Ranking each game by class: Dark Mages / Druids / Sorcerors

[Jotari]

48 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Lore-wise, sure. Gameplay-wise, no way.

Beast and Bird Laguz are generally high-move, high-speed units, that attack physically at 1-range.

Dragon Laguz are low-move, low-speed units who can attack at 2-range, but the attacking formula varies with specific breed.

They're all using the same transformation mechanic though, and all of them are characterized by having one personal weapon without access to other weapons. Birds and beasts having the same movement is like called pegasus and cavaliers similar because they have the same movement.

48 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

...Eh, not really. They're both 5-move units, that promote to 6-move. Both learn Beastfoe, but also have a beast-type weakness. Their other skill is the opposite of each other, but essentially, has the same effect (+4 damage every other turn). And they pull from the same weapon "beaststone" pool. The most substantive difference is in statlines: Kaden is "the Myrmidon", while Keaton is "the Armor Knight". Which changes how they play, sure, but to not much greater degree than, say, Hinoka vs. Tsubaki.

I think those stat lines are incredibly pronounced though. Much more than Hi okay vs Tsubaki. It's more like Hinoka vs Benni.

48 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Yeah, I don't know what to think of Corrin in this regard. They're not strictly a Manakete... but neither are the Dragon Laguz, and I definitely think it's fine to rank them among the Manaketes.

Eh... if the popular call is to do all the shifters together, then I could just cope by making two separate lists. There's not enough to treat "Birdformers" as their own thing - unfortunately, they're a Tellius exclusive thus far. Also, we already ranked the Herons as Dancers.

You know, it would be nice to see bird type beast units again. All flying units being people on mounts is starting to get a tad boring.

[Whisky]

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

That's putting a lot of weight on the faire skill. Heroes and Swordmasters both have swordfaire but that doesn't make them same class

I think the main defining trait of Dark Mages is that they use Dark Magic. In the GBA games, Shaman are pretty much just Mages that use Dark Magic instead of Anima. And Dark Knights are one of the only classes that have any bonus towards using Dark Magic in 3H, even more so than Dark Mage/Bishop actually. That and that Dark Mage -> Dark Bishop -> Dark Knight is pretty much just as natural a progression as any other class progression in 3H and that Dark Knight is a pretty direct upgrade for anyone in the Dark Bishop class.

Also I’d actually say that Swordmaster, Assassin, and Hero are basically all branching promotion paths, more or less.

[Dark Holy Elf]

 

25 minutes ago, Whisky said:

Okay so the problem is, Dark Mages here compete with Mages that deal effective damage to Wyverns. That’s a really nice thing to have. I just don’t see how Dark Mages can keep up with their competition. Ray isn’t great. I’ve seen people talk about Nosferatu tanking, I haven’t tried it myself but that seems very risky and unreliable. Wouldn’t work for Niime either because of how frail she is.

I've done it with both and it definitely works reliably. Niime needed to watch what enemies she faces a bit (enemies with crit etc.), Raigh really didn't, is my memory.

As Cysx notes, Raigh really benefits from his Lugh support, but this isn't hard to set up, quite fast and super beneficial for both since it gives both full hit and full avoid. Niime needs a Seraph Robe or two. The cost of both Nosferatu and Niime's Seraph Robes is fair to bring up, I suppose, but I don't really find money that hard to come by in Binding Blade, at least not by the point of the game we're talking about. I did a challenge run where I promoted every single unit and I didn't need to use the arena to pull it off... my point being that on a playthrough where you're not throwing close to 6 digits of gold down the toilet on that, you really should have lots of money.

The accuracy topping out at 70 hit is definitely a bit of a downside though, for sure. It's a better situation than pure axe-users but that's not saying much. Outside said challenge run I've only ever used Raigh alongside Lugh, which does help him out a fair bit, though even then it's a few maps before he starts really feeling like a contributor. Of course, most other mages require at least some babying in this game, and the upside is neat.

Incidentally I will say I'm not really as concerned with the lack of Aircalibur as you? Promoted Raigh and Niime both double pretty much every wyvern on Normal, and a fair chunk of them on Hard (particularly Raigh, at least if his speed growth cooperates)— blame their fascination with steel lances — and their res is garbage so if they're doubled, they die. Apocalypse can also one-shot them even on Hard IIRC, but that's only relevant at the very end of course.

[Whisky]

46 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I've done it with both and it definitely works reliably. Niime needed to watch what enemies she faces a bit (enemies with crit etc.), Raigh really didn't, is my memory.

Perhaps I need to try it, but I’m still skeptical. How high are their Hit rates? You say it works reliably so their hits rates need to be close to 100 against the enemies you have them fight.

It seems that Rei’s Lugh support takes 60 turns to reach A. Is that fast?

51 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

The accuracy topping out at 70 hit is definitely a bit of a downside though, for sure. It's a better situation than pure axe-users but that's not saying much.

Killer Axes actually have higher accuracy as long as you’re fighting Lance enemies like Wyverns.

52 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Incidentally I will say I'm not really as concerned with the lack of Aircalibur as you? Promoted Raigh and Niime both double pretty much every wyvern on Normal, and a fair chunk of them on Hard (particularly Raigh, at least if his speed growth cooperates)

Normal could be a different story, but in Hard mode Aircalibur is great. Wyverns are not slow, Rei’s not going to be doubling them for a while, and even later on I’m not so sure he’d be able to. It looks like they have around 12 AS in Ch21. Rei needs to be around level 20/6 on average to double that, but it seems that those are actually the slower end of Wyverns in that chapter, according to the HM stats forum thread here. And Wyvern Lords have around 14-16 AS. Niime can only double slower Riders and no Lords as well.

Since Rei joins rather under leveled with not so great stats, I’d think I would want to promote him almost immediately if I’m going to use him, in order to make him somewhat decent as soon as possible. But that only puts him at 11 Spd, not nearly enough to double the Wyverns in the following chapters. You fight a lot of Wyverns starting in Ch13, right after Rei joins and also right after Aircalibur first becomes available if I’m remembering right. These Wyverns seem to have around 8-10 AS, or more if the equip a Javelin. Cecilia can deal some nice chip damage to Wyverns with Aircalibur, and a trained up Lugh can be really effective against them. It’s a great weapon.

It’s also nice to not need to worry about getting to a high level to be effective, or if you get unlucky Spd procs. I’ve always found Air caliber really useful and a really nice bonus for Mages. And I don’t think doubling Wyverns can be assumed. Lugh is faster than most units so he actually might not even need to rely on Air caliber as much as Rei could’ve benefitted from it. If Rei were a Mage I think he’d be better specifically because he’d be able to use Aircalibur after promoting and be much more useful against Wyverns before reaching high enough levels to double them.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Whisky said:

I think the main defining trait of Dark Mages is that they use Dark Magic. In the GBA games, Shaman are pretty much just Mages that use Dark Magic instead of Anima. And Dark Knights are one of the only classes that have any bonus towards using Dark Magic in 3H, even more so than Dark Mage/Bishop actually. That and that Dark Mage -> Dark Bishop -> Dark Knight is pretty much just as natural a progression as any other class progression in 3H and that Dark Knight is a pretty direct upgrade for anyone in the Dark Bishop class.

Also I’d actually say that Swordmaster, Assassin, and Hero are basically all branching promotion paths, more or less.

But it would be ridiculous to then not count the DS games Dark Mages on the basis that they don't use Dark Magic even though they're literally called Dark Mages. Likewise, are we going to consider every magic class in Three Houses just because they can all use Dark Magic?

[Samu_77]

20 minutes ago, Whisky said:

Perhaps I need to try it, but I’m still skeptical. How high are their Hit rates? You say it works reliably so their hits rates need to be close to 100 against the enemies you have them fight.

It seems that Rei’s Lugh support takes 60 turns to reach A. Is that fast?

Killer Axes actually have higher accuracy as long as you’re fighting Lance enemies like Wyverns.

Normal could be a different story, but in Hard mode Aircalibur is great. Wyverns are not slow, Rei’s not going to be doubling them for a while, and even later on I’m not so sure he’d be able to. It looks like they have around 12 AS in Ch21. Rei needs to be around level 20/6 on average to double that, but it seems that those are actually the slower end of Wyverns in that chapter, according to the HM stats forum thread here. And Wyvern Lords have around 14-16 AS. Niime can only double slower Riders and no Lords as well.

Since Rei joins rather under leveled with not so great stats, I’d think I would want to promote him almost immediately if I’m going to use him, in order to make him somewhat decent as soon as possible. But that only puts him at 11 Spd, not nearly enough to double the Wyverns in the following chapters. You fight a lot of Wyverns starting in Ch13, right after Rei joins and also right after Aircalibur first becomes available if I’m remembering right. These Wyverns seem to have around 8-10 AS, or more if the equip a Javelin. Cecilia can deal some nice chip damage to Wyverns with Aircalibur, and a trained up Lugh can be really effective against them. It’s a great weapon.

It’s also nice to not need to worry about getting to a high level to be effective, or if you get unlucky Spd procs. I’ve always found Air caliber really useful and a really nice bonus for Mages. And I don’t think doubling Wyverns can be assumed. Lugh is faster than most units so he actually might not even need to rely on Air caliber as much as Rei could’ve benefitted from it. If Rei were a Mage I think he’d be better specifically because he’d be able to use Aircalibur after promoting and be much more useful against Wyverns before reaching high enough levels to double them.

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.

[Eltosian Kadath]

Once again with an image to display my thoughts.

I will start by weighing in on whether or not to include to include Dark Knight on this list, and while I was going to at first, the more I though about it, the more clear it became that the games that have Dark Knight intentionally very distinct from the Dark Mage and Sorcerer classes. In Awakening and Fates this comes in the form of the being cut off from Dark Magic, and in Three Houses being the only one of the three not requiring a Dark Seal. I will cover the three quickly here. Its inclusion in Three Houses would have the most impact, as it is around A tier, and solid enough to drag my ranking up at least a tier, and probably enough to bring it all the way to A tier with it. In Awakening it losses Dark Magic, and with it would be more in the C tier, but wouldn't be able to shake Awakening's S tier ranking if combined. In Fates I find it the worst mounted, and worst magic class in Conquest, I don't think it would be D tier on its own, as being either of those things is still rather useful, but it would be far closer to the B-C tier rank, and not enough to impact Fate's ranking on the merits of Sorcerer alone.

 

 

S Tier: One of the Best Classes in the Game

Awakening: Nos-tanking is one of the things that breaks this game in half, and earns the S tier, but I will add that the other Dark Magic Tomes are rather nice too (like the brave Waste, absurd crit rate of Ruin, and long range of

 

Thracia 776: The first Dark Mage has a good showing, although ironically not for dark magic, but for staff utility, and with Staff being king in Thracia, that makes it an easy S tier. The only one you get starts with C staff at base, gets a free rank on promotion, making it very easy to get all the way up to that A tier for warp. Magic is also really useful in Thracia, but Dark Magic Tomes tends to be rare, and heavy, but fortunately Dark Mages can use all magic types in this game, so its weaknesses don't hold him back.

 

A Tier: A Good Class

Sacred Stones: I really wanted to put summoner in S tier, but despite how great they are, they do come rather late into the game, no matter how you slice it.

 

Fates: Sorcerer is the best non-DLC magic class in Conquest. It has the best stats distribution for magic damage, Heartseeker has utility for a few dodgey bosses (helping to capture the very useful, but dodgey Haitaka is one nice example of heartseeker utility), and Bow Breaker is a great skill to have for dealing with the final boss, and if you are working towards it, you can get it in time to deal with Takumi on his wall as well, disarming two of the most dangerous bosses in the game. Nosferatu as the only Dark Magic Tome is a bit underwhelming, but Odin seems tailor made to make it work with his weird stat spread, and if you know what you are doing, he can put in a lot of work with Nos-tanking.

 

B Tier: An OK Class

Binding Blade: A bit of a mixed bag with this set. Sophia is one of the worst units in the entire game (IMO the worst, but Wendy is certainly in close competition). Raigh is fine I guess, he comes a bit underleveled, but can become good with enough love, a true B tier unit. Finally Niime is great, but she comes so late into the game that I don't think she can carry the rest of them into A tier with her. Talking a bit more abstractly, the Dark Magic Tomes in this game don't compare all that favorably to Anima magic. Nosferatu is the notable benefit of Dark Mage as it is fairly usable, but Anima gets the excellent Excalibur as a wyvern killer, and with Eclipses embarrassing 10 base accuracy, Anima also gets the far more usable siege tome as well.

 

Blazing Sword: The three basic mages of this game (Erk, Lucius, and Canas) end up very similar, and very average. I prefer Canas of the three, as Dark Magic is interesting, but Nosfertu was made dangerously heavy in this game, Luna is very situational due to most enemies having low Resistance (and you want to save some for Athos to use on the final boss), and while Eclipse got buffed to base 30 hit, it is still unusably inaccurate. Not that Anima or Light magic get anything all that special to compete.

 

C Tier:  A Subpar Class

Three Houses: I considered putting this in B tier thanks to Dark Mage, but with how restricted this class is with having to cut the Dark Seals from the Death Knight's corpse, it being only on par with classes of its tier for the extra hurdles, and with Poison Strike being more funny to use than actually good, I let it slip a tier. Dark Bishop is simple not up to snuff with other classes in its tier, and would probably earn a D tier ranking all on its own.

 

Shadow Dragon: This class is just a slightly worse Sage that you can deploy less of. It trades Magic for a bit of Defenses, which is not a great trade for the class type, and with how SD reclassing works, it is the most restrictive class with you only having the option for one Dark Mage/Sorcerer for the majority of the game, and only very late into the game get the option for a second (and unless you hack the game, or are intentionally sacrificing units for the Gaidens you wont see any natural Dark Mage/Sorcerers). Even the thing it is a worse rarer version of, isn't exactly great in SD, at most being a tier up from this.

 

New Mystery of the Emblem: The devs tried to mitigate the weaknesses of the class, but in allowing mixed male class sets, they took away the main reason to be in it, that you didn't have another magic option. In a lot of ways the weaknesses of the class from SD are still here, but there were things done to mitigate their impact. First off, the environment is far more conductive to magic, and you open up that second Sorcerer slot far earlier, and will actually have the chance to meet Etzel without intentionally killing off hoards of units. There is also an odd weakness added to the class, that it is a male only class, so ironically has no access to the powerful Nosferatu, and while access to the male only, useful effective damage of Excalibur, might seems to counteract that, they added the gender neutral Shaver that also has that potent effective damage against fliers. Although the biggest weakness added was the mixing of the male class sets. Before if you had access to Sorcerer, you didn't have access to Sage, but now any unit you wanted to be in the slightly worse Sorcerer class could be a Sage instead. I do feel this widened the gap between these two classes, especially with how quickly, and how many Mage/Sage reclassing slots you accumulate. Admittedly the Bishop lines became a bit rarer, but their extra staff rank (and only staff access before promotion), make them a very different class, and Sage has a similar time acting as a staff bot as Sorcerer does.

 

D Tier: A Bad Class

Radiant Dawn: The only option here is not available on the first playthrough, very late game, rather under-leveled for that late arrival, and finally mages aren't even good in Radiant Dawn's late game. Just a terrible class option, whose only value is novelty on a replay.

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

11 hours ago, Jotari said:

I'll take a moment to get off the hill I'm dying on to talk about something everyone else seems to have overlooked...the actual introduction of the class to the series. Thracia? Salem? Am I the only one that's played it? Well, Salem is a pretty great unit!...but kind of a rubbish Dark Mage. Dark tomes and the difficult to use and they lose their special effects when used by the player, which is just lame. You'll probably find yourself using basic wind magic or something with him more often. No, his main utility is that he's actually a staff bot in disguise, coming with C rank staves at a point in the game where you only have a handful of staff users. And when you promote him he gains a staff rank instead of a Dark Magic rank! Maybe we should wait until the clerics thread to talk about him after all! But, it's kind of cool in a character way that he is abandoning the soul eating magic and putting his efforts into healing over hurting. And what a great name for the series first dark mage.

You kinda answered your own inquiry.😆

Jormungandr is 12 Wt that can't be mitigated. 14 Mt hits hard, but again, you very likely can't double with it (and perhaps risk being ORKO'ed in return?). Fenrir is siege, that's not bad -if you can obtain a copy.

TearRing Saga has a similar issue. You do get Light and Dark users, yet the tomes are incredibly rare and they'll be sticking to the Anima trio most of the time. I'd say it's nothing about intended characterization (after all, Linoan also finds herself using Anima or staffs most of the time b/c only one Nos (albeit 60 uses), and Lightning isn't available until very late), and more regarding Light/Dark as sidearms/special weapons than normal weapon types.

Thracia 776 being a game where Warp and status staffs become incredibly plentiful and powerful also overshadow Salem's potential magical offense. If this were less so, Salem might be more memorable for use of Dark, even if his limited tome selection didn't change.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Interdimensional Observer

[Whisky]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

But it would be ridiculous to then not count the DS games Dark Mages on the basis that they don't use Dark Magic even though they're literally called Dark Mages. Likewise, are we going to consider every magic class in Three Houses just because they can all use Dark Magic?

I don’t understand how you’re getting there from what I’ve been saying. Why is it ridiculous to not count the DS games’ Dark Mages? I don’t really think they should count because they aren’t really ‘Dark’ Mages at all. Their name is a lie. They don’t use Dark Magic, they just use the same magic as regular Mages. They basically are just regular Mages for a different group of units.

And in 3H, any class can use any weapon type for the most part, including any magic class being able to use any type of magic. But Dark Knights are one of the only classes in the game to have a bonus to using Dark Magic. The other being Gremory.

[Jotari]

56 minutes ago, Whisky said:

I don’t understand how you’re getting there from what I’ve been saying. Why is it ridiculous to not count the DS games’ Dark Mages? I don’t really think they should count because they aren’t really ‘Dark’ Mages at all. Their name is a lie. They don’t use Dark Magic, they just use the same magic as regular Mages. They basically are just regular Mages for a different group of units.

Because they're called Dark Mages. And Mages who are not Dark Mages exist in the game. If Dark Magic (other than Imhullu) existed in Archanea then they'd certainly be using it, because they're Dark Mages. If merely having access to dark magic is the only requirement then not only is every engage magic using class a dark mage, Lehran's Chancellor and Athos Archsage would be considered Dark Mages too. At that point we're not actually evaluating classes, just a weapon type.

56 minutes ago, Whisky said:

And in 3H, any class can use any weapon type for the most part, including any magic class being able to use any type of magic. But Dark Knights are one of the only classes in the game to have a bonus to using Dark Magic. The other being Gremory.

This is completely in contradiction to what you're saying above. If using Dark Magic is the criteria then Mortal Savant should be a Dark Mage. You're shifting the goal posts now from "Using Dark Magic" to "Having Dark Magic boosting skills", in which case none of the Dark Mages in any game prior to Three Houses qualifies. Unless the qualifiers have to be determined independtly in each game, in which case, Archanean Dark Mages should more than quality.

 

With all that being said, I feel I should toss, to everyone not just Whiskey, is Veyle a Dark Mage? Dark Magic doesn't exist in Engage, but she uses Obscurite as a prf which looks pretty darky. And we're probably not going to have a chance to talk about her in any other class since she's not a real Dragon.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Jotari

[Cysx]

8 hours ago, Whisky said:

It seems that Rei’s Lugh support takes 60 turns to reach A. Is that fast?

Probably top ten in the game(would be top 5 if Raigh joined earlier), and those two units have the same mobility (Lugh will likely be promoted but that's it) and have 1-2 range, making placement fairly easy. That being said, it ain't brisk.

7 hours ago, Samu_77 said:

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

No need to wonder, the ch 21 ones deal 40 damage at most, and he averages 41 physical durability after 14 levels and a promotion, or 12 with +Def from his support

Also can someone define scuffed to me in this context, genuinely ? I thought I had a decent understanding of the word, but now I'm not so sure.

9 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I don't really find money that hard to come by in Binding Blade, at least not by the point of the game we're talking about.

It's not hard to get money in BB, but there are a ton of useful things to spend it on is the thing. You can hardly go wrong with +7 HP on most people, in that specific case.

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Jormungandr is 12 Wt that can't be mitigated. 14 Mt hits hard, but again, you very likely can't double with it (and perhaps risk being ORKO'ed in return?). Fenrir is siege, that's not bad -if you can obtain a copy.

TearRing Saga has a similar issue. You do get Light and Dark users, yet the tomes are incredibly rare and they'll be sticking to the Anima trio most of the time. I'd say it's nothing about intended characterization (after all, Linoan also finds herself using Anima or staffs most of the time b/c only one Nos (albeit 60 uses), and Lightning isn't available until very late), and more regarding Light/Dark as sidearms/special weapons than normal weapon types.

Thracia 776 being a game where Warp and status staffs become incredibly plentiful and powerful also overshadow Salem's potential magical offense. If this were less so, Salem might be more memorable for use of Dark, even if his limited tome selection didn't change.

Let's not mince words people haven't played the game

You're likely not getting him to A for Fenrir. I tried once, it's way too much work, acquiring one is the easy part.

That being said, Niime is considered one of the best dark mages in the series, and she's 100% primarily a staff unit. Class is class, Salem is a Dark mage. He does differ on a few key parts also compared to other staffers, like more HP for Fatigue and just plain survival, and Con. Why Con when that doesn't affect AS for magic, well because he can rescue other people, then use the much more plentiful Rewarp to save on Warp uses. It's a bit niche, but that can be useful here and there.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Cysx

[Dark Holy Elf]

  

7 hours ago, Whisky said:

Perhaps I need to try it, but I’m still skeptical. How high are their Hit rates? You say it works reliably so their hits rates need to be close to 100 against the enemies you have them fight.

It seems that Rei’s Lugh support takes 60 turns to reach A. Is that fast?

Nosferatu (70) + A support with Lugh (15) + around 18 skl using your 20/6 figure (36) + around 8 luck (4) = 125. So that should be pretty close to 100 against all but super fast enemies.

I'd consider that pretty fast? This is Binding Blade with its stupidly long maps. Most of the requirements for 5 star tactics are on the order of 20 turns, and if Chapter 21 is what you're worried about, there are 12 full maps between Raigh's joining and it. I don't think it's remotely unreasonable that the twins find time for 5 turns together per map. If you're using Warp to go really fast obviously this is less practical, and in general makes Raigh worse because he also needs time to catch up, which he's not going to get then.

I would describe Raigh as high-investment, high-reward. That doesn't really rate very highly to me in a unit ranking for reasons I've outlined in other threads, but if you wait a few levels before promotion, feed him kills, build his Lugh support, etc., he can certainly do some impressive things in the back half of the game. I just threw him and Lugh onto forests on Murdock's map and watched them destroy everything at basically no risk of dying, it's fun. Compared to physical units their 1-2 range is much better, and enemy res in this game is very low, so their enemy phase has higher potential than e.g. a swordmaster or paladin (even though I would consider both those classes to be better than dark mage overall too, to be clear).

7 hours ago, Whisky said:

Killer Axes actually have higher accuracy as long as you’re fighting Lance enemies like Wyverns.

Sure, by 5. Nosferatu beats this by 5 against everything else though. And most of the prominent mono axe (or axe+bow) users lack a reasonable full-hit support, and largely have lower skill than Raigh on top of that.

7 hours ago, Whisky said:

If Rei were a Mage I think he’d be better specifically because he’d be able to use Aircalibur after promoting and be much more useful against Wyverns before reaching high enough levels to double them.

To be clear I agree with this; Mage is better than Dark Mage in this game. Fire's high hit is wonderful particularly for lower-res bosses, Aircalibur is nice even if I'm not quite on high as it as you. I just think Nosferatu is a neat niche. I basically agree with what @Eltosian Kadath just posted about the classes/tomes in the game.

7 hours ago, Samu_77 said:

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

Notice how the people who've actually tried it speak more highly of it than those who haven't.

There's a half-bonus to crit avo from the Lugh support as well. It's not much (+2/+5/+7) but it's easily enough to avoid crit from mercs and thunder mages.

Talking about Raigh getting one-shot by a silver weapon past Chapter 16 borders on being disingenuous. Robes are storebought and obviously a good investment on any combat unit you feel is at risk for this (i.e. if Raigh or any other mage is rolling badly for HP). And on average he shouldn't even need them; even 20/1 Raigh with B Lugh needs 39 atk to be one-shot, and I don't think even wyvern lords have 25 str until Brunya's map.

[Whisky]

31 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Because they're called Dark Mages. And Mages who are not Dark Mages exist in the game. If Dark Magic (other than Imhullu) existed in Archanea then they'd certainly be using it, because they're Dark Mages. If merely having access to dark magic is the only requirement then not only is every engage magic using class a dark mage, Lehran's Chancellor and Athos Archsage would be considered Dark Mages too. At that point we're not actually evaluating classes, just a weapon type.

This is completely in contradiction to what you're saying above. If using Dark Magic is the criteria then Mortal Savant should be a Dark Mage. You're shifting the goal posts now from "Using Dark Magic" to "Having Dark Magic boosting skills", in which case none of the Dark Mages in any game prior to Three Houses qualifies. Unless the qualifiers have to be determined independtly in each game, in which case, Archanean Dark Mages should more than quality.

Well first of all, what do you consider to be the qualifier? You seem to be suggesting that being called “Dark Mage” is more of a qualifier than actually using Dark Magic, which just seems strange to me. If Dark Magic were in the DS games, they would use it.. but it doesn’t. I don’t see what ties this class to Shaman and Druids in the GBA games at all aside from the arbitrary name. In the GBA games there’s a clear mechanical difference between Mages and Shaman. The type of weapon they use a big distinction in these games and often was pretty much the only distinction between classes in older FE games.

In 3H, any class can use any weapon type for the most part and that includes magic classes being able to use any magic type. But classes still specialize in certain weapon types via skill bonuses, Faires, and certification requirements. Dark Knight has Dark Tome Faire. Mortal Savant does not. I don’t see how this is a contradiction. 

In previous games they didn’t need skills that boost it because they had exclusive use of it, but in 3H things have changed. Every class that specializes in Swords has Sword Faire, hence them specializing in it. You wouldn’t call every class a Sword class just because they can use Swords. Despite every class using any weapon type, classes can still be separated by weapon type based on Faire skills and such.

3H doesn’t have class lines or promotions like most other FE games, and I think Dark Mage -> Dark Bishop -> Dark Knight is just about as much of a logical and natural progression as pretty much any other class line in 3H

31 minutes ago, Jotari said:

With all that being said, I feel I should toss, to everyone not just Whiskey, is Veyle a Dark Mage? Dark Magic doesn't exist in Engage, but she uses Obscurite as a prf which looks pretty darky. And we're probably not going to have a chance to talk about her in any other class since she's not a real Dragon.

She’s half dragon. Since her class is very similar to Alear it would probably make sense to include her in the same class discusión that Alear is in? But to answer the question, yeah I don’t know, it’s the closest thing to Dark Magic in that game and it is unique to her.

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Whisky said:

Well first of all, what do you consider to be the qualifier? You seem to be suggesting that being called “Dark Mage” is more of a qualifier than actually using Dark Magic, which just seems strange to me. If Dark Magic were in the DS games, they would use it.. but it doesn’t. I don’t see what ties this class to Shaman and Druids in the GBA games at all aside from the arbitrary name. In the GBA games there’s a clear mechanical difference between Mages and Shaman. The type of weapon they use a big distinction in these games and often was pretty much the only distinction between classes in older FE games.

In 3H, any class can use any weapon type for the most part and that includes magic classes being able to use any magic type. But classes still specialize in certain weapon types via skill bonuses, Faires, and certification requirements. Dark Knight has Dark Tome Faire. Mortal Savant does not. I don’t see how this is a contradiction. 

In previous games they didn’t need skills that boost it because they had exclusive use of it, but in 3H things have changed. Every class that specializes in Swords has Sword Faire, hence them specializing in it. You wouldn’t call every class a Sword class just because they can use Swords. Despite every class using any weapon type, classes can still be separated by weapon type based on Faire skills and such.

3H doesn’t have class lines or promotions like most other FE games, and I think Dark Mage -> Dark Bishop -> Dark Knight is just about as much of a logical and natural progression as pretty much any other class line in 3H

Dark Mage, like most classes, is an aesthetic. What makes a character a wyvern lord? It isn't that they uses axes, as they haven't always. It isn't that they fly, other classes can do that. It isn't even that they have high defense, that's relative and influenced by character not exclusive to that class. What makes something a wyvern lord is the simple fact that its a character that rides a wyvern. Likewise what I'd say makes a character a Dark Mage id that they look like what Fire Emblem has established a Dark Mage to look and act like.

7 hours ago, Whisky said:

She’s half dragon. Since her class is very similar to Alear it would probably make sense to include her in the same class discusión that Alear is in? But to answer the question, yeah I don’t know, it’s the closest thing to Dark Magic in that game and it is unique to her.

But we discussed Alear with the lords, and I don't think it'd be accurate to discuss Alear with the Manaketes/Beasts because Alear mechanically doesn't work like that at all.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

17 hours ago, Jotari said:

I think those stat lines are incredibly pronounced though. Much more than Hi okay vs Tsubaki. It's more like Hinoka vs Benni.

Look, all I'm saying is, Kaden with a Beastrune looks an awful lot like Keaton with a Beaststone. ...Or not, IDK. They feel like the "Myrmidon vs Mercenary" distinction, if any of the games actually went hard into making Mercs the slow-and-bulky ones, rather than copping out and leaving them "balanced".

17 hours ago, Jotari said:

They're all using the same transformation mechanic though, and all of them are characterized by having one personal weapon without access to other weapons. Birds and beasts having the same movement is like called pegasus and cavaliers similar because they have the same movement.

TBH I think Cavaliers and Pegasus Knights are closer to each other than either one is to Armor Knight. But that discussion would get us too far afield.

17 hours ago, Jotari said:

You know, it would be nice to see bird type beast units again. All flying units being people on mounts is starting to get a tad boring.

Damn straight. Would love to see birdfolk make a comeback, whether or not they're laguz. Or maybe bat-shifters, or even playable Gargoyles?

8 hours ago, Whisky said:

And in 3H, any class can use any weapon type for the most part, including any magic class being able to use any type of magic. But Dark Knights are one of the only classes in the game to have a bonus to using Dark Magic. The other being Gremory.

Also Valkyrie, technically. The class gets Dark Magic Range +1.

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

With all that being said, I feel I should toss, to everyone not just Whiskey, is Veyle a Dark Mage? Dark Magic doesn't exist in Engage, but she uses Obscurite as a prf which looks pretty darky. And we're probably not going to have a chance to talk about her in any other class since she's not a real Dragon.

IMO I don't think every unit in series history has to "fit" one of the categories we're using. Veyle is weird enough that I wouldn't call her a "Dark Mage" type.

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

 

Damn straight. Would love to see birdfolk make a comeback, whether or not they're laguz.

Even if they wouldn't exactly be shifters, I would also accept winged angels using weapons as a new species for the series.

1 minute ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Or maybe bat-shifters, or even playable Gargoyles?

Hereos actually has bat shifters (can't recall if you're still on the Heroes train).

1 minute ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

 

IMO I don't think every unit in series history has to "fit" one of the categories we're using. Veyle is weird enough that I wouldn't call her a "Dark Mage" type.

I wouldn't really either, but since we were getting into the weeds of it, I thought it relevant to bring up. She seems like she fits Whiskey's criteria at any rate.

[SnowFire]

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

With all that being said, I feel I should toss, to everyone not just Whiskey, is Veyle a Dark Mage? Dark Magic doesn't exist in Engage, but she uses Obscurite as a prf which looks pretty darky. And we're probably not going to have a chance to talk about her in any other class since she's not a real Dragon.

I urge you to absolutely, do not, under any circumstances, look up what Obscurité means in French.  Don't do it.  No, stop!  You'll regret it!

...but yeah, honestly, I think Fell Child might be the closest to Dark Mage, since I think the prf. is tied to the class rather than Veyle herself.  It's just like Sorcerer in Fates where there's only a single Dark Magic spell to cast, and is mostly casting Tomes usable by all, except even lamer because Obscurité is basically a worse Ragnarok but with a little crit rather than doing something truly unique.  So a Dark Mage in flavor, just the two most standout things about the class have nothing to do with dark magic: Dragon typing for better Emblem usage, and Dagger access along with a prf. magical dagger.  It's okay - bad stats but Dragon typing is so rare that if you want a certain Dragon effect, your options are limited barring running the Fell Xenologue.

[Jotari]

8 minutes ago, SnowFire said:

I urge you to absolutely, do not, under any circumstances, look up what Obscurité means in French.  Don't do it.  No, stop!  You'll regret it!

Huh, for some reason I thought it was Italian.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

33 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Even if they wouldn't exactly be shifters, I would also accept winged angels using weapons as a new species for the series.

Nintendo of America: "Let me stop you right there."

I'd welcome an FE title with Angelic and Demonic races, certainly, but I fear the "overt religious imagery" might pique a few brows. Wouldn't want the game to come across as excessively for, or excessively against, or excessively ambivalent on, Christianity.

Still, I think there's room to incorporate more fantasy-oriented races, such as Naiads and Dryads. They could have Dragon Vein-like powers, too: Naiads could fill or drain riverbeds, while Dryads raise or raze forests.

40 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Hereos actually has bat shifters (can't recall if you're still on the Heroes train).

Oh, really? The more you know. Haven't touched Heroes in years.

[Jotari]

23 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Nintendo of America: "Let me stop you right there."

I'd welcome an FE title with Angelic and Demonic races, certainly, but I fear the "overt religious imagery" might pique a few brows. Wouldn't want the game to come across as excessively for, or excessively against, or excessively ambivalent on, Christianity.

Still, I think there's room to incorporate more fantasy-oriented races, such as Naiads and Dryads. They could have Dragon Vein-like powers, too: Naiads could fill or drain riverbeds, while Dryads raise or raze forests.

Oh, really? The more you know. Haven't touched Heroes in years.

Meh, Angels don't need to be overtly religious. Final Fantasy has managed to have winged humanoids, and even with overt religious reference we've been getting Shin Megami Tensei games for decades now. And Nintendo personally published Bayonetta as an exclusive. Feels like, looking at what's actually released, we left Pokemon satanic panic behind in the 90s.

[Eltosian Kadath]

10 hours ago, Jotari said:

 

With all that being said, I feel I should toss, to everyone not just Whiskey, is Veyle a Dark Mage? Dark Magic doesn't exist in Engage, but she uses Obscurite as a prf which looks pretty darky. And we're probably not going to have a chance to talk about her in any other class since she's not a real Dragon.

Hmmm... If I were to rank her in my tiers...a lot of what I said about Alear's class holds true for hers as well, but with an even better class skill, and better weapon types, but comes MUCH later. I am thinking A tier, but it is a close call, as there are a fair number of things to offset that late arrival. For reference I will copy my comments on Alear's class in the spoiler box below

Spoiler

The thing that pushes this to A tier is the Dragon class typing. That class type gets so many great bonuses from emblems, that it becomes the best user of multiple different, very powerful Emblems, and the Divine Spirit skill it gets feeds into that even more. Otherwise it is a bit underwhelming, Swords aren't a great weapon type in this game, and it doesn't really get the stats to work with the brawling it gets, but those setbacks are only enough to push the class out of S Tier.

 

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Hereos actually has bat shifters (can't recall if you're still on the Heroes train).

That is really cool...What character(s) did that add that are Bat shifters?

 

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Huh, for some reason I thought it was Italian.

All those Romance languages share a lot of similar words. Heck, from my knowledge of English, it clearly shares a Latin root with words like Obscure, and probably has a very vaguely similar meaning

 

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

 

I'd welcome an FE title with Angelic and Demonic races, certainly, but I fear the "overt religious imagery" might pique a few brows. Wouldn't want the game to come across as excessively for, or excessively against, or excessively ambivalent on, Christianity.

We already got the Demon King, and Demonic Beasts, while the Herons are extremely angelic already.

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by Eltosian Kadath

[Jotari]

4 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

 

  Hide contents

The thing that pushes this to A tier is the Dragon class typing. That class type gets so many great bonuses from emblems, that it becomes the best user of multiple different, very powerful Emblems, and the Divine Spirit skill it gets feeds into that even more. Otherwise it is a bit underwhelming, Swords aren't a great weapon type in this game, and it doesn't really get the stats to work with the brawling it gets, but those setbacks are only enough to push the class out of S Tier.

 

That is really cool...What character(s) did that add that are Bat shifters?

 

Just some original characters to beef out the beast list.

[SnowFire]

More seriously, it's definitely French as the European language the devs decided to be influenced by in Engage, especially in Firene.  Libération, Misericorde, etc. are also French; Céline / Chloé / Louis / Boucheron / Ève are all French names.  (Alfred, admittedly, is an English name, and Etie was maybe "We saw the male name Etienne and decided to chop off some letters to make a female version").

The bat characters in FE Heroes are just Embla, her goon Elm, and nameless goons.  But I can't say the plot there was done with a lot of care.  Embla is RIP and Elm generated so little interest from the scriptwriter that it wasn't even that clear whether he was dead or not after he was defeated, and only showed back up again like 9 months later in side content to show he wasn't dead yet.

[Jotari]

49 minutes ago, SnowFire said:

More seriously, it's definitely French as the European language the devs decided to be influenced by in Engage, especially in Firene.  Libération, Misericorde, etc. are also French; Céline / Chloé / Louis / Boucheron / Ève are all French names.  (Alfred, admittedly, is an English name, and Etie was maybe "We saw the male name Etienne and decided to chop off some letters to make a female version").

The most obvious on that front would be Tireur d'élite, that's like a genuine sentence.

[Whisky]

12 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I would describe Raigh as high-investment, high-reward. That doesn't really rate very highly to me in a unit ranking for reasons I've outlined in other threads, but if you wait a few levels before promotion, feed him kills, build his Lugh support, etc., he can certainly do some impressive things in the back half of the game.

Ah that’s fair. We’re looking at him completely differently then. I was thinking of him as a low investment low reward unit that you can basically promote immediately and have a semi decent but unimpressive unit. That’s why I wasn’t expecting to be able to double most enemies, especially Wyverns.

12 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Nosferatu (70) + A support with Lugh (15) + around 18 skl using your 20/6 figure (36) + around 8 luck (4) = 125. So that should be pretty close to 100 against all but super fast enemies.

Per SerenesForest HM stats thread, Wyvern Riders in Ch21 have Avoid around 30-35 with Lords having around 35-40. At 125 Hit, we’d have around 90-95 displayed Hit against Riders and 85-90 against Lords. If you’re throwing him up against several enemies at once relying on him to not miss or else he dies then I’d consider that pretty risky, but could definitely be fun to try out. Sometimes the risky play can be more fun anyway. I’ve taken risks in Ironmans before if I thought it’d be more fun than the safer option.

Mercs and Heroes have Avoid of around 40-45 reducing your displayed Hit to 80-85 against them, and of course you risk getting doubled by them.

12 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I'd consider that pretty fast? This is Binding Blade with its stupidly long maps. Most of the requirements for 5 star tactics are on the order of 20 turns, and if Chapter 21 is what you're worried about, there are 12 full maps between Raigh's joining and it. I don't think it's remotely unreasonable that the twins find time for 5 turns together per map. If you're using Warp to go really fast obviously this is less practical, and in general makes Raigh worse because he also needs time to catch up, which he's not going to get then.

Well part of the reason I picked Ch21 as an example is because I gave up on Rei being able to double Wyverns sooner. You fight a fair number of Wyverns in the chapters following Rei’s joining and I don’t think he has any hope of doubling them for a while, and he’s going to take some time to build support too. He can get it eventually. Like you said, high investment high reward.

There may be some enemy types that Rei is effective against earlier though, like Fighters perhaps.

12 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

using your 20/6 figure

I didn’t pick that level because I thought it was a reasonable level for him to get to by that point. I picked it because that’s when he reaches Niime’s base Spd on average. And at that Spd, both of them are only doubling slower Wyverns, but probably not most of them, and definitely not the Lords.

Also on that note, it takes around 33 MagAtk to 2HKO Ch21 Wyvern Lords, give or take. There’s some variance in enemies’ stats. Point being that base Niime and average 20/6 Rei probably won’t 2HKO most Lords, which means they’re 3RKOing. Maybe Aircalibur isn’t as important for the Riders, but it seems like a huge benefit against Lords.

I said earlier that I don’t think Rei has any hope of doubling Wyverns for a while after he joins and it’s going to take quite some investment. Eventually he may reach a point where he can reliably double and kill most Wyvern Riders, but there’s a lot of chapters before that where having access to an effective damage weapon like Aircalibur would be really to nice to have.

I don’t know what level Rei would reasonably be at this point. Really just depends on how much you want to invest in him.

12 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Sure, by 5. Nosferatu beats this by 5 against everything else though. And most of the prominent mono axe (or axe+bow) users lack a reasonable full-hit support, and largely have lower skill than Raigh on top of that.

Hey, it’s still 5 more against Lance users. You can often play around using your units in the situations that they’re best in while covering their weaknesses with other units. I’m not afraid of going up to bat for Axes in FE6. I think they get a bit over criticized for their low accuracy, which isn’t an issue against Lances, and there are a lot of Lance enemies in the game. I’m also not sure Rei can really have much more Skl than the Axe users if you’ve been investing in them. Geese’s average Skill isn’t lower until very high level. Garret starts with 15 Skl which isn’t bad. Hit boosting supports, I’m not sure about. Also they can use Swordreavers to have the same hit against Sword enemies as Nosferatu, disregarding support differences. Also I think Axes generally have decent Hit against Axe enemies since they have low Avoid. Though Dark Magic would probably be notably better against Bow users or magic users.

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

Dark Mage, like most classes, is an aesthetic. What makes a character a wyvern lord? It isn't that they uses axes, as they haven't always. It isn't that they fly, other classes can do that. It isn't even that they have high defense, that's relative and influenced by character not exclusive to that class. What makes something a wyvern lord is the simple fact that its a character that rides a wyvern. Likewise what I'd say makes a character a Dark Mage id that they look like what Fire Emblem has established a Dark Mage to look and act like.

So you’re judging class lines by aesthetic, and perhaps thematic, while I’m judging them by mechanics.

To me when I think of what makes Shaman distinct from Mages in the GBA games, it’s that they use Dark Magic, more so than that they wear darker robes.

I haven’t played Fates but don’t the two factions in that game have basically the same classes but with different themes? Do you count those classes as the basic version of that type of class or as completely different classes?

Also, Pegasus Knights promote into Draco Knights in the DS games so I’m not sure it’s as simple as you’re making it out to be. Pegasus Knight -> Draco Knight is the class line in that game.

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

But we discussed Alear with the lords, and I don't think it'd be accurate to discuss Alear with the Manaketes/Beasts because Alear mechanically doesn't work like that at all.

Yeah I think it would have made sense to discuss Veyle in the lords topic to be honest, but Dark Mage is fair enough too. Some units that are in unique classes might not fit well into this topic series.

To be honest I only just noticed that you said ‘mechanically’. Is it a combination of aesthetics and mechanics then?

5 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Also Valkyrie, technically. The class gets Dark Magic Range +1.

I suppose so huh? I don’t know much about DLC.