samthedigital

Your team looks fine. I would probably use another unit (probably Veyle) over Yunaka so that I don't have to invest in as many characters early on, and I don't find thieves to be that useful in this game, but Maddening is balanced enough that you can use whatever team you want and still have success.

It's not your MM experience that's the main difference here. A lot of people don't value endgame potential as much because being slightly better in endgame isn't crucial to success. Having some decent lackeys and a unit to take on Ashnard (usually Ike) is enough. This is generally true in Fire Emblem too; there aren't really that many exceptions in the series. Gatrie does not require that initial investment. He's pretty good early on and doesn't require any additional work to be useful even if he falls off later. This is why I noted Gatrie in particular earlier in the topic, but there are a lot of units that fit this kind of mold that you have listed several tiers below Brom. Units like Stephan, Muarim, or Lethe for example can contribute regardless of the amount of time we spend grinding because of their bases.

An "efficiency" playthrough generally has no unit deaths. They generally allow resets if that means the chapter is faster on average, but I'm not sure if you're doing an ironman tier list or not. If I have a character that can fill this criteria without spending a hundred turns grinding are they not better than the characters that need grinding to achieve the same goal? I can't imagine that my tiering philosophy is that different from yours. It's just that I would penalize a unit if they need a lot of help if they want to contribute to beating the game. 0% growths runs are typically LTCs which can involve a lot of resets already. There have been 0% growths ironman playthroughs completed in some other Fire Emblem games though, so it might be possible here. You could always try if you want to see it done.

Have you ever tried playing at a faster pace? You can certainly do all that grinding if you like, and it might be prudent if you're doing an ironman without meticulous planning, but it is otherwise completely unnecessary. Maniac mode can be completed with 0% growths; you don't need your units to be as strong as possible. It certainly helps to have more trained units for the sake of consistency, but it's far less efficient to play as you described than it is to do things like juggernaut with Titania early on and the like. It's not like the experience is wasted; she is going to be more useful for longer since she is getting a few more levels. It's not as if the other units will be getting no kills or experience either. They might get less, but it's also balanced out somewhat by getting more bonus experience and the experience formula working in the favor of units who are at a lower level.

These are my thoughts in a nutshell. I didn't find MM to be difficult as much as it was tedious. It was neat to finish once, but I don't go back to PoR for engaging or difficult gameplay.

There isn't enough bexp to save until later on (where it might be more difficult to get an alternate unit to a high level) if we want to turn Marcia into a carry on MM. If we are talking about an ironman I'm not sure that the typical efficiency strategies and benchmarks would apply anyway without a lot of planning though.

FE9 Maniac Mode Enemy Stats - Google Sheets This was posted in the Hard mode enemy stats thread. It might be useful here.

To be clear I used the LTC as an example since it shows that Marcia is good enough as a carry on Hard mode despite the lower stats. It's not meant to advocate LTC tiering. It's definitely more of an investment than it would be otherwise given the forge costs and gold differences on the Japanese version, so it might be closer than you'd think. If Speedwings help Jill double more enemies then I'd say that there's more value in giving them to her than most other units; the only others I could think of would be mages, but I don't have enough experience with Maniac to be sure that they'd want them or not.

On Hard mode (outside of the Japanese version) she doesn't really fall off because both because enemies aren't as strong and forges are half as expensive. Technically speaking in an LTC we save turns by skipping Jill entirely since Marcia can solo the map before we have the opportunity to get Jill.

That's not necessarily true. There are still many situations where the faster team will still have the same amount of success, and if there is no difference between the "stronger" and "faster" team in terms of consistency the faster one has an advantage. That's not to say that mounted units aren't just innately better than armored units in the first place though, and even on Maniac mode there is a place for playing fast. I would even guess that some of the less reliable strategies would turn out better than reliable ones because of how slow enemy phase is in some situations as an aside. The last chapter comes to mind; taking a lot of turns to clear that map compared to taking 2 saves a lot of time especially on combat animations even if the strategy isn't as consistent. The fact that Titania can pretty much solo the first third of hard mode on her own (it doesn't even make the team any worse later on either) does make her a better unit, at least on that difficulty. This is why Stefan is better on Maniac than on Hard mode; his bases are more valuable because we don't have access to as many units as on Hard mode, so he should be viewed differently. To be clear I am not suggesting that Titania is any worse; she's still a Paladin later on even if she's the worst one, and she has many chapters where she's the best unit available. We can use almost any combination of teams and have similar success later on in the game, but the units individually will not help save time/turns (or make things more consistent, etc) as much as Titania did early on with the fliers and Reyson maybe being exceptions. You mentioned factoring in difficulty, and it would probably be a good idea. Japanese Maniac mode is different enough from the difficulty most people have played. On Hard mode the rest of the team is going to be just as powerful later on even with liberal use of Titania earlier on given how strong of a tool bonus experience is. Maniac mode is a little different in this aspect, but it's not entirely dissimilar in terms of Titania usage. If the difference between using Titania a lot early on and not using her at all is a level or two for every other unit that is still worth the time it saved early on given that a handful of levels don't really change anything. Even then I'm not sure that this is the case given how much enemy spam there is in Maniac mode.

I rank units based off of what unit provides more utility when playing the game efficiently. I don't need to spend 60 turns to clear a map reliably, and there is no need to grind that much to beat the game consistently. If you're just grinding to get the same results what makes the units better? Why does it matter that one unit is killing an enemy a little quicker? You lose that sort of thing if you don't take turns into consideration. Hard mode really is as simple as mounted units move forwards as much as possible and win the game from there; there's not a lot to PoR if I'm being honest. What do you mean by optimal exactly? By my definition of the term we're using Titania almost exclusively until we get bonus experience and we can start snowballing more units. That's by far the fastest and most consistent way to play through the early game. Titania is the best unit on the team until we start snowballing Marcia or Jill if we do this, and even if she falls off later no unit has provided what she has early on or more than the other two have later on in the game; they're filler units in a way compared to the carries.

The reason people would consider Marica to be better is because of the first boat map. She can clear everything and everyone else is stuck on the boat. It requires investment to do, so we already have a flier we've invested in before Jill joins. I don't fully buy the argument, but it is a reason to have trained Marcia. On Maniac mode it might be more difficult to have two fliers, but there's no reason that we can't have two (or even three) otherwise; it's a good class, and we also want to use multiple Paladins for the same reason. It's not that she's required but that she's significantly better than every other unit, and there isn't any incentive not to give her a lot of kills since we have bonus experience to patch up other units later. She's still useful past the halfway point too even if she's not the best unit anymore. I would also not rank units based on their endgame potential alone. I added the caveat about Maniac mode because on hard we're dumping bexp into them and it takes a similar amount for both to promote. The game doesn't really get more difficult on that mode, and I also don't factor in a handful of chapters just because of difficulty; it's more subjective than just seeing how much longer one unit is better than the other for. You can do something that's both faster and just as consistent on hard mode without making use of slow units, so it is more effective. If this is the case then you're playing the game more slowly than I would. My primary strategy in PoR is to move my mounted units as far as possible to finish chapters as quickly as possible, and on Hard mode the enemy quality isn't good enough to discourage this. Zihark requires investment to be better than Stefan. We're spoiled on Hard mode, so if you prefer Zihark on that difficulty I don't really consider it much of a weakness. On Maniac bexp is far more valuable, so Stefan's bases become better as a result. He can be used either as a short or long term unit, but Zihark is only really useful if you invest in him for the long term, and as you said Swordmasters aren't particularly good anyway. Even if you look at their caps it's really close besides the luck too.

I like to use both of them on hard mode since there is so much bexp to go around. I find myself using Jill for the more important tasks though though simply because she is that little bit better. The exp is cut in half on Maniac, so it would make more sense to just use one of them, but I'm not sure; I haven't played the difficulty in a long time. The one advantage to training Marcia early is finishing the boat map quickly, but I'm not sure how doable that is on Maniac mode. The reason a lot of people rank her as one of the best 3 units in the game is because that early game is invaluable. You can replace other units, but she's the best unit in the game by a lot for a long time. I'm not sure about Maniac, but on hard mode Paragon pushes her above Makalov. On hard mode we're dumping experience into them until they promote, and Astrid has the advantage until her level advantage from Paragon wears off. I'm not sure how much of that applies on Maniac though. Most people don't play Manaic where the defenses matter even less; on Hard there is never a situation where a General is useful because they just don't have the movement to do anything. Even if there were only route maps Generals still couldn't get to as many enemies in the amount of time a Paladin or flyer could. It's a little different on Maniac, but I don't find there to be an incredible gap between the two either. Here are some of my thoughts on some of the placements on the tier list: I'm of the opinion that Titania/Marcia/Jill should be alone in S tier. The order doesn't really matter to me that much; someone could make an argument for any of the three depending on what criteria they value more and it's perfectly reasonable. They do have an edge over the other units though. Titania has the early game and the other two are in the best possible classes. Ike should go down a bit. He's amazing for two chapters, but otherwise his primary utility is in his supports. He's probably going to be on the front lines a lot because he's needed for objectives sometimes, but the lack of 1-2 range does hurt him, and he has to be ferried by other units. There shouldn't be a large gap between Sothe and Volke. Regardless of your opinion of thieves they shouldn't be fighting. The one situation where Volke is clearly better (outside of join time) in my opinion is in the desert chapter if you want to go pacifist. He can tank some stuff that Sothe can't, but they're otherwise fairly similar. For reasons listed above I think that Astrid and Makalov should be closer and that the Knights should be lower. There should also be a clear separation between Gatrie and Brom. Gatrie has all of the movement problems, but he is around as one of the best units for a few chapters early on which does give him that little something over Brom. Stefan should be higher, and Zihark should be lower. If we're playing on hard mode my opinion would be different because there are more resources to go around, but Stefan has decent combat for no investment which is more of a premium on Manaic, and Zihark requires a lot of it to be effective. Rolf should be on the bottom tier. If not that then I would at least put him below Shinon. Shinon has a few chapters of utility because there aren't many strong units early, but archers are just bad in this game otherwise. It takes a lot of investment for Rolf to one round anything, and even then there are better targets that have 1-2 range. I would never consider the triangle attack because I'd much rather give Oscar axes and never use Rolf. There are probably a few more things I could add, but those are the things that stuck out to me the most.

I'd probably give Jill the edge over Marcia personally even though it's close on hard mode. Marcia has one or two good chapters before Jill joins, but past that Jill's access to axes along with the extra bulk means she's the better unit the rest of the way through, and we're using bonus experience to level them anyway. On Maniac Jill's strength is more noticeable and is even better if we're also using the crit forge bug. He probably based this off of Maniac mode where they are more useful given how bulky some enemies can be. They're also useful for cheesing the chapter with the priests and the odd siege tome use outside of that map occasionally on hard mode. I'll write out some thoughts on the tier list itself when I have more time later on.

To me the better solution is just to have enemies that can't be beaten via dodge tanking. That way it can still be a useful strategy depending on the situation while not making it overpowered. Engage "solved" the issue by making a lot of other defensive (and offensive) tools overpowered. I'd say that dodge tanking hasn't been overpowered relative to other strategies in at least half of the titles since the DS games though, so I don't really see it as a problem.

Top: FE7, 8, Engage, Conquest Order doesn't matter so much here. I wouldn't call any of these great necessarily; every single one of these units and/or classes have a shelf life. Oswin is pretty good early on until we get a bigger cast, Duessel is useful for a while, and Louis is useful until roughly chapter 8. I'm not a fan of armored units in Engage past the early game; there are stronger defensive tools than using armoured units while still maintaining a strong offense, and GKs are somewhat limited in that aspect. Effie is a really good unit casually, and that's why Conquest is here. Her long term prospects aren't the best, but there are a lot of neat tools to make units like her useful later on in Conquest. That being said the only reason these are at the top is because there isn't anything better rather than because they're good. Mid: FE10 It has been too long since I've played FE10, but the shelf life for these units feels a little higher than the ones below. Tauroneo is amazing early on. Brom makes for decent filler, and Gatrie is pretty good for a while until he starts to fall off. The BK is great when he's around if he counts. If I were using a lettering scheme these would be more like C tier units compared to the A tier above. Lower Mid: FE5, 9 Gatrie is good for a very short period of time and Xavier is a good filler unit if we go through the trouble of recruiting them. It's a bit of a separation between this and the bottom tier units because they have their uses once in a while. Bottom: FE4, FE6 There's not a lot to say about these. FE4 is horse emblem, and FE6 generals have a lot stacked against them even when trying to tank which is supposed to be the thing they're good at; all of their other attributes (movement, damage, etc) are garbage.

Bartre is another decent option too. If I remember correctly he's the first unit with A axes and he has a lot of time to gain the ranks. If you're not looking for debate or criticism then you want to avoid calling this a guide and using words like should. In any case the one advice I would give is that if you're using Shanna it can be useful to get her to promotion by the western isles arc to build her sword rank. She can get to C swords for Killing Edge utility which is unique for a flying unit for a good portion of the playthrough.

I originally really liked sticking Byleth on a dragon for the bonuses. It's something that sounds really good on paper, but in practice I don't find that the stat buffs are necessary, not anymore anyway. I never found Corrin to be good on a dragon type because the primary utility is Draconic Hex and Dreadful Aura. Those skills are best utilized by a unit that has good movement to maximize the effective range. The only dragon specific thing that appeals to me is the Soren ability that buffs their crit rate, but it's locked behind DLC. Maddening is actually quite tame when compared to the last few installments in the series even without the DLC. lenticular mentioned something to the effect that towards the end of the game we got too much experience on hard mode and the game became really easy after that, and that was my experience too. Maddening fixes that, and the experience penalty is sufficient in preventing units from getting overleveled for the most part. The DLC ruins the balance though; the maps scale to the party's levels, and there are enough maps that it's possible to get about 10 levels above the curve without a lot of effort. That's without considering the fact that certain maps were designed with only a few emblems in mind, so having a lot of emblems really feels like breaking the game sometimes. The only thing that the DLC had going for it in my opinion were the SP books, but the well fixed that too even though I'm not in love with the solution. Just in general I have a lot of problems with it, but maybe that's best saved for another topic.

Leif!Anna with ~50HP, 30 Magic, and 28 speed; her other stats weren't really relevant. I used Canter and Speed+3. I didn't really try making use of her ability, so it was just a nice bonus when it procced; it doesn't seem that worthwhile to me without grinding.

I only went up to around Hit+15-20 before the well came out, but I had enough to get 30 on maddening without playing the wyvern or fishing mini-game on the playthrough after it did. Admittedly a lower value would probably be sufficient to reach 100% hit rates, but I'm lazy and I also want to be sure that the build is as consistent as possible. I'm fairly conservative with skill choices overall though; most of my units get Canter (not+) and a second skill that usually not expensive depending on the unit's long term needs.

Panette's Wrath/Vantage build is really flexible. I personally prefer Canter or Hit+X as her second skill (with Vantage always being the first) depending on what I want her to do during a map; Hit+30 gives her 100% hit rate against even the dodgiest enemies in the game. I've also heard that Panette!Leif is good while engaged if she doesn't unlock his bond conversation for more engage weapons. On paper it seems good (with a few key advantages and disadvantages to the typical Ike!Panette build), but I haven't tried it out for myself.

Generally speaking I think it matters when we do the Fell Xenologue; all of the characters are pretty busted if we blast through Fell Xenologue on Normal mode after chapter 7 or so. I had an overall positive with Zelestia. She started having troubles one rounding when not engaged as the game went on (Chrom), but since flying magic damage is so good I would probably fix her problems with stat boosters if it wasn't working out. I swapped Nel to a Paladin with Camilla, Canter, and Lance Power 4 if I remember correctly. The combination sort of worked, but in the future I wouldn't use Paladin. It seemed good on paper, but her usefulness was heavily tied to being engaged. I suspect that she would do better in something like Wyvern with an item surge boosted Killer Axe (or alternatively something that increases her Mt) to help supplement damage though. I used Rafal as a Byleth bot, so he didn't end up doing much outside of support; I can't comment on him. I also don't really care about post-game content, so I haven't experimented with that either. Gregory seems fine, but I didn't try him out. I didn't use Madeline either, but that's mainly because she has a defensive stat spread, and I don't find that to be terribly useful in this game.

I'm not sure exactly how OP the strongest team would be, but even just completing all of the DLC content alone nets you ~7 units with 20 internal levels which is enough to make the difficulty a joke (relatively speaking) for the rest of the game. The only real limiting factor is the lack of some emblems that help break the game even more.

It depends on what you mean by meta defining; if you want to get through those chapters quickly you need to get through obstacles that only fliers can bypass without warp along with the +1 move; that seems pretty meta defining to me. Most 1-2 range options aren't great, but some people now consider Ivy to be the best unit in the game because she has good 1-2 range, and with Lyn she doubles and can kill most things. She can get Bonded Shield support when she needs help surviving EP too. The other thing is that with SP being more accessible Wrath/Vantage setups and the like are also easier to set up, so there isn't nearly as much value in doubling fast enemies as the game goes on especially when not warp skipping maps.

I had a promoted Chloe by the time Lapis joined on my latest playthrough, so I don't disagree with you necessarily, but it will depend on the context of the playthrough somewhat too. Someone who plays more efficiently than I do might not have had the time to gain as much experience for example. My latest playthrough took ~300 turns doing all content not counting DLC whereas an efficiency run might be able to more than halve that number. As above I agree with you for the most part especially concerning how Chloe is useful before we get Lapis, and she's also better in the chapter where we get Lapis too. I probably also mentioned something to this effect over the course of this topic, but I would not recommend reading it all lol. I don't feel as strongly about the Second Seal use though. We're probably not investing in too many characters from the early game, so as long as it's not wasteful I think it's fair for Lapis to not be penalized for using the resource.