XeKr

Expected turncount does penalize needing stat-blessing because it adversely affects reliability. I apologize, but your posting style makes it quite hard to discern when you’re being serious and when you’re not. And I definitely don’t have the time nor interest to divine it so I'll take most things itt at face value, especially when you say stuff like “it matters to me.” Please use strikethrough text when appropriate. Marth does have many advantages over others (most notably the Falchion). I’m of the opinion he should be rewarded for what he is really good at (when you do get the choice). And he is indeed much better than the cast against Medeus (but not required) and is expected (statistically) to save many turns. However, I did note earlier that it doesn’t actually matter to me where he goes. I greatly prefer logical consistency and simplicity (it is much easier to draw a line between mandatory or not vs. defining what exactly "practical" is), but I’m not going to rant against an ad hoc solution. Mainly b/c imo it’s just not that interesting to discuss beyond the little theoryFE for Marth-less Medeuskills. For reference, I was also suggesting that a possible reason Julian is that high is on thief utility alone (not to say I necessarily agree or disagree. Still undecided). I was assuming it wasn’t for his combat (my question was rhetorical), which as you alluded to, is not exactly that great. (Are you addressing me here? You did quote my post). Anyways, you’ll notice I’m not the one who actually placed Julian/Rickard (or any of these other placements you apparently have a problem with). I’m mainly asking to clarify whether Eclipse thinks Rickard is too high/low, especially relative to Julian (already 2 tiers difference), and why exactly when he’s essentially Julian-lite.

I’m not exactly sure how recruitment costs are being handled: we’ll have to wait for PKL. However, Rickard is lower than Julian. What’s the problem, again? >_>

I don't disagree, but why is Julian so high then? Combat? Are you really proposing tiering based on forced actions? Do you agree with the following? Lyn for top of top tier for seizing prologue? Micaiah for top of top tier for seizing 1-E? Can't get past the FE12 prologue without MU too. This is a extremely old argument you're making and I think you'll find no one really agrees with that view (with good reason). The difference with the Medeus thing is that it is possible to kill him without Marth, just not efficiently.

Reclassing and all the stat-boosters available do mean anyone is "technically" usable in fringe contexts. I suppose one could argue them above the ones who do strictly cost turns to recruit but it's not a big difference. Dunno really. And I think one of the ideas behind this list is that it doesn't matter if a unit is strictly outclassed. All that matters is what they could potentially accomplish if given the opportunity. And Rickard opening doors/chests is always useful I suppose (I need to review when specifically a Thief is actually needed over keys though). Medeus has 99/42 hp/def. >_> 24 Str of SM/Horseman + 3 weapon rank + 18 Mercurius = 45... 30 Str Berserker + 20 Haute = 50... iirc you can't sac the Manaketes into him in this game, so Marth is really the only efficient way (1 Marth crit is already >60 damage). Though it does look like saccing some forged Thoron users might work... Anyways, it does look doable but may need rigging multiple crits/dodges across multiple turns, plus probably costs a bunch of money and/or (much) more exp investment into a Sage, which obviously just obliterates turncount/reliability everywhere. Could put Marth into "lolMedeus" tier or just leave him where he is already in place in top. Doesn't really matter to me. But basically even if ignoring absolute “forced” actions like seize, Marth is probably still one of or is the most essential character to efficient clears. Moar later mebe.

The standard team (and most teams that went through the rest of the game with any semblance of efficiency) without Marth probably can't even beat Medeus. >_> Re: Airforce vs. Feena. This seems particularly hard to resolve cleanly since Dancers are so special and so many strategies are optimized around them. I'd usually side with the Dancer but Again and such do exist in this game. Re: Mallesia vs. MU: I'd be curious to see a more detailed analysis. I have thought that MU has traditionally been overrated (statistically not so different from a few others besides a small initial level lead) but the details are more obscure.

Okay. I think I got caught up in your exact wording (could think of a few nitpicky counterexamples). I agree with you then. Re: Relevancy: I kinda mentioned this, but the problem is the topic got derailed by (what I would consider "off-topic") philosophy related issues. The original post and discussion regarding its points fit a niche separate from the common (and very broad) discussion in Tiering philosophy. You could certainly merge the topics, especially since discussion is winding down. However, people not interested in "what's the ultimate purpose of tiering?" or "is it good/bad to have an objective/arbitrary standard" would have to skip around and it'd be all around messier.

bleh OU. I'll actually say RSE for this. DPP after a billion dragon bans is okay too.

While your proposal could work, it’s not precisely what is being suggested here. The nature of expected turncount means the ranking can be presented in a gradient encompassing the total cast. Tier labelings are then arbitrary where there seems to be a “big enough” gap. In addition, reliability and turncount are essentially combined. One does not always supersede the other. For example, a unit that significantly improves the reliability of a strategy even if not cutting a turn may be (much) more valuable than someone who just cuts a single turn somewhere. The former unit might improve expected turncount by a lot more. The methodology already accounts for varying contexts (meaning exp/resource allocation as well as team composition). Taking up resources/exp is not something that needs to be dealt with separately; it's already included. That’s the gist, but what actually results is probably not so different from your proposal and really most of SF’s traditional efficiency lists.

If they are marginally improving the reliability, they are improving expected turncount. This is identical to actual turnshaving in principle if not necessarily magnitude.

I’ll offer a reason against the merge. In general tiering philosophy, such a topic is inevitably derailed by why some prefer LTC tiering and some don’t. That’s the purpose of discussing philosophy. I think most LTC (and non-LTC) players probably have no interest in such discussion (tedious, repetitive, neither side budges). I know I would rather discuss specific contentions with/consquences of the logic of expected turncount itself and such, which this topic provides a nice niche for. Of course, this topic got derailed by those irrelevancies anyways, but at least discussion is curving back around to the original purpose. Rutger/Thany still get lots of credit because their contribution is so crazy high. But the fact it's dependent on each other (a specific composition of sorts) means it's not something overwhelmingly high, or something that always happens. Their contribution is appropriately weighted down by these factors. They're good because they shave lots of turns, but not quite as good as if they could do it by themselves. Their specific position would depend on how other characters perform relative to them. Your second point is directly addressed by expected turncount. Is it worth taking a small risk in Chapter A to feed a kill so that the unit could contribute in Chapter B? That depends on just how much a risk is needed and how much that unit actually potentially can do later. Sorry, I'm not sure I understood/answered your exact question though, so let me know if not.

Wait...are you telling me that Donnel isn't top tier because he isn't....efficient? >_> btw I'm all for godtier Donnel if we don't care about turns. He totally doubles the offense and durability of other units for like 80% of the maingame. Clearly godtier material. I mean just compare to Panne. Donnel gets like 2 chapters of training (existing > not existing) and then the stats don't even compare very soon afterwards. Panne has silly beast, dragon and Bow weakness (plus no Sol) which means she can't steamroll chapters as easily. EDIT: In retrospect...nvm... <_< I'll instead say I think the old SDS Tier list and RTU topics adequately cover this sort of subject.

There are a lot more enemies (very densely packed) and they often can match or exceed your character's stats (early on). There are a lot more siege tomes and status staves later on. Bexp is much less. Those are the big differences I think. Best comparison is probably a bit harder than FE10 HM Part 1 (NTSC). Probably similar to FE6 HM but less accuracy silliness.

@dondon: While you’re right in your objections, I’m just pointing out the methodology directly addresses your concern. The performance of these “redundant” units can be resolved, even if (very?) difficult to do so. In most cases, we’re settling for estimates of their potential contributions in these fringe cases. Still, the point of considering varying contexts and an ensemble is that these contributions don’t have to be unique. They just have to (sometimes) exist. The more often they exist (less specific the team needs to be) and bigger the contribution (turns shaved) the better. What remains is deciding what contexts and contributions are more important. I do think there is some messiness in how the varying contexts are weighted (equally or weighted toward “higher tier” compositions, etc), but this treatment still feels better (or at least not worse) than other tiering criterion. Surely if this standard does not resolve differences, then a more lenient/arbitrary one won’t also. There is obviously some dissonance in that an somewhat “objective” tiering standard is proposed here but there also remain tons of proposed rough estimates and subjective factors. But it’s unnecessary (and inappropriate) to consider this as the magical silver bullet solution for tiering: that’s an overly ambitious and impossible expectation. Rather, I think this sort of thing has always been presented simply as an useful framework to consider and discuss efficiency (and rank characters).

I notice you took out the relevant wording. >_> There are things we understand intuitively that we do not understand or think about formally/rigorously. I'm curious though, why are you so aggressive about this issue? EDIT: As a matter of clarity, I do see your point as I often have sentences with awkward syntax/word choice (especially this late, plus technically not my first language, plus laziness). As a matter of semantics...I'll let you discuss with Celes or whoever likes talking about that.

It also shows up in that the exp Erk took could go to other units which makes meeting their stat benchmarks more robust, no? Plus funds maybe? Or instead of staff-spamming (which may rely on certain units getting hit and such), he (or someone else in that deployment spot) could be chipping to help out. Or it would result in more flexibility in movement/positionings. I'm just throwing out ideas, but there's tons of little things to be considered. EDIT: Err...you basically alluded to this in your post, lol. >_>

Personally I think those who understand the underlying principles should find this mostly intuitive (all 5 of us), but this is still very useful for clarification and reference. I don’t understand, so no u. What’s with the wave of anti-intellectualism SF is experiencing recently? Just don’t post in these threads if you don’t care and have no relevant/useful contribution. Or ask for clarification if you’re interested. Same as any other topic. At any rate, these formal definitions offer a suggested method of dealing with the arbitrariness that has plagued FE tier lists across gamefaqs and SF for 1000s of posts. Whether that’s good or not is each one’s own opinion. Whether it’s worth discussion or not merely depends on player interest. Unless I’m misunderstanding you, I think you should read the definition again. In addition, I don’t think this is true in general if considering reliability. Sure there will be many contexts that identically reach a certain turncount, but they won’t do so at the same reliability. This also follows from the intuition people have in arguments like “this unit is “better” at combat" (assuming same move, etc). Many common counterarguments to the turns-centric tiering method fail if considering expected turncount. Such as optimal tier vs. non-optimal tier silliness. It’s possible to consider a gradient, which orders the characters nicely (somewhat). tl;dr is basically: Compare expected turncount of Unit A + non-specific team vs. non-specific team. “Expected” and “non-specific” are very key. In your example, suppose Rath saves 1 turn in nearly all contexts with no investment. That’s fairly good if it’s truly unique to him. Pent (as the best warpskipper, if only because of needing no/little exp investment and also good combat) on most teams will save lots of turns. Pent on a team with a trained Erk or whatever specifically designed to obsolete him might not really save turns but that’s a fairly specific group in the ensemble. You might also then imagine a very similar argument for Erk (as Pent). However, he also took up exp, meaning at the very least reliability was sacrificed earlier. His contribution is still less (cost more). It’s then certainly possible to imagine that averaged over the ensemble, Pent is still better over the others. Erk vs. Rath would depend on how good is warpskipping vs. the exp investment compared to Rath’s turnshave. I’m inclined to think warpskipping is that good but w/e who knows in theory FE land. The “weighting” issue of the subsets/contexts could still be quite bothersome but that’s for another day…

Hmm, while probably true, at that point it could still be played around (particularly when Salamence/Garchomp were gone, or in UU). Gen 4 stall and semi-stall were by far my favorite playstyles. The tendency toward hyper-offense and weather silliness in the more current metagames is what I dislike.

You missed my point. <_<. Your vagueness is making me lean more toward Haar, especially since there does seem to be a lot Haar does in part 3 that can’t be reliably replicated. In addition, the draft discussion strongly suggests many contexts where Jill is not dominant.

That's my point? Westbrick apparently thought the story/characterization/localization was worth dropping from 10 to 4, despite the gameplay being "good enough" for dozens of runs and hundreds of hours of play. Fair enough to him if he actually values that stuff that highly.

I can definitely see that, but I feel the physical/special split and Choice Specs/Scarf+Life Orb added just enough to make Gen 4 compelling. I also had tons of fun with Toxic Spikes (probably my favorite team type). Not so much Stealth Rock. >_>

Basically this. DPP OU was pretty much the limit for me in terms of playability (even then, DPP UU was often more fun). Gen 5 OU was basically ubers (UU was okay). imo Gen 6 will be worse once the novelty wears off..

And who wrote this lovely review? >_> More on topic-wise, there are numerous obvious criticisms that can be made about this game. Of course, this is true of any game. Reviews are inevitably and inherently highly opinionated, with various subjective factors being more, or less, important for different people.

Yes, if Jill can actually reliably kill Ike + Jill and Haar (or whoever else) otherwise perform identically (or close enough) in part 4. However, formally, the worth of a unit is (imo) measured by the expected number of turns gained in their absence (in an ensemble of varying non-specific team compositions blahblahblah). And not having Jill is still only worth her pre-part 4 turns, as Haar (and royals and etc) do exist as well as the million resources she took up (including the Boots). Ah, that’s what you call clean? >_>

Hmm...at a glance, I think Nolan is borderline on doubling or OHKOs (with Tarvos) on Tigers anyway. Brave Axe means less Def. Pretty massive 3-6 win then. For 3-12, flight is super important and durability is probably in Jill's favor without Tarvos (the Hp difference is massive though). I might go and see how much 1-2 range is needed. Part 4, I was referring to vs. Haar.

Admittedly I need some refreshing on the details, but I was under the impression that it requires the whole team as per Espinosa’s points (Titania/Oscar does a majority of the fighting/Rescue drops, etc). Re: philosophy. There’s a lot that comes to mind, but from my first post in this topic… Tiering is super srs business gaiz. However, I will also add there’s no need to malign others in any capacity. Just unnecessary. Though perhaps amusing to fire shots all day. ^_^