FE6 it's a chapter with a turn limit, or to get Melady and Zeiss to talk to Galle and then use one of them again to kill him (since, if you don't, you'll have them bloking 2 of the spaces adjacent to Galle which might make it harder to have someone else reach him to kill him + "wasted" a turn for two of the few units that can kill him without problems + if you can't  get someone else to kill Galle or more people to block block his way then he can start to target your weaker unis), or to refresh Rutger to attack a boss again (since in FE6 the hit rates are so low and the throne bonuses are so high that the solution to almost half of the bosses it just "throw Rutger at them"), or on the second to last chapter where it's essential to have everyone ALWAYS doing something be it attack or run or heal, or to be able to have someone cure someone under Berserk/Sleep(since FE6 is full of enemies with status staves and they always Berserk Rutger or Dieck for them to murder your whole army!) and then heal that other unit that is almost dying but you couldn't be able to heal because you had to unberserk Rutger/Dieck immediately otherwise they'd gonna kill any of your units that they attacked (or attack the other and then die), or also to reach Cath with Roy to recruit her (which is very annoying to do as you have to do it trice and she had 1+ move than Roy so your options are either blocking Cath's way which is not always possible and can end with her attacking and getting killed, or sending Lalum with Roy), and also the fact that Douglas won't attack Lalum/Elphin in chapter 16 is simply a blessing (since he's an annoying enemy that actively chases after you during the whole chapter but you can't kill him otherwise you can't recruit him later AND don't get the next gaiden chapter, which means no true ending, being able to trap him with Lalum/Elphin is great, also I might be wrong but I think that if you make them talk to Douglas then he stopped being hostile to your whole army but I'm not 100% sure about that). Because of all of this, I had to place FE7 above FE6.

 2) FE7: I was gonna Place Ninian/Nils above Lalum/Elphin at first, but after recalling how much more times I felt like Lalum absolutely saved my ass I had to place FE6 first. Still Ninian and Nils' rings make them specially powerful among dancers, and I'm not sure if it's just my impression but I feel they had better availability than FE6's and 8's dancers(?) at least if you consider Lyn's mode I'm almost sure they do. I liked the gimmick that Ninian and Nils keep switching between them while carrying their stats, Nils does suffer a little in comparision to Ninian- and to the dancers on other games where supports exist- since he has the distinct quality of for some reason in hell not be able to get supports (not that you'd normally need him to raise most of his stats anyway so this doesn't hurt him much, it's just that it's a bummer, specially since Ninian can but he can't...).

 3) FE8: Nothing wrong about Tethys, she's obviously great simply for being a dancer, and her stats are good enough for her to never almost get hit too so nothing to complain, but as everyone is saying, there's nothing special about her, so yeah that's it, not much more I can say about her as an unit I guess (could probably cjeck if her affinity is good, but then I'd have to do the same for Lalum's, Elphin's, Ninian's and Nils' in order for it to be a fair commentary and I simply don't want to check each of their affinities and what stats they affect and how much they affect each so... It's not like this could raise Tethys' ranking anyway). She wins for having the best theme though.

 

 

 

Just out of curiostity, in FE3/New Mistery, can Xane transform into your dancer and dance your other units? (and if yes, can he dance Phina??) That'd make him seriously busted!

 And also, not related to the ranking but, one thing that they shouldn't have stopped doing with FE dancers was giving them an unique song while refreshing, recently I was watching a compilation of all of the refreshing themes and found out that they stopped after FE8, which made me sad because I had no idea that they stopped, hell, some dancers even had TWO themes (one while attacking/being attacked and one for then they danced). Anyway, the dancing themes are pretty cool (shoutout to Sylvia/Lene's and to Tethys'!) and it'd be cool if they comeback.

[ARMADS!!!]

13 minutes ago, ARMADS!!! said:

 1) FE6: (...)Because of all of this, I had to place FE7 above FE6.

 

 I meant "I had to place FE6 above  FE7"! Sorry for double posting but for some reason the forum is not letting me edit my own post (it says it has been too long since I posted or tha the post was deleted, but I see it was not deleted and when I tried to edit it I had posted it like 10 ago, so I don't know if it's a bug or whatever or something else went wrong but I felt it was better to clarify the mistake I made because if I left "FE6" and "FE7" switched on the post it could confuse someone..).

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 9/30/2023 at 12:54 AM, Florete said:

I know this won't be relevant to a lot of players here, but one thing I think needs to kept in mind for more recent entries is casual mode. This is especially notable for Olivia, because it means she can be downed by the ambush spawns but not lost by the player, unlike Larum and Elphin, who also happen to be in a game with bigger, longer maps.

I think this is definitely fair to bring up, but for me personally, I only ever play on Classic Mode, and I just don't really have a great sense of how my playstyle and priorities would change on Casual. So my comments/ratings will continue to assume Classic, not out of any argument for the mode's superiority but because it's all I feel qualified to talk about.

1 hour ago, ARMADS!!! said:

 I think they have enough avoid to barely ever get hit anyway so that's hardly a problem, they can even be used as avoid-tank bait for possible ambush spawns that could easily kill someone that is squisjy AND has a mid/bad avoid... like Lilina but instead will choose to attack the dancer because they're disarmed.

I've had it happen so obviously that colours my views. That said as someone who likes dodgetanks in GBA, I don't really find the Binding Blade dancers that great at it... they join with 31 avo but only level up relatively slowly, so this doesn't improve that fast, and I personally find them impractical to build supports for (though I'll acknowledge if you draw out maps, you can do it if you want). And while, sure, a steel axe will probably have 25-30 displayed hit and will usually miss, it will also probably one-hit-kill and I don't really like the idea of banking on an ~85% chance to not die. I really never found any time I wanted to use my dancer to draw hits in that game.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, ARMADS!!! said:

 

 

 What? There were dancer rings in FE6 too???

 

 

No, that's just similar naming messing me over again. Blazing Blade. Bloody Durandal doesn't even go on fire >.>

1 hour ago, ARMADS!!! said:

 

 

 

Just out of curiostity, in FE3/New Mistery, can Xane transform into your dancer and dance your other units? (and if yes, can he dance Phina??) That'd make him seriously busted!

 

I don't think he can, but he doesn't need to, as that game has the Again staff which is already busted. Especially in Old Mystery where it allows  your entire army (including Phina) move again.

Edited October 2, 2023 by Jotari

[ARMADS!!!]

13 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I think this is definitely fair to bring up, but for me personally, I only ever play on Classic Mode, and I just don't really have a great sense of how my playstyle and priorities would change on Casual. So my comments/ratings will continue to assume Classic, not out of any argument for the mode's superiority but because it's all I feel qualified to talk about.

I've had it happen so obviously that colours my views. That said as someone who likes dodgetanks in GBA, I don't really find the Binding Blade dancers that great at it... they join with 31 avo but only level up relatively slowly, so this doesn't improve that fast, and I personally find them impractical to build supports for (though I'll acknowledge if you draw out maps, you can do it if you want). And while, sure, a steel axe will probably have 25-30 displayed hit and will usually miss, it will also probably one-hit-kill and I don't really like the idea of banking on an ~85% chance to not die. I really never found any time I wanted to use my dancer to draw hits in that game.

 I think than Elphin might be less of a dodge tank than Lalum idk but since I never used Elphin I can't talk about him.  What I did with Lalum was to place her on a forest or on a fort(specially when I knew that those fuckers ambush spawns would come from some of the forts but didn't know when, and a bunch of my units where on the area, I'd let Lalum there and prey that they chose her over Lilina), also I always lose points grinding supports and refresh units way more than needed (like on a bunch of the turns that are for grinding supports or when another unit is reaching a shop after I have no enemies left but haven't sized the castle yet) so maybe my Lalum had some more levels than she normally should (on top of the extra avoid from supports), also bear in mind that I didn't play the game on hard it was more viable too, also I play with save states (usually save around once per turn- unless I won't move too many units- or when I'll do a risky decision) so if it goes wrong and she dies I can reload the save but she doesn't die on the absolute marjority of times . Of course, when I had a better option to use as dodge tank, I would use it, I didn't throw Lalum into a group of enemies 10 times per chapter, but it sure had its perks to use her as a bait (just as much as it does with Tethys for example, but it's more useful to do it on FE6, the game with ambush spawns) because she's ALWAYS targeted (only better option for being sure your bait will be targeted might be throwing your lord, specially if unarmed, but I think I never did this in FE6 so idk if the enemies would prefer Lalum or Roy, in FE8 it sure it a good idea to use Eirika to protect other units like this though).

 

14 minutes ago, Jotari said:

No, that's just similar naming messing me over again. Blazing Blade. Bloody Durandal doesn't even go on fire >.>

 Oh, ok! I confused FE6 and 7 too myself on the post you just quoted, it happens more than I'd like to admit it. Crap...I've never thought about that if there was a "blazing" blade, it was the actual sword of seals/binding blade as it actually catches on fire...

24 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I don't think he can, but he doesn't need to, as that game has the Again staff which is already busted. Especially in Old Mystery where it allows  your entire army (including Phina) move again.

Cool! The older FEs had some REALLY busted stuff, like those INSANE stat boosters and the starsphere in FE Gaiden (fuck, one of them gives +5 mov... that's just crazily broken), and now this Again staff...

[Whisky]

This one is pretty popular eh?

It’s kind of hard one because all Dancers are good for the same reasons. Though exactly how useful they are can vary depending on context, like someone earlier mentioning that it depends on your options during player phase, which makes sense. Availability could be another factor to consider, though I think Dancers are available for roughly the same amount of the game for most FE games.

I’ve played randomizer where I got two Dancers which opens up so many options. Having two is pretty OP.

I haven’t played Awakening or Fates.

Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn

These are the only games I know where the Dancer classes can refresh multiple units at once which is just crazy. 3H and Engage have Dance of the Goddess but that’s separate from the class.

Three Houses and Engage

Both of these games have a lot of player phase options and ways to really get a lot out of dancing. Dancers also have a bit of extra utility in these games too instead of only Dancing.

Blazing Sword (FE7)

I’m putting this above the other GBA games because of the rings. Even though Dancing is still probably better on most turns, the rings are a good option to have too and have very strong effects. The +Def one can pretty much make a unit invincible for a turn and the +Atk one can be really good for killing bosses.

Binding Blade and Sacred Stones

I think Dancing is generally considered the least useful in SS and that’s probably true, but it’s still good there too, just less good. Dancing is great in Binding Blade but I think they’re close enough to just group together. These are the only two games I know of where Dancers only Dance and don’t have anything else, which is still really useful.

I guess I’ll just add that Rescue/Dropping can combine very well with Dancing. You can Rescue/Drop a unit backwards to help the Dancer reach them. This can open up a lot more options when you’re planning your turn out.

Of course this also applies to Warp/Rescue/Stride/Cantó/etc.

2 hours ago, ARMADS!!! said:

I've never thought about that if there was a "blazing" blade, it was the actual sword of seals/binding blade as it actually catches on fire...

I know, right?! Makes me wonder if they got confused when naming them.

[samthedigital]

6 hours ago, ARMADS!!! said:

I still haven't played FE5 yet so pardon me if I'm being ignorant, but doesn't that game have a fatigue mechanic that would stop you from being able to use your dancer in a bunch of chapters? Wouldn't that possibly lower her tier?

There's an item called S Drink that resets the unit's fatigue. It's pretty easy to buy a bunch of them and basically ignore the mechanic entirely if you know what to sell. Lara doesn't really get fatigued all that often anyway though since dancing only adds 1 fatigue. Staves take up a lot more, so Lara is more flexible to help facilitate staff spamming.

[ARMADS!!!]

9 hours ago, Whisky said:

I know, right?! Makes me wonder if they got confused when naming them.

 In case you're serious, the legendary weapons of Elibe had elements atributed to them, as I recall the tomes were simply atributed to their respective elements and I don't rememer about Elimine's staff, but the phisycal weapons were atributed as: Armads being the "thunder" axe, Mulagir as the "wind" bow, Malted as the "ice" spear, and Durandal as the "blazing" sword, even if the weapons didn't have any sort of "elemental" effect. The names were most likely given in honour to the places where each weapon was kept (Durandal was kept on sort of a volcano chamber, hence "blazing" sword). But yeah, it was sorta weird that they decided to muse Durandal as the Lord's prf sword on FE7 AND to choose it's subtitle as the name of game, while knowing well that the Lord's sword of the previous game is the one that catches on fire.

 

8 hours ago, samthedigital said:

There's an item called S Drink that resets the unit's fatigue. It's pretty easy to buy a bunch of them and basically ignore the mechanic entirely if you know what to sell. Lara doesn't really get fatigued all that often anyway though since dancing only adds 1 fatigue. Staves take up a lot more, so Lara is more flexible to help facilitate staff spamming.

Oh, ok!

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, ARMADS!!! said:

 In case you're serious, the legendary weapons of Elibe had elements atributed to them, as I recall the tomes were simply atributed to their respective elements and I don't rememer about Elimine's staff, but the phisycal weapons were atributed as: Armads being the "thunder" axe, Mulagir as the "wind" bow, Malted as the "ice" spear, and Durandal as the "blazing" sword, even if the weapons didn't have any sort of "elemental" effect. The names were most likely given in honour to the places where each weapon was kept (Durandal was kept on sort of a volcano chamber, hence "blazing" sword). But yeah, it was sorta weird that they decided to muse Durandal as the Lord's prf sword on FE7 AND to choose it's subtitle as the name of game, while knowing well that the Lord's sword of the previous game is the one that catches on fire.

 

Oh, ok!

The game should have been called Icy Lance because Eliwood should have been using Maltet.