High investment units

[lenticular]

When we're discussing units, we tend to throw terms like "high investment" around quite a bit. The general implication is that while it is possible to make that unit good, it costs more to get them there than other units. But one thing that I've been thinking about recently is what it actually means for a unit to be high investment. What are we actually investing?

These thoughts came from a run of Radiant Dawn that I've been doing where the only units I took to the Tower are generally considered somewhere between "terrible" and "ok but high investment". Specifically, I took: Meg, Fiona, Lyre, Astrid, Heather, Mist, Rolf, Nealuchi, Tormod, Pelleas, and Leanne (and the 6 mandatory units). And despite ostensibly having a full team of high investment units, the run wasn't challenging at all. I had more than enough resources to level everyone either to or close to level cap, with most units having capped most or all of their relvevant stats. Now, two things do need saying here. First is that Radiant Dawn is a weird game with a weird structure that overall probably makes it easier than most of the series to train up a full team of scrubs. The second is that I was playing on Normal difficulty (PAL) because Radiant Dawn's Hard difficulty is some egregious nonsense. But even with these caveats in mind, it feels that if these units genuinely require a high amount of investment then it shouldn't be possible to invest in all of them. Or at the very least it should be difficult to do so, but it really wasn't. So what gives?

I've been trying to think about what it is that we're actually investing in high investment units, and have come up with a few different possibilities.

1. EXP. This seems to be cited quite a bit, and I think is mostly (though not entirely) bogus. The vast majority of runs in the vast majority of Fire Emblem games have more than enough experience to go around. Especially given that experience is scaled based on character level. If I give a unit slightly less experience now, that's just going to mean that they're going to be gaining more experience/fight for a little while until they catch up again.
2. Specific limited resources. I'm thinking of things like stat boosters or weapons here. "Oh, Jimbob is a great unit. You just need to give him two Energy Drops, a Speedwing, and a Brave Lance and he's as good as anyone else!" That sort of thing. And while it's true that this would be a particularly high investment just to pull someone up to par, there are very few units throughout all of Fire Emblem that genuinely require this sort of favouritism if we want them to be viable. And yes, I know that you're now thinking about Bantu or Karla or similar, but they're very much the exception rather than the rule.
3. Short-term difficulty. I think that we are getting somewhere here, but we're still not there. On the one hand, if I decide to deploy an underleveled unit to a map then that will make that map harder than if I'd deployed the strongest unit from my bench, especially if I'm trying to train them up and keep them safe while I do so. This much is true. But on the other hand, I find that most Fire Emblem maps are generous with their deployment slots and that the presence or absence of my (twelfth/fifteenth/whatever) best unit is rarely going to make any sort of material difference. And beyond that, we do get to choose which levels we use for training. Nobody is going to suggest that it's a good idea to use maps like Conquest chapter 10 or Three Houses chapter 13 as training opportunities.
4. Time. I think that this is probably the most significant investment for most units but is also the one that I see talked about the least. Most Fire Emblem units will become good to great if they are trained up, and can be trained up without meaningfully taking resources from other units, and doing so is not generally particularly difficult, but it often is fiddly and time-consuming. And if someone doesn't want to take the time to raise Rolf/Nino/Clair/whoever then really, who can blame them? We all only have so many hours on this earth. And yet, it does feel like a subjective play-style-dependant criterion rather than anything more tangible.

So where am I going with all of this? I don't know. Nowhere, really? I guess just that the more I think about the concept of a high investment unit, the less confident I am that I actually know what one is. So I guess that's my question. What do you think it is? What do you figure we're investing into these units?

[Jotari]

Viewing Fire Emblem from a perspective of efficiency is so 2010s. Hence forth I suggest all tier lists be ranked by how fun a unit is to use. So Astrid is S tier and Lehran is F Tier (can't even attack without devoiding another unit of their ability to attack! What the hell is that!?).

[Shoblongoo]

[High Investment Unit] = Unit that immediately upon joining your party will underperform other units available at the time, which you could be using in the alternative. And will require you to warp your gameplay around feeding them the resources they need to perform better, before they can perform at or above the level of a low investment unit. 

Whether or not high investment units are "good" depends on whether or not you're playing a game where your low-investment units eventually drop-off. And having high investment units able to outperform them is necessary to meet the difficulty spike of buffed up enemies in the mid to late game.

Or whether your low investment units never drop off and can comfortably handle endgame mobs without higher performing high investment units that have been fully invested in.
__

FE8 is the classic example of a game where high investment units are dogshit, because your low investment units never drop-off and the marginally better units you get from fully investing in an Amelia or an Ewan is never necessary to address a problem you could be throwing Seth or Saleh at. 

Conquest is the classic example of a game where high investment units are good. Because the endgame goes hard.  You can't just count on Camilla putting in the same work on Chapter 20 that she puts in on Chapter 11 to carry the team. And building up high-investment units that will eventually outperform your low investment units when they're fully invested in pays off when she doesn't. 
 

Edited February 22 by Shoblongoo

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

I tend to think of "investment" as being "EXP", "stat boosters", and "promotion items". Maybe you could add "forges" and "skill scrolls" to the list. But time is an interesting way to look at it, and not necessarily a wrong one.

Broadly speaking, I would consider an "investment unit" to be one that underperforms at first, but can become on-par with (or even superior to) units who overperform at join time. Lachesis in FE4 is one such example - she starts with poor combat, infantry mobility, and limited staff access. But when she promotes, all of these issues are solved, and she becomes one of your best units. So, if you can practically choose between giving EXP to her, or giving it to a "competing" unit, Lachesis will almost always be the better choice.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Lehran is F Tier (can't even attack without devoiding another unit of their ability to attack! What the hell is that!?).

Not even a bad take. I'd much rather go a "playthrough without Lehran" than a "playthrough without <insert other unit here>". Even Astrid has her uses in the 2.5 Crimean Royal Knight maps.

[Shaky Jones]

There's no such thing as high investment units or any of that funky stuff. It's simply "based" or "cringe". Frost is based. Tiki is cringe. Simple as.

 

From a literal definition, high investment would simply imply that it takes a lot of effort to get them to work should the player really like their portrait and/or personality. However when I refer to someone as such, and how I believe others should see it, a high investment unit is someone who can outshine above a majority of others when invested to upon reaching the lategame. Otherwise, you'd just call them shit. This plays into how well an FE game manages to balance units, which is usually hot garbage. 

Ests in Kaga FE can be a decent unit given how hard it is to get good level ups in that game. Not spectacular, but decent. Investment is obviously required, but given how these games generally aren't too difficult, it's not much of a challenge for her to catch up. Other units might be able to get said kills, but they're just gonna get +skl again. Maybe a better example would be Dyute (Delthea) in Gaiden. That game is the definition of blank growth emblem. It also helps that when you get her, you've obtained the busted angel ring that doubles growth gains, something a lot of Alm's army were level-ing up without. Of course there's people like Lachesis in FE4, who's one of the few units who has access to a completely busted master class once trained to lvl 20, even if it takes effort otherwise fulfilled by Sigurd being Sigurd. One of the best examples of a high investment unit to me would actually be Leonie from Tear Ring Saga. Her bases are rather low, and given she begins right on Runan's route with some tanky enemies and in a game generally where enemies can appear by the dozen, giving her kills as an archer does take some degree of dedication. However, doing so wouldn't just lead to her being on par with other units, but will completely decimate them. Aside from having a really nice set of skills like paragon and luna, she's also one of the only units in the game to have a move growth, so she won't just be another archer in your team, and that's assuming you actually managed to cap a guy like Ruka. I personally ended up not liking the game overall, but I do think unit balance was done really well in that game. Most units had their nieche. Another thing that I think is really important about growth units in old FE is that Kaga generally would make these with the idea of being replacement units for dead guys, not another addition to your full army. It's super common to look at Est units and go "Why would I use them? I have my full team here". Kaga's answer would most likely be "They're here in case you lost your full team but you keep resetting like a filthy casual." Dyute and Lachesis are likely exceptions, but for the most part, even with skills and good growths in a game otherwise lacking of such, the idea was primarily to provide the player with opportunities to ensure a team is available for endgame even if you were choosing to never reload upon losing allies. Sure, you could just add prepromotes with stats serviceable to the joining time every 2 chapters, but that would get boring and repetitive very quickly. They're likely supposed to be a unique, more fun kind of unit than when trained, can absolutely demolish for the sake of it, even if the payoff is for a short time. Just have fun dammit.

FE12 Est is the opposite of everything good about high investment units. In this game, everyone is going to be capped by now. She provides nothing other than being part of a triangle attack that nobody uses. It's not even locked to her squad in this game. In almost any difficulty, she's getting eviscerated. I've used her about 6 times now, and her stats will be that of "max str/spd unit +11" only with less HP and DEF. I still enjoy using her on H4, mostly to piss off elitists and to say I could, but there's no way I could recommend her to someone. If the player in question likes growth units, use literally anyone else. Abel has good growths. Sheema does. Freaking Tomas can pop off if you give him the ch17 draco kills. It's FE12. She will not stand out in any way other than being in a basic class, which honestly hurts her more given her inability to reclass into stuff like swordmaster or sniper for a while. It's so funny just how much she fails as an Est in this game despite literally being Est. I love it.

Other FE's are still capable of doing investment units well, again either through skills or not having growth inflation, preferably both. If the game in question is difficult, prepromotes might fall off in the lategame, so completely ignoring investments and being a mega elitist will bite you back hard. The average player probably won't be able to handle FE6 ch21&22 with base Marcus, Zealott, and Echidna. Sometimes that capped magic Lilina can be just what you need. Shoblongoo's Conquest example is pretty good. If the lategame is difficult and the first half isn't too demanding, then powerful prepromotes wouldn't be the most important thing in the world, and investment units would be more helpful in the long run. 

That said, who cares? Use Frost. He's awesome.

37 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

FE8 is the classic example of a game where high investment units are dogshit, because your low investment units never drop-off and the marginally better units you get from fully investing in an Amelia or an Ewan is never necessary to address a problem you could be throwing Seth or Saleh at. 

What do you mean? That's the game where you NEED Ewan and Amelia! How else will you overcome the biggest challenge of all?

Not falling asleep from boredom.

4 hours ago, lenticular said:

These thoughts came from a run of Radiant Dawn that I've been doing where the only units I took to the Tower are generally considered somewhere between "terrible" and "ok but high investment". Specifically, I took: Meg, Fiona, Lyre, Astrid, Heather, Mist, Rolf, Nealuchi, Tormod, Pelleas, and Leanne

Meg is a great high investment unit. She's based. She's fun. You can use bexp strats to basically guarantee her capping. Good meme unit.

Fiona.....no she's just terrible.

Poor Pelleas being in the same category as Lyre. Guess that's better than the alternative...

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Viewing Fire Emblem from a perspective of efficiency is so 2010s. Hence forth I suggest all tier lists be ranked by how fun a unit is to use. So Astrid is S tier and Lehran is F Tier (can't even attack without devoiding another unit of their ability to attack! What the hell is that!?).

How do you do fellow Frost man?

4 hours ago, lenticular said:

Specific limited resources. I'm thinking of things like stat boosters or weapons here. "Oh, Jimbob is a great unit. You just need to give him two Energy Drops, a Speedwing, and a Brave Lance and he's as good as anyone else!" That sort of thing. And while it's true that this would be a particularly high investment just to pull someone up to par, there are very few units throughout all of Fire Emblem that genuinely require this sort of favouritism if we want them to be viable. And yes, I know that you're now thinking about Bantu or Karla or similar, but they're very much the exception rather than the rule.

At least Bantu has his thing of using unique stones in FE12. With the magic stone, you can completely negate all magic damage, which is insanely busted in higher difficulties if used properly. This doesn't make him good int he slightest, but at least I can definitely say he isn't the worst unit in the series.

That would be Sophia.

49 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

Whether or not high investment units are "good" depends on whether or not you're playing a game where your low-investment units eventually drop-off. And having high investment units able to outperform them is necessary to meet the difficulty spike of buffed up enemies in the mid to late game.

If I need to constantly invest in prepromotes and Jeigans to have them lategame viable, are they actually bad units? Checkmate elitists.

If you say "but early game", Cord. 

[X-Naut]

I think the key question you need to ask is "What's in it for me?" Some people will get a sense of accomplishment out of making their favorite face go Zero to Hero; other players are looking for something they can't get out of anybody else, at least as easily. The latter is what separates units like Lachesis from the Ninos, Rolfs and Megs.

[Jotari]

39 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

There's no such thing as high investment units or any of that funky stuff. It's simply "based" or "cringe". Frost is based. Tiki is cringe. Simple as.

No. Tiki is fun to use and this based.

39 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

 She provides nothing other than being part of a triangle attack that nobody uses.

I've genuinely seen Whitewing Nosferatu triangle attack used as a Medeus kill strategy on Lunatic Reverse.

39 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

At least Bantu has his thing of using unique stones in FE12. With the magic stone, you can completely negate all magic damage, which is insanely busted in higher difficulties if used properly. This doesn't make him good int he slightest, but at least I can definitely say he isn't the worst unit in the series.

I didn't think Bantu can use mage stones?

[Florete]

6 hours ago, lenticular said:

The second is that I was playing on Normal difficulty (PAL) because Radiant Dawn's Hard difficulty is some egregious nonsense.

I mean, you're free to think that, but that's basically the overall answer here. People talking about high investment costs are almost always doing so in the context of the highest difficulty. This is what "gives." Consider that normal mode RD has effectively four times as much BEXP as hard mode.

And RD hard arguably isn't even among the hardest hard modes in the series. Once you get used to not being able to see enemy ranges it's not that special. Even the lack of weapon triangle isn't unique to it.

1 hour ago, Shaky Jones said:

Meg is a great high investment unit. She's based. She's fun. You can use bexp strats to basically guarantee her capping. Good meme unit.

Fiona.....no she's just terrible.

Nah, Fiona's better.

[TheClassic]

The effort to level the unit is definitely a factor too. Even with enough EXP and time to go around, I benched Meg in my last RD playthrough because I was tired of babying a General. Leo on the other hand didn't need to tank anything so he ended up staying. I wouldn't be surprised if you could beat any entry in the series on normal with a team of the worst units that are also the biggest experience sinks, so long as you're patient enough to keep them all alive.

So "high investment" for me these days is how much effort it is to get the unit to end game. I.e. training Meg versus throwing a forge at Renning and saying "get in loser, we're going to the tower".

Edited February 23 by TheClassic

[lenticular]

On 2/22/2024 at 1:50 PM, Jotari said:

Viewing Fire Emblem from a perspective of efficiency is so 2010s. Hence forth I suggest all tier lists be ranked by how fun a unit is to use. So Astrid is S tier and Lehran is F Tier (can't even attack without devoiding another unit of their ability to attack! What the hell is that!?).

Honestly, now I kinda want to do a full big Rate The Unit series where we rate purely on fun rather than efficiency or power or anything like that. Happily, I recognise that I'm far too lazy to commit to such a project.

On 2/22/2024 at 5:45 PM, Florete said:

And RD hard arguably isn't even among the hardest hard modes in the series.

For the sake of clarity, I don't think that RD Hard is particularly difficult. I just think that it's particularly nonsense. Specifically the removing of enemy ranges. Getting rid of UI/QoL/accessability features in the name of "difficulty" is one of my biggest pet peeves of game design. I can go into more detail about exactly why I think this is terrible design, but I figure it's probably a sufficiently uncontroversial idea that I really don't need to explain myself.

On 2/22/2024 at 5:45 PM, Florete said:

People talking about high investment costs are almost always doing so in the context of the highest difficulty.

I don't think I agree with this? I mean, not in the sense that I think people shouldn't use the term like that, but more that I don't think they do. I think that people generally use the same terminology and language regardless of what difficulty they're talking about. I don't have any hard data to back this up or anything, so let's just leave it as saying that the overall feeling and impression that I have is not the same as the one that you have.

8 hours ago, TheClassic said:

The effort to level the unit is definitely a factor too. Even with enough EXP and time to go around, I benched Meg in my last RD playthrough because I was tired of babying a General.

That's pretty similar to what I was getting at when I suggested time investement. In both cases, it's not about investing some in-game resource so much as it's about what we, the players, are personally investing in terms of our time, effort, and energy.

8 hours ago, TheClassic said:

I wouldn't be surprised if you could beat any entry in the series on normal with a team of the worst units that are also the biggest experience sinks, so long as you're patient enough to keep them all alive.

I strongly suspect you could probably do this for most of the series even on the hardest difficulties. At the very least, Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance (international; I've never played Maniac), Shadows of Valentia, Three Houses, and Engage all seem like they could probably be beaten on their hardest difficulties with their worst characters, so long as you make appropriate allowances for places where specific characters are required. I wouldn't be surprised if it was possible for Radiant Dawn, Awakening and Birthright too, though I don't know as much about the harder difficulties of those games.

On 2/22/2024 at 3:39 PM, Shoblongoo said:

[High Investment Unit] = Unit that immediately upon joining your party will underperform other units available at the time, which you could be using in the alternative. And will require you to warp your gameplay around feeding them the resources they need to perform better, before they can perform at or above the level of a low investment unit. 

Yeah, I do think that's a pretty fair way of looking at things. If we imagine a graph of power level against time for each unit, then the investment units are the ones which have an upward slope for at least part of the graph. Though this is somewhat complicated by units who have weird graphs. I'm thinking of units like Volke (starts OP, then drops off when other people catch up to him, but then can become great again if you use him) or Donnel (starts awful, becomes great when his growths kick in, then drops back to mediocre once everyone starts reaching caps).

[Florete]

10 hours ago, lenticular said:

For the sake of clarity, I don't think that RD Hard is particularly difficult. I just think that it's particularly nonsense. Specifically the removing of enemy ranges. Getting rid of UI/QoL/accessability features in the name of "difficulty" is one of my biggest pet peeves of game design. I can go into more detail about exactly why I think this is terrible design, but I figure it's probably a sufficiently uncontroversial idea that I really don't need to explain myself.

You don't need to explain, I agree it's an awful decision. I just think it's not bad enough that the whole mode should be disregarded.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Not only does RD Hard Mode suck, but it really isn't even that much harder than Normal Mode imho. In particular, it is extremely similar to Normal Mode if a player wastes or sits on bonus exp (two things I'm both very guilty of, depending on the run, and I imagine I'm far from alone). The one time I did play Hard I did a bit of a pseudo-challenge run limiting myself to certain affinities only (I certainly used a number of the units mentioned on that list, like Rolf and Meg). I don't doubt for a moment that lenticular could have used the team she cited for the tower on hard mode too and done fine.

17 hours ago, lenticular said:

I don't think I agree with this? I mean, not in the sense that I think people shouldn't use the term like that, but more that I don't think they do. I think that people generally use the same terminology and language regardless of what difficulty they're talking about. I don't have any hard data to back this up or anything, so let's just leave it as saying that the overall feeling and impression that I have is not the same as the one that you have.

I also strongly second the above. I suspect most people just discuss what they are most familiar with, only agreeing to settle on a particular difficulty it's actually relevant for a discussion (it often isn't, most great units are great regardless of mode) or has been pre-stated to remove ambiguity.

[Florete]

21 hours ago, lenticular said:

I don't think I agree with this? I mean, not in the sense that I think people shouldn't use the term like that, but more that I don't think they do. I think that people generally use the same terminology and language regardless of what difficulty they're talking about. I don't have any hard data to back this up or anything, so let's just leave it as saying that the overall feeling and impression that I have is not the same as the one that you have.

 

3 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I also strongly second the above. I suspect most people just discuss what they are most familiar with, only agreeing to settle on a particular difficulty it's actually relevant for a discussion (it often isn't, most great units are great regardless of mode) or has been pre-stated to remove ambiguity.

It's somewhat dependent on the game (no one cares for Awakening Lunatic+, for example), but the people who care about this kind of thing - unit viability, investment costs, etc. - are the fans who play these games multiple times over and probably end up desiring more of a challenge than normal mode. I rarely see discussions about normal mode if it's not clarified early, and if clarification is asked for, they usually say hard mode, at least from my own experience. It's a common sentiment that the hardest difficulty is where units are pushed to their limits, and so that's where their abilities matter the most.

For this context specifically, there's enough BEXP in RD normal that I don't think most people care about it as a cost for units like Meg and Fiona. What matters is how well they use it and where it gets them.

It's possible more recent games differ. I barely discussed Three Houses online at all, and when I was discussing Engage a lot of people hadn't yet gotten to Maddening (but also Engage discussion is scarce in general).

[Cdijk16]

On 2/22/2024 at 4:54 PM, lenticular said:

When we're discussing units, we tend to throw terms like "high investment" around quite a bit. The general implication is that while it is possible to make that unit good, it costs more to get them there than other units. But one thing that I've been thinking about recently is what it actually means for a unit to be high investment. What are we actually investing?

These thoughts came from a run of Radiant Dawn that I've been doing where the only units I took to the Tower are generally considered somewhere between "terrible" and "ok but high investment". Specifically, I took: Meg, Fiona, Lyre, Astrid, Heather, Mist, Rolf, Nealuchi, Tormod, Pelleas, and Leanne (and the 6 mandatory units). And despite ostensibly having a full team of high investment units, the run wasn't challenging at all. I had more than enough resources to level everyone either to or close to level cap, with most units having capped most or all of their relvevant stats. Now, two things do need saying here. First is that Radiant Dawn is a weird game with a weird structure that overall probably makes it easier than most of the series to train up a full team of scrubs. The second is that I was playing on Normal difficulty (PAL) because Radiant Dawn's Hard difficulty is some egregious nonsense. But even with these caveats in mind, it feels that if these units genuinely require a high amount of investment then it shouldn't be possible to invest in all of them. Or at the very least it should be difficult to do so, but it really wasn't. So what gives?

I've been trying to think about what it is that we're actually investing in high investment units, and have come up with a few different possibilities.

1. EXP. This seems to be cited quite a bit, and I think is mostly (though not entirely) bogus. The vast majority of runs in the vast majority of Fire Emblem games have more than enough experience to go around. Especially given that experience is scaled based on character level. If I give a unit slightly less experience now, that's just going to mean that they're going to be gaining more experience/fight for a little while until they catch up again.

Most tier list discussions or unit comparisons of any kind assume that the game is being played on hardest available difficulty. Higher difficulties (including Radiant Dawn) tend to sharply reduce the rate at which EXP is gained. In RD and POR, the about of BEXP is also sharply reduced. This makes requiring significant EXP investment to become competent a much more severe downside. This also means that under-leveled units with low bases will take a lot more time to become competent and require more effort in babying them and feeding them kills. 

Edit: I think it is mostly accurate to describe a high investment unit as one requiring significant investment in any three or more of EXP, Limited Resources like such as promotion items or stat boosters, effort put into training them and real time investment put into training them in order to become competent.

Edited February 25 by Cdijk16

[samthedigital]

34 minutes ago, Florete said:

It's somewhat dependent on the game (no one cares for Awakening Lunatic+, for example), but the people who care about this kind of thing - unit viability, investment costs, etc. - are the fans who play these games multiple times over and probably end up desiring more of a challenge than normal mode. I rarely see discussions about normal mode if it's not clarified early, and if clarification is asked for, they usually say hard mode, at least from my own experience.

The context of the playthrough is more important than the difficulty. If I am just looking to beat a Fire Emblem game on the hardest difficulty resource distribution generally isn't that important. That's especially true if I take advantage of things like boss abuse and the like. On the other hand if I were to do a draft/speedrun/LTC/etc. then those resources would be important even on the easiest difficulty. I'm going to assume that lenticular's perspective is more casual (for lack of a better word) to some degree. Otherwise I would disagree with a lot of what was said in the OP.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

On 2/22/2024 at 12:24 PM, lenticular said:

Specific limited resources. I'm thinking of things like stat boosters or weapons here. "Oh, Jimbob is a great unit. You just need to give him two Energy Drops, a Speedwing, and a Brave Lance and he's as good as anyone else!" That sort of thing. And while it's true that this would be a particularly high investment just to pull someone up to par, there are very few units throughout all of Fire Emblem that genuinely require this sort of favouritism if we want them to be viable. And yes, I know that you're now thinking about Bantu or Karla or similar, but they're very much the exception rather than the rule.

And other reclass resources~ Think Heart Sealing Mozu; that same seal could be used for Corrin shenanigans, Servant 1 reclass if you´re boring and insecure, MAID EFFIE! Think of the possibilities! And maybe specific effective weaponry, Est does join in SD with a Ridersbane I believe on a map full of Cavs...

Another thing to consider would be if the high investment unit covers a niche not directly available. To remain with the prior example, Villager/MoA Mozu is reason for despair, Archer/SNiper Mozu is your most reliable, ranged, high damage unit in CQ and offers the Archer line to a few of her friends~ Est on the other hand joins after Caeda had almost 20 chapters to rampage across all of Archanea with her special horse skewer, Minerva be out the swinging axes at A-rank and Catria and Palla have been around ballin. She does nothing your army doesn´t already have copious amounts off. Same with Amelia I belive, though I think Ross has some opportunities outside of carrying his dads weapons? Not sure, haven´t played much of Sacred Stones.

I suppose I might be talking about growth units more than high investment units here? Bantu is probably a high investment unit too, but with low growths to boot.

On 2/22/2024 at 2:50 PM, Jotari said:

Viewing Fire Emblem from a perspective of efficiency is so 2010s. Hence forth I suggest all tier lists be ranked by how fun a unit is to use. So Astrid is S tier and Lehran is F Tier (can't even attack without devoiding another unit of their ability to attack! What the hell is that!?).

Shaky Jones, alt account found. Get rattled lvl 1 skeleton, you need to lvl up!

 

On that note... in Three Houses, basically every unit is a growth unit, barring staff. So my question is, would Catherin be a high investment unit? If you recruit her early she´s almost guaranteed to outstat your whole army, yet the sentiment for her is she requires a lot of time/tutoring to get into better classes...