[Redefining the tiering process]

Since I keep seeing 1-P Edward come up, just wanted to chime in. IMO, a lot of units will have value by virtue of being force deployed on a small team, it happens in the earlygame of almost every FE in existence. The reason why the BK is good enough to divide by 0 in 1-9 is because you don't have a 3rd unit who could make the chapter beatable if we don't choose to use the BK.

So an initial idea, while sounding completely arbitrary, is to give more weight to standing out in a big army. Seth pulls this off; when you have 10+ unit slots he's still mopping the floor. Edward does not. Basically, we're accepting that being in a small army setting will implicitly make you more valuable, so you compensate for that to prevent conclusions most people would find absurd or unsettling (eg/ FE10 Brom >>> others for 2-1).

[Having trouble with codes for SoS]

Use codebreaker codes

The codes are formatted XXXXXXXX 00## (where ## is the value of the item).

So, for instance, for the slot 1 character, you want item slot 1 type to be a hero's crest, and the quantity to be 1, you'd use:

3202AB94 005f

3202AB95 0001

5f is for the hero crest, 01 is for the quantity.

Note that when you manipulate unit stats, 10 becomes 0A, 11 becomes 0B, 12 becomes 0C, and so on, until 16 becomes 0F, then you go 10-19, 1A, 1B, 1C, etc. Getting used to base 16 was a little confusing for me at first.

[Redefining the tiering process]

Funny to see this topic flooded with posts, just to die abruptly a few days later.

There’s one post that stood out in my mind that I wanted to address.

Just to remind everyone, "turns saved" to dictate the placement of units on a tier list was an argument chosen to be self-evidently absurd. See: Eddie's performance in 1-P. In other words, the intention was to pull people back from the brink, using a patently ridiculous notion. Unexpectedly, some people took it seriously.

The proper use of turn counts in a tier list argument, is as just another factor to consider. The reason that turn counts matter is not because we can end 2-Endgame on Turn 1 with a magic crit and therefore Haar is Jesus, it's that going faster is generally more difficult/dangerous than turtling our way across a map. Thus, speed can expose the difference between units that straight stat comparisons cannot.

Perhaps I’m reading into this incorrectly, but this is just turning turn count into another minor consideration, like having 1-2 range or a cool innate skill, rather than the end-all of arguments. I’m fine with that, but it seems the community at large has a different idea.

Looking at recent posts, most people seem to be buying into low turn count = better as the primary criteria for ranking. The whole notion of making no-Sethskip and no-warpskip tiers is to circumvent the problem of reducing most of the cast being compared to “who does better potshots while Seth mows down armies”.

Here are some more specific examples:

FE8

Duessel's stats are great and all, but 6 Mov just gets him left in the the dust in comparison to Franz/Vanessa/Cormag/promoted Kyle or Forde etc. I might say the same for Eph.route Ephraim, but he gets 7 Mov eventually and is probably the best candidate for a C10 bosskill.

If low turn count’s only another consideration, why’s Duessel left in the dust?

FE9

If it's not maximum efficiency, do we need those items in the first place? Of course not - the value of those items is in the turns that they save, and if that is less than the number of turns needed to get them, then they have no value. You don't even need to play maximum efficiency in order for this to occur. No matter if you use 9 move or 7 move units, you will reach the Throne before you reach the chests.

There’s a big discussion on whether some chests can be acquired or not when low turn counting as part of a tier argument for Volke/Sothe.

There’s also tons of posts on mages/generals falling behind exp wise due to not being able to keep up, an issue highly mitigated by not rushing through a chapter.

I probably should've found more than 2 specific examples, chalk that up to extreme laziness.

[Sho's strategy]

Helpful topic for low turning

I managed to 4 turn 1-4 when I was recording my low turn count videos for FE10. Unfortunately I deleted them all. I recall using a promoted Nolan and Illyana, might not work with just Edward being added in.

[Looking for more information on the enemy control glitch]

As some of you might now, I'm working on a TAS improvement of Cheetah7071's Sacred Stones TAS, and I'm currently looking into which route is faster. The speed at which C11 Eph can be routed makes a big difference as to which route is better.

Now, the problem with pirate ship is a lot of enemies refuse to move.

Aside from all these highlighted enemies, there's a bunch of mogalls and gargoyles off-screen that want to play pacifist. All this could change if I can control the enemies and send them on a suicide mission into my units.

Now, the problem with the enemy control glitch is that it has a very small window of opportunity if you don't use PWASE (panels which affect something else). However, I'll be using frame advance so small windows of opportunity are hardly an issue. However, the gamefaqs guide suggests that the window of opportunity without PWASE is only a fraction of a frame, which isn't enough, even with tools assistance.

So, what I want to know, is this true, or is the fraction of a frame bit an exaggeration? What's an exhaustive list of every place that can use the glitch, PWASE or not?

Here's hoping VASM or someone else can help me out :/

[Sacred Stones No-Seth Tier List]

I think Eph route Cormag needs to go up.

A 10/1 Cormag has 34 hp/15.5 str/13 spd/11 skl/12 def/3 res/4 luck

Base level Duessel has 41 hp/17 str/12 spd/12 skl/17 def/9 res/8 luck

Cormag has very similar offense, the extra point of spd compensates somewhat for Duessel's complete WTC. Defensively, it appears Duessel crushes him, but most of that is overkill. On the pirate ship, a common enemy is an iron lance gargoyle, who does a whopping 6 damage to him (i.e. a 6HKO). Who cares if Duessel is invincible if Cormag's only going to die through extreme negligence? Granted, he'll occasionally need attention from healers that Duessel won't, or loses a player phase to a vulnerary, but it's no big deal.

Okay, Duessel is obviously winning, so why is this even an argument? Simple, AS, flight and leveling potential. Duessel's only shortcoming is his spd, and with a base level of --/8 and a 30% growth, he'll have trouble doubling anything promoted, possibly even with a speedwing. Cormag, on the other hand, already has a 1 base advantage, a much lower level, and a 15% growth advantage.

It's probably better not to promote Cormag so early, I just wanted to illustrate a point at how similar he is to Duessel when a whip is thrown at him (no pun intended?). Indeed, at level 9 he is easily levelling every 3-4 kills, and the upcoming maps are chock full of enemies. The pirate ship has over 40, the next one starts with 48, and there's even another Eph route rout map with 55. Even in efficient play he could easily gain 2-3 levels/chapter.

The advantages of flight should be obvious, Cormag has a 1 move advantage (2 once promoted), doesn't get obstructed by terrain (Duessel loses 3 move on forests and stuff) and has all that usual awesomeness like skipping large chunks of C19, desert utility, etc.

Granted, Cormag is already ranked pretty high, but I don't see a tier difference between the two. I might give this more thought later if I'm bored enough.

[Thracia: Movement Stars are for Champs]

Apparently

is what happens when you abuse movement stars.

[Redefining the tiering process]

That's my point. The Wyvern and the flight do not have inherent value. What has value is what the character can do […] Flight is only a means to an end, not an end in of

itself.

You have me slightly confused here. I’m not saying a unit is better than another because of flying, I’m saying the unit is better because of the implied advantages that flying provides to the chapter’s completion. If as in your example we want to get Ike to seize, flying utility is going to help towards that goal in the ways I already mentioned.

He can't. Haar needs to engage in combat multiple times in 3-4 and also help kill the boss. If Haar had no combat abilities, he would die when he dropped Ike, or enemies would pile up and block Ranulf and Ike.

For one thing, you can have Haar do things like move 5 spaces forward, drop, and move 4 spaces back if durability were an issue for him. Obviously that would lower his tactical flexibility and overall usage a fair deal compared to an uber-combat Haar, but a significant advantage is still there.

Even better, often your flier doesn’t even need to canto away more than 1-2 spaces of where she’s dropping your powerhouse unit. FE8 C9EirRoute comes to mind.

Having Vanessa or Tana drop Seth off to the South shaves so many turns it’s not even funny. I don’t care what anyone going West is doing, it doesn’t measure up.

If Haar did not have combat, he would be unable to accomplish that task because he would die.

He could easily burn more supplies than any other unit on your team without seeing a single enemy. He has barns, fences, etc, as cover. And, if he can take so much as a single hit, which isn’t asking much even for terrible combat units, his flexibility jumps that much higher.

In my speedrun, he gets attacked by a whole 3 enemies in the first 5 turns, and manages to burn 4 supplies in the process, and I wasn’t even using any other units during those turns. It wouldn’t take that much more ninja’ing for him not to get attacked at all and still retain a large percentage of his amazing usefulness.

I disagree. Flying on its own varies in value depending on how much terrain there is. For instance, flying is not really great in FE8 Ephraim Route since there only a bare handful of situations where you want a flier.

Yes, of course. In a defence chapter, flying may become close to useless, and possibly even a hindrance if there’s a bunch of ballistae and stuff. But in general I see the advantage as overwhelming. Hell, I’ll bring some serious evidence to the table if you’re still not convinced, so far I’ve been just naming quick examples off the top of my head out of laziness.

[Redefining the tiering process]

The Wyvern doesn't matter. What matters is what a character can do.

You seriously underestimate non-combat utility. A unit like Mordecai in POR could easily rank in high/top tier just for his ability to smite units, as that single-handedly saves at least a turn on numerous maps in the game. Similarly, mounted units have tremendous utility from rescue-dropping, especially when a flier uses it to bypass terrain. In many cases you can skip up to 3/4s of a map because of a flier, no amount of combat can compensate for that in that particular map unless you're a bosskiller or something.

Even if you stripped Haar of his combat in FE10, he'd still easily be in high tier because he can ferry Ike up a mountain (3-4), he's the most suited for 3-3's goal of burning supplies, he can help units bypass traps on the bridge in 3-11, and the list goes on. In particular, before other fliers join the team, his flying monopoly inarguably saves turns all over the place, even if he were Fiona in combat.

Can you give an example of such a situation, in any tier list?

FE6 Thany comes to mind. Her combat is terrible (not sure where people stand on whether it's salvageable long-term but wtv) but she saves an awesome number of turns just by being the only flier capable of ferrying people over mountains and such until other fliers show up. Dondon's 0% run of that game made this glaringly obvious, and I would personally have FE6 Thany in top tier easily, even if that isn't the case in the current list.

If Sanaki had a horse, that wouldn't really improve her because she lacks the durability to charge ahead.

It would make her a hell of a lot more useful, though, because she'd be able to increase the mobility of better units by ferrying them, and she could perform hit & runs, which increases her tactical flexibility significantly.

I appreciate the value of flying utility, but it's only truly awesome when the character in question can back it up with great stats (or FE6 where there is a ton of terrain everywhere).

I disagree, flying on its own is an invaluable turn-shaving tool, having good combat to back it up just makes it over-the-top.

The only reason we have fliers like Zeiss who have poor ranking is because their availability is pitiful and their contributions are severly mitigated by the presence of other fliers on the map.

[Redefining the tiering process]

And remember that mounted units do not always dominate. In FE10, for example, two of the games Paladins are down in Bottom tier and a few more in the Mid/Low Mid range. Context is key. A mount and all its advantages certainly helps, but it has to be weighed against the other units around it and what they all bring. No one can really argue that someone like Titania in FE9 has the best of all worlds (offense, durability, mobility) for a large portion of the game, but Mia still beats Oscar in FE10.

Well FE10 is a strange case because much of the advantage of being on a horsie is hindered, if not turned into an outright disadvantage, thanks to map terrain. So, in that sense, the raw mobility advantage of having a horsie is heavily reduced, and the unit's actual combat credentials vs a foot unit become more important.

The point is more salient in a game like FE4 where someone like Holyn/Ayra lose a lot of their usefulness precisely because they're unmounted. The only reason they'd be beating any mounts would be due to an availability advantage, *boom* argument concluded.

But yes, I agree that the nature of the game can mess with the importance of mobility, and ultimately result in a better debating platform. FE7 comes to mind, the way earlygame is designed just lends itself to making a unit like Oswin very useful, whereas someone with similar combat will end up bad to mediocre in another game (eg/ Gilliam, FE9 Gatrie).

[Redefining the tiering process]

What is this? What is the developers intention? Are you one of the developers who can tell us what you intended for the players to strive for in these games?

Obviously not, seeing as, for example, in the GBA games, you likely won't even know about something like supports unless you look it up online or randomly stumble across it because neither the game nor the game's book tells you about it.

Sorry if this comes off as rude, I just find it annoying when someone makes a claim about what the creator of something "intended" when they don't seem to have any right to be making such assumptions. As far as Fire Emblem goes, it's a strategy RPG with many known and hidden elements. It can be played multiple ways and I don't think any one of them was "intended" by its creators to be "the" one.

I suppose I wasn't being clear. I honestly don't really care how game devs expect us to play the game. Hell, I remember a while back Mekkah was claiming game devs expected players to arena abuse Nino, and similar siliness. And obviously trying to guess how programmers expect consumers to play their games is inherently a little ridiculous. What I meant by it was to find a way to promote discussion that doesn't involve rendering the vast majority of any cast useless simply because they belong to an unfavorable class or require a lot of levelling.

Isn't it annoying to having one unit completely destroy another statistically, yet that advantage is entirely voided by the fact that one unit is an archer while the other rides a beast from the east? Evidently there's nothing wrong with such logic, some advantages will matter more than others, but it makes discussion boring and predictable, in my opinion.

This is not real irony. It's not fake, modern dramatic irony. Not even Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette irony.

Irony is not a synonym for "here comes a fun fact", Vykan.

<3

[Redefining the tiering process]

As I'm sure you know, the better solution would be to make a new tier list topic with a goal different from low turning...but there's no suitable one.

Did you read my idea about an "RNG free" tier list?

Really, anything that causes a big paradigm shift in how we evaluate units is cool, even if it's a bit silly or pointless.

[Redefining the tiering process]

I’m finding that max efficiency tier lists have reached an extreme that is no longer conducive to debating and argumentation. Based on my own experiences, and what I’ve seen from Dondon’s 0% growths and various efficiency playlogs (particularly Gergeshwan’s), aiming for low turn counts as your ultimate goal trivializes the tiering process.

Let me elaborate a bit. One problem is that turncounts are so low that levelling units becomes a chore. In fact, levelling units long-term isn’t even feasible anymore in most cases. I’d go as far as saying 60-90% of a unit’s combat potential is determined by their bases, depending on the game.

Another problem is that mobility alone is an overwhelmingly powerful asset to have when low turning, and it trivializes the hell out of arguments. If shaving turns is the main criteria for ranking units, then the first flier to join your team is almost automatically top tier based on their non-combat utility. You’ll also commonly see the argument “this unit’s not contributing offensively/not gaining levels because all the mounted units ahead of him are doing most of the work”. Again, taken to its rightful extreme, most units that aren’t mounted on some sort of creature are generally only contributing minorly to a low turncount run. In the same vein, in certain games (FE5, FE6, FE11), warpskipping makes otherwise worthless magic users with high staff ranks turn into gods, and renders entire casts of units useless, that is unless you’re a lord or a bosskiller.

Ironically, low turning is a goal that requires extremely complex planning, knowledge of the game, etc, but it also reduces tiering arguments to blinding simplicity. No more supports, very little levelling, prepromotes dominate (hello there Marcus/Seth/Titania/etc), mobility trumps combat, 2/3rds of the cast is lucky to get more than 10 kills, resource allocation is basically pre-determined, and the list goes on.

What I find interesting is that the tier process seems to be lagging behind the evidence it’s based upon (i.e. the wealth of efficiency playthrough videos posted here). You will still see arguments where units are given unrealistically high levelling and supports, movement advantages are treated as minor, if not sometimes outright ignored, etc. It’s almost as though people either don’t realize what ridiculously efficient play is like, or they dislike its consequences and implicitly ignore them.

So, I’ve identified something I view as problematic, but I’m not sure what a good solution would be. In some way, turn counts have to become a secondary concern for the tier process to become refreshing. An interesting concept would perhaps be to have an “RNG proof” tier list. That is, a list where the main goal of a playthrough is to beat the game through as little risk as possible. This would shift a lot of importance on things like durability, hit rates, and range attacking, while simultaneously taking away a lot of the emphasis on ploughing through a chapter at rapid-fire pace. In fact, I find that a lot of the efficiency playlogs are surprisingly dependent on low probability outcomes, even if it isn’t outright RNG abuse. So instead of asking “who’s the best unit for 4 turning this chapter (where 4 turning might be a 1/3 chance anyway), we ask, “who’s the best unit for 5-7 turning this chapter safely? I’m not saying to banish RNG dependence outright, as it’s still a very paramount aspect of the game. I think, above anything, I like the concept of eliminating a character’s chance of death in a chapter, though perhaps an arbitrary cutoff could work too (<1%, <0.1%, <0.05%).

That’s the best idea I have at the moment, but I encourage any thought process that promotes debate, and possibly a playstyle closer to what game developers intended (more levelling, supports are viable again, mages/generals/archers aren’t close to useless in most games, etcetera).

[A copy of Path of Radiance for sale]

You're in luck, I own a copy of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Request. One of my favorite gamecube games :)

[A copy of Path of Radiance for sale]

Sup guys,

I am selling my copy of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. I give you my personal promise that the game is in excellent condition, which hopefully means something given I've been active on these boards for years (though not recently).

The game comes complete with case, disc and instruction manual. There are no scratches or fingerprints on the game disc. The version is NTSC. I've provided a picture of the game below:

If you're interested, please PM me to discuss prices and to provide an address so I can send you the game. Payment will be done through paypal, and we can discuss shipping options based on how urgently you want to receive the game.

[RD HM 0% growths video playthrough]

I'm impressed by how easily you handled the nightmare that is 4-4, and did so using predominantly 1 range attacking. You're definitely an expert at being resourceful, with planning details as minute as using Boyd with the Akkr for quality chip damage.

[RD HM 0% growths video playthrough]

Dondon can even make Fiona surprisingly useful (BK hand-off and lowering enemy gauges). Nicely done.

[RD HM 0% growths video playthrough]

They can both use it. With the hammerne, you can get 9 uses out of the rescue staff, and sometimes it is useful to use it twice on the same turn through trade + use.

[RD HM 0% growths video playthrough]

When promoted, she is a mounted unit who can use the rescue staff.

[PoR Low turns]

Any future plans? There's still quite a few trial maps yet to be conquered.

[RD HM 0% growths video playthrough]

I must say it's been a pleasure watching your videos so far. Can't wait to see how you handle maps like 4-3 and 4-4.

[FE9 Tier List]

Alright, well that's something entirely different. One of your posts said:

The problem is it is very rare that Stefan will ever be recruited

Very rare =/= never, please be more careful with your words next time.

Though, I can think of a scenario where Stefan is recruited accidentally. Mordy and/or Lethe are killing their fellow laguz to gain exp, and stumble upon Stefan's space.

[FE9 Tier List]

The thing is that the player has no idea that Stefan exists. And that, in order to find him, you would have to sit in the desert and look through every single spot, and how would you know to use a Laguz for it? I was going to address that it's also easy to miss since he's all the way over on the east side of the map, which was nowhere near the throne, but you sort of addressed that.

The probability of recruiting Stefan is irrelevant. It could be 1 in 8 billion and yet we can still rank him based on how he performs in the event he is recruited. Cats already said this in different words, so I'm not sure what you're mis-comprehending.

[FE9 Tier List]

Stefan should be near the bottom of the tier list because how the hell should I know how to recruit him?

Reikken indirectly suggested that we only rate characters when they're recruited. Thus Stefan being missed 99.9999% of the time wouldn't count against him. It would however matter if we were talking about his supporters, the vague katti or the occult on some random team that very likely wouldn't include him.

[FE9 Tier List]

In the case of assuming an imperfect player, there are certain distinctions which are fairly obvious and easily made. For example, the assumption that the player does not know the growth rates of his units or the exact details of his items (with the Knight Ward being the best example); in other words, the assumption is that the player does not have access to, or does not utilize, resources beyond the game disc itself in order to acquire information about the game mechanics.

If a player were unaware of the 30% speed growth boost that the knight ward imparts, they’d use it mainly for the +2 def/res bonus. This should logically make characters like Gatrie/Devdan/Brom/Tauroneo and to a lesser extent all mounts drop a bit, though perhaps this has been accounted for already (Devdan appears to have dropped significantly at least). Moreover, the most viable candidates for the knight ward’s durability boost would jump for obvious reasons. There might be some overlap, though.