Bartozio

I'm assuming Maddening difficulty for this rating. Note that I've never used Zelkov more than at best a few chapters, so this might not be too accurate. Honestly, Zelkov is kind of in a weird spot to rate. His stats are really good when he joins, but around the time he joins you get 8 other units with similarly good stats in quick succesion. I'm not gonna talk too much about how good all of those other units are, since they'll be rated later anyway, but suffice to say he has quite a bit of competition. That makes his weaknesses stand out all the more. The thief class just isn't all that impressive at that point in the game, and he needs to gain 4 level ups before he can leave it. That might not sound like much, but considering he's very well leveled for his join time, he'll struggle to gain more than say one level per chapter at a time where deployment slots are very competitive. And even if he does make it out of thief, his growth rates aren't even that particularly impressive. He'll probably still make for a decent unit, but only getting a decent unit after requiring some favoritism isn't a good look. So I'm giving him a 4/10.

Assuming maddening difficulty: I'm giving Kagetsu an 8/10. He would have really liked being able to get a few good skills or proficiencies from the early emblems and he lacks some of the insane tool other characters get, but he does have insane combat stats overall. High enough speed to double without too much help, enough strength to deal good damage and enough bulk to survive a few hits. He can fill basically any combat role you want him too that isn't magic based, which makes him extremely easy to fit on any team. I do think some other characters shine better if you give them the right builds though, which is why he "only" gets an 8.

Maddening difficulty: Honestly, Ivy is a pretty amazing unit, and not only because she comes to bail you out in chapter 11. She has high magic, a great personal class and pretty solid bulk and build for a magic unit. While mages like Anna or Citrinne will get weighted down from using stronger tomes, Ivy can pretty easily use them without a second thought. She can also easily take a hit from physical units before killing them on the counter, something most other good mages in this game struggle with. And that's not even talking about her being able to fly and use staves while doing all of this. Of course, she does come with some issues. Her speed is the main one I think, but I also found giving her speed+5 and cooking a speed meal (or giving her a speed tonic) goes a long way in allowing her to double the enemies with more average speed. Basically, she needs some help, but most units do and you get more from helping Ivy than you'd get from helping most other units. So I'll give her a 9/10

I mostly agree with the first part, although the not out of the gate part is somewhat inacurate. Citrinne join in chapter 7, and I've had Anna as a bonded shield sweeper online for chapter 12. That's basically 4 chapters without a super unit, and even in those I've had other characters with the right emblem and a bit of planning be able to take out entire halves of the map on their own. So pretty much from the moment Citrinne joins powerhouses (can) exist. I will agree though that those powerhouses can't be everywhere and your other units will have to do some combat in other parts of the map. I consider that mostly filler combat, especially once you have more than one powerhouse going, but Citrinne deserves praise for filling that role better than most other units. I am redacting points from her for not being able to turn into one of those powerhouses though, or even not having any kind of enemy phase. In terms of speed issues I strongly disagree. I should start of by saying I think Ivy being able to fly while using staves and tomes and having enough bulk to have something of an enemy phase is more relevant when comparing them then the difference in speed. In terms of how much the speed difference matters, I'm not sure how big the difference really is between the two, but it matter a lot if one needs the lyn emblem to double whereas the other can get by with Speed+x and maybe a tonic or meal. One is a heavily contested resource, the other is not. Even needing almost the full boost from speedtaker is a huge downgrade over needing Speed+x, since it takes a few turns to stack up on speedtaker, whereas Speed+x you can have instantly. So no, it really matters exactly how much support you need to start doubling.

You can definitely build some powerhouse units who can solo masses of enemies if you want to, even on maddening. Having a unit with high magic and speed protected by bonded shield, or a unit running a crit build with vantage or Ike does wonders for clearing out maps. You're likely not going to have an army of those powerhouses of course, maybe 3 or 4 units like that, but that can be more than enough.

And so we have arrived at Citrinne, the noble who is too rich for her own good. My rating is based on Maddening mode with fixed growths. As other people have already mentioned, Citrinne has sky high magic and not much else. When she joins it allows her to easily replace one of your other mages as she has no trouble nuking enemy armor units or dealing big chip damage to anyone else. This makes a pretty good filler unit for a few chapters, although getting Canter on her is more difficult than other early game units because of her low starting SP for her level. In terms of long term investment, we run into the discussion of bond rings. In particular the Olwen S-rank ring is amazing on her as it lets her always double when she initiates combat with a thunder tome. In my first run I used this on her as a sage and it lets her one round most enemies all the way to endgame, including faster enemy types like wolf knights and swordmasters, who can be quite the pain to deal with otherwise. She also gets to use staves, so even on turns where she won't kill anything she can make herself useful. Obviously she has competition in doing this, mostly from Ivy and Pandreo, but her higher magic stat makes her pretty competitive for the spot. And like... even if you prefer the other 2, it's not like using 3 strong mages is a bad thing in this game. However, since the rules state we're not rng abusing for bond rings, I'm going to assume she won't get any specific S-rank ring. Without that tool, her speed starts to become a fairly serious issue. I've encountered several times later on in the game that Citrinne had trouble even doubling generals, which really starts to hurt her viability. Of course there's ways to fix her speed. Going mage knight or inheriting Speed+x should let her keep doubling generals, and inheriting speed taker or just straight up using the Lyn ring will let her double most regular enemies (though not the really fast ones). However, needing an almost full set of speed taker before you start doubling regular enemies is not a great look, and the Lyn emblem is a pretty heavily contested resource. I still think that's an okay look, being able to deal good chip and healing, and dealing with armor units is good enough to earn someone a filler slot, and she can make good use of some of the more support oriented emblems like Corrin or Byleth. Not amazing, but you can do much worse than that. If you want, she can even reclass to a bow wielding class and use the Radiant bow to kill wyverns, something most natural bow units will struggle with (and she can still kill other fliers with a regular bow, because the might and class bases are enough for that). In conclusion, if I took bond ring rigging in account I'd rate her a 8/10, but we're not I'm giving her a 5/10. She's a decent choice if you want more mages or a magic filler with canter during the Solm arc, but she needs some investment and she's not going to turn into a team carry unless you happen to get lucky.

Welp, it's seems we have arrived at this games scared archer. Rating is based on maddening. I've admittedly never used Alcryst longterm, so take this one with a grain of salt. Alcryst sadly suffers from a few pretty major setbacks. For one, his SP situation when he joins is among the worst of all the characters in the early game (along with his two retainers). 500 SP at level 10 means he needs to hit internal level 15 to reach Canter, whereas most other units only need level 12 or 13 at most. Because of the level curve this means he need more investment than units like Etie or Diamant to reach Canter. He can still get it of course, but it's a point against him. The other issue is that his stats and growths just aren't all that impressive compared to other units. Sure, he beats Etie is basically every stat other than strength, but that's not exactly a very high bar. There's also plently of units like Lapis, Alear, Chloe and even a reclassed Clanne and/or Jean who will have more speed with similar strength. So then, why would people still use Alcryst? The main contributors are the utlity bows provide and him getting Luna after promotion. So lets talk about those. Bows are a great weapon type to have access to in this game. The effective weapon bonus by itself is basically enough to one shot most fliers other than some wyverns in the early to mid game, and being able to easily chip enemies at 2 or 3 range is extremely valuable. Of course the issue one might notice with that is that dealing chip damage and killing a specific enemy type is more a filler combat role. Even being great at this doesn't make you compare favourably to a unit who can easily sweep half a map with bonded shield support or the Ike ring. The second issue is that Alcryst is hardly the only unit who can fill the niche of a bow unit, or even the best at it. Most people compare him to Etie and basically stop there, saying he's fine because he compares favourably to her. I do think Etie requiring less investment to get Canter makes her the winner in the role of low investment bow unit with canter, but she's hardly the only competition for alcryst. Anna promoted to warrior can easily abuse the fact warrior bases are enough to one shot most fliers with a bow to get all the easy kills Alcryst could, while also making much better use of the radiant bow because of her high magic. And if you're willing to spend a second seal on it, units like Jean or Amber make for very good overall combat units as warriors. Of course none of those units have Luna, but I don't think that's as big of a deal as people make it out to be. The extra damage is nice when it triggers and you can always rig a proc with divine pulse if you need to, but relying on a proc skill to get kills other units can get without any luck really isn't all that impressive. It's a cool ability and it's entirely possible to play around the proc chance by using it at the start of your turn and seeing if Alcryst is going to kill someone or just chip them down, but it's imo not enough to make up for other units just having better stats. All in all, I think Alcryst is okay as a filler for a few chapters when he joins and if you invest in him he can stay a decent filler. Luna likely makes him pretty fun to use and gives him a shot at doing more than filler duties for a bit, but it doesn't actually make him a good investment target in terms of reliably clearing maps. Overall, he gets a 4/10 from me.

And now we come to that mysterious wanderer, Yunaka. The rating below is considering Maddening mode. Okay, so lets start with the good. Yunaka joins with pretty good bases and Thief is just a good class in the early game as it has good 1-2 range to fight on enemy phase and avoid counters on player phase. She's probably your best answer early on for most mages, since she has good Res and can easily fight them on enemy phase with physical weapons (well, assuming the're not using thunder). She's probably not one rounding much else without an emblem ring, but then that goes for most of your units and she deals decent chip damage. She also gets to use Micaiah for free in her joining chapter, which can get her a good amount of exp and, more importantly, sp. After that, she likely only needs a single extra good chapter of Micaiah/Marth to get to Canter, or potentially two if you let her use some of the less in demand emblems. That's a pretty notable advantage over most of the other early game units, who all tend to need at least two chapters of Micaiah/Marth to reach Canter. This means that even if you're not planning to use Yunaka long term, it's still pretty easy to give her Canter and use her as a strong filler unit in the early game without hindering investment in the units you actually want to invest into. So that's the good, now lets talk about the bad. After chapter 11 you should have obtained a grand total of 4 master seals, along with two being buyable in the shop (one before chapter 11, the other afterwards). Considering the low deployment limit for the next few maps, from here on out you'll likely only be deploying promoted units, and Yunaka's thief class doesn't compare nearly as well against those as it did against the unpromoted ones. You'd really like to promote our girl here as well, but unfortunately you can't. Thief doesn't have a promotion and it can only reclass into promoted classes after you reach level 21. She's honestly fine, if not spectacular, once you get her into some of the better classes like Mage Knight or Griffon Knight, but it's quite a chore to get her there. This is made even worse by the fact that her dip occurs at a point where you're not allowed to field a lot of units, whoever else you were training in the early game is likely popping off right now, and you get a huge influx of amazing units. Between all that, it can be fairly difficult to justify fielding Yunaka just so she can get a bit more exp. All in all, I give her a 5/10. Really good unit early on with some potential for the late game, but her midgame is just aweful.

I don't think there's really a wrong way to use pair up, but using some units purely as a backpack is very viable. Often times in Fire Emblem, having a few amazing combat units is more valuable than having an army of decent combat units, and backpacks help those few units be even more amazing. As mentioned though, you will likely want to promote those units eventually just to get a bigger bonus. They should be able to reach level 10 from purely backpacking anyway. Of course, raising a balanced team can be a lot more fun to some people and there's advantages to being able to swap to your backup unit for a bit as well. It really depends on how you prefer playing the game.

Maddening difficulty: Louis is honestly a very interesting unit in this game. He joins with an insane Defense stat that makes him basically unkillable in the early game unless he faces mages or armor slaying weapons. That's an amazing trait, but in maddening mode you start noticing his first issue: enemies ignore you if they can't deal any damage. A lot of sword wielding enemies only have around 16-18 attack, meaning they will straight up ignore Louis. This makes the big guy a lot trickier to use, since he can't just deal with a bunch of those enemies over two turns or damage several on enemy phase for your other units to clean up. Of course he's still great for protecting some of your frailer units or driving more enemies into your training targets. And hey, there's also plenty of enemies, mostly axe users, who can damage him. He also makes a pretty solid Sigurd user early on, as he can quite boldy charge into enemy lines without a care in the world to secure side objectives or mess with enemy ai. Past the early game he starts to run into another huge issue though. Simply put, you don't have any real need for a unit with overkill bulk. Beyond chapter 11, you'll likely be running only units you seriously invested in or some of the amazing prepromotes you get, all of which can likely take a few hits or offer something more important. That alone wouldn't be a huge loss, since Louis can do a lot better that just taking a few hits. But you also get the Lucina ring at this point, and Bonded Shield is pretty much the strongest enemy phase tool out there. Know what's better than having a virtually invincible tank who gets ignored by several enemies and deals decent damage to the ones that do attack him? Making one of your glass cannons invinsible for a few turns, so all enemies will still want to attack them and all die for trying, that's what. A few chapters later you also get Ike, who can turn any unit into a great tank, Corrin, who can lock down groups of enemies hard enough you don't even need to face them on enemy phase, and Byleth who lets you kill enough enemies on player phase you don't really need to worry about enemy phasing either. Between all of those tools, there's very little reason to still use someone just because they have good bulk. Of course, as mentioned above, he can still be made useful in the late game. Halberdier, Great knight with Sigurd equiped or potentially just a warrior build focussing on bows can all make use of his great strength stat. None of those build will really make him the star of the show (unless you're going for 1-turn clears, maybe), but a good early game performance and still being usable later on is a lot better than most of the early cast can claim So in the end, I'm giving him a 6/10 Note: I do think Louis is likely a lot better on lower difficulties, but I haven't played those, so I can't really take that into account for his ranking.

I forgot to mention this last time, but my rating is based on maddening difficulty with fixed growths. Chloe is honestly blessed with many strengths and few weaknesses. She's the only natural flyer you get in the early game and one of the few who can get into a strong combat class without needing a second seal (Wyvern Knight and Griffon Knight are both solid classes for her for the entire game). She does want some other early resources, like an early master seal and using an emblem ring to farm a good amount of SP, but every potential combat unit wants those and Chloe makes a pretty good case for deserving them. She starts off with competent stats, meaning she doesn't need to be babied as much as units like Clanne or Anna, and her stats when trained up are fairly comparable to some of the powerhouses you get later on. Speaking of said powerhouses, even when you get several prepromotes after chapter 10, Chloe can keep up with them statswise (in terms of offensive stats at least) and she has the advantage of being able to obtain skills like Canter, Sword/Lance power, or even just basically any proficiency she might want. I personally love using Lyn on a fast flyer, because it means I have a mobile unit who can double and kill annoying enemies like wolf knights and sword masters who can be very difficult to effectively kill otherwise, but even with just a regular bond rong she can double and one round a good amount of more average enemies. While she isn't a paragon of bulk, she can usually survive a hit or two, and her great speed means she won't get doubled and has some good avoid. Basically, one of, if the best investment targets for you early on. In maddening, you don't really have units who can stay great at combat without any serious investment (forged weapons, good skills/emblem rings), so Chloe basically hits top of the list there. I should mention though that she's perfectly replacable on any team. Units like Lapis, Clanne or Anna can do roughly the same things in the mid game, just at a higher startup cost. And Kagetsu and Merrin can do the same thing once you get the right emblems. All in all, I'm giving Chloe a 9/10. Easily one of the best units of this game, but not someone you'll dearly miss if you start using other units instead.

I honestly think Celine is pretty useful and easily one of the better characters from the early game. She easily makes for the best Celica user early on, due to the player being forced to use it on her in chapter 4, and having a level lead over your only other mage (resulting in better stats across the board). She notably has just enough bulk to be able to handle some solo missions like obtaining the treassure in chapter 5 or protecting Anna and killing the thieves in paralogue 2. As mentioned before, she can also make good use of the Sigurd ring if you've obtained the Levin sword (which is just a good weapon for the early and midgame). Once Citrine joins Celine isn't the best Celica user by default anymore, but considering she's likely not too underleveled compared to her she still gives her a good run for her money. Most notably, she has better bulk and speed, which makes using Warp Ragnarok a lot safer with her, on top of her having a higher bond level already (which can be compensated for in the arena, but in the early game there is actually a limit of how crazy you can go on spending your bond fragments). Even if you prefer Citrine though, having a second mage isn't really a bad thing. Of course, as most people have mentioned and what seems to be the reason everyone gives her a low score is that her combat takes a nose dive after chapter 11. Ivy and Pandreo easily outclass her as offensive mages, and there's several other heavy hitters like Kagetsu, Merrin and Pannette joining around that time, who can do much better than her. However, Celine has one thing going for her that all of those characters joining after chapter 10 lack that I honestly haven't seen anyone talk about. She can actually inherit skills from the early 6 emblems to use in the midgame. By simply using Celica, an emblem that she uses very well to help you clear maps and that she doesn't face heavy competition over, she can very easily reach 1k SP to inherit Canter, and going a little further for 1200 SP lets her also inherit Favourite Food from Celica. Note that she can reach those number without requiring one of the early 3 master seals or any help from the Ancient Well, so you can keep those resources for other units. You get 2 master seals from the chapter 10-11 gambit, another buyable one in the item shop and another one in chapter 12 if you protect the right villager, so she should be able to promote around that time without really hindering your other units. At that point, you have a staff user with Canter who can provide some decent chip from 1-3 range as well. That makes her imo the best support unit at that point, outside of your Lucina user. She might not have the highest magic, but she's bulky enough she won't die to a single hit, and she can use Canter to retreat from enemy range. She's not killing enemies for you very well, but she can still help out there, and I don't think having a few support focussed characters in your party is bad thing, compared to only fielding heavy hitters. You also get the Corrin ring after chapter 15, and at that point in time she's likely the only unit who has Canter, access to 3-range attacks and favourite food. Citrinne has a lot of trouble getting enough SP for both of those without using the well (which I think is better spend on creating some super combat units) and Clanne needs a lot more help reaching the required level than Celine does. Any other unit either requires an extra seal or just can't have those skills at this point period. That makes Celine the best user of, in my opinion, one of the strongest rings in the game. She can just stun lock a group of enemies for a few turns from complete safety and move away to give your other units all the space they need to finish them off, and then take a turn to eat an item to do it all over again without ever needing to move to a specific spot on the map. She also gets to use one of the most useful dragon vein options whenever she isn't engaged. Of course she does lose a lot of those advantages later on. Ohter units can get Canter after chapter 17, and favourite food after chapter 20. But that's still a decent period of time where she has a strong claim on one of the best tools in the game. And even afterwards she is arguably your second best offensive staff user after Hortensia, and those are good enough that even being second best is a good niche. Overall, I give her a 7 out of 10. She'll rarely be the mvp of a map or blow you away with her peformance, but she can consistently occupy a good niche for relatively low investment.

There's a small bonus to having characters use weapons that match their crest, but it's generally not all that impactfull (in this case they recover some hp at the start of each turn I think?). Basically, I wouldn't worry about it too much if I were you. Not really. The only thing I think that really matters in regards to crests is that having one means you don't get -10 hp penalty whenever you use a heroes relic. Because of that it's useful to use at least some characters with a crest, although that's pretty difficult to avoid regardless. Paralogues generally offer better rewards and have more enemies to fight, so they're more rewarding to pick. You can only play each paralogue once however, and only if you fullfill the criteria to unlock them (basically always involves having recruited the right characters). I think most people consider the Golden Deer class the easiest on Maddening, so I'd recommend that one. There's a pretty big difficulty spike between Hard and Maddening, to the point that I've seen people who found Hard too easy struggle to get through Maddening. There is indeed a fourth route, though I'd recommend only asking about it after you've completed the game once, since it involves some spoilers.

I recently finished chapter 17, and I've had two skirmishes appear so far. I think they appeared after I finished chapter 11 and 16, though I'm not entirely sure. They indeed don't seem to appear based only on what chapter you're on, though it's interesting it's almost the same for everyone so far (the first one after chapter 11 or 12, second after chapter 16 or 18). Maybe it's also related to the number of paralogues you have played (I finished the Lyn and Lucina ones before the second skirmish appeared)? Could also just be purely random I guess, lol.

704

698

The thing with three houses is that flyers don't really offer any utility outside of combat. There's no rescue mechanic and very few side objectives that don't involve combat. That doesn't make flyers outright bad, but it does mean that if you have bad combat, getting to a certain spot early won't do much if you can't kill the enemies there. On normal and hard that's hardly a concern, because enemies are pretty weak there, and the flying classes have very good base stats/growth rates, so any physical unit can generally become a flyer and be expected to eradicate squads of enemies without much trouble. That makes flying classes very superior on those difficulties. On Maddening, enemies are actually challenging, so being good a combat is not a given for most units. Flyers will generally still be all round good, but doubling some/most enemies and having decent survivibility isn't always enough. So it's nice to add some units with a more specialized kit like a sniper with Hunters Volley or a War Master with a Wrath+Vantage build. It's also worth noting that while several classes like Brawler and Sniper can make anyone good, Flying classes can't really do that on Maddening. If the unit was great before becoming that class, they'll still be great, but with more mobility, but if they couldn't really do much at first, they'll still be subpar as wyverns. That's my opinion based on 1.5 playthroughs on Maddening at least 😛 I think doubling enemies like caveliers/paladins or Warriors is doable for most units at some point (though for those not getting Darting Blow it might become a bit tougher), but the faster enemies like Brawlers or Heroes is pretty much the territory of a select few very fast units.

286

I honestly always found Cold Steel Elise kind of boring, personalitywise, while Fates Elise is pretty hilarious in most of her convos, so easy pick here for me tbh.

Ah, Mercedes, the dedicated healer of the game. Because of her stats and proficiencies, there's really no point in making her anything but a magic unit. She has a proficiency in both Reason and Faith, and pretty good magic, res and Charm to boot. Her speed isn't amazing, but it's not too bad either. She has all the healing spells you want, but outside of that I find her spell list to be pretty lacking. There's no 3-range spells or effective damage in her reason list, and no movement spells (rescue or warp) in her faith list. This means she really lacks some of the utilty some of the other magic units can provide. On top of that, she starts of with a D rank in Faith, as opposed to the D+ that Linhardt and Marianne start out with. This means she can't get Physic for chapter 2, which is pretty significant, since it's imo one of the harder chapters in the game, and any extra tool you can get is welcome. I should also mention that she doesn't have any combat art to use her magic stat in a different class, like some other people can do with for instance Frozen Lance. Live to Serve is also pretty useless on a unit who has no business taking hits in the first place. All in all, I'm giving her a 5/10. That might seem high for all my ranting, but she's still the only healer BL are going to have for a while, and she still at least gets physic (looking at you, Manuella and flayn). There's also staves to give her the magic range she lacks, so it's not completely helpless. All in all, not a very stand outish magic unit, bit she gets the job done.

I'm giving the guy an 8.5/10. I think Sylvain is consistently one of your better units. Early game because of his personal and bonds with Felix and Ingrid, and mid to late game for swift strikes. Not having access to Pegasus Knight sucks for the early game, though when he gets swift strikes he can kill most things on player phase anyway (keep in mind that lances have a lot of options for dealing effective damage). Bow weakness also sucks, but you can still get to D+ or C in a reasonable amount of time I think. Overall, a very solid unit. There's a few units who can outperform him, but not a lot.

There's several ways to tackle it honestly, but I think the most important thing to do is keep a save file from the last month before the timeskip at hand so you can always go back and change a few things just in case. Also, if you really find yourself struggling with the map or just don't want to play it here's a video about how to clear it without using too many specif resources by Mekkah (VW clear starts 14 minutes in):

Bernadetta is in my opinion the perfect example of why you don't need good stats to be a great unit. Early game, she has one of the lowest strength bases of all physical attackers, but with her personal skill, she's still among the top damage dealers. And then she can get her one shot build far earlier than any other unit. Other people require skills they get at A-rank, or mastering an advanced class, Bernie only needs to get here lance rank to C+. This means that at a point where two of your units might not be enough to kill a single enemy in one turn, Bernadetta can do it all on her own. It should also be noted that from here on out, she doesn't need anything else. You can train her bow rank for Encloser or her riding for Pass, but both are just the icing on the cake. She doesn't even need to be leveled that much, because Vengeance does insane damage even at base. The bad part is of course the late game. At some point other units start getting their one shot tools as well and those don't require as much setup. Vengeance still does it's job, but in most cases other units are just easier to use to do the same thing. Encloser is nice to take an enemy out of the picture if you can't kill him, but killing them would still be better. I'd also argue she's one of the least one dimensional units out there, since Pass can make her a great dancer (and physic if she falls behind) and has the spell list to be one of the best mages in the game (keep in mind, Persecution Complex works with magic attacks as well, and the base magic of certain classes is quite good). All in all, I'm giving her an 8/10. Amazing early game, but she falls of a bit late game and can be difficult to use.

Yeah, that's fair. I was mostly trying to dissprove you'd need to train Caspar to lvl 30 to even do damage, but this is a much easier way to do it.

You're aware you can just train his lance rank to C for knightkeeler and dump a Lance of Ruin on him, right? It's something anyone can do, so not really relevant when rating Caspar, but felt like pointing it out to save some grinding for you.