Renall

For Leaf? It's a fair bit. No pursuit and he's a foot unit, and unlike Lachesis the Prince class doesn't get staves before promotion. I dunno, that sounds like something that requires some pretty hefty favoritism. I don't know about the Elite Ring, but certainly Celice is the obvious choice for the Leg Ring for ch6 and 7.

Neither Johalva nor Leaf is going to promote until around the time Faval would show up, so it's basically the same thing; Lester has the bows and nobody else is going to be able to use them. And it'd be a waste not to have somebody using them during that time. Arthur [Azel] turns out a bit better in the end, but he doesn't have a horse until promotion, while Lester always does. Also, I have to give Johan > Johalva just for the movement. Johalva is probably the statistically superior character with the better secondary option, but he isn't fast enough on the map.

I agree with Midir!Lester over Azel!Arthur considering he can Canto after his range attack and has a hero bow passed down to him, even though Wrath is great it's quite risky. Azel!Arthur is going to have, like what, Elfire or something at best? Even in the best case of Bolganone or Wind he's still dealing with low Mt for decent Evade or high Mt with his AS shot to hell and back. Killer Bow has 14 Mt (6 less than Bolganone) for only 4 Wt (almost as light as Wind), 100 Hit, and Critical. And Lester should get the Hero Bow too (who else would want it from ch6-8, or even use it at all?). There's no way Lester [Jamka]/[Midir] isn't going to have both of those bows, and even one of them would kick Arthur [Azel]'s ass. Plus he's got a horse. I mentioned this before the two-page derail, those two Lesters definitely need to rocket up somewhere. He's a mobile artillery platform, hindered mostly only by the lack of enemy phase, which would put him under units who perform similarly offensively but counterattack.

That's an extremely narrow set of circumstances considering she appears like three times total. Three enemies is a small portion of the total game. Plus Julius will kill her for you in ch10.

Aless is better as part of the total unit of horse troops that can zoom ahead on most maps. Shanan is a better individual character. I'm not sure which one you'd weight, but since this is a tier list I'd presume it's individual character ability. I'm really not sure.

They both leave, as far as I can remember.

Shanan vs. Aless vs. Arthur [Levin] is pretty contentious. I've always sided with Shanan and I'm inclined to agree here because his Avoid is really quite godlike even though he and Aless both kill anything. It's true that Aless has move and that is very important (one of the most important stats in the game, I'd argue), but he is slightly more mortal than the Balmung/Holsety wielders. That said, he comes into his own toward the end when he's charging across entire continents with Celice, and Shanan can fall behind somewhat. Plus Shanan starting promoted alleviates the movement issue somewhat. Now, regarding Lakche/Skasaha. I'm only covering her because basically anything that's true for her goes double for him. Lakche [Lex] starts at lv1 with the following stats: 40 HP, 7 DEF, 22 Atk (Hero Sword, let's be real generous), 10 AS, and tons of Hit (100 with the Hero, 26 from SKL alone, plus Celice's leadership, Delmud's Charisma, etc.). Her Avoid, however, is like 28 before Leadership/Charisma/etc. And this is with a very light weapon; if she doesn't have the Hero (this applies to Skasaha since he won't, especially with Lex as father), she needs a Sword to keep Avoid up as a Blade lowers it a good bit. Enemies in ch6 alone aren't total punks in Hit; the crappy Axefighters have an okay amount (in the 60s-70s I think?), the Bow Armors have more. And they have decent amounts of Atk, around 20 or so on average or thereabouts. Lakche wants to be on forests or hills whenever she can be and as close to Celice and Delmud as possible because that is not a terribly good situation to be in. Granted, it's still a 3-4 HKO, but why chance it? Oifaye doesn't even give a shit. 17 DEF laughs at those punks. And he's not slouching on offense either since he's got more STR than Lakche and an Armor Cutter, so they both pretty much one-round people. Also I think he's one of the few people who can get to the NE village at Ganeishire before it gets too badly torched, so that's free money he can use to buy a sword off somebody. As chapters bear on, Lakche gains more avoid, but it's still somewhat tumultuous to be away from anyone who can shore up her Avoid. But that's kind of the problem. Celice is either using the Leg Ring or a horse after he promotes. Delmud is mounted. These guys might take off and not be anywhere near her. Best case scenario, she's fighting without their help (and then she wants terrain, and there isn't always terrain to be used). Worst case scenario, they've left her completely in the dust. Now, the few times where the enemy is right outside, terrain is unfavorable to mounts, and everybody wants to bunch up (Muhammed's army or something), she's shining. But her capacity to kill people is hardly unique among 2nd Gen characters and in many cases is desperate overkill. And she's not moving very fast. Oifaye, while he starts to slack as the game wears on, retains his very high DEF and mounted advantage. He may not be as good a fighter as late-game Celice, Aless, Delmud, Arthur, Lester, etc., but he can stay with the vanguard and help out punching holes, finishing off somebody who didn't die because Arthur forgot to Continue, popping armors with a spare Cutter, whatever he needs to do. Now Lex's version of the twins has the advantage of Elite, which lets them use the arenas to pretty much remain competitive the whole game despite fighting less. But Lakche still needs 12 more levels to really approach Oifaye's base capabilities, and she only winds up tying him in DEF. And that's with Lex as her dad. Any other Lakche doesn't get that much DEF. Oifaye tears shit up right out the starting gate and even though he isn't the best fighter by the end, he can actually keep up with the guys doing most of the fighting. And like I said, anything that goes for Lakche, goes for her brother moreso. As for Delmud [beowulf], they're pretty comparable statistically. Obviously have different skillsets. It basically comes down to this: Is Lakche's superior offense by her skills (including Elite) more useful than Delmud having more movement than her and Charisma? On paper, sure, she beats him against a lot of enemies. However, there is no question that he'll be fighting all of those enemies if he wants to. You have to play slower for Lakche to be joining that party or give her the Leg Ring which she doesn't really deserve. So basically, is Delmud [beowulf] one-rounding enemies? If he is, she's not better than him. If he isn't, then I don't know for sure.

Yeah I actually forgot how high Oifaye's DEF is. Maybe he should be going up, actually...

I think Shanan and Aless are considerably better than Sety in any capacity. They exist pretty much a full 2 chapters longer and Aless has a horse. Otherwise, Sety may as well be a clone of Shanan (unkillable skill-rapists), but he has 1~2 range and magical attack. But still, 2 chapters is a long time. Not sure if they beat Arthur [Levin]. I think it comes down to when he promotes. Low is completely messed up. Tristan needs to rise (I ranked him too low by far, if he gets the Pursuit Ring he's very good), Daisy and Femina need to drop (they are terrible). If nothing else Hannibal needs to be above them, or at least above Daisy. Daisy cannot do anything and cannot survive anything. Hannibal cannot do anything but can survive. Lester [Midir] and [Jamka] need to go up. There's no way a guy who joins on turn 2 of ch6 and has exclusive rights to the Killer and Hero Bows for most of the game is worse than Sety's replacement (not that Hawk is really all that bad). Delmud [Fin]/[beowulf] over Oifaye. EDIT: Actually, [beowulf] over him depending on what he inherits, but since [Fin] starts with no good weapons Oifaye is going to be kicking his ass for a good while. And it's still questionable given Oifaye's 17 DEF base, so I dunno. Tinny has no right to exist in High. She's certainly not better than Sety [Claude], any Lakche/Skasaha (at least they start at low level when it's acceptable to be a low level), your dancer, or Arthur [Azel], who has almost a full chapter on her. Julia up. I see no reason she shouldn't be in High. Yeah she disappears, but it really isn't for all that long. She's decent up until then and has exclusive control of Rezire. Arthur/Tinny [Lex] are grossly overrated. I've done the numbers before, and they just aren't doing enough damage with Ambush + Wrath to be viable. If they got Pursuit they'd at least be good for the gimmick and fast leveling but they simply don't have that. Mana is certainly better than a lot of the replacements just because Staff Chick doesn't really care that much about stats. Radney and Roddlevan probably wouldn't be hurt moving up either, they aren't that bad. And Roddlevan > Radney; stats are very close but he has Ambush and she doesn't. Janne and Linda out of Low; Linda has Wrath and Elite, good promotion gains, and Minor Tordo to use Thoron, which drops early in a Replacements game if you don't pass it down (off Ishtor). Janne is a healer on a horse and while unlike Nanna she's NOTHING ELSE, that's still not bad. Oh, and Lakche and Skasaha down generally. Yeah, I went there.

Yeah, and she was probably overplaced there.

He doesn't "contend with the epic," people just have a screwed-up idea of what the epic is. I don't know if he's top of the super-mortals (though he's certainly a dark horse candidate), but Delmud isn't quite approaching the level of Shanan, Aless, Levin!Sety and Levin!Arthur. And neither is Lakche, some people's opinions of the sword twins notwithstanding. But at least Delmud can keep up with Aless and make him better, so even though he can't fight the likes of Ishtar or whatever terribly reliably, he can provide benefit to the people who do.

Generally speaking, a character whose MAG is 10+ points below their cap and who is expected to gain an average of 1 point over their entire leveling span and who is only really capable of using Elwind as their ace in the hole is not a great character. Or at least, Noish!Sety is not worth waiting until the tail end of ch8 for. One thing about Claude!Sety is even if you don't intend to ever really bother using him you can just have him Reserve spam for a little bit and top off his levels. Can be a little handy on ranked (although I question how quickly Claude x Fury can be made on ranked). I suppose nothing prevents any other Sety from staff-spamming too, but not having an A in anything sucks. It's livable, but it sucks. ...on what planet? When I think of lords that tend to rank high I think of gods like Sigurd and Ike, and overexposed GBA lords like Hector. Celice doesn't really jump out at me as a highly-rated lord. He's above-average. Arthur is the first character you get who hits RES and the second who is ranged. But he's unmounted pre-promotion so I'm inclined to agree with you until then. Definitely. Oh come on, who isn't? In most general circumstances yeah. Yes. Yeah, I'll give you this one. After promotion it swings around, but Delmud's already been kicking ass for the whole second gen by then. Don't know if I agree here. Lester's another of those workhorse units that's really good (with the right dads) and doesn't get a lot of credit. The difference is Delmud actually has an enemy phase and Lester has no competition for his weapons (and the Killer and Hero Bows are amazing). Wouldn't know where to call it here. Sure. Sety is massively overrated anyway. I'd still be inclined to disagree though, because Sety from almost any father is extremely potent and Sage is quite a broken class. Who says Skasaha is better than Delmud? lololol Tinny. Agreed. I'd argue Delmud over Fee, under Lana (what can I say, Staff Chick is good in FE4), and I don't know where I'd mix him in with Nanna and Lester. Depends which Delmud we're talking about and which other kids. A Delmud without Pursuit is not very good unless he can get the ring, which will be a problem if we went with Jamka!Lester or something. Tristan has a similar issue, but he's got decent combat parameters with the ring. I would certainly prefer to father Delmud with Fin, Beowulf, or even Azel to get around that issue of course, and it doesn't hurt him too much really. This differs somewhat from my opinions a year ago on the GameFAQs Gen 2 tier list, but that list was sort of a gigantic mess and I'd prefer to revisit it. I stand by Shanan at top of top, but the rest of it probably needs to be scrapped and rebuilt.

I always assumed Nergal's morphs were closer to a homonculus: bodies created with magic, but not imbued with the same sort of essence/soul as ordinary humans. This seems to be part of their existential angst, and they can be given varying degrees of intelligence (like the morph in that one defense chapter who was basically just a programmed message). I suppose it's possible Nergal used quintessence in great quantities to create those morphs, which creates a rather odd situation where he's created beings out of souls that do not themselves have them. I can certainly see how such magic would be considered profane art.

How does that make Sety horrible if he's still better than all your other mages? It just makes him less godly. Noish!Sety has 10% MAG growth and a base of 17. That's pretty bad. It's worse than Hawk, his replacement (he also has less SPD and RES than Hawk, but still beats him in HP and DEF).

I thought it was just an example. It's not like this is the tier list thread, so it isn't like the argument is going to change anything.

Sounds reasonable to me other than the inevitable "let's use the example to drag this out into a stupidly specific debate."

I hope you remember that only the first magic ring works; they aren't cumulative. I think he meant more there's two available, so it's okay to give Sety one.

That's funny because nobody considers Celice to be one of the godly units until Tyrfing. And I didn't say Delmud was bad, just that he doesn't stand out like some pairings because he's always a good, solid unit with good stats but no "flashpoint" other than Charisma (which of course ignores all the other skills he'll usually have, but hey, people consider those boring I guess). Way to completely misinterpret the argument though.

Well a couple of posts back, Renall stated something like mounts>everything in FE4 which is untrue so I pointed out the inconsistencies in that logic. Its just that holy swordies with good resistence=boss killers=god and just happen to be mounted so they can get through slews of enemy mages. Noishe and Alec have terrible durability and are forever stuck with steel swords unless you want to completely favor them so they can get cutters and brave weapons EVERYONE wants, therefore the statement is false No, it's true, you're just selectively ignoring an essential part of the argument. Alec or Noish != Ayra. I'm not disagreeing with that. However, Alec + Noish + Whoever Else On Horseback > Ayra. As long as the set of characters who are mounted is sufficient to beat the game before unmounted units are able to contribute significantly, then mounted characters are more useful as they form part of a unified set. Ask yourself: Would you rather have Levin!Sety or Midir!Lester, Beowulf!Delmud, and Oifaye? 99% of the time, Sety is the wrong answer. Yes, he's better than they are. Yes, he's more durable than they are. Yes, he hits harder than they do. But they have things he can never have, namely movement (ignoring the Leg Ring for a moment) and numbers. Sety (and Ayra) can never be more than one unit. They can never kill more than one enemy on the Player Phase. The group of more characters can; although with Alec and Noish it's unlikely they will kill one enemy each unless finishing guys off, but still, they can finish more weak guys off than Ayra can because there's two of them. "So what," you say. "By that logic, Noish + Alec + Ayra is better than Noish + Alec." True. If Ayra can be there with Noish and Alec and Sigurd and Cuan and etc. etc. etc. fighting with them. She can't. And the map design works against her in that capacity.

B Swords means a Hero in the field for Patty plus a combat skill which lets her bypass her STR weakness (and it's SKL% activation, which she'll have plenty of), Holyn plugs Faval's SKL hole (and it's a huge-ass hole with freakin' Ardan as dad, 25% growth vs. 95% isn't even a contest) and makes his HP growth even more obscene. He's a very solid player among small gods. He shines, he just doesn't shine as much as everybody around him. But he's very reliable and he makes anyone he's close to better. And he's mounted and comes in ch6, so yay for him. His weakness is that he is just not awesome enough in any particular area, although I've seen some pretty intriguing pairing/ring setups to turn him into a tank. Never tried them though.

Right. And we would DEFINATELY let Ayra KEEP the Brave/Hero Sword, a myrmidon/swordfighter who can ALREADY occasionally attack consecutively. I'm sorry, but I just don't see much sense in that. I would give it to someone who needs it much more, like Beowulf or even a promoted Dew. Well, you're going to want to make sure it reaches the second generation right away, which means it has to end up on either Sigurd, Ayra, Ayra's husband, or Lachesis's husband.

There is no way in hell I'm putting Lex with Brigid over Holyn in unranked.

He does if you want to raise Sylvia with Ambush/Sleep Sword, but outside of ranked there's no real reason for that. And tbh, even though I've been propagandising the combo for Sylvia even in ranked, I probably forgot about the other broken arena trick with Prayer, which allows Leen to kill everything in the arena regardless. And prayer outside of the arena is just handy since it means you can have her exposed if needed. Though it's not a huge boon because her atk is horrid. Charisma on Laylea is fun if she's close to the battle, which isn't always possible. Whenever she isn't, Charisma isn't doing anything for you. Laylea also gets the Barrier Sword, for whatever good that's worth. She doesn't need to keep it either. I've never honestly needed it, but it's nice when you want to set something up. Same with Laylea's Charisma; not always necessary, but you can rush her in to provide the bonus to Arthur or Shanan at a critical point and own Ishtar so hard she runs back to her boyfriend crying. Or whatever it is you need stacked Charisma for. Leen is a better fighter no matter her father, but that's kinda not saying too much. Either way, it's really a choice between exploiting Leen's superior durability or picking up a Barrier Sword and a third Charisma, at the expense of a unit who has even less durability than most dancers. EDIT: Also, if you wanted Ambush Leen, wouldn't a better shuffling of pairings be Ayra x Noish, Sylvia x Lex? Leen gets Ambush and better DEF (and Elite), Corple gets Elite, and Ayra's kids will be just fine with Noish's skillset (and he can give swords to Skasaha).

Aideen x Midir Ayra x Lex Lachesis x Beowulf Sylvia x Nobody [or Anyone] Fury x Claude Tiltyu x Levin Brigid x Holyn are the pairings I would consider the ones that make the 2nd Generation as easy as possible. They don't necessarily make the first Generation easier (although Beowulf is easier than Fin and it's debatable there how much more useful Fin is). The pairings I would consider essential "pro picks" are Tiltyu x Levin and Brigid x Holyn. All the others are certainly subject to debate, but ch6 Holsety with Wrath that later gets a horse is just too good and Holyn has such amazing synergy with Brigid's kids, making Faval a HP monster with his only weakness plugged and Patty an actually useable character. The other pairings I do consider the best, but many of them have other options.

No, but Alec, Noish, Sigurd, Lex, Midir, Cuan, Beowulf and Fin all told will kill a hell of a lot of guys long before Ayra ever gets to the party. Likewise, Lakche is a statistically superior unit to Johan, Delmud, and Lester, but when they're ten miles ahead with Aless (and later Celice and Arthur), I just can't bring myself to care how good she supposedly is. Granted, a Leg Ring can make the twins' only real disadvantage disappear, but that's one less ring somebody else could be using (Celice pre-promotion, Laylea, etc.).