Silly

Raphael is not weak in flying, which makes me thing he is probably not the worst unit in the game. For example, Dedue has slightly better stats than Raphael in the first eight chapters or so, but his flying weakness means he ain't going to be a Wyvern anytime soon, which means that past level 20 Raphael is actually significantly faster than Dedue and has more utility (due to much higher mobility). Wyvern Rider does a lot to contribute to his long term viability and will give him a massive speed bump. Just the fact that Wyvern Rider has at minimum 17 speed and Wyvern Lord has at minimum 24 is insane, and does a lot to patch up Raphael's awful speed. Someone who is bad for the entire game is probably worse than someone who is bad for the first eight chapters or so but can then reclass into a class that is at the very, very minimum acceptably useful.

I am positive that Bowrange+ affects combat arts. Curved Shot on an archer lets you hit 4 tiles away.

There is no wrong way to play Fire Emblem. If you like using all Armored Knights in your playthrough of FE6 even though Armored Knights are commonly accepted as garbage in that game, then by all means go ahead and play that way. We've all done stupid stuff before for fun (gotta get the triple armor triangle attack, amirite?) So far there has been no game that is nearly difficult enough to force you to play a specific way in order to beat it. However, if you want to have some sort of common ground for creating discussion or ranking things, then you need to establish some terms that make a degree of sense. The first general principle is usually no grinding. Evaluating whether unit X or unit Y is better is pretty pointless if you assume grinding, because with grinding involved every unit ends up dominant compared to the enemy, to the point where they all function pretty much identically as a giant ball of stats. Clearly, this is probably not a good way of ranking things. The second that is commonly accepted is assuming players are playing with at least moderate efficiency. Now this is a high contentious term, since moderate efficiency means slightly different things to different people, but most people agree on roughly what it is. It does not mean LTCing maps, but it does generally mean that you do not intentionally hamper yourself if you are comfortable with playing at a faster pace. This second factor is relevant because given unlimited turns, the large majority of units can kill enemies and accomplish map objectives. Why does it matter that my Armor Knight takes ten turns to cross the map to get to these enemies if I have unlimited turns? I'll just take more time to walk there. Why does it matter that my unit takes three rounds to kill an enemy instead of one if I have unlimited turns? I'll just take more time to kill this enemy before moving on. Why does it matter if my unit can only survive two attacks instead of five? I'll just go slower and fight less enemies at once, and stop and heal between every battle. Clearly, you can tell that there is again not much difference between units if you don't put at least some degree of importance on efficiency. The third is generally assuming units are "average". Fire Emblem is a very RNG driven game, so on one playthrough you may get a unit that is blessed with amazing level ups and one that is cursed with poor ones. Players comparing their own subjective experiences here will be unable to find common ground, since my unit X could look completely different statistically than your unit X. Thus, we usually assume average level ups. For example, if unit X has a 50% strength growth, we mostly look at scenarios where unit X gains 1 strength every two levels. This gives a common ground to stand on, since we can be sure that when we talk about unit X we're actually talking about the same unit and not two completely different characters wearing the same face. These factors are generally the most common ones in unit evaluation, because not only do they take away a lot of the subjectiveness towards evaluations, there is also the fact of the matter that units that are generally considered good using the above metrics will usually end up good regardless of whether you follow the above metrics or not. A unit that is good on a no grind playthrough will also be good in a playthrough with grinding, because they will only be more powerful. But a unit that is only good with grinding may fall off and no longer perform well if you decide to play faster and avoid grinding. Likewise, a unit that is more mobile, is able to fight more enemies per round, and kill them quicker is generally considered superior to one without those qualities, even if you don't play as fast as possible. The strong unit can always slow themselves down to match your pace, but the unit that is only good when you're playing slowly and taking 30 turns to clear most maps might not scale well as you get more comfortable with the game and are able to clear maps more quickly. If you want to play Fire Emblem in a different way, you are by all means entitled to do so. It's a single player game and nobody can control your experience but yourself. But in terms of discussion, claiming that grinding through games is an optimal method is probably not conducive to any sort of accurate ranking.

A lot of this requires you to intentionally slow down, which is not really a good thing when much of the metrics that the community tends to judge performance by involve at least relatively efficient clears. For example, softening up enemies for other units to kill when you could just have killed them outright is only really optimal if your other units weren't doing anything anyways. If they could have been doing something else productive, then you should just take the kill and have your other units do something else useful. Grinding class skills is also assumed not to happen, because grinding is not a thing that we generally take into account when rating things, given that with enough grinding everything becomes good enough to trivialize the game. Ranged weapons like Hand Axes and Javelins are specifically bad because if you use them on player phase you will often miss out on a kill, which is really bad.

Raphael's biggest saving grace is that he doesn't have a flying weakness, and the minimum speed (base speed + class bonus) for Wyvern Rider and Wyvern Lord are 17 and 24 respectively. He won't be gaining much speed beyond that (even with a class growth bonus he's only hitting a 25 speed growth), but at the very least that's a passable amount.

One important thing to note is that mages have diminishing returns in this game. Their general role is to be able to flex between player phase nukes and healers. The first ~2 are incredibly valuable, since certain enemies are hard to kill without them and healing utility is very important if you have no healers, whereas each additional one rapidly experiences diminishing returns. Ideally, you want both mages to have Physic, since without Physic their healing utility sucks, though only one with Physic is acceptable (the other one can Lysithea for example). Having no units with Physic deployed is not something that I ideally want to play maps with. Given this is the case, whichever early game mage you have with Physic will likely be deployed basically on every single map. They all do both halves of their job equally well, as they boast relatively similar offensive growths (Mag + Spd), and all learn Physic at the same rank. This means that Lindhart on the BE route, Mercedes on BL route, and Marianne on GD route should all be roughly equal, as they all fill the same niche, with only slight differences. Whichever mage you started with will probably be the best given that they have a head start on weapon ranks compared to ones you recruit later. This also means that all of the Physic mages are very good units, given that they are worthy of a deployment slot in basically every map. They are certainly worth much more than units in the Manuela/Flayn category (which is roughly where a strict rally bot would be), which have good utility for a few specific turns but aren't necessarily always contributing, and can be cut when deployment slots are tighter. Lindhart might get a bit of a bump here compared to the other mages. Despite the BE route having two Physic users and Lindhart being the slowest Physic mage, he does get Warp, which if you didn't recruit Lysithea ends up being of vital importance. Though all of the physic users are core units to their specific routes, and all deserve to have a relatively high placement on any list.

The point is that their combat ability IS NOT MEDIOCRE. It's only mediocre if you do suboptimal things. Your inability to properly utilize your mages does not mean that they're bad...

Marianne also has +2 AS over Lysithea at base. Overall these differences aren't super big anyways, as neither of them ORKOs in the early game (because basically none of your units do) and they get to a ORKO threshold reasonably quickly (the main thing driver here is being able to double). You level reason because Mage is significantly better than Priest and Dark Knight is a better class than Holy Knight. Your primary damage spell is going to be whatever your lightest magic is, which is always going to be your reason spell. Thus, it's better to train up reason because the ranks will contribute extra hit to your primary damage spell, and the difference between Dark and Holy Knight is a whole +5 damage (+10 if you double) on your primary spell due to Tomefaire. There's not much incentive to actively train faith beyond C. At some point you will get Silence anyways just by healing (since all of the magic classes get a boost to faith weapon ranks), so if you actually need it near the endgame you will have it. Silence isn't very good (also Holy Knight has 7 move), as the large majority of mages do not need to be silenced to be dealt with. Nobody is dying to a single bolting (and you might even be able to just dodge it considering it has 65 hit and enemies are not very accurate in this game), so you can usually just kill the mage before it becomes a problem. Plus, it's still not a big reason to actively train faith, as getting to B faith from healing throughout the entire game isn't an issue. The major advantage that Marianne has over Mercedes, imo, is actually her Riding proficiency and hidden talent in lances, which makes Dark Knight easier to access compared to Mercedes (who has a strength in Reason, but is neutral in riding and weak in lances). That, and Thoron, which is helpful. You get class mastery from healing people, and given that mage is an intermediate class the class mastery for it takes less exp than later ones. You only need 50 actions iirc (since the mastery boosting renown reward is the best one and you should be buying that asap), which is cut to 25 actions with the Knowledge Gem. Also, there is no real downside to sticking with mage past level 20 if for some reason you can't get there. Because if you reclass her out of a magic class you get a rally bot that can't do any combat at all, which is like Manuela/Flayn tier usefulness or maybe a bit less. You get some good utility in rally, but that is primarily only useful at killing a few particularly tough enemies (as the good units can probably ORKO generics without issue), and not being able to have good combat is not worth that tradeoff. It's not like a dancer, where at the bare minimum you can dance a good combat unit to kill a second enemy. With a rally bot, most of the time your unit gets better at killing one enemy, but since generics aren't that strong in this game the extra stats aren't important on many turns and it's better to just have someone that kills a second unit as well. If you class her into a magic class so that she has good combat, then you're stuck with a rally bot that has 4 move, which greatly diminishes her utility. Basically, you have to pick between one or the other if you're playing reasonably efficiently. It's not like the Physic mages, who can provide good combat early on when enemies are still in range (especially since your first turn is likely going to be stride), and then transition to healing people with Physic later on (as your units start to take hits and become damaged), meaning they can potentially be useful every single turn.

Here is my list currently. Units are roughly ordered within each tier. This is assuming you take the path where the unit is able to be recruited the earliest. Some units move up or down a bit depending on your path. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Best: These units have the best combination of qualities, and will likely be some of your top contributors on every run. Claude, Dimitri, Edelgard, F!Byleth M!Byleth, Lysithea, Petra, Leonie Good: Other than the units above, these units will likely comprise the majority of your primary deployment slots. Felix, Seteth, Catherine, Sylvain, Ferdinand, Hilda, Lindhart Ingrid, Dorothea, Mercedes, Marianne, Shamir Utility: These unit round out a team, filling in your deployment slots that aren't for combat units. Note that the top of this tier is really, really good and can be deployed on any map, while the bottom of this tier contains subpar units that are mostly deployed when you have free slots. Dancer (any unit), Stride-Bot (anyone with a riding proficiency) Flayn, Manuela ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Acceptable: This is the point where I would stop actively recommending these units. They're fine if you want to use them, but they don't do anything particularly noteworthy for me. Cyril, Bernadetta, Hubert, Annette Ignatz, Caspar, Ashe, Lorenz Bad: I would not recommend using any of these units. Note that every unit is actually usable in this game, so it's not like these are completely lost causes. They're just worse than your other options. Raphael, Dedue Alois, Hanneman, Gilbert

I think sorting by route might be a bit too complicated. Does Claude take a hit because he's only available on one route while Sylvain is a free recruit on all routes? How about Dedue compared to Raphael? etc. etc. For most of the students I just judge them based on their performance as if you had them from the start of the game.

Edelgard's prf repairs with Agarthium, which is considerably more rare than Umbral Steel.

Mercedes and Marianne don't really have early game slumps. The thing about "healers" is that primarily focusing on faith because you're supposed to be healing people is actually a big trap. It's much better to focus a lot of your efforts on reason. Then they're just regular mages that happen to have Physic, which gives them a lot of utility because your mages aren't going to be able to attack somebody every turn unless you're playing slow to accommodate them. If you focus primarily on faith then the unit is going to be bad at combat and gain exp slowly, but you can make your healers actually good at combat pretty easily, at which point they can both gain combat exp and healing exp. For all of your healers (Lindhart, Dorothea, Mercedes, Marianne) you should spec into Reason + Faith in the early game. Your first priority is to get to D Reason. This gives them a good offensive spell to work with (since Nosferatu is garbage), and turns them into a solid combat unit. For example, Lysithea using Miasma at base is not considerably different than Marianne using Blizzard at base in terms of damage output. Second priority is to get to C faith in order to unlock Physic. This is one of the biggest bumps in utility that your mage can have. Afterwards, you can change up your priorities depending on how you want the unit to end up (Dark Knight or Gremory). For example, if you want to turn Marianne into a Dark Knight, there is no real point in leveling Faith beyond C, since her last two faith spells aren't actually that important. Ideal class paths are roughly: Monk -> Mage -> Warlock/Bishop -> Dark Knight/Gremory Mage should be everyone's intermediate class because the Fiendish Blow is incredible (and also solves any damage issues that probably shouldn't exist but might if your unit is slightly screwed), and it is not a hard class for your healer to get into. Warlock/Bishop is the natural upgrade path, with pros and cons to both. Warlock does more damage, Bishop has more utility, and you may not have the weapon ranks for both classes so just pick the one you have the ranks for if you only have one available. Dark Knight and Gremory are obvious terminal classes. Lindhart can go Holy Knight since he's the one unit that has a strong incentive to actively train Faith past C (Fortify isn't something you need early, and Mercedes will get there eventually), so he might reach the requirements for that class much faster than Dark Knight requirements. Annette is less good as a mage because she doesn't get Physic, which imo is the single most important spell for a mage to learn (other than Lysithea, who is an exception due to her early warp and massive magic stat). She can do mage things, but typically your mages are going to have free turns due to not being in range of enemies, and then she is stuck with 4 move and how are you going to be consistently next to somebody important so that you can rally them when they have 6+ move and you have 4? If you want her to be a dedicated rally bot you might as well reclass her into a unit that has more move.

One thing to note about Edelgard's prf is that the materials to repair it are fairly rare, so I'm not sure how much you can actually spam it to fast clear maps. It's possible for a few maps but probably not for every map. She is a good wyvern though. Hilda/Sylvain/Ferdinand should all be in approximately the same spot. No big point in splitting them over two tiers. They're too similar to consider any of them considerably different than the other in my opinion. They all have good offensive growths (45 Str, 50 Spd) and a proficiency in axes + lances plus neutral flying, which makes Wyvern Lord their "optimal" endgame class. Other than that, their bases and growths are not significantly different enough for me to want to place them separately. Of the three, Hilda is probably the worst on paper, but how they turn out in game mostly depends on how RNG determines your growths. Seteth is actually also pretty similar to them as well, except his proficiencies are even better (as he has a flying strength) and his base authority rank upon joining is actually really high (if I'm remembering correctly). His one downside is the fact that he joins so late, meaning he will be missing out on Death Blow/Darting Blow, which your other Wyverns should have at this point. This is probably debatable but I would rank him the same as the previous three as well. Flayn is too high. She is not very good when she joins. Her rescue range at base is like 3 or 4 tiles, on a footlocked unit with 4 move. A weakness in mounts also means that she will find it hard/impossible to get to Dark Knight in a reasonable amount of time, meaning she will be stuck with 4 move for most of the game and maybe 5 move very late. Lacking Physic is also a big downside to her utility (fortify access doesn't fully make up for this imo). Probably belongs to something like B-/C+ tier. Manuela is also too high. Warp takes forever to learn, and her other "utility" is mostly fake. Bolting is impossible to learn since she has a reason weakness. Silence is pretty mediocre because mages in this game are mostly easy to kill on player phase and the actual mage bosses are unsilenceable anyways. Likewise, warp also has less utility than it would seem given that it is one range (how often is your 4 move mage going to be next to your frontline units that might have 7+ move at this point?) and as stated before mages are easy to just kill. I would also rate Catherine higher. Yes, her proficiencies aren't the greatest, but her base stats are absurd for her level/join time. And you can (and should) just reclass her off of swords. If you recruit her asap, it doesn't take too, too much effort to put her into Pegasus Knight. It only requires D flying and C lances, and you don't have to meet the requirements perfectly as you can soft reset certifications to save your seal (or just gamble away your intermediate seal, you get a lot of them because every mid-game recruitable comes with one for free). Since D rank comes so fast, you can pretty reasonably hit D flying and D+ lances very early on, at which point you have a ~20 Str, 20 Spd Pegasus Knight quite early on with excellent strength and speed growths and a low enough level that she will still be expected to gain exp quickly.

Those class recommendations are if you wanted to stick to unit "strengths", but if you actually just wanted the best classes then it makes a lot of subpar choices. For example, pretty much every unit with an axe proficiency is actually better off going Wyvern Lord as their endgame class (unless they have a flying weakness), since that class is so much better than the others. Holy Knight is also generally an inferior endgame class to Dark Knight, so it shouldn't really be recommended except in very specific circumstances.

Mercedes, Marianne, and Dorothea should move up, or Manuela/Annette should move down. Physic is incredibly valuable in this game, and if you don't have it you're a really bad healer. Trying to keep a 4 move mage next to your frontline units who have 5-8 move is really annoying and slows down your rate of play significantly. Cyril is also misplaced in my opinion. His base stats are honestly not that bad considering his join time. He can be recruited as early as chapter 5, where generic enemies are only level 10, so he's really not that behind in terms of levels. His growth rates are quite good, with 40 Str and 60 Spd, and he has a strength in literally every skill you need to become either a Bow Knight or a Wyvern Rider. He's definitely far from bottom tier. He's not nearly as "bad" as most Ests are considering his join time, as he is only slightly worse than your other units when you can recruit him. I also disagree with some placements between Top/High tier and some of the lower tiers, but the units are roughly in the right places so I can let that pass for now.

Marianne specifically should just class into Mage -> Warlock -> Dark Knight, tbh. There's no strong incentive to raise her faith rank beyond C for Physic and no real reason to go Gremory because she doesn't have any particularly rare spells that need to have their usage doubled (such as Warp, Meteor, etc.). Better to just grab Tomefaire and a mount.

Offensive White magic in general is just really poopy in this game. It's incredibly heavy, so you should basically never be attacking with it outside of some niche circumstances. Basically all your healers should spec into at least the first few ranks of Reason, if only to learn their first Black magic spell (which is usually between 2-4 weight).

Well there's a big issue with that, and it's that if you play Aux battles to grind then your units end up overleveled. At that point whether you've mastered your class or not isn't super relevant, because you can just straight up outstat enemies.

8 move and canto, plus no terrain penalties makes Wyvern Lord the most mobile class in the game (tied with Falcon Knight). Very, very strong, since axes have high might and the class comes with Axefaire as well as an innate +4 strength bonus. The only class with higher strength than it is War Master, with a +5 bonus. But War Masters aren't as fast, and don't have nearly the same range of movement as Wyvern Lord does. Very fast. For some reason Wyvern Lord is the second fastest class in the game (behind Falcon Knight) with an innate +4 speed bonus. It also has a base speed of 20, so anybody who is really slow (looking at your Raphael) can fix their speed by promoting to Wyvern Lord, which bumps their minimum speed up to 20+4. And unlike Falcon Knights, Wyvern Lords are stronger and bulkier (though Falcon Knight is a pretty good class itself). Fairly bulky. +2 HP and +3 Def as innate bonuses helps the class take hits fairly well, and while dedicated tank classes take hits better than Wyverns, they don't do anything else nearly as well. Great Knight has +5 Def over Wyvern Lord, but Wyvern Lord has +8 Spd on the Great Knight, which means that you will double and ORKO a lot more often than you would as a Great Knight. Basically, you have a class that is fast and strong enough to reliably ORKO the vast majority of enemies you come across, bulky enough to fight multiple enemies on enemy phase without dying, and with high enough mobility to basically always position itself where you need it to be. And you don't even really have a bow weakness, because if you can't just murder the archer on player phase, you can always choose to dismount in this game to remove your bow weakness.

The best class for pretty much every unit is whichever "OP" class they can access the easiest. For physical units the two best classes currently are Wyvern Lord and Bow Knight. Falcon Knight is slightly worse than Wyvern Lord but is also pretty good. These classes just have way too many advantages over the others for it to be "best" to pick something else most of the time. For magic units, Dark Knight is the best all-around class, and for the most part is better than Holy Knight. If you really need x2 uses on your magic, Gremory is also good. If you're a male warper (AKA Lindhart), Bishop is acceptable as well. Having one dancer is optimal, as there are things that an extra turn can do that makes it better than even your best unit. For example, a dancer can boost the movement of one of your units significantly (move, dance, then move again, allowing someone super long reach in one turn), which is not something you can do if you only have regular units. Plus, after mastery, dancing someone gives them +4 speed for the turn, which is really good. Who your dancer ends up being is mostly irrelevant though, as 99% of the strength of a dancer comes from being able to dance, which you can do regardless of what your stats are. You should really just make whoever your 10th best unit is into a dancer, because their stats are irrelevant.

That's because Hand Axes and Javelins are horrendous in this game. Your use of the Levin Sword here is fairly justified, as you're using on a unit that has reasonable magic and might not naturally have access to spells. They're bad on spellcasters but fairly good on hybrid characters that can attack with both damage types. Also, the best way to deal with archers is to kill them on player phase with a high move unit. If you have to kill them on enemy phase then the best way to handle them is usually your own archer. But in a pinch a mage with 1-3 range or a unit with a magic weapon can work, so it is a niche.

I've found that enemies in this game tend to have fairly low Res. If your mage is able to double you will be ORKOing regardless of what weapon you use. Also, Fimbulvetr isn't "fairly weak". It has 12 mt, 65 hit, 25 crit, 10 weight. Compare that with the Bolt Axe's 14 mt, 60 hit, 0 crit, and 15 weight. The Bolt Axe is only 2 mt stronger, and in return you lose out on all the other stats. Plus, keep in mind that Fimbulvetr is also boosted by Reason Prowess skills, as well as Black Tomefaire, which are more common skills for you to have compared to Axefaire on a mage or significant Axe Prowess levels. Plus, Marianne learns Thoron, which innately has 3 range. Throw in Tomefaire and it's just as powerful as a Bolt Axe, while likely having considerably more hit, extra crit, and importantly, +8 AS over the Bolt Axe. Thrysus and Caduceus Staff should be enough for your dedicated mages. I haven't found it very good to have more than 2-3 core magic users on a team (since while magic utility is very important, the mage classes themselves are pretty terrible and need to be worked around until you get to master tier). Throw Thrysus on one, Caduceus Staff on the other, and if you happen to have a third mage they are likely a bit more utility focused or already innately have 3 range and can get away with not having a staff. Plus leveling Reason to S rank also comes with +1 range innately. Mages almost never want a magic weapon (you might be able to make an exception for relics or something, but for the most part spells will suffice). Magic weapons are good on units that primarily attack defense but still have a fairly reasonable magic stat, like Edelgard or Ingrid as you mentioned. But those units are not generally mages, and if you make them mages you probably want to use your actual spells most of the time and not magic weaponry.

That's fair. I will note that with those numbers Silver Sword enemies will probably have ~40-50 hit on you if you take a player phase action, given that they have higher base hit, use more accurate weapons, and don't take any hit penalties from range. Also, from what I can tell, archers will attack from 3 range if you can't counter at 3 range but can counterattack at 2, but if the difference between 2 and 3 range doesn't matter then they will usually attack at 2 range for the hit bonus. But with the right build it does seem reasonable to rely on misses from generics (as long as their weapon isn't too accurate). Though it does necessitate that you use an adjutant and your equipment slot, so it's not something that every unit can do (as you only have so many evasion rings and adjutant slots).

That picture is missing a lot of context, such as what level you/enemies are at, whether you waited instead of taking a player phase action, etc.

There's a lategame quest that lets you access a shop where you can buy arcane crystals. At least, it existed on the BE route. I'm not there yet on my second run so I can't confirm that it exists on all routes.