samthedigital

Your criteria is a little too picky. Noah is fine, and there are a few other characters that can definitely be decent out of that list. Otherwise I agree with you, character balance is lopsided, but it's mostly due to the fact that there are more characters in 6 compared to the others. There are still a similar amount of good units. Still, that's not really the point. Character balance is only one of several criteria. Overall the game isn't that badly balanced compared to other Fire Emblem games.

We might have different definitions of throwaway units. There are about 10 really good units in PoR, and 10 more that are passable or have some utility. Most of the good characters are basically the same too. They're mounted paladins or flyers with good 1-2 range combat. It's a little more nuanced in FE6. Rutger is sword locked, Shin and Sue are effectively bow locked, Shanna doesn't have good combat, and Niime is mostly useful for her staff rank and magic stat rather than her combat. Those are all some of the best units in the game, and they all perform different tasks. If you can name more units that are useless in FE6 compared to others it is mostly because there are more units in the game.

Those are rather lenient. Ambush spawns and the like on hard mode make it a little less lenient sometimes, but it's not very consistent. Not looking outside of the GBA titles FE6 has some more emphasys on player phase making bows and swords more useful. Bosses are also a consideration given that they are rather tough, so having a unit like Rutger can help a lot too. In 7 and 8 1-2 range is heavily favored, and the early game mounted units are better. Marcus is usable the whole game and Florina can contribute towards combat related tasks for example. FE8 has Seth who can practically beat the game on his own with ease. Path of Radiance mounted units are even more imbalanced, and I would guess that this is also true for Radiant Dawn, but I don't have as much experience with that one.

The game doesn't really punish the player that much for playing slowly. It depends on your definition of slow I guess, but the game doesn't expect the player to make full use of a character's movement every single turn or anything like that. I would also disagree that FE6 is one of the most unbalanced titles in the series. If we're talking about individual character balance maybe; but otherwise there are many other Fire Emblem games with more lopsided weapon and class imbalance. Warp doesn't trivialize the game nearly as much as it does in some other titles either.

Don't let characters die and be aware of the requirements to get the best ending. Otherwise you should be fine doing what you like especially on normal mode.

He has something to do in every chapter until he falls off to compensate for that. Weapon rank growth isn't very important; they get Hand Axes when they promote. They can also promote around when Dart joins or slightly later where he is stuck waiting quite a few chapters. He also has some hit issues on his join chapter and is stuck with Axes which while better than being sword locked is not completely ideal. Supports take too long to build and aren't very effective when you do build them. Dart can one round things just fine without them anyway. He's not a bad unit by any means; his combat is good with a few levels. With a skill book and a speedwing he's especially good when he promotes, but that does require resources. A Speedwing will fix Hawkeye's speed issues for the most part. He's great filler whereas Dart takes more resources and time to really get going. I understand the sentiment to be sure. I feel that Dart is slightly underrated, but I wouldn't go that far with the claim. He definitely has faults despite the fact that he becomes great at combat with some effort.

He doesn't cost anything to buy, and he can contribute to the experience rank easily enough. A lot of good units are not going to promote either, so the fact that he won't isn't that big of a deal really. Marcus, Kent, Sain, Lowen, Raven, Hawkeye, Harken, Hector, Geitz

They really don't. Rath can open doors and move again if he needs to, but you would need to play slowly to not make use of his extra movement on Genesis. You're giving Wil and Rebecca way too much credit. They're going to be more useful on a ranked playthrough because the EXP rank exists, but it still doesn't help them clear main objectives quickly with their 5 mov or farm experience on EP with their locked 2 range. Anyway, the TC's question is too vague to be interesting to answer. I'm also like 10 days late to the party, but whatever.

Chapter 25 gives you enough experience to comfortably promote those two units along with a flier by itself if you decide that you want to spend the turns to recruit Farina. If you plan your turn count out well enough you can trivialize funds by abusing the FFO arena.

From the OP:

It really isn't that tight if you play through most chapters quickly. It's definitely possible to hit promotion for 3-4 characters in FFO and still S rank tactics somewhat comfortably even while playing chapters like 19xx. The amount of enemies that Lyn can fight effectively is pertinent to her contribution as a unit in a ranked run. How easily a unit can gain experience is one of the most important factors in determining how good a unit is in a ranked run. There are a handful of units that need to be babied or can't really contribute to the ranks in any meaningful way, and Lyn is at least a step above those units.

In a ranked setting we're going to be cycling through units for the experience rank regardless, so it's not really as important a question as it is for an unranked playthrough. Even if the rankings are of concern it's possible to do this with a few units, and it can beneficial to plan for it given that any arena kill is basically free experience and money. Not every unit can enter the arena for an extended period of time safely in HHM though.

Yeah, there are a lot of places where you could have saved turns. The ranks in 7 are really rather lenient. It's not as easy to S rank as 6, but with some LTC strategies in mind and a healthy amount of safe arena abuse in chapter 24 none of the ranks are too difficult to reach.

You could have also lured the stronger enemies later and cleared the map that way if you didn't have units strong enough to take them on. Raven can still be useful throughout the game with early promotion. He really doesn't lose all that much and Harken is fairly similar anyway. That's just one map.

In chapter 17x you can avoid the level 17 units by not going towards the center of the map. They don't move unless you get in their range. It's not going to hurt you too much to promote those units early though. Raven is probably a better choice for early promotion than Guy since his promotion bonuses are much better, but you can get another Hero Crest fairly soon anyway. Why can't you spare slots for some of them? It's fairly easy to use a few of them to take on stragglers or reinforcements in most maps while Marcus and another unit or two do the heavy lifting. You don't need them to be sure; there are enough good prepromotes anyway, but having a trained flier and another cavalier/paladin can help.

It's also possible to avoid using her and have her avoid enemies when she has to be deployed. That's not very difficult either.

A flash cart is probably going to be your best option.

If Corrin can't get the kill alone you can probably rely on a second unit to kill Takumi. It's especially easy if you spend a few turns to set up the Rescue chain.

If you have enough competent units it's possible to deal with the heroes on turn one while also having them in position to deal with the enemies near the Entrap Maid on turn two. If your units can't survive the rest of the heroes on enemy phase just use Freeze staves on the ones you can't take care of.

I'd rather you post it as the run feels more complete with it there if nothing else.

Just abuse the MU here and take it slowly if you have to. Have Felicia pair up with him if he's taking too much damage. There isn't really a great benefit from leveling the rest of these units early on.

Totodile has the best start because it kills faster than any other Pokemon, so your statement doesn't make much sense. You can't really compare two different points in the game the same way.

This is late too, but Charmander isn't only an option as an HM slave, but he is the best option since he is free, quicker than anyone else to get, and he learns Dig and Cut which are both important for HM slaves. Most Pokemon are useless and Charmander has a reason to be on every team, so I would give him some merit at least for that. I don't really disagree with anything though, just that Charmander should be rated a little higher for utility.

The statement I made about the RNG has nothing to do with what I told you of efficiency versus reliability pertaining to the current method of evaluating characters. Boss abuse, tower abuse, and arena abuse are all examples of inefficiency because of the input required. They are entirely different from RNG abuse which doesn't require turn deficits, so your examples still show nothing. Your point was this: Which has little to do with feeding characters one bonus experience at a time and doesn't invalidate what I said.

I wasn't talking about the diversity of criteria we could use to rank characters. I was talking about the specific criteria being used. The OP posts the tier list FAQ, so using that assumption one should easily come to the conclusion that this is the main criteria: This isn't a well defined system, but it does show that faster average turn counts are more important than more consistent strategies. What? This doesn't even address the main point. The games use an easily manipulable number generator that lets the player control how the game plays out. This has nothing to do with Path of Radiance in particular, but whatever. Giving a character a certain amount of experience at a time to maximize leveling potential is different from abusing specific stat gains.