Samu_77

In a game like Genealogy where every turn the game asks if I want to save then I'm pretty lax about my move, or if I'm playing Awakening I'm so familiar with the game that I just charge through it. In a game like Fates Conquest on higher difficulties I know that enemies will have like, multiple skills and positional changes that I need to check like everything. If I'm playing an Ironman then I'm going to be checking just about everything to make sure I'm not getting obliterated (although I will miss something once every now and then.) It also unironically depends on how irritating something can be to check. Like when you have to manually check a menu, sometimes more then one each time by hovering over a unit and then seeing what they have it gets tedious after a while, so like sometimes I'll mess up and my Jagen will take a Horseslayer to the face. If it's like Engage where I get all of the information I need at a quick glance then I can plan more because it's more convenient. Enemy range toggle is also super convenient

I have to agree with Whisky here in that Nos-Tanking seems incredibly scuffed in Binding Blade, especially on Hard Mode. Rei's Luck is generally pretty low which already makes me skeptical when it comes to using to do any kind of tanking, any Thunder Mage is going to have some crit on him, any Bishop is going to have crit while taking fairly low damage, Mercenaries sound like they are going to have some crit on him, and the fast ones seem like they will double him outright. Wyvern's can be hit hard I suppose but there's so many of them in harder chapters that I have to wonder that unless you give him a fair amount of robes if he even suvives a hit from Silver Lance Wyvern Lord's that are in 21 and 23, and then there's random strong enemies here and there. Sacae in particular seems like Nomads are just too fast and will double him on average. I just can't see many moments in this game where throwing Rei into the fray of everything and expecting him to come out on top is going to work out well. Niime might not be getting doubled but she also is also going to die to those Silver Lance Wyverns without some robes too. I also agree that Rei would most likely be better as a Mage, and that in my latest Ironman Aircaliber was really, REALLY good. It's accurate, as strong as Elfire and Weightless and doing effective damage. It's far and away doing the most damage to Wyverns without using Divine Weapons and even when you aren't fighting them it's got good Accuracy which is nice to have in this game. I still think Rei's stats would let him down too much, and the scarcity of Guiding Rings in this game means that those few Mages you are training up that aren't pre-promote better be pretty worth those two, from my perspective Saul + Lugh seems infinitely superior, and by your third I think that's just too late.

Is Nosferatu Tanking in this game really this good? I've seen other people mention it but when I tested it out in my recent FE6 playthrough I remember the accuracy being fairly unreliable from Raigh, I can see it being really good on Normal Mode but can it hold up on Hard Mode?

Dark Knights come from Dark Mages, so I think it's fair to do so. It is strange to say, rate Leo as a Dark Mage when he needs to reclass in order to use Dark Magic, but he has the skills from that class and it comes from it so I think it's fair to do so. Not ranking 3H because I just don't have the experience with Dark Mages to. 1: Awakening Nosferatu 2:Fates Sorcerer due to having access to the best 1-2 range in the game, as most other 1-2 don't allow for doubling or offensive skill activation, already has it pretty good. Using things like Life and Death and Vantage coupled with high-might Tomes can lead to wiping out whole fields of Conquest enemies at a time. Damage and Stat-Stacking is so good, in fact that Nosferatu-tanking can still be fairly reliable given all of the tonics, Rally's, stat-backpacking, ect. that you can do in this game. Dark Knights can feel a little weak in this game sometimes (although that is probably just me), but Sorcerer alone makes this class incredibly potent in my eyes, good class skills too from Dark Mage. 3: FE8 Summoning is just so unbelievably cracked. It does so much for the player when utilized, and you get it basically for free on Knoll. I don't know if it's fair exactly to count Ewan as a Dark Mage since he isn't even one at the beginning, and his time as a Shaman is generally pretty poor, but the amount of free utility you get out of Phantoms is just so unbelievably absurd that I can't rank him anything lower, even if by the time you get him it's going to take a long time to get to Summoner from Pupil without a LOT of favoritism. Druid is... okay I guess. High Magic Staff utility is nice but it's pretty hard to do combat with Knoll because his stats just aren't really up to it and the same kinda applies for Ewan, but 1-2 range + staves is never going to be bad. 4: FE7 Canas is solid. 1-2 Range is valuable in this game and he does good damage and has staff utility. I'm not wild about his other tomes, but he generally gets the job done. He feels like a perfect example of a magical archetype in this type of game. 5: FE6 It feels weird to put this down here when Niime is one of the best units in the late game right out of the box, but alas. Niime has the best Staff Usage in the entire game due to her high Magic and A-Rank, which alone makes her incredibly good. Her offense is also solid, which Flux isn't the most accurate tome it usually gets the job done when she needs it to. Apocolypse let's her boost her Staff utility AND will one-shot practically every Dragon you need it to at Range, which also counts for Wyverns in Ch.23. She has great resistance that can let her lightning-rod Siege tomes in either Route, although in Sacae her chance of getting smacked with a Ballistea is much higher. Her Physcial Defense is paper, but she almost always has enough speed to avoid getting doubled, so she's good for one attack. Her Availibility though, is just too bad to salvage the others. Raigh is just okay. Being a Guiding Ring promo in this game is generally pretty bad but even ignoring that, he doesn't have enough speed to double most things, he probably will get double by a lot of things, and his accuracy is a lot more suspect then your other Mages due to Dark Magic. He can still technically promote instantly and use Staves, but the low staff rank coupled with just not having the stats to keep up just makes him a very meh unit. 1-2 range is nice but that alone will not salvage a unit, speaking of which... Sophia, if you don't count her Guiding Ring (I don't personally because it's in her join map where she's force deployed) is the worst unit in the game, which is impressive given some of her competition. Worst bases in the game, very unreliable hit that has 2RN working against her as much, if not more, as it is working for her, middling availability, she's dies in ANY round of combat for a good while, even magical because her HP and speed is so low. Worst of all even if you do decide to feed her like crazy, she doesn't even surpass other units that much because of how low her base stats are, her speed in particular would have her getting double from many Enemies for many a combat rounds. She can have staves but it's E-Rank. This unit is sad.

I have played Awakening at least a dozen times in my life and never once have I gotten a Rescue Staff before Mariable, there's barely any time to whatsoever because you only have two chapters before Marriable to even roll it (it might even be one but it's been awhile). Rift Door's be damned that thing is nearly impossible to get amongst all of the other items from sparklies. Your only getting this staff early if you are absurdly lucky considering the amount of shit you get otherwise or you check your 3DS like every 2 hours seeing if another Merchant Spawned. Either way it's pure RNG so it's not a contestable point because it isn't consistent at all unless you are willing to burn hours of your time. And again with the other points, what is Valkyrie doing for you that Sage isn't? The class skills aren't very good and while in theory it's good in combat Sage just outclasses it and is an infinitely easier class to achieve for staff support then any character not named Marriable. Even if you rate the whole class, if it's worse then an option that you always have and is easier to get to then doesn't that make the class moot?

First of all Merchants isn't a realistic factor for ranking a unit. Merchants offer stat boosters and reclass options, so I could theoretically say that Virion is equally as viable as every other character in the game cause merchants exist. The ease of access of the Rescue Staff is a detriment to Valkyrie more then a benefit. The magic that Sages have over Valkyries is too good to justify them. If you want to go a step further and really analyze everything, then you can also buy Physic staves from Spotpass and make the movement advantage that Valkyries have moot. They may not have the rank required to use them at base but you spam the rescue staff SO much in this game it barely matters, and it gives so much EXP that it's arguably beneficial. Valkyries can do this too, but there's no reason to ever be a Valkyrie when you can be a Sage, other then post-game Rally Resistance.

I can see the argument but my problem is that Movement isn't really that important in Awakening in my opinion when even if you aren't Nos Tanking a lot of times your play is still going to be throwing one Paired Up unit into a fray to go and destroy a whole group of enemies. I find Sage to usually be doing Valkyries job better because it's higher magic allows for more range with distance staves, more healing (Although Magic Pair Ups usually give you plenty) and can do much more offensively with a higher magic, usually better weapon ranks allowing stronger tomes and eventually tomefaire, even though they have worse movement. Getting around in Awakening by using dancing, rescue staves and pairing up into another unit also just gives you a lot of ways to circumvent your movement issues. The speed is very nice to be sure but I generally don't like the idea of Valkyries fighting because from my experience using them tends to get them blown up pretty fast by things like forged Silver weapons late game, speed is also fairly easy to fix in this game by just slapping an Assassin or Swordmaster Backpack on a unit. The availability of the class is also just too poor for my tastes and the skills are dreadful.

There's like a million ways to use Pair up, I'd argue more so in Awakening because it's almost universally better there compared to Fates version, I'd generally recommend staying paired up at all times in Awakening but there are some circumstances where it's helpful to not be. Awakening: The only time you shouldn't be paired up is A: the pair up that you use gives more reach to get someone to an objective (whether that be a group of enemies or something) think like you pairing up Robin into Sumia to give you more movement to get Robin to destroy things faster B: More utility, like Rally, Dancing or Staves, because pairing up barely improves your range on staves and doesn't do anything for Rally or Dancing This is because even your best unit in Combat isn't as good as a worse unit in combat who has a pair up, the stat boost alone probably edges them out with Dual Guard and Dual Strike being the tipping point as to why it's so effective. There's never a reason to separate because multiple actions isn't very useful because this is the most enemy-phase focused Fire Emblem game. Generally just keep units who are paired up paired up for the entire game, and it will be much better then anything. They get more support which means more stats from backpacking and more dual guard and dual strike activations as well as eventually children if you care about those. Likewise I would just say pair up the children with your partners, but children I find are only really relevant if you play DLC, by the time you invest in them the game is almost over. Pair up is incredibly broken in Awakening and it's the biggest proprietor of "the rich get richer" type of style that Awakening is usually criticized for. Like 95% of the time my units are always paired up Fates: I'm mainly talking about Conquest here, since it's the hardest and most relevant to diversifying strategies, but it's pretty much the same story among all versions. I think that the stats you get from Guard Stance Backpacking are generally much more useful then Dual Strike, especially with Conquests design style of giving you ultra-powered units like Camilla and Xander who only get better with pumping up their stats. Again this is also the fastest way to get support, which means child units faster, who can be much more useful in this game depending on your situations That said, the fact that units can generally *do* more things like drop stats with Daggers and proc skills like Savage Blow in addition to utility that carries from Awakening makes it a bit more tricky. Shelter also allows units to act again, especially useful for units like Azure, but it can also be incredibly specific. This move is also more reliable now, especially for units who can double because they can build up Guard Stance quicker, which is another reason I think this Stance is superior, because it allows you give more speed to your unit which lets you get more shield and yada yada yada. It's not as centralizing as Awakening, but outside of chapter 10 Conquest where you need all of your Units doing as much as you can each turn I honestly almost never have a reason to stay out of Guard Stance for combat units.

I: Always have Peagasus Knights Always have a Cavalier Always have a Mage Always have a Swordmaster Almost always have a Hero

Fates: Yes Elise is that good. 11 base starting magic with a 75% growth, 10 base speed with a 65% growth is very high, and lets her eventually start attacking once she goes into Strategist. Fire isn't ideal but since she's always doubling she'll get to Thunder pretty quickly which is all she needs. Amazing personal skill as well. Also has access to a good amount of Freeze and great availability, free Dragon Vein ability as well. The class skills are the only things that holds her back, but when you eventually get Inspiration it stacks with her personal and gives everyone next to her +3 damage and -5 damage. You could argue that Jakob/Felicia technically come from this line so should be ranked, in that case they are the main early game healer along with Elise while providing speed and resistance bonuses when backpacks which are great to have. FE4: Admittedly I'm still in the middle of this game so my opinion is incomplete, but Kanto after healing is cracked and no health-restore items makes healing more valuable. FE6: The amount of Status Staves that enemies can have in this game means that flexibility in your ability to move while providing Restore is highly valuable. Admittedly neither of these two units are very good at attacking but in all honesty healing can be a much more pivotal role in this game anyways. Canto Rescue is always nice FE7: Basically for the same reason as above but while I find Priscilla does a better job at fighting, it comes much later and the Restore function isn't as vital in this game. Still a very solid unit. FE8: L'Arachel just comes too late with a sad D-Rank in Staves and an even sadder join level. D-Rank means she can't even Restore at base and while you can certainly work that up to the point before Status Staves arrive it's still annoying. Her base and promotion classes also had one point of movement taken away which doesn't help. Natasha also counts for this, for which I guess she's okay? I think Bishop is ultimately a tad better because of Slayer but Valkyrie is certainly a good option. 3H: Haven't played DLC so this is for Holy Knights It's alright in theory, but losing White Magic x2 in exchange for the ability to move more is... mmm. I just never really felt like this was a super good class to be in. Canto is always nice to have though. Awakening: Valkyrie just doesn't do anything in this game. Marriable isn't a super amazing unit but she's serviceable enough. Bad class skills, okay enough stat backpacking but it takes a shockingly long time to get to promotion in a game where you want your units to be able to attack with pair up for better offense. She doesn't cut it for what needs to be good in this game, and other units can replace her much sooner in her roles. Amazing: FE14, FE4 Good: FE6-8 Mediocre: 3H Bad: Awakening

It's a nice dream but... I just don't see them ever doing this just because this feels like something they would have done pre-Engage, whereas it's just too late in a post-Engage world I feel, considering a lot of these games haven't even been translated in from Japanese yet officially. If they were to do this I would assume they would do something like FE1-5 in one pack, FE6-10 in a second pack, 11-14 in the last one, which divides it up pretty well even though Fates is three games in one (although packaged together, I'd argue with how many maps are reused it's not as full as three whole games). As for Echoes, maybe in Pack 1 because to most people could be the least appealing due to how old the games are (Fe1 and Gaiden particularly aren't exactly lighting most modern games minds on fire). I can't see Three Houses ever being put in any kind of collection though anytime within the next 10 years and the same goes for Engage. Full mangas are practically never included in collections, much less Nintendo ones. A good example of what you can expect for "legacy content" would be things like in the Mega Man Legacy Collections in concept art, promotional materials, merchandise ect. although I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Fe1-5 content left when Kaga did/ is lost to time and games like Binding Blade went through so much development hell it would be a jumbled mess of a lot of stuff. But yeah, even with Roy in three Smash games Binding Blade has still never left Japan, it's very hard to see something like this happening even though I'd be very happy to see it. I'd unironically expect them to release each game translated individually on the Eshop before anything else but even that seems unlikely.

Hiya papaya indeed, welcome friend, I'm relatively new too.

For the record I want to clarify real quick that I don't mean any malice or disrespect to the people in the conversation here, I feel as if I've been coming off too cold with my response and want to make sure there's no ill will between any of what I'm saying and the people involved.

I was going to draft something up but Whisky basically said what I was going to. Anyways this image shows you that if Rutger were to be a lord he loses on a whopping 5 speed and 6 skill. These are VERY in demand stats in the Binding Blade and if he were to suddenly become this awful Lord Class, that it barely gives anything to compensate for those lost stats. Rutger's raw stats are doing a lot of heavy lifting, especially on hard mode, but I think the disparity between the Myrmidon and Lord class bases here are pretty telling for how bad Lord is in this game. By all means if somebody were to romhack and give Rutger to the player as a Lord and make ROY the Myrmidon in chapter 4 I'm all game for that but even still you'll notice that even Rutger can't salvage how bad this class is.

Nobody in their right mind would give up Rutger being the best Boss-Killer (even though this niche can be replicated by others later) for the ability to seize because Seizing isn't very hard to do in this game. Roy's best utility out of seizing the throne is usually limited to picking up a kill or providing supports to somebody else because he sure ain't going on the frontlines, so as mentioned by others, seizing's importance is already known so the player knows that Roy's gotta get to the end of the map already. If Seizing had a tactical benefit like Genealogy Seizing did outside of punching the time clock at the end of your shift on the map then this ability might be worth something, but it doesn't.

Pokemon is my favorite media franchise of all time and has shaped me more then any other video game, movie, tv show, anime, manga whatever. I love Gen1,3,5 and Legends Arceus to absolutely pieces, really like Gen7, like Gen4, am indifferent to Gen 2,6 and 8 and don't like 9 whatsoever, that said as a kid while I begged for every plushie, trading card and spin-off game I could find, the older I get the more I start to tune out a lot of what I don't care about and just play main-series games with occasional competitive battling. Conversly I picked up Awakening in 2014 because of the immense popularity it had and when your a kid Awakening feels like a good stepping stone from Pokemon I feel because it's a lot of one guy destroying everything. From there I just starting bouncing around playing the FE games I feel like. I do believe there is some similarity, but also given it's one of the top selling video games series I think there's inevitably comparison from any fanbase is how I see it.

I agree that it isn't hard to keep Roy safe, especially when you factor in his faster support building and potentially the usage of items like the Angelic Robe, but poor survivability by means of not taking hits is still always a point against you by limiting your position of where you can be on the battlefield.

There's a difference between important and good, Roy is unquestionably the most important unit in the game but does that make him good when every boss except for like Yahn and Idunn are going to destroy him without effort, which is as necessary as everything else is to getting through the game as getting Roy to that seize point. Importance can't equal good because these are nuanced games to a certain extent every deployment is equally important because we are facing an army that on average outnumbers us like 1-3 or 1-5, so everything counts here.

The problem with the way I see it is that seizing isn't really contribution in my eyes because it's mandatory, yes it gives him something to do, but he's also force-deployed anyways and because it's something that you need to do to proceed through the game. It's really more of a formality then anything else, but what Jotari also pointed out is that Roy is also bad at Seizing anyways because he is bad at surviving. The problem here is that Roy is not an optional character to use, he's mandatory every single time, and if he wasn't it'd be doubtful that as many people would train him as they do because he only becomes a good, self-sufficient Unit in Endgame (he can do stuff like reliably hit with Swords and provide Fast Fire Supports, but it's not enough to argue him being a "good" unit compared to the myriad of other problems). I don't know if I'd keep Roy at the start of the map each time if I had the option because he does do some things that are valuable, but his status as being the only one who can seize when he's so bad at it makes him worse in my opinion, even if it is contribution.

This is generally how I feel about it. Seizing is never a benefit to me, and if anything it drags down a unit, especially if there is a turn-count pressure on the map like there is for a fair amount of FE6 maps for Gaiden Chapters (although the turns given for these gaiden thresholds are very generous). I think if you give the character the benefit of saying that "because they are the lord they can seize and that makes them important because it's something nobody else has" I feel like that isn't judging much of the character so much as it is a mechanic of the game, even if the Lords are the only ones who benefit. I mean, this is an old debate as to what qualifies "good" because every unit in FE is usable, but generally I rate a units on merit of "does this character accomplish what I need to do in this game". Miledy for example is "good" because she goes in and barely takes damage and destroys everything, and she does it with much less effort then most characters, therefore accomplishing my goals with the least amount of complications and risks. Sophia is "bad" because she takes forever to raise, constantly needs to be kept safe at all times and isn't that consistent due to her accuracy issues even when raised a fair amount. I agree that game design sense for how good a unit can be is important but generally I'm not factoring that into how I see the characters here, and even so I wouldn't actually say Roy is designed well because it doesn't feel like he should ever be as useless as he actually is in game until you get the Broken Blade and he is a chore up until then. But this is getting very off topic. I just personally don't see how Seize mechanic can be a boon to a character personally.

Is it fair to credit the necessity of Seizing a map as a positive for a unit? Because I personally only see it as a negative thing. If the objective was anything else then Roy I feel would become a lot better because he is free to do other things then make his way to the Throne each time, for example a defeat boss map would give him a lot more freedom on the battlefield. I agree that it makes them more important but I wouldn't necessarily say that makes them better.

Thank you matey, I appreciate your help I will... consider the playthrough because that might be more then I can handle at this point.

I've been wanting to play more FE games that I haven't and the main two on my list right now are FE4 and FE5. FE4 is more appealing to because it's the prequal. With that said I am currently still in school and I was curious about how long would it realistically take to beat FE4, because I've heard some conflicting sources on it. I know this is kind of a silly question for a forum like this but I figured it was my best way of getting a good answer. For reference about my play speed it took me about 30 hours to do a Binding Blade Hard Mode without resets, so I'm assuming this game would take like 25-30 hours as well>

I suppose everything with Reclassing onwards will be mostly a unit ranking. My list of games I've played is very scattered but I'll go Fe1, Fe6-8, 11, 13-17 1: Awakening I factor in all three "lord type" units. Robin as we all know breaks the game, but the pivotal point here is that Chrom is the best way to support Robin breaking the game by way of removing your more problematic lose condition, and the bonuses that Chrom gives as a Stat backpack are pretty high. In addition, it's mainly strength that is need when you are paired up because it's the most relevant stat when you are the backpack for the other unit to boost your dual strikes, which Chrom also does with his Dual Strike + skill, and the others stats used even puts Chrom favorably as well because his skill is pretty good and the growth for it is also good, this helps Robin even more in the long run because it adds more consistency to your ability to destroy everything with Robin. When played in this "path of least resistance" way of playing Awakening the gap between using these two characters as your character compared to actually raising your army is absurd and breaks the game way harder then any other lord does for any other game (except seemingly Fe4, but I can't personally speak on that note), even 3H Lords don't break their games as much as the pair of these two do. Lucina would drag this down quite a bit which is impressive because she's far from a bad unit, just not as game breaking. If you aren't doing the "path of least resistance" way of playing Awakening, and trying to play this game like an actual Fire Emblem game, you are going to find that Robin is still your best unit for most of the game because of Veteran (eventually, not initially with Frederick), and Chrom is still far above average with his honestly absurd growths and ability go to go Cavalier and provide Cav stat backpack is also insanely good as well as giving really good skills. Lucina, if given the ability to grow, can also eventually turn out to be very good like the rest of the children, although she still is easily the weakest out of three. 2: 3H Stats, great weapons, easily reclassable into Wyverns, are the characters least likely to get destroyed in Early Game Maddening, high Authority. Byleth has unlimited support options. These units have realistically no weaknesses, have arguably the highest potential and are just insanely good. I don't have much to say about these ones because their reputation is so well known. 3: Fates Corrin acts as a watered down Robin, which is still pretty damn good. Notably their EXP is almost completely uncontested for the Prolouge, so if you want you can basically have them be at level 9 (that's what mine got the last few times I played this game) by the end and have them promoted by the end of the next chapter. One of the best parent units due to Nobility being cracked. Corrin is the easiest unit to use Fates' most broken strategies due to the amount of control you have to accessing their class and support lines, like Life and Death Vantage, high skill Ninja Sol Builds, or extreme Nosferatu tanking with an incredibly magic invested Corrin. Draconic Hex for Con or Rev can be really good for boss killing but the Hoshidan Lord and Nohrian Lord classes are relatively middling comparatively. Corrin does always take effective weapon from Dragon-Buster weapons like Wyrmslayers, but this is a very rare occurrence. 4: FE1 Only character that gets you villages, constant taunt is incredibly exploitable, Rapier does a lot of damage and there's a fair amount of them in this game, somewhat higher movement that lets him keep up with the other high move units. Eventually gets some nifty tools in Mercurius, the FIRE EMBLEM and Falchion. Marth feels a lot like "the rich get richer" type of unit because just raising him makes it easier for other enemies to target him and then he just keeps getting more and more experience. 5: Engage Alear is actually kind of cracked. EXP in early game is very easy to give them due to him having the most convenient access to Marth Emblem Mercurius and other then Chloe not as many of the early game units hold up long-term, so feeding them when they are force deployed is easy to do. There's all kinds of fun stuff Dragon-type units get but the most flashy is by far Goddess Dance and Instruct, which more or less just gives you the easiest way to circumvent the Boss Health Crystal system by making all of your units cracked and extra turns. Emblem Corrin is also very solid on them due to your pick of Dragon Veins. In a game where your units can feel relatively homogenous and where sometimes it feels as if you are deploying Emblems instead of actual characters, being the best character at using the Emblem is really good. 6: Echoes Alm is the best unit in Act 1, as he takes like no damage from everything and doubles everything with his higher speed (don't give him lightning sword though, that shit is heavy and your other Merc will like it a lot more). Act 3 Alm is much worse then his other performances, as Ridersbane Paladins start to dominate the maps where you have to fight those and Alm simply can't keep up. The higher presence of Mages also doesn't bode well for him, and honestly the fact that he more or less can promote the second you reach Act 4 if you just do Celica route first means leveling him up isn't even that good of an idea since his Hero bases are so good he will rarely pull ahead of them without allocating a lot of exp the rest of your army. Those Hero bases are so good though that he becomes cracked again in Act 4 and he starts to destroy everything if given a Killer Bow, and is arguably your best unit again. Celica is definitely worse, but healing utility is nice, early Seraphim is great, Thunder is good chip and I find Celica almost always does something useful on her turn. Her higher res also lets her deal with Witches better, although they are unlikely to be attacking her compared to others. Seraphim lets her fight throughout the whole game on a good level too. 7: FE8 Ephraim is a very solid combat unit, has very good one to two range, is easy to give a ton of EXP in his map, and will generally carry you well throughout his route, while noticeably still being very good when he rejoins on Eirika route. His promotion is very good, being lance-locked in this game isn't so bad when your hit rates are still very good and Axe units are a little less common and Siegmund makes him the best boss-killer for late game assuming he hasn't been speed screwed. Canto Rescue is always a good bonus as well. Eirika isn't nearly as good, and drags down the viability of both. Her durability is absolutely atrocious, she does little damage to anything that isn't a cavalier, who will likely hit her very hard with a lance in return if they aren't sword cavs. She does get a very good, fast-building support with Seth notably and she gets a second copy of her high-durability Rapier early as well, but yeah, this unit just doesn't have a good time in this game. Her Promotion is decent with Canto Rescue and a delete button against most Monsters but this still isn't anything spectacular FE7: Hector is just a solid unit all around, good enough 1-2 range, can survive a lot of hits, has a fast building support with Eliwood that is pretty solid. It's the others that drag down this ranking. Eliwood feels incredibly useless until promotion because there is nothing that he provides that other characters can't do better, not enough speed to double, not enough damage with his rapier even on effective units. Swordlock is terrible in this game where you can throw Marcus or Raven or whoever into the fray with a Hand-Axe and expect them to come out on top and accuracy isn't in the least bit in demand in this game. His promotion is the saving grace here because it turns him into a glorified cavalier which is still good because it gives him solid 1-2 range in Javelins and Canto Rescue. He's just nothing spectacular really. Lyn... yikes. The Mani Katti is the one truly good thing about her, weightless, effective damage with crit and high accuracy is really good. Everything else is terrible. Terrible survivability, swordlocked until promotion, the Mani Katti isn't even likely to kill because she's usually at weapon disadvantage against the ones she's supposedly good at fighting. Unlike Eirika who at least has Canto Rescue upon promotion, Lyn get's... Bows, which may be even worse then Swords. Lyn is literally a worse Nomad Trooper class with high res. At least she's usually optional, and she does have a fast support with Florina with solid bonuses. FE6: Swordlocke isn't as bad in this game, and for what it's worth in a game with accuracy problems, Roy actually usually doesn't have to deal with them because of the high accuracy of Rapier and his supports build fast and give good bonuses. And then you see that Roy dies from almost everything in the entire game until he promotes, doesn't kill anything even with supports, basically NEVER doubles anything that isn't an armor knight, and you have to ferry him around every single chapter to the throne. Upon that Promotion he goes kinda crazy with that +7 defense and +10 res, and the Binding Blade is up there for one of the best personal weapons in the series as it lets him play FE7 by giving him hard-hitting 1-2 range with very good accuracy and survivability. If you've been training him like mad than Durandal is also an option I guess to although removing the Durandal from Rutger is a sin in my book. The thing I hate about most with this character is that he eventually becomes very good to the point that you should probably train him but he's so unbelievably useless from like 7-21x that I want to cry. FE11: Marth is just not it in this game. Rapier is good but man in a game where he can't reclass and there are clearly other better units from nearly the start of the game like Ogma he's just sad in this game. Being unable to actually use the Falchion Properly to kill Medues on higher difficulties is also just sad, even though it isn't relevant for most of the game it's just telling of how good Marth is. Any resource you allocate to Marth is much better spent on units like Ceada.