OMG it's a tier list

[Florete]

do you not remember the time when the wing spear was considered a novelty and the best way to use caeda was to reclass her into mage?

Nope, because I never did FE11 tiers. I didn't like the game so I hardly discussed it all.

look, there is something very specific about how to use caeda in a manner that maximizes her performance. you have to forge her wing spear to +4 (or +6 MT if you also want to reliably LTC chapter 6). you have to give her the first angelic robe. you have to give her the first master seal. any differences that you're trying to establish between high maintenance units in other games and jill in this one is just splitting hairs.

Okay. Thing is, even without knowing the exact numbers, forging some Mt onto the Wing Spear and letting her have at it still creates a very useful unit.

Hey, man, you're the one who brought up units from other games. From my own experience, just doing intuitive things with Caeda still results in a great unit. Jill, not so much (though she's still good). If you think I'm wrong about Caeda, I don't really care; look at the logic itself instead of the application if you must.

welp, FE9 Marcia to high tier then!

Still waiting for opposition to actually talk about this game. Edited October 5, 2013 by Red Fox of Fire

[dondon151]

The guy who is bringing up Caeda out of left field complains about me using an example from within this tier list on how complex decisions have already been used on this tier list to vault characters why? You weird sometimes.

oh, if only it were that simple! you made the spurious claim that because mia is going down, jill should also stay down. it turns out that no one in this recent discussion even mentioned mia going down, much less attempted to justify that proposal by forgetting how to make a steel sword forge. and you think that i'm weird for being confused?

Now, if we are happy with a tier list based on doing very many specific things rather than general obvious things, then stacking all your boosters onto Jill and giving her paragon or beastfoe in 3-6 to either kill a bunch of stuff quickly or get even more levels is fine. Obviously you are happy with a tier list that requires incredibly precise actions. Maybe RF isn't. But for you to suggest that all of those examples you brought up are equivalent to the Jill thing is tantamount to strawmanning. Thus, I'm out.

so i ask of you a justification for why you want to draw this arbitrary line of strategic complexity, and you accuse me of strawmanning. great.

you seem to have a problem with how many resources constitute too many resources. 10+ levels of BEXP on FE9 marcia? no problem. a forge that can cost up to 12320G for FE11 caeda? no problem. your only two earlygame stat boosters on FE5 leif, who is otherwise a thoroughly mediocre unit, plus bringing into chapter 4 a weapon that only he can use? no problem. a battery of stat boosters plus a skill on FE10 jill? we've got a problem! so instead of pussyfooting about the issue, how about you address the problem directly and give me a hard-and-fast cutoff for exactly how many resources we're allowed to give to a unit before pulling on the reins?

never mind that jill's part 4 is leagues better than volug's or nolan's (there's also the utter lack of other viable DB units). never mind that seeding jill's initial EXP gain in 3-6 provides for an incredibly potent positive feedback loop. we can't have that! because the player who does that is too good at the game for this tier list.

[Snowy_One]

There is also a pretty huge gap between 'doing what is obvious' and 'overly-specific strategies'. A player, with no access to online, could figure out easily that giving Titania a speedwing can make her a lot better simply by paying attention to the game mechanics. In general, unless it requires a player doing something VERY abstract or shooting for one specific goal/playstyle, the average player is probably capable of figuring it out.

[-Cynthia-]

I'm not sure dumping stat boosters on Jill then giving her Paragon/Beastfoe is very precise. I mean we seem to have accepted forges/Adept on Mia, giving Nolan Beastfoe!Crossbow then switching him to Tarvos for the Enemy Phase etc. Even if we don't use the most specific turn cutting strategies, Jill is still very good.

[Florete]

I'm not sure dumping stat boosters on Jill then giving her Paragon/Beastfoe is very precise. I mean we seem to have accepted forges/Adept on Mia, giving Nolan Beastfoe!Crossbow then switching him to Tarvos for the Enemy Phase etc. Even if we don't use the most specific turn cutting strategies, Jill is still very good.

Finally, someone actually talking about this game.

Considering where discussions are headed lately, all of those strats are up for questioning. I don't think Nolan is assumed Beastfoe, for example. Giving Mia a forge (anyone can get a forge, really) and Adept seems intuitive enough to me.

[dondon151]

Okay. Thing is, even without knowing the exact numbers, forging some Mt onto the Wing Spear and letting her have at it still creates a very useful unit.

Hey, man, you're the one who brought up units from other games. From my own experience, just doing intuitive things with Caeda still results in a great unit. Jill, not so much (though she's still good). If you think I'm wrong about Caeda, I don't really care; look at the logic itself instead of the application if you must.

Still waiting for opposition to actually talk about this game.

caeda is not a top-tier unit without a wing spear forge - it's just a slightly more accurate ridersbane. marcia is not a top-tier unit without her BEXP plow. leif is not even remotely a good unit without his pre-manster favoritism. in the cases of the former two units, they would probably be around where jill (T) is now without their little resource packages.

i can't believe that you're plugging your ears with your fingers and ignoring my arguments, citing that they don't directly originate from this game. you'd have to be willfully blinding yourself if you think that those examples are irrelevant. how about you address them, or at least the rhetoric behind them, instead of writing them off with an authoritarian justification? otherwise i'm perfectly willing to assume that you have no viable argument against them and are implicitly conceding the point.

Considering where discussions are headed lately, all of those strats are up for questioning. I don't think Nolan is assumed Beastfoe, for example. Giving Mia a forge (anyone can get a forge, really) and Adept seems intuitive enough to me.

this only seems intuitive because we've been doing it forever. i should have to point no further than the history of this tier list to show the evidence that there existed one point in time where this decision was not only unintuitive, but unjustifiable.

Edited October 5, 2013 by dondon151

[Narga_Rocks]

There is also a pretty huge gap between 'doing what is obvious' and 'overly-specific strategies'. A player, with no access to online, could figure out easily that giving Titania a speedwing can make her a lot better simply by paying attention to the game mechanics. In general, unless it requires a player doing something VERY abstract or shooting for one specific goal/playstyle, the average player is probably capable of figuring it out.

I don't know if RF wants it to be completely for the average player who never read online strats on what they could figure out easily or not. She sounds like she wants it closer to your suggestion than dondon. Granted it's kinda hard to say what is something a player could "figure out easily" and what would require lots and lots of work, but that could be argued out. Speedwings should be kinda obvious when it's just one booster, and you play through once, notice she comes up just short a crapton of times, so the next time you play you give her the wing instead of Soren since it helps. How many iterations does it take to decide to give Jill everything under the sun?

and dondon, the only thing I'm going to say is you aren't understanding anything I'm saying about Mia. No surprise if you are going to assume the worst, then read, and interpret thusly. Whatever her position ends up for whatever reason, she was NOT brought up by me for the sake of Jill = Mia or anything. She was merely brought up as an example of a bunch of stuff you throw at a unit and causing her tier position to change positively, similar to what you are going for with Jill. In a way, it's a support of your point that Jill should go up since Mia went up on specific stuff, too. How was this not obvious?

[Florete]

i can't believe that you're plugging your ears with your fingers and ignoring my arguments, citing that they don't directly originate from this game. you'd have to be willfully blinding yourself if you think that those examples are irrelevant. how about you address them, or at least the rhetoric behind them, instead of writing them off with an authoritarian justification? otherwise i'm perfectly willing to assume that you have no viable argument against them and are implicitly conceding the point.

Hey, I believe everything you're saying about them (I never even beat FE5, how can I disagree there?). But guess what? Those characters aren't in this game. They're not on this list. And this is the list I'm worried about. So Caeda isn't top tier without a Wing Spear forge? Alright. Why should I give a fuck? Do you want me to hop on over there and start arguing Caeda down or something?

this only seems intuitive because we've been doing it forever. i should have to point no further than the history of this tier list to show the evidence that there existed one point in time where this decision was not only unintuitive, but unjustifiable.

That was also a time where resource consumption was considered a huge negative. I'm not advocating we go back to the ways of 2009 here.

[dondon151]

In a way, it's a support of your point that Jill should go up since Mia went up on specific stuff, too. How was this not obvious?

you posted this:

However, if Mia drops back to upper mid then keeping Jill down is perfectly valid.

1. it makes the implication that mia is imminently going to drop down to upper mid.

2. i haven't been following every single recent development in this thread and thought that mia was actually being argued back to upper mid.

Alright. Why should I give a fuck?

this is like saying, "let's not study world history because it's impossible to draw parallels between world and US history."

actually, no, that's too convoluted. here are two simple analogies:

1. caeda is to FE11 as jill is to FE10

2. marcia is to FE9 as jill is to FE10

i don't think i can get any more clear than that.

Edited October 5, 2013 by dondon151

[Narga_Rocks]

you posted this:

1. it makes the implication that mia is imminently going to drop down to upper mid.

2. i haven't been following every single recent development in this thread and thought that mia was actually being argued back to upper mid.

I posted a lot of things, not just the Mia dropping thing. Also, it was a separate sentence. Parse better. If Mia were to drop down because 7 move isn't 9, that's one thing. If Mia were to go back to where she started before people were willing to give her stuff, that would be similar to keeping Jill down for not getting stuff. I was implying the second thing, and I don't see why that wasn't clear. Maybe I should just use more words for you and do the parsing for you next time? Would that help? :) <- yes, I know how you feel about adding smileys from reading another post of yours. That's why I put it there.

actually, no, that's too convoluted. here are two simple analogies:

1. caeda is to FE11 as jill is to FE10

2. marcia is to FE9 as jill is to FE10

edit: RF beat me to it, but I was going to say "maybe she would disagree with Caeda at the top, too?"

Edited October 5, 2013 by Narga_Rocks

[Florete]

actually, no, that's too convoluted. here are two simple analogies:

1. caeda is to FE11 as jill is to FE10

2. marcia is to FE9 as jill is to FE10

i don't think i can get any more clear than that.

Well then, perhaps you should grab a torch, because I must not be reading you clearly. Still don't know why I should care.

Maybe this will help: if this were the FE11 tier list and what you're saying about Caeda is 100% true, I'd not want her in top, either.

[shadykid]

hey PKL, could you please make a general tier list thread for every game in general discussion

besides, this isn't the only tier list that could use an overhaul

[BBM]

I think that the point that Dondon is trying to make is that even if the mods of the other tier lists are different, how to play efficiently is fairly similar from game to game, and there should be some sort of agreed-upon standard with regards to how good the player is. If every other tier list on the forum assumes a competent enough player for Marcia/Caeda/Marcus/etc to be at the top, why is this tier list different?

And you might not be the mod of any of the other lists, but IIRC you have been fairly active in at least the FE9 one (correct me if I'm wrong) and yet you've raised no argument in that list at any point (recently, anyways) to drop Marcia down a tier, which is inconsistent considering dumping all your BEXP into Marcia is at least as unintuitive as dumping a bunch of statboosters into Jill.

[dondon151]

I think that the point that Dondon is trying to make is that even if the mods of the other tier lists are different, how to play efficiently is fairly similar from game to game, and there should be some sort of agreed-upon standard with regards to how good the player is. If every other tier list on the forum assumes a competent enough player for Marcia/Caeda/Marcus/etc to be at the top, why is this tier list different?

And you might not be the mod of any of the other lists, but IIRC you have been fairly active in at least the FE9 one (correct me if I'm wrong) and yet you've raised no argument in that list at any point (recently, anyways) to drop Marcia down a tier, which is inconsistent considering dumping all your BEXP into Marcia is at least as unintuitive as dumping a bunch of statboosters into Jill.

ding ding ding!

and, look, jill isn't even going to be at the top. the common position now is that jill (T) should be in top tier and jill (N) isn't even going to be in top tier.

Would that help? :) <- yes, I know how you feel about adding smileys from reading another post of yours. That's why I put it there.

oh, so you added that smiley strictly to irritate me. one would expect a moderator to set a better example.

Edited October 5, 2013 by dondon151

[Florete]

I think that the point that Dondon is trying to make is that even if the mods of the other tier lists are different, how to play efficiently is fairly similar from game to game, and there should be some sort of agreed-upon standard with regards to how good the player is. If every other tier list on the forum assumes a competent enough player for Marcia/Caeda/Marcus/etc to be at the top, why is this tier list different?

The reason I'm saying any of this is because I don't want to keep to those standards. They're the reason tier lists polarized so many and aren't even really following the purpose of creating the term "efficiency" in the first place, which was sort of an anti-rank sentiment meant to better reflect how people usually play. Thus I'm bringing up all this "intuition" stuff. RD first "intuition" tier list.

Tiering as a whole is mostly dead here, anyway, so what other lists do is even less relevant.

And you might not be the mod of any of the other lists, but IIRC you have been fairly active in at least the FE9 one (correct me if I'm wrong) and yet you've raised no argument in that list at any point (recently, anyways) to drop Marcia down a tier, which is inconsistent considering dumping all your BEXP into Marcia is at least as unintuitive as dumping a bunch of statboosters into Jill.

I was, but it's been a loooong time. People and ideas change. Would I argue FE9 Marcia down from Top now? Not sure. Maybe. I at least won't say that I'd definitely keep her there.

[dondon151]

Thus I'm bringing up all this "intuition" stuff. RD first "intuition" tier list.

oh, boy. you get to follow in the intellectual footsteps of smash fanatic and snowy. give yourself a pat on the back.

[Ema Skye]

With regards to Jill: I do think that there is space in high tier for Vanilla Jill. In particular, I can see her on top of Nephenee (T). Jill's flight is a very helpful advantage in her maps, since they either feature cliffs/ledges that she can climb without penalty (1-6-1, 1-6-2, 1-E, 3-12, 3-13) or just really annoying terrain (1-6-1, 3-6). Her offense is also among the best on the team since she doubles more enemies than her teammates do (excluding Sothe, Volug and Zihark).

Jill (T) I think could go over Nailah (comparing her to herons can get really messy so I'll leave it alone). The transfer bonus is just insane and limits the resources she wants to like just the Seraph Robe (she should be entitled to a Master Seal if she's being used since you have three prior to 1-7 and the only other unit who wants one is Nolan). 31 HP / 13 Str / 14 Skl / 17 Spe / 15 Def is borderline insane for part 1 and a promotion turns her into pretty much Sothe with wings (33 HP / 15 Str / 15 Skl / 18 Spe / 17 Def at 14/1 with a seraph Robe and transfers) as well as better weapons.

And echoing people on the past two pages with saying that the differences between Sothe and Volug are big enough for a tier gap. Volug's lack of EXP gain, lack of 1-2 range, and limited Olivi Grass (he has a monopoly over it, but he's left with the scraps Maurim used from 1-8 and 1-E, and a dropped one from 3-6 to last until 3-13) aren't enough to offset his durability lead of 14 HP in my opinion.

[Florete]

oh, boy. you get to follow in the intellectual footsteps of smash fanatic and snowy. give yourself a pat on the back.

Forgive me for when I said people and ideas change: I forgot to exclude you.

[dondon151]

Considering where discussions are headed lately, all of those strats are up for questioning. I don't think Nolan is assumed Beastfoe, for example. Giving Mia a forge (anyone can get a forge, really) and Adept seems intuitive enough to me.

i said earlier that giving mia resources only seems intuitive because we've been doing it forever, and you cleverly dodged it with "well in 2009, we didn't like giving resources." so i'll ask it again: how is that remotely intuitive? to get to the mia that we generally assume now, we have to:

1) calculate that mia is more likely to proc adept than non-doubling units. sure, this is an easy calculation, but we have to bother to consider it in the first place. we also have to come to the conclusion that mia would benefit more from a 3rd hit than some other units would benefit from a 2nd hit. (there are also doubling competitors for adept, like nephenee and shinon.)

2) be willing to remove adept from soren, who has it for free. this is an easy fallacy to subscribe to.

3) realize that you can transfer a ton of money via ilyana at very little cost to the DB.

4) realize that you can spend a ton of money on +5 MT, +15 crit forges with little long-term repercussion.

none of this is intuitive. you should know more than anyone that this conclusion came about by means of lengthy debate. remember interceptor's little article that debunked the myth of the GMs being poor? this is all so obvious to us now, but there was one point where this was a maverick idea, and not just because we were averse to handing out resources.

Forgive me for when I said people and ideas change: I forgot to exclude you.

funny that you go for this dig when you acknowledged not more than a couple of pages ago that my ideas regarding volug had changed.

[shadykid]

With regards to Jill: I do think that there is space in high tier for Vanilla Jill.

wait, when did this become a Marvel discussion

[Florete]

For the record, I would not just assume Mia gets Adept and make her tier position based on that always being fact. All I'm saying is that she has a strong and intuitive case for it.

1) calculate that mia is more likely to proc adept than non-doubling units. sure, this is an easy calculation, but we have to bother to consider it in the first place. we also have to come to the conclusion that mia would benefit more from a 3rd hit than some other units would benefit from a 2nd hit. (there are also doubling competitors for adept, like nephenee and shinon.)

This is easy. Mia has the most Spd, and even if you don't want to account for proc rates not given in the game (Adept being Spd%), she still doubles the most, has the most crit, and is among the least likely to kill in just two normal hits but get a kill on a third. All this can be seen just by using her. Easy to see that Adept is going to be more useful on her than anyone else. Nephenee may also get it sometimes. Shinon is a bit more iffy, but I wouldn't completely count him out.

2) be willing to remove adept from soren, who has it for free. this is an easy fallacy to subscribe to.

This is true.

3) realize that you can transfer a ton of money via ilyana at very little cost to the DB.

This is a hard mode tier list with Lehran and Pelleas tiered, thus I think it's entirely reasonable to assume that we've played through the game once and seen that Ilyana reappears with the GMs. She doesn't need to bring them a winning lottery ticket, but we can assume she'll bring a few goods over.

4) realize that you can spend a ton of money on +5 MT, +15 crit forges with little long-term repercussion.

Drop the +15 crit. Just giving her a +Mt forge is good enough and intuitive enough.

funny that you go for this dig when you acknowledged not more than a couple of pages ago that my ideas regarding volug had changed.

"Oh, dondon's opinion on Volug has changed. That must mean he's a completely different person with all-new ideas who doesn't subscribe to any of his old ways anymore."

[PKL]

caeda is not a top-tier unit without a wing spear forge - it's just a slightly more accurate ridersbane. marcia is not a top-tier unit without her BEXP plow. leif is not even remotely a good unit without his pre-manster favoritism. in the cases of the former two units, they would probably be around where jill (T) is now without their little resource packages.

i can't believe that you're plugging your ears with your fingers and ignoring my arguments, citing that they don't directly originate from this game. you'd have to be willfully blinding yourself if you think that those examples are irrelevant. how about you address them, or at least the rhetoric behind them, instead of writing them off with an authoritarian justification? otherwise i'm perfectly willing to assume that you have no viable argument against them and are implicitly conceding the point.

this only seems intuitive because we've been doing it forever. i should have to point no further than the history of this tier list to show the evidence that there existed one point in time where this decision was not only unintuitive, but unjustifiable.

I used to think this too. But this is false now. She's still ridiculous and can 3 turn C12, which is still Marcia only. I managed to do it in a draft, where she can only be given 2 levels max from her base when she joins and it was fixed mode. I got her to Level something/1 by the time C12 happened. You gotta give her the Robe and Draco and a forge (and eventually the C14 energy drop), so she still needs resources that aren't BEXP. You only lose 2 turns to a BEXP'd Marcia and im not sure if C10 was a 4 turn just because its a draft and I had a more limited team. I probably couldve 3 turned if I had other units. Sure, she doesnt have as ridiculous an offense and needs more help long-term, but she's still acceptable in C23 and I never really had that much of an issue because it's an earlypromoted Marcia.

Anyway, FE10Jill. Consider that she wants 2 Robes, a Dracoshield, an Energy Drop, transfers, Steel Axe forge and Beastfoe to realize her full potential. BEXP in FE9 is a more abundant resource, it's not comparable at all to what Jill needs here to function at her best.

[Espinosa]

Somebody needs to do a full No BEXP LTC run in FE9, just to show that Marcia still wallops the game (seems pretty clear to me personally anyway, but like dondon says, if it's not available for all to see it's an unsubstantiated claim).

About C12's low-turn; can't an unpromoted Marcia achieve a similar success with some shoves to compensate for the lower mobility?

[Irysa]

"full potential" is a bit of an misleading statement. Jill appreciates boosters and puts them to better use than basically anyone in the entire DB beacuse of her class and unique position within the game. You're simply not going to have any better use for the resources aside from Nolan really.

That being said though...you're all apparently in disagreement on what each tier bracket means (or who deserves to be where because of resources etc). I think it's probably a good thing to have concepts like "units that need resources to save turns" get penalised appropriately even if the resources seem to have no better claimant, but dondon is correct that it's not typically exactly what this board seems to universally apply to every list. If you want to reformat, some restructuring would be in order I think.

Also wow people really get aggressive in tierlists here.

Edited October 5, 2013 by Irysa

[shadykid]

I used to think this too. But this is false now. She's still ridiculous and can 3 turn C12, which is still Marcia only. I managed to do it in a draft, where she can only be given 2 levels max from her base when she joins and it was fixed mode. I got her to Level something/1 by the time C12 happened. You gotta give her the Robe and Draco and a forge (and eventually the C14 energy drop), so she still needs resources that aren't BEXP. You only lose 2 turns to a BEXP'd Marcia and im not sure if C10 was a 4 turn just because its a draft and I had a more limited team. I probably couldve 3 turned if I had other units. Sure, she doesnt have as ridiculous an offense and needs more help long-term, but she's still acceptable in C23 and I never really had that much of an issue because it's an earlypromoted Marcia.

Anyway, FE10Jill. Consider that she wants 2 Robes, a Dracoshield, an Energy Drop, transfers, Steel Axe forge and Beastfoe to realize her full potential. BEXP in FE9 is a more abundant resource, it's not comparable at all to what Jill needs here to function at her best.

whoa there wait a minute

Jill doesn't need a 2nd robe, and transfers/no transfers are in a completely separate category