Dark Holy Elf
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Naesala: 8.5/10. Naesala is pretty bad! ... for a laguz royal. Which means he's really great. He has trouble one-rounding tankier enemies, and he can definitely actually die since his def/luck/HP are the lowest of the royals. In some way it's better to compare him to the hawks; he's actually a lot like Janaff except with no gauge to worry about it. So better than Janaff, though with less availability. It balances when we're talking about units this good.
Skrimir: 4/10. Eh, he's fine, but I'm not too impressed. He's good in 4-P but then in the next map he can't double much of anything and then he's kinda trashy for endgame. And unlike Naesala, he still has a gauge to worry about it, though at least it goes down slowly (still loses him turns at the start of the fight).
Tibarn: 9/10. Laguz royal. He's notably tankier than Naesala, and stronger too. He even has more move. But they play similar roles overall. I have little to say about him; obviously he is great and pretty much the only limiter on his score is his availability (which is why I score Nailah higher) and lack of 2 range (like the other royals).
Pelleas: 4/10. Okay, first off, he is absolutely better than Sanaki. Compare an insta-promoted Pelleas with Sanaki and you'll notice he beats her by 10 HP and 8 def, while matching her speed. But more importantly, he has staves... at B rank base. He trashes Sanaki pretty bad, and it gets even more lopsided if you actually raise him instead of crowning him (and luckilly for him he joins on the best path for raising someone due to yummy laguz exp). That said, he's still not a great endgame choice because he does need a bunch of raising and then can't get 34 speed (a shame, since his speed growth is good) unlike Calill.
Stefan: 6/10. Unlike Skrimir or Pelleas, this guy is actually a decent endgame consideration. Sure, you'll probably have better choices (largely because he joins with no supports), but Stefan actually isn't terribly far from a Mia or Edward who have gobbled up loads of exp; he has high str, high spd, adequate durability for his class, and instant access to Vague Katti and Alondite, along with Wyrmslayers for E-3.42 speed means 42% activation rate of tear – awesome!21%, actually. EDIT: unless you meant over a double, in which case it's ~37.6%
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In my HM runs Edward normally ends at level 2-3 second tier and Zihark about level 4 at the end of part 1, so both are more or less equal. Zihark is still 1-2 speed points ahead of Edward.
Also it hasn't to do anything with favoritism.
If Zihark gains only 1 level in Part 1 while Edward gains 18-19, then that has everything to do with favouritism, because that's not what they get with remotely equal treatment. This isn't Fates or even GBA; you only get 1.5 more exp per kill per level down you are, and level gaps do not close quickly as a result.
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Also Zihark is only an experience eater in part 1-7, and he has adept, so I don't see any point in using him unless you're desperate.
He's only really needed from 1-8 because first tier Edward can't double everything anymore (unless you prepromote him).
His perfomance in part 3 is not as great as people might think. Sure, he is a dodgetank, but in combat he's not really better than Edward because of his lower offensive power. Wrath-Edward with stormsword can easier oneround a tiger than Zihark. Also even resolve on him can be treacherous as I mentioned in previous comments. In 3-6 it works because you can estimate the enemy well due to their limited movement, but in 3-6 and 3-12 Zihark will become the same as Edward: a safety risk.
But Zihark does not have lower offensive power than Edward. Did you not read DLuna's post? Zihark in Part 3 has comparable Str and more Spd. Wrath-Zihark can one-round a tiger at range just as easily as Wrath-Edward, if you want to play him that way; the difference is that Zihark can also be a tank unit which Edward can't be. Edward is horribly inferior to Zihark until he promotes and is never meaningfully superior unless you do silly things like compare them at equal levels which they will never be given equal treatment until sometime around endgame.
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Yeah the rare times I've used +3's they have been bronze, and late.
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+7 isn't possible in no-grind. +1, +2, and maaybe +3 are. I have no problem assuming a reasonable clip of playing and using combinations of the gem mine, lottery, and arena to get the gems needed; I do that every playthrough.
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Got a voting via PM.
It caused some interesting changes:
- Nailah felt from god to top-tier.
- Aran and Edward returned to up-mid-tier.
- Rafiel is best heron.
- Muarim felt from mid to low-mid-tier.
It's your list, your rules, but IMO people should vote or post publicly if their votes are going to be counted.
Thanks for posting the results though. I took a cursory glance through and I didn't see my 4/10 vote for Meg there (posted here along with a 9/10 for Volug). I may have forgotten to vote that time; apologies if so.
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Janaff: 8.5/10. Janaff is in the running for most improved unit in Radiant Dawn. His base stats are nutty; 34 speed is already the magic endgame number and 40 atk is comparable to what Haar and Titania have at this point (i.e. better than everyone else), and his bulk is outstanding too. He joins one level away from Tear and can use the BExp/Blossom combo well to improve even further. Besides that, he has a great class despite laguz drawbacks (shove + canto in one) and joins right before some maps where flight is amazing (3-11, part 4 splitpath). Maybe you don't send him to endgame but he's one of your best contributors before then.
Ulki: 8.5/10. Similar to Janaff. The loss of 4 atk hurts, but on the other hand he joins with 132 transformed avoid! Not much hits that until endgame. I've used him to tank untransformed, he's so stupid. The same comments as Janaff apply otherwise... flight/Tear/Blossom good, laguz issues bad, amazing for a while but probably not endgame material, for all that he'll perform fine there as a tank if that's your thing; it's nice to have someone you can leave in range of a few dragons and not give a damn.
Tanith: 5/10. She's okay. She's not as fast as Marcia and that stat can definitely be a problem for her, because the rest of her stats aren't better enough anywhere to make up for not doubling. Earth affinity is nice but she has trouble really getting great use out of it since she joins later (and realistically I find Sigrun's the only person she'll ever support; granted it's a solid support). Still, like Janaff/Ulki, she joins right before a place where flight rules so she's absolutely getting used in three maps minimum.
Sigrun: 5/10. Compared to Tanith, she looks generally worse... except that she's 3 levels higher and this matters a lot, because it means she spends a significantly higher chunk of time in tier 3. When comparing units whose fate is generally to be deployed only in 3-4 maps, this matters quite a bit. But whenever they're on the same tier, Tanith's better strength, and later speed/def means she wins out.
Sanaki: 2.5/10 I'm not seeing the hype. Sanaki has straight-up the worst physical durability of any unit who should be fighting, only has 23 speed (even worse with anything heavier than wind), and doesn't have staves. She's pretty clearly worse than, say, Bastian (+10 base def, +17 base HP, B in staves) let alone Calill/Soren/Micaiah and the only reason to train her is because she's forced. -
I have no doubt it's possible but it comes at a cost to the rest of your team and I'm frankly not particularly impressed by the payoff as I already mentioned. Like sure if you give him all the valuable boss kills maybe he can graduate to being on par with NM Guy except in a setting much less favourable to evasion and with a prepromo swordmaster just around the corner anyway.
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The chance to get strength and speed in one level up is 36%. I have to admit you must be a bit lucky with it.
However you still can give him up to five levels in the first three maps.
Edward needs 15 speed at the beginning of 1-3 to double everyone except myrms. With his 12 base speed and 60% speed growth he normally can reach the required speed.
After that he needs one speed in each chapter still to double most of the opponents. Very possible to realize.
Getting Edward 5 levels in three really short maps, two of which he is 2HKOed by many enemies, requires favouritism for him. Personally I find he usually gets closer to 3.
I find Edward becomes extremely mediocre very fast since he has paper defence (and unlike Leo/Miccy/Ilyana his ranged game sucks), and even if he gets the speed growth you describe his base power isn't very impressive either so it's not like he's great at one-rounding things to make up for his bad durability.
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Mia: 7.5/10. She doubles things that most people don't, which is nice, and her Str isn't bad either. Thanks to being on a path with authority she can get reasonably dodgy if she can snag Ike or Oscar for support. Suffers from comparison to the strongest Greil Mercs, though; her str/durability aren't so hot out of the gate and she doesn't have canto or forgeable 1-2.
Kyza: 2/10. Decidedly mediocre, with only 22 speed and not-so-hot other stats. He's worse than Lethe or Mordecai in Part 3, and doesn't have their Part 2.
Lyre: 1/10. Not even that fast at base, and her other stats are wretched. Cat gauge remains overhated but even if she had a dragon gauge she'd be worthless, though at least the "+4 Str from Energy Drops" would be worth more then...
Ranulf: 6.5/10. He's got great stats (Mia but with much better str/def/HP) but has the usual laguz drawbacks of a gauge to watch and no 2 range. He has Mordecai's Str with ridiculously more speed, so even if you spend the odd extra turn on grass he has more offence. One neat thing you can do with him that not everyone seems to know about is that he (along with Janaff and Ulki) are great choices for Blossom since they barely gain combat exp anyway; just BExp them to 90+ when you have some to spare and watch them get excellent levels.
Reyson: 9.5/10. The best heron IMO, he can fly and refresh four people when you really need him to (laguz stones exist), and is generally super-mobile when transformed. He can also occasionally survive hits the others can't, so that's something. -
Boyd's potential without favoritism (i.e. Speedwings or a greatly disproportionate amount of Exp) doesn't really impress me. He doesn't even hit 30 speed until 20/12, let alone the 34 that I want for any unmounted non-staff user in endgame. I guess there are transfers but I've never seen the merit in considering transfers in these discussions myself.
18 base AS is pretty unfortunate for Boyd yeah- though with a speed transfer 20 AS is workable. People didn't seem to bring up how slow Soren is though (same base speed as Boyd with 10% lower growth and Boyd's speed caps are much better).
I can't speak for everyone else but I gave Soren only a slightly higher score than Boyd, and that's mostly because of the utility of targetting high-Def/low-Res units, picking up staves on promotion, and being a candidate for an early Master Crown/BExp due to hitting caps. Soren's base speed is absolutely still a problem (though being 3 levels lower offsets any advantage Boyd has in speed growth; Boyd won't actually pull ahead until around the time they hit tier 3).
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Lucia being more pivotal in Part 2 than Mia could ever hope to be in Part 3 doesn't make her better than Mia.
It would if Mia were mediocre. Alternatively: it makes Lucia better than Edward.
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This year:
1. Fire Emblem Fates (259:21)
2. Bravely Second (76:18)
3. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice (30:49)
4. Kid Icarus: Uprising (10:58)
5. Bravely Default (3:27) *finished a replay of this over new year 2016
Overall:
1. Fire Emblem Fates (260:39)
2. Bravely Default (180:15)
3. Fire Emblem Awakening (128:13)
4. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies (84:40)
5. Bravely Second (76:18)
6. Pokemon X (74:38)
7. Kid Icarus: Uprising (53:48)
8. Super Smash Bros (50:55)
Some disclaimers:
-About one third of Dual Destinies' playtime belongs to a friend to whom I loaned my 3DS. I notched two playthroughs myself.
-This is my second 3DS, missing my first playthrogh of Awakening and a lot of playtime for Mario Kart 7, and Kid Icarus: Uprising, which would probably be in my top five if included. -
I never said Brom was faster than Boyd. He isn't. However, his base speed is only 2 lower with 6 levels in hand, so it's entirely possible that they'll be quite similar there, as well as in Str. At that point it's a question of whether you prefer Brom's far greater durability or Boyd's +1 move.
Calling Boyd a "slower version of Ike" undersells how big the gap between the two is. Not only does Ike beat him by 5 speed (which is the difference between doubling most enemies and doubling almost none), he has a 6-point lead in Def as well, substantially more accuracy (+8 skill and swords), and earth affinity. Ike destroys him. Brom is a much better comparison. -
Probably Nier Automata, though I don't like psyche myself up much for games before they come out. Still, I did enjoy the original Nier a lot, with the exception of its gameplay, and I couldn't ask for a better group to fix that than Platinum. Since I don't have a PS4 and there aren't many games for it I'm interested in, though, it may be a while before I can actually play it.
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To chime in on other games mentioned so far...
I too enjoyed the original Bubsy a fair deal. Not the best game, but a perfectly respectable platformer. I haven't seen much hate for it personally? Its sequels, now... I haven't played those but I've heard a lot of bad things.
FF13 is more polarising than anything else, but yeah, I loved it. Straight-up, I think it's one of the best FFs. Linearity isn't a flaw to me, its battle system is amazing, its battle design is great (I love how randoms weren't just filler trash to shove aside in 30 seconds, and it has some amazing boss fights) and I really liked its cast. -
Bravely Second would be my choice if Fates didn't exist. I didn't like its characters/writing much but it improved the already excellent job/battle system of Bravely Default, and I'm a sucker for FF5-likes.
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Rolf: 6/10. He's kinda meh for a while but has great payoff later because his Str/Spd, aka the only stats archers need, are great. Shinon is better, of course, but there's little reason you can't use both if you feel like it.
Boyd: 3/10. On the other hand, I don't see the point here. Boyd isn't just outclassed by one person, but by at least three other high-Str axe users on the same team... and you could easily say it's 4 depending on how much Exp Brom got in Part 2. His base Spd/Def are the worst of the many part 3 axemen and axewomen (hell, his Str is too, though not by much), and his speed never really gets that great either.
Oscar: 7/10. He got nerfed a lot, but he's still a very solid unit, with mobility and earth affinity and a high starting level. His stats don't really impress but they don't disappoint either.
Shinon: 7/10. Shinon is good but a touch overrated here? Just because he might be the best archer in the series doesn't mean he's that great! He's kinda the opposite of Oscar, other than having similar starting level: bad class, good stats. He doubles almost everything and you don't worry about his durability, though the Str could be somewhat better.
Gatrie: 7.5/10. Slightly better than the above two I think. Gatrie is great at all the stats knights should be great at, but his speed isn't half-bad either, allowing him to double slower enemies. He's basically Haar with -3 move and no mount, though better Res (which matters; he's not one-shotted by thunder mages). Obviously that's much worse than Haar! But still pretty good.If you trained Brom enough, he'll be better when he rejoins and fill that knight spot, leaving Gatrie even further behind. To be honest I think people overrate him purely because he's a GM.
Sorry, I have to call this out. It's extremely unlikely for Brom to be better than Gatrie upon join. On average, Brom needs to be...
Level 12 to match Gatrie's base HP
Level 17 to match Gatrie's base Str
Level 16 to match Gatrie's base Spd
Level 7 to match Gatrie's base Def
Level 10 to match Gatrie's base Res
It takes significant favouritism for Brom to reach any of these thresholds except the one for Def and maaaybe Res. So at most he will have better luck, skill (offset by Gatrie having secondary weapon rank above E), and maybe slightly better Def, and will lose everything else, especially since Gatrie has two maps to gain levels in before Brom joins, too.
I like Brom the character better than Gatrie the character too, and I wish he was the better unit, but in RD he's rather clearly not. -
Gotta be Fates: Conquest. That gameplay is crazy good.
Undertale challenges it for me as my other favourite game this year but that's not a 2016 game anyway. Nothing else is particularly close, Fates: Birthright is surely third for being basically a better Awakening, and I already liked Awakening.
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What were the developers smoking when they made a slow, unskilled Samurai, anyway? Or a slow Sky Knight? Low strength, I can see, since Marcia in FE9/10 also had sort of low strength, but low speed on a class that runs on that stat? Come on, people!
What was even the point?
Oh, yeah, I know. Forcing you to use their royal equivalents, that's what. It is also what bothers me most in Fire Emblem Fates. That they try to force you to use the Royals, male Royals especially.
Agree 100%. Shaky hit rates are the reason I don't usually use Charlotte, Setsuna, Hinata, Niles, Ryoma or Camilla in no-grind playthroughs, either.
Ryoma especially is overhyped as all get-out. In my opinion anyways.
Bolded part #1: The game does very little to force you to use Takumi or Leo... or honestly any royal outside of Camilla in Conquest 10, though I do agree that Ryoma/Xander/Camilla are very good units out of the gate who stay good forever so it's fair to say the game encourages their use.
Bolded part #2: None of these characters have remotely bad hit. Hinata uses an accurate weapon type (which offsets his slightly shaky skill), Niles has a mid-accuracy weapon and 9+50% Skl is perfectly fine for his join time, and Camilla/Ryoma join with extremely high skill for their point in the game and Camilla has an axe rank to help make up for lower axe hit.
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You don't need to stay in a class to get its skills. As soon as a character has spent even a single second in a class, he or she permanently has access to the unique carnages/skills of that class, even if you create/learn them later.
The stat differences between the promoted classes are honestly rather minor so don't worry too much about being in the "right" class at endgame. IMO the best first promotion choice is the one which gives you the skills/carnages you want sooner but you really can't go wrong either way.
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Interesting thread idea, I like it.
-I love flying units. Give them all the weaknesses you want, games, I'll always use them. The increased mobility options are incredible. It helps that there are almost always some who are excellent units, though whether it's the pegasi, the wyverns, or both varies by game.
-In the GBA games only, I have a huge bias towards evade-based units, because those units become near invincible in those games and it's great fun, since often the biggest walls are characters you wouldn't expect, like promoted Clarine.
-I'm generally not a fan of Ests. Characters who start a little underlevelled and need moderate investment (e.g. Lute, RD Rolf) I enjoy, but characters who start far behind I detest (e.g. Sophia, Donnel).
-Since so many people have mentioned gender... I think I have a bias towards roughly even gender balance in my teams. In older games this meant I used a much higher % of the available female units because there weren't very many, but it's not very noticeable in Awakening and Fates (though I felt that females were the lion's share of the good units in Awakening so I biased that way a bit in that game; Fates is more even).
-I do have a bias towards characters I find more attractive, which for men usually means more graceful, bishounen-type looks (e.g. Kaze), and for women pretty much inevitably means the more mature types (e.g. Sigrun). I don't always use these characters but I try harder to make them work when I do and am happier when the RNG favours them; one of my favourite FE memories is when Sigrun randomly turned out godly off of pure RNG luck.
-I almost always use dancers unless there are same-turn reinforcements. Then it depends on my mood and the durability of said dancer.-I usually try to use a couple mages even in games where they aren't very useful. On the other hand, I make no such allowances for archers or any other specific weapon types in games where those are generally weak.
Also, apart from disliking Hector I basically second all of Thor's post, particularly the paragraph about tough female characters being a preference.
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Most ratings are done under the assumption that Lyn Mode is skipped.
It isn't even possible to skip Lyn Mode on a fresh file, and there's little incentive to do it even when you can since it improves several units, gives you a white gem, etc. I strongly disagree with this assumption.
Even if you count Lyn mode, he's got, what, the last 5 chapters? And despite that, there are going to be a lot of units crowding for experience, while he has only one tome until the last chapter. So he has 35 attacks total for most of Lyn mode. The only way he'll get a ton of experience is some SERIOUS preferential treatment, as his attack isn't much to start, and he'll not be doing 1 hit kills for a while.
It's not that he can't be good, it's that he does have thing holding him from being amazing.
Lucius has 11 atk and 10 speed. You're seriously overrating Lyn Mode enemies: most non-mage non-bosses have 0 or 1 res and less than 20 HP, so Lucius does ORKO them. They're all Level 1-2 (a few hit Level 3 in the last two maps only), so check out this page to pretty much see their stats. As you can see he one-rounds archers, brigands, cavaliers, and soldiers, at minimum. Everything else he at least solidly 2RKOs, with high accuracy, which is generally as well as anyone else does (many units miss 2HKOs due to def being higher than res this early, and stronger units like Sain and Dorcas can have issues doubling). He contributes just fine. I'm not even proposing we favour him; just giving him his "share" of the available kills should give him at least 3 levels in 5 maps, which gets him to 13 atk / 11 AS or so, which looks a lot better than Canas' 17 atk / 7 AS to me.
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Ike: 9.5/10. I don't like Ike10 the character at all but he's a really damn good unit (unlike Ike9 whom I quite like as a character but is much more meh gameplaywise). Better stats than Haar/Titania due to 23 base speed compared to their 20/21 doubling a lot of stuff. And Ragnell is ridiculous. With favouritism/RNG luck to reach 34 speed he can even be ludicrous in endgame, though without that he's only decent (and can struggle with his duel a bit). No mount is a negative, granted, and makes me score him below Haar, but that's about it.
Mist: 5/10. Healer, competes with other healers at all points, though is less totally fragile than Laura, and more mobile than other non-Elincia healers (even before promotion, unlike PoR). A similar score to Laura works.
Titania: 9/10. Well 3-4 and 3-7 are both anti-horse (good thing 3-7 is irrelevant) but yeah she's really good: great class and good overall stats (especially strength, but there's literally nothing bad) that become absolutely stupid when she hits tier 3. Holds up pretty well forever.
Soren: 4/10. Slow and bad durability, doesn't really hit any harder than all the other strength titans in the Greil Mercs. You can favour him and get another healer I guess but that's really one thing the GM route doesn't need more of. Early Master Crown does give you a pretty good combat unit for a while, at least, especially if you can fix his speed via BExp first, but that's a significant "if".
Rhys: 4/10. Compared to Mist he's more fragile (speed-wise) AND has -1 move. He has more chip damage but I don't value that as much. Still okay; you want every healer you can get for Part 4 in particular.
FE10 Tierlist 2017
in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Posted
Nah. I've soloed that map with Micaiah (though IIRC you either need some levelup luck or to grab Leo's Dracoshield to survive the boss), so it should be really easy with just Micaiah + Leo. There's no reason to do this, but it does show that Edward certainly isn't "required". 1-P features chokepoints everywhere and non-aggressive enemies.