Silly

I don't think it's normal to count paralogue rewards as a measure of a unit's viability. From what I recall, most lists tend to measure units by their contributions as a unit, and not what things they unlock merely by existing. If you wanted the thing that they give you, you could just recruit the unit to gain access to them, and then leave them to rot on a bench forever. For example, do we bump up RD Stefan's usefulness because he joins with the Vague Katti? Technically this is an endgame sword that you don't have access to unless you recruit him. Do you bump up FE6 Douglas because if you don't recruit him then you can't obtain Aureola and therefore can't access the true ending of the game? I would probably say no. Likewise, despite certain paralogue rewards being nice, I don't count them towards a unit's viability.

Some units are considerably better than others when late recruited, and that should definitely be taken into account on tier lists. One thing you need to consider is base stats. A good combination of Str/Spd/Def at base is very nice. The other important thing to take into account though is weapon ranks and how they match up with good classes, since students only train their default goals while not recruited. A unit like Felix has pretty great bases, but he's going to join with ~B rank in Swords/Brawling and E ranks everywhere else, which means that you have to put considerable effort into getting him into one of the better classes. On the other hand, a late recruit like Petra is going to join with ~B axes, D flying, which means that she is going to be very easy to reclass into a top tier class. Of the late recruits, Ferdinand, Petra, Sylvain, and Hilda all look like excellent filler Wyvern Riders to round out extra spots on your team. They come with good bases in Str/Spd/Def and a naturally high axe rank, meaning you only need to train Flying (C flying is doable in ~2 months). Ferdinand, Sylvain, and Hilda also come with a natural Lance rank, so you don't need to train it to eventually get to Wyvern Lord. Petra doesn't have a Lance rank, but she comes with D Flying and a strength, meaning she ends up needing less total wexp to get to Wyvern Rider/Lord. Ingrid has good bases as well and good weapon ranks to eventually reclass into Falcon Knight. Going Wyvern is considerably harder compared to the units that join with an axe rank, but it's not like Falcon Knight is that much worse. Leonie is the last unit I want to highlight, joining with excellent bases along with ~B Lances and Bows (plus D riding), meaning it's fairly easy to pick up the ranks to eventually go Bow Knight. I think these units are probably the best combat units to cross recruit. Felix can also make the list if you're willing to put in extra effort to get him into a good class, but making him truly shine takes considerably more work than the above students.

Students only train their default goals before you recruit them. For example, late recruit Lysithea will have high Reason and Authority ranks, but E+ Faith. So if you really want warp you should probably recruit her early.

For reference, this is roughly the bases you should expect if you recruit a student in chapter 12 (which is the last available chapter to recruit, barring some exceptions). As you can tell, certain students look significantly better than others in terms of base stats. Compare Ignatz to Leonie, for example. Both join with high bow rank, but it's pretty clear that Leonie is outclassing Ignatz by a pretty sizable amount in the important stats.

I think the bottom of A tier or B+ are both reasonable spots. Healers are in a fine spot, but it's important to understand that they aren't really directly competing with the physical units. It's sort of hard to compare Mercedes and Sylvain, for example, because they both occupy completely different roles in a team and do their job relatively well. ------------------------------------ Also cross recruits feel very important. Late cross recruited students actually have inflated bases compared to what they would have if you had recruited them early and leveled them normally, which makes them especially good for the new difficulty. Not only do you not need to invest your already limited exp into a student if you late recruit them, they come with superior stats compared to if you recruited them early! This stat bonus is especially apparent in students who end up as Cavaliers, Brigands, Pegasus Knights, Thieves, Mercenaries and Brawlers, as those classes have cross recruit stat bonuses in the right spots. (So basically the only underwhelming late recruits are magic users and archers.)

My opinion on Gilbert has changed dramatically recently. Turns out that it's not super hard to get him to Wyvern Rider (which also fixes his horrendous 2 base speed). He starts with the necessary axe rank, so you can just focus straight flying. He can pretty reasonably reclass within two months of study. (So probably before the story battle at the end of Ch 15.) Say you just took Gilbert and reclassed him to Wyvern Rider without giving him any exp. Then compared to Seteth's bases, Gilbert would have +9 HP, +1 Str, -2 Spd, +1 Def (as well as some differences in the less important stats of course). In addition, his personal skill essentially gives him +2 extra Def, and he comes with Weight -3 unlocked, so he will usually not lose much AS to his weapon (he is -2 AS at base when using Silver Axe). He's obviously not as good as Seteth (who is another late joining unit with good bases that can be an extra Wyvern for your team) because Seteth has a whole host of other upsides, but I really don't think that a Ch 15 Wyvern with those bases can be considered bottom tier. You're going to be able to find something useful for him to do. Especially on the new difficulty, where exp gain is significantly reduced, so later joins with good bases become more useful comparatively.

@VincentASM Also I noticed a minor error on the website when doing research for the base stat formula. On your site, Pegasus Knight is listed as having a +2 Cha modifier in the class stat bonuses section. This should actually be a +2 Res modifier.

Here is the "supposed" math for Gilbert. Personal Base = 5 Personal Growth = 45 Class Growth = 60 Alternate Class Growth = 50 (you have a second fortress knight class listed) Class Bonus = 10 Implied Level 26 Defense: 5 + 25 * (0.45 + 0.6) + 10 = 41.25 Implied Def (other growths): 5 + 25 * (0.45 + 0.5) + 10 = 38.75 Actual Level 26 Defense: 30 The above formula works out relatively well for most other units (within a 1 point difference of their actual bases in most cases). It even works really well for all of Gilbert's non-defense stats. It just for some reason ends up incredibly off with Gilbert's defense. Either Gilbert's class defense growth is actually about 10-20%, or something weird is going on. ---------------------------------- EDIT: Okay so after giving this some more thought I think I've stumbled across the correct answer. Defense and resistance growth is capped at 60%. If we assume that to be true, this fixes the issue with Gilbert's defense, as well as Flayn and Hanneman's joining Res, and corrects the minor 1 point difference in Alois + Seteth's base defenses on recruitment. I assume something similar might be contributing to the other places where the stats are inconsistent, but will have to do further research later.

@VincentASM Given that you replied to the thread, I'm sure you're aware of this recent reddit discovery about how autoleveled bases work: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/d0w2hr/an_analysis_on_the_monastery_autolevelling/ I have been testing the above link and for the most part it looks like it works well for all recruitable units. However, I've been seeing a few inconsistencies and given that you've actually looked through the game files I was hoping that you might have some insight into things. Most inconsistencies I've found are certain non-student units joining with stats that are ~1 point off of from where they should be. For example, using the formula Alois should have 18 base defense when recruited in Chapter 11, but when I recruited him he only had 17 defense. Not sure if there is some unknown stat variation affecting things by about +/- 1 stat point, but for the most part things line up. I have encountered a few bigger problems though. The biggest inconsistency that I'm seeing is Gilbert. He joins with about 30 defense, but the Fortress Knight class that he's in has a massive 60% enemy defense modifier, which should imply that his base defense on join be about 10 points higher. Flayn (and I believe Hanneman) are also smaller inconsistencies, joining with about 3 point less resistance than the numbers should imply. Gilbert specifically is a big issue, since the numbers really don't match for him. Not the default enemy fortress knight data, nor the ch 5 fortress knight data that you also have listed. I was wondering if there was some other sort of Fortress Knight growths in the game data that he was using for level ups instead, or he had different bases as an ally unit versus a playable unit, or something else that could explain how his defense is so different from what it should be.

So I managed to figure out a pretty reliable 5 turn clear of Ch 1 Blue Lions. See details here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jl0TjTVp32KyfZpEvTIEw9hjusQnyzgbOMEF5XSmYRk/edit?usp=sharing I don't have any way of recording this, but if anybody does and wants to make a video showing this off, it would be more helpful than just text instructions. As far as I'm aware, Blue Lions is currently the only route with a reliable 5 turn clear of this chapter. BE and GD routes rely on low percentage crits for a 5 turn clear.

As a side note, I spent a few hours messing around with various strategies for LTC Chapter 1 on the BE route. At this point I'm fairly convinced that getting a 5 turn clear in this chapter is impossible without getting a crit somewhere. The closest I've gotten without relying on a crit was a few damage short of a 5 turn, and that was with heavy optimization and enemy AI manipulation. A 6 turn clear is not difficult though, and should be relatively reliable if you know what you're doing. This roughly matches up with what other people think of the map on the BL/GD routes. A 6 turn clear is fairly reliable, whereas a 5 turn relies on some amount of low percentage RNG.

If this is the case (which I assumed it was), then we really shouldn't give someone like Sylvain credit for access to an early Lance of Ruin, or Lorenz credit for unlocking the chapter that you obtain Thrysus in.

Curious, do we normally give units credit for the items and stuff that they have? Because I personally wouldn't value something like that. For example, does Claude get bonus credit in the prologue because trading his Iron Bow around is essential to clearing the chapter quickly? Does Stefan get credit in FE9/10 for bringing the Vague Katti, even if you take his weapon and immediately bench him afterwards? etc. etc. Also I wouldn't be too opposed to combining tier B and A- (or at least move the top half of B into A-).

This sort of discussion happens every time someone brings up "best" or "tier list". No Fire Emblem game is hard enough to the point where you are pretty much required to play in a specific way to beat it, outside of "dumb" difficulties like early game Awakening Lunatic. Given that this game is a single player game, you are free to experience it however you like. If you want to play using only "low tier" units or classes, that's up to you. If you want a run using only your lord, or only females, or only sword users, that's also up to you. I've personally done many of these things, despite most of this being what is supposedly "inefficient". (As a side note, don't do all mages RD, 4-E-3 is basically impossible and requires grinding Kurth for 50+ turns to clear the map.) But despite doing dumb stuff all the time, I do my best to look at things objectively. Is Paladin Amelia better than General Amelia? Definitely. Does this mean that General Amelia won't be able to beat the game? Not at all. Does Paladin Amelia being better than General Amelia mean that I'm only going to be using Paladin? Heck no. Gimme dat big General hunk of metal. My Amelia will tank enemies just as hard as she tanks my turn count, and I'll like it that way. However, when talking about things like tier lists or optimal class paths online, I'm not going to say that General Amelia is the best unit just because I have used her in that way and beaten the game with it.

Except gauntlets don't deal with high defense enemies significantly better than any other weapon type... they have incredibly low might, which means that enemy defense cuts into their damage output significantly. For example, consider a mid game armor knight (chapter 14 GD Hard). They are level 28 and have roughly 40 hp and 25 prt. Say you want to kill them on player phase with Silver Gauntlets. This means you need 31 strength (minus any bonuses from abilities/battalions/etc). Forging here doesn't help, as all a gauntlet forge gives you here is +5 hit. Now say you want to kill them on player phase with a Silver Axe. You only need 29 strength before your weapon is factored in to kill. Forging here drops the threshold to 28 strength. Note that this is on Armored Knights. Fortress Knights in the next chapter are even bulkier, with 32 prt, which is even worse. Also, this is on player phase. The Silver Axe maintains its damage output during enemy phase as well, whereas the gauntlet's damage output has now dropped by half. I would also like to point out that if you really wanted to ensure that you hit the benchmarks to kill enemy armors on player phase, you have access to effective weaponry such as the Rapier/Armorslayer/Any of the many Axes that have effective damage vs armors. For example, a sword user with a Rapier+ only needs 18 strength to be able to ORKO armor knights on both player and enemy phase. The lower the enemy's defense is relative to your attack, the better gauntlets do relative to traditional weaponry. The main issue that I have here is that this game does not demand you hit such high numbers consistently. If other weapons do the job of gauntlets well enough, then they don't really have a significant niche. Non-armor units are not nearly bulky enough, so it is not difficult to hit ORKO thresholds on them with traditional weaponry on player phase. Even in the endgame ORKO thresholds with traditional weapons mostly hover in the 60 attack or less range. Armored units are bulky enough that you might not be able to kill them with traditional weaponry. But their high defense means that gauntlets aren't as comparatively advantaged. Plus if you really needed to deal with an armored unit it's better to rely on effective weaponry or magic or something anyways. The biggest spot where gauntlets are advantaged compared to traditional weaponry are against enemies with massive HP pools but moderate to low defenses. As it stands, traditional generics don't really fall into this camp. This category mostly applies to some beast units, and I can freely admit that this is a situation where the damage output of gauntlets does matter. However, does this make gauntlets better than other weapon types? I don't think so. The situations in which the primary advantage of gauntlets are necessary are just too small, and the situations in which gauntlets aren't as good as other weapons happens too often. This is completely ignoring the fact that weapons are attached to classes (certain classes have faire skills that make them better at using specific weapons) and just evaluating how the weapons perform in a vacuum. On a side note, if you guys want to strawman every viewpoint that doesn't fit into your own by circlejerking about "lel the other side only talks about 12 flier teams", then that is a kind of silly way to talk about things. (The fact is that I have never advocated for that kind of thing, and have instead said the opposite.) ----------------------------------------------- This is a pretty good post. Setting aside the whole talk about how War Master is as a class though, let's just focus on the weapon choice. I want to point out that as a War Master you should probably just use axes as your primary weapon type and have gauntlets as a backup for the occasional situations where it's actually beneficial to use them. The extra attack on gauntlets is kind of unnecessary, considering an axe snags important KOs just as easily. For example, let's take a look at your numbers on Raphael. Since you set Raphael at level 30 let's assume enemies are roughly level 30 as well (ch 15 GD). In this chapter, Raphael with your stats (plus a damage boosting battalion) has pretty similar combat against all enemies with either gauntlets or axes except for the following: Fortress Knight x5: Gauntlets and weaker axes do not ORKO on enemy phase here. Silver Axe (and anything stronger) snags an ORKO on enemy phase. Gauntlets, along with Iron Axe, will manage to snag an ORKO on player phase because of Death Blow. Gwendell: This guy is too bulky to be ORKOed by this Raphael with anything short of a Hammer. Both regular axes and gauntlets miss the ORKO on both player and enemy phase. If you happen to have a Hammer (or one of the stronger variants) then you can ORKO him during both player or enemy phase, but nothing short of a Hammer manages to kill him. Overall, using primarily axes is probably better. For the most part you are killing the same things, but the additional flexibility of being able to pick up really high might axes against bulkier enemies, use effective weaponry, and sometimes pick up a 1-2 range weapon here or there is helpful. Gauntlets can be kept for the niche where the enemy has a gigantic health pool (beasts), or when you are both too slow to double and cannot just one-shot someone with an axe (which is fairly rare, but could happen sometimes). On a completely different note, as you've pointed out, Wyvern Lord is pretty clearly the "better" class compared to War Master in terms of axe users. This means that when considering the "best" class for someone with axe proficiency, War Master should mostly be outclassed by Wyvern Lord, except in cases when training flying is too prohibitive. If you're one of the people who can't train flying (such as Dedue), then War Master is a totally acceptable class to claim as the "best" class, as it reasonably meets or exceeds ORKOing benchmarks and is probably better than any of the other non-mounted options. Also, if you want somebody that uses fists, then sure War Master is the only endgame class option. You should be a War Master if you really want to punch things, since that's your only real option. But in the context of killing enemies fists aren't really that special of a weapon type, as something like an axe or a bow or whatever will likely meet ORKO benchmarks on player phase just fine.

Gauntlets kind of don't have a niche past the early game. The low weight is their big draw in the early game. Before you get access to forging, the low weight often allows you to get access to ORKOs that you might miss out on otherwise. However, after you get access to forging, you can use Training+ on your units, which lets you get access to relatively low weight weaponry in basically every weapon type. Their "good" player phase is not really needed on the current difficulty, because past the early game pretty much every weapon type can meet the requirements necessary to ORKO on player phase. Except other weapons also have better enemy phases, since they don't have next to no might. --------------------------------------------------------- Axes are good though.

Characters that get killed in battle but are plot relevant don't "die" but instead become undeployable. They're basically dead for gameplay purposes, but for story purposes the writers still need them alive.

So if you meet both the speed and strength thresholds required to reliably kill the majority of enemies, that's obviously the ideal scenario. If you're not quite there yet, then it's a bit harder to evaluate, but I would say that generally having more speed tends to be preferable to more strength. There are ways to fix both strength and speed in this game, but the ways to fix strength are more readily available than ways to fix speed. Battalions provide big strength boosts, and are an easy way to add additional attack power, but no battalions provide speed. In addition, by switching to a heavier, more powerful weapon, a unit gains the ability to trade speed for attack. If your unit has overkill speed but just not enough attack to kill something, you can always switch to a stronger weapon if you need meet some particularly important thresholds (worst case scenario you can use a relic like the Lance of Ruin, which can very easily fix up strength issues with its massive might). On the other hand, the unit that meets the strength threshold but not the speed threshold doesn't have nearly as many ways to gain additional speed. You can cook speed meals for a temporary +1 speed, and you can equip a Speed Ring for +2 speed. But that's about it. (I guess if you have Ignatz you can rally speed). Though despite the fact that I just called Petra's extra speed on Edelgard an advantage, I do think that Edelgard is the better unit due to advantages in other areas. One important advantage is their innate abilities. Petra's is often not very useful, because when it is active she often just kills the enemy without needing to rely on her ability. On the other hand, Edelgard's ability is pretty relevant throughout the whole game at ensuring that she always remains above the curve. Secondly, Edelgard will likely have considerably more bulk than Petra, due to her free Armored Lord promotion bumping her defense up to 17 at minimum. Lastly, Aymr is really good, which is a plus in Edelgard's favor. Though as much as I like Aymr I do recognize that it's very limited in its uses so it shouldn't add too much in Edelgard's favor. ------------------------------------------------ Edit: After rereading, I might not have answered the exact question you were asking, and instead answered something completely different, so here is another attempt. Part of why Wyvern is so good is that it's pretty damn close to meeting both the speed and strength thresholds required to ORKO naturally. I tend to classify enemy groups as "super fast" (stuff like swordmasters), "fast" (heroes), "mid-speed" (warriors and paladins), "slow" (bishops), and "really slow" (armored knights). The mid-speed enemies tend to sit at maybe 25ish AS in the endgame, which means that pretty much every Wyvern Lord will double them pretty easily, given that the minimum speed for the class is 24. Only really slow Wyverns (like if you went for Wyvern Raphael) might have a chance of missing out on doubling. Fast enemies, it depends on the Wyvern. These enemies tend to have AS numbers in the low 30's near the end of the game. Taking Hilda as an example, her natural speed growth puts her at borderline doubling threshold for these enemies (she'll have roughly 33ish speed around level 40). She does need a little help, but it's fairly reasonable to say that if you wanted to double these enemies you would be able to. Super fast enemies are very hard to double. It usually requires a very, very fast character (such as Ingrid or Petra) to have a hope of doing so. For the most part, if you can double an enemy as a Wyvern, you will kill them. No character that will realistically turn into a Wyvern has terrible strength in this game (35% might be the lowest growth), and between natural strength growth, battalion bonuses, axes being the strongest weapon type, axefaire, and the class's strength bonus, you should be able to hit ORKOs (you'll need roughly 55 attack to reliably ORKO most enemies in the later stages of the game with a double imo). The big exceptions are the really bulky enemies, such as Fortress Knights and Great Knights, who usually will not be ORKOed if you don't have overkill strength (you're going to need maybe 75 attack to ORKO endgame armors), but they can be compensated for with a hammer if you have the option. Petra is probably slightly better in terms of meeting important thresholds given that she will very reliably meet the speed threshold (whereas Edelgard might need a little bit, but not a lot, of help with speed), and can fairly reasonably meet the strength threshold as well, but for the most part unless you have godawful stats you will likely only require a little bit of help to meet these thresholds as a Wyvern Lord.

Not particularly. I don't think it's significant enough to impact character ranking because every character can take advantage of gardening abuse. I do think that some units are particularly interested in getting their stats fixed in certain areas, such as Raphael. And farming for garden boosters does make these characters much better than if you had chosen not to garden abuse. So if you wanted to use Raphael on your team then this is a very good way to improve his viability greatly. But then again, gardening is a limited resource, and you can't farm enough boosters to give to all 10 or so units on your roster everything that they want. Every speed booster that I'm giving to Raphael to turn him from "really slow" into "good unit" comes at the cost of a strength booster that I can't give to Petra or Ingrid, a magic booster that I can't give to Lysithea, etc. Gardening does probably benefit the less good characters more than the better characters comparatively, since there is more room for the worse character to become more useful. But a mediocre character + gardening abuse is, in my opinion, still worse than a good character + gardening abuse.

Just a first pass of class balance that I'd be interested in seeing. Beginner: Bows moved off of fighter (maybe to soldier, which has a dex boost). The fighter class is pretty overloaded atm, with so many classes wanting to go through it due to three proficiencies. Intermediate: Rebalance class mastery so that every choice here gets a good class mastery (rather than having Brigand + Pegasus + Mage + Archer be clearly the best choices here). At the very least, move Darting Blow off of Pegasus. There is no reason that one of the best classes in this tier should also have one of the best masteries. Master: If advanced classes are meant to be fine terminal classes, make master classes have signficant tradeoffs instead of being strictly better (such as Warrior < War Master). Alternatively, if people are expected to end in a master class, make sure that advanced classes have reasonable upgrade paths that don't force you to do something weird (for example, Paladin -> ???). Fliers: Should probably cap at 7 move (one less than mounted units) instead of 8. I'd like to see the innate Avoid +10 go as well, as it is very unnecessary. Wyverns need to be a lot slower (maybe even have a negative speed modifier). Archers: Close Counter should probably be nerfed. I'd like for bows to not be able to double at 1 range (except Mini Bow), but some other nerf would be fine. Regardless, these should not be the best 1-2 range option in the game. Foot units: Normal advanced tier classes (such as Swordmaster and Warrior) should have 6 move across the board. Mages in advanced tier and Fortress Knight should have 5 move instead of 4. Potentially add a footlocked lance class as well for higher tiers, as I'm surprised that this doesn't exist.

Roughly ordered. Claude Edelgard F!Byleth Dimitri (M!Byleth) Petra Leonie Considering dropping Leonie to the tier below, as she is kind of borderline imo. Female Byleth is better than Male Byleth not because of the Sylvain recruitment (though that is a bonus) but mostly due to the ability to access Pegasus Knight early on. For reference, the next tier of units (aka the remaining "great" units) that I have is as follows: Hilda Ferdinand Sylvain Lysithea Ingrid Seteth Shamir Lindhart Felix Catherine Dorothea Marianne Mercedes Less ordered than the top tier list. If characters moved up or down a few places I wouldn't be particularly worried. (On a side note, if you care about LTC then Lysithea and Shamir probably move into top tier and Leonie drops out.)

I mean, if you were being sarcastic, then yes of course your statement is unhelpful, as it doesn't contribute anything beyond attempting to be antagonistic. If you made a wording mistake and intended no such thing, simply clarify that you did and it's all water under the bridge.

I've always found magic weapons to be very underwhelming in many cases. I want them to be good but they miss out on kills way too often. For example, Falcon Knight Ingrid averages roughly 20 magic at level 40. (6 base + 35% growth for 39 levels, with no bonuses due to class.) Levin Sword additionally doesn't benefit from Lancefaire, and she probably doesn't have a +magic battalion (I don't even know if there are any flying battalions that give magic tbh). This means that she has 29 attack before enemy resistance is factored in, which is not that great. You're likely not hitting ORKOs on archers with these numbers. Better to just kill the archer on player phase, so that you can fight enemies on EP with a better weapon equipped.

I feel like you're cherry picking something here to make a sarcastic comment about instead of contributing something helpful. If the statement was not intended as sarcasm, please disregard.

In the interest of avoiding derailing this topic, I'll keep this post short. My original post that spawned this mindblowingly dumb debate literally had the following two points: Mages don't have combat that is as good as fliers. They both reliably kill the large majority of enemy types on player phase, but fliers can take more hits and are thus able to have stronger enemy phase combat as well. The low movement on mages is another drawback that prevents them from being able to reach places and accomplish objectives as easily as fliers (such as killing specific enemies, getting somewhere to open a chest, preventing a green unit with bad AI from killing themselves when you needed to save them, etc.) As a result of these two points, I said that in the context of a run where Warp is not of the utmost importance, Lysithea probably does not deserve to be top tier (which in my opinion is only roughly 6 characters at the current moment), and instead should be in the tier below top tier. This goes against a not-uncommon opinion that calls Lysithea the best unit in the game even in a non-LTC setting. I do not think this is true. She is a good unit, but she doesn't rival the best units in the game, who have both excellent combat and reasonable access to a flying class. I'm not talking about bad fliers here, but the broken ones like Byleth and Claude. I feel these points are fairly reasonable, and I don't see anything particularly controversial about them.