Quasar

You are, of course, entirely correct in this matter and the game not having rescue makes it even worse for them. However I'll still point out that Armors have 5 MOV in FESD.

EllenxLugh might get C snappy but beyond that we're looking at a long way to go. Ellen has to heal things and Lugh has to attack. Combined with +1 per turn.. yeah. [Regarding Saul's offense]It's true he has raw power but you need to limit his exposure and therefore effectiveness to kill things due him being frail. Nice job on looking at Ellen's survivability, I was on lazy mode myself. You do realize that you're saying that Ellen/Saul might not have a place on the team for Clarine taking one of the two healing spots? Bringing your only mage Lugh over a physical attacker makes all kinds of sense. 21 is disgusting for for Ellen. For all weaker characters I guess. I wouldn't bring Ellen to this chapter at all, maybe not even Saul but at least his demise from a single hit is an unlucky break. Luckily 21 is pretty much the worst case scenario. Edit: A large percentage, no, because there's like a hundred guys on the map but there's plenty. If I recall correctly at least one comes per turn as a reinforcement, maybe more. Plus the ones on map to begin with.

I can't agree with him being hard to train. Harder than a healer, sure, but what I meant was that Lugh's promotional gains, that being healing and some tome level, outweight Saul's gains which is pretty much Light magic. Saul is a pretty fail attacker while healing can be useful in many situations as a secondary role. Edit: And yeah Clarine too, forgot about her. Heavy competition for those things. Anyway does Saul's LCK even matter? From a quick glance it seems that Ellen can't even survive a non-crit and doesn't have the speed to back up her luck for relying purely on avoid. Edit: Also who's going to support Ellen? All her supports are +1 except for fliers who join late and won't be around her. At least Saul has Dorothy.

Well, the Guiding Ring is rare as hell. Lugh is probably stealing the first one for a more meaningful promotion so even if you're 20 by the time Sacae comes there's only the other ring left from the end of 14 and it's contested. Of course the same goes for Ellen.

How did this resolve anything?

Where on earth did you get this bad hit business? She has 109 HIT (WTT) at join with Killer Lance and 104 with Iron Lance. Percival has 114 HIT (WTT) with Killer Lance several chapters later. Miredy has more at this point. And, uh.. I think "decent support options" is kind of an overstatement. Cecilia (...) vs. Ellen (...) and a really good support with Zeis (matching mobility and it's fast, unlike Zeis himself). I like Zeis but he's horrible. At least it's a decent choice should he be played and thinking about it it's probably the only reason to use him anyway. Lugh is 1+1 and I don't see them ever getting even a C with Miredy's mobility.

As the self-appointed president of Miredy Defense Force (MDF) I feel necessary to point out that you can quite freely promote Miredy at 14-15 which is pretty realistic by the time Percival joins. You don't really lose anything as 20/20 is a bit of a far-fetched dream and gives Miredy a stat boost and swords earlier. If promoted at 15 Miredy's main loss is in SPD (17 to 20+Percival's CON for heavier weapons) and Sword skill. Luckily 17 SPD is pretty respectable at CH15 and is able to double everything, if not weighed down, that Percival can except some Mercenaries. Iron Sword is meh of course. For what it's worth Miredy's supports are better too. And that's quite sad.

I'm just hoping you're not trying to pull off figures from your sleeve and get away with it. Like with that speed calculation. 15-2 isn't 12 and thus he can't double. What? I wouldn't have him do that but if you think he can solo chapters early on I have no idea how you can consider him worse than Zealot given any advantage later on. Sure. The two axemen bring five axes with them. Just borrow one.

Except that it doesn't double anything but Armors and Mamkutes. WK SPD at Ch21 is 15 and Zealot is never going to have 19 AS. Did you forget to round up Marcus' DEF too because according to my mathematics 17-12 at -/20 isn't 6. Nor is 16.7-11.85 Yeah, I keep doing that because Marcus isn't going to rush ahead still and Wolt is forced in play at the beginning either way. I have no idea why we're even discussing the placement of characters in mid-ish tiers if their equally ranked support partners are assumed to not be played. Why are we assuming our discussed characters are in play then? D rank gives you Halberd and Hammer yes, and Marcus can have those too. You have a choice in weaponry, you can have that axe rank if you want them. Hell, Marcus might even hit something with the Halberd due to SKL and LCK lead which by the way are not worth nothing.

No. At join it's 1 AS. Marcus should be at least level 3 and from there on they're gaining levels at an equal rate. If Zealot gets to 20 it's back to 1 AS and never is 2. Uh... okay. At join it's two minus Wolt. I'm seeing the averages but I'm not seeing 6 anywhere, and they won't be 20/20 soon. If ever. He is tied in two ranks and bloody close on the third. You can choose it to be swords too and basically you're not losing on anything because Killing Edges aren't common yet. If Marcus is allowed no supports I can't I suppose. With only Wolt I can clearly see Marcus > Zealot. Also if you want to set Lance/Alan/Roy in stone you really should do so and not allow any of the three to be used with support arguments for other characters. Like I said earlier, it's your tier list and your rules.

:3 You mean 1 AS? The 1AS that becomes 0 AS eventually? Marcus has a better speed growth man. Where did you get 6 DEF though? Weapon skills are extremely questionable. If there is a difference Marcus can catch up in the next chapter or so. Supports..

Treck's dead. If he's not he'll want A Noah so you're left with B Treck and no Noah. Growths? Really now? Ten levels for 2 HP and 2 DEF advantage while losing out on some other stats? Holy growth advantage, Batman. The supports better be really fucking good because that's not even a difference worth mentioning. So are they? Marcus has better characters but they have better options available so he's left with Wolt. Zealot, if assumed that Treck got lucky and survived, has B Treck from the cavaliers as they want A with each other and Noah wants B Fir who is superior to them and deserves it more. Now for the remaining three slots he can take the birds. Birds don't want Zealot, except for Yuno just because it's a fast one. The birds' don't slow Zealot down but when you turn the situation around Zealot sure as hell slows the birds down, killing the usage of flight pretty much entirely since Zealot can't cross rivers etc. Seriously, I don't see it. He's not better than Marcus at join. Any small advantage he would gain would be too late to save him while they're being equal for the part they both are useful. If we want to talk about efficiency you're better off using both for Western Isles and dumping them afterwards. I have no idea where you're going with this. I can clear the game without using Lance. He's the highest ranked character in the game. You don't need to use him, sure, but you don't need to use Zealot either. You don't need to use any specific character but don't pretend Marcus isn't your best unit for those chapters.

Wolt taken by a lot of units? Sue is too slow to be even considered so I assume you're talking about Roy, Alan and Lance and I find it extremely questionable any of the three would want Wolt over each other. Noah, sure. Tate is slow to begin with though and can't spend all the time next to Zealot since she has flight. And movement range is an interesting point considering this: Flexible supports, eh. Then I'd flex to Marcus/Alan/Lance triangle too. At least they'll keep their movement for the most part.

I care about C MarcusxWolt because it helps illustrate Marcus vs. Zealot as it effectively eliminates Zealot's on-join advantage. By the way the more Wolt support he gets the longer it takes for Zealot to gain any advantage. Just, you know, saying. Marcus > Zealot.

Uh.. such as what? This is FE6 and Marcus isn't Seth. He's not going to rush ahead and solo a map. If your precious Roy triangle is being worked on as well the whole damn team is moving at Roy's pace anyway.

Okay, this is getting out of hand. You can't just erase all supports because they're not optimal. IcexIce not that awesome? If you really want to think it's impossible to break Roy-Lance-Alan apart then Marcus-Wolt is better than nothing, and that's not arguable. With C Wolt Zealot isn't better than Marcus at join. By the time Zealot has a slight (defensive) advantage it's already pretty damn late in the game. Too late to make up for Marcus' earlygame.

I'm actually with Marcus. I'm trying to show Zealot's defensive lead doesn't kick in early enough. That's what I'd like to know too. Earlier I recall Marcus being denied Roy/Lance/Alan for them being better off by themselves, Wolt for sucking and Lilina for being bad and slow (true). Thanks. Didn't know that. This is how I actually thought with both of them but I can see why it wouldn't be obvious. Even with all being fielded you can't expect for the whole team to move at the rate of 4/turn. You'll be on the map but you won't necessarily reach anyone to make a difference. Unless staff utility is considered remarkably less useful than attacking early on I don't see Clarine's problem except being frail before her avoid kicks in with levels and Dieck-Rutger supports.

I'm not really up for putting Fa on the table again yet but I wouldn't mind continuing Marcus vs. Zealot as it was kind of just dropped. Marcus (unsupported... for now) Level HP S/M Skl Spd Lck Def Res -/3 33.2 9.5 14.4 11.5 10.4 9.3 8.4 Zealot Level HP S/M Skl Spd Lck Def Res -/1 35 10 12 13 5 11 7 Rounding Marcus' stats to even numbers for Zealot's join chapter leaves Z with: +2 HP 0 STR -2 SKL +1 SPD -5 LCK +2 DEF -1 RES Now a quick look at growths tells us this, again in Zealot's point of view: +15% HP 0 STR 0 SKL -5% SPD -5% LCK +15% DEF -5% RES At Ch7 Zealot can double cavaliers that Marcus can't but otherwise they're equal. Marcus will start to gain Zealot on speed and their offense will stay pretty much equal for long enough, leaving defense the only sector where Zealot is a clear winner from a purely statistical point of view. Marcus' weapon ranks should at this point be A lances with exp towards S, C or at least close to C with swords and probably still E with axes, maybe with a little exp towards D. Zealot has less lance exp than Marcus, slightly more or equal sword exp and half a rank to one win with axes. Before going to supports and performance later on I'd like to clarify something. I noticed with Wendy and Fa that my own vision of efficiency was quite a bit different from several others'. It's not my tier list, I'm of course willing to adjust my arguments accordingly but I need to know the rules to play the game if you know what I mean. So what is efficiency? I see at least two differing paths with this. Extreme. Lowest turns to complete chapters as possible. Never using sub-par units if they slow you down even slightly. Supports and equipment always given to the most optimal and best characters. Promotions given to the unit that gives the greatest benefit to the team, ie. the one who will be fielded and needs it the most. Stat boosters should be considered, but only for those who it makes a difference for. Basically Mid-Tier guys and especially lower will rarely, if ever, be fielded and end up having no supports at all. Fair for all. Every character will be fielded in every map as soon as they're available. Everyone has equal rights to equipment they can use and supports they can be assumed to get in a reasonable amount of time. Everyone has the right to promote upon reaching 20, however the amount of promotion items should still be taken to consideration. Equal rights to stat boosters. No loitering around but chapters could be completed faster with a better roster characters too. Something in-between? Something completely different? In any case my personal opinion, as insignificant as it may be, is that equal resources for all whenever possible is the most accurate option to base a tier list on.

How on earth are you gimping anything if at start you pick her up and drop her before you approach the enemies? There aren't that many long range attackers around the beginning of chapters.

I don't have a problem with this. Good job. One small thing though: you can try to carry Wendy around with someone else to compensate for the move especially at the beginning of a chapter but it becomes a hassle later. It helps some but doesn't really change anything I guess. I assumed Lugh and the healers to be 20/1 by chapter 15 which is what I assumed you were talking about. Lugh, Ellen, Saul and Clarine can then double. Lugh will do more damage if supported while supported Ellen, Saul and especially Clarine will do somewhat less. I have a problem with this.

Assuming you've leveled to 10 with Fa and are past the babying phase the question remaining is do you bring her out just to to be effective against that one Mamkute at the end of the map. You don't. If you bring a unit that's supposed to make the enemy units bleed you expect him/her to do that, not just run along and attack the one thing they're super effective against. It's not a stretch to assume eight rounds of combat on average per chapter for unit basically leaving Fa with two chapters worth of availability after babying. If that's overkill with six rounds it's three chapters at most. Except the vast majority of your magic users. The point of my post was to show that if you replaced "Wendy" with "Fa" in your post you'd have the exact same thing, if not worse. You're the one who brought TA up, you can be bloody sure I wouldn't have touched that damn thing even with a stick.

Okay. What about Fa's situation? Starting at 1, no access to 2 range, eating a counter, no triangle attack and all of this later in game. How exactly do Wendy's supports suck? Wendy's Fire, OJ for one would marry her for that and at least all her supports are +2 per turn. I might be obsessed with triangles but you can form one with Wendy+OJ/Boris/Barth/Lilina(/Astohl too I guess). Those Ostians sure like each other. I'm fine with Fa>Wendy in any case as I never said Wendy should definitely go above her, was just trying to explain how I didn't see them so far apart.

Very well, allow me to elaborate and open the door to the insanity that is the depths of my mind. Seven levels of availability advantage to build her levels and supports. When Fa joins Wendy should be able to avoid ORKO and if that's not the case for promoted opponents or so you can still keep throwing Javelins and that's doing more than Fa already. More than 30 Javelins too, mind you. Fa is only super effective against Mamkutes anyway and there's pretty much one chapter where it's arguably useful to have a character effective against Mamkutes. Wendy is shit. Piss-poor. Horrible. If Fa is better, of which I'm not yet convinced, then not by much and I have no idea how you seem to think they're so far apart. Fair enough for the rest but I'm 100% sure of Miredy's position at least. It's kind of hard to forget trying to argue Miredy to rise from top of Top to bottom of High while not jumping over anyone. Roy should want Marcus for Ice's defensive advantages. He won't be a combat god anyway and he really needs survivability. Yeah, it's one of the best support triangles in the game at least but is it enough a reason to say they will never, ever, support anyone else? And even if you'd argue that Marcus can still get the single leftover support there, while admittably it's not helping much. Offense>Defense for Wolt, but defense still helps anyone, unless you can say your archer never gets counterattacked. Which means you'll never be attacking, say, magic users or people with 2 range weapons equipped. This is also completely ignoring the human mistakes of letting one slip, shitty RNG luck with some enemies surviving and you not being able to finish them all off etc. He has better bases but the growths definitely aren't a landslide in Zealot's favor by any means. Marcus should be level 3 or so by Ch7. Difference at join for Zealot: +1.8HP, +0.5 STR, lower SKL and LCK but it doesn't really matter that much, +2 DEF and -1 RES. I'm not sure how I can fairly argue the support options so I'll leave them to someone else, I'm just too tempted to say Tate is unusable while Treck and especially Noah have better options, all of which are in my opinion extremely poor arguments.

Let's see. I think Percival was right below Miledy and Juno wasn't below Fa if I remember correctly. Even Wendy below her seems questionable to me but not sure. About Marcus: I'm not sure how you can say he doesn't have supports. He doesn't if you don't give them to him but he does have decent choices. He can form a triangle with two of Alan/Lance/Roy, sure, they might prefer to hang by themselves and sure if you dump him eventually it might be a waste but I don't think you can just say he'll never get any of them. Using the same logic you might as well give him Lilina and Wolt as you'll be dumping them too for being horrible. Marcus is doing something special around arguably the hardest chapters in game - being your best unit. And having the best lance. Zealot doesn't get the same privilege as you already have Marcus being awesome, while in lesser extent at that point. Edit: You've got Lalum twice there by the way.