A new method to create a tier list

[Mekkah]

I believe that a unit's place on a tier list should be based on their average performance overall in the game, on every map they're in. So, I went and made a small start on what should be a tier list for every chapter in the game - I suppose it would be easiest to start out with Eirika route for now. It should be much more specific and fruitful to argue about a single chapter's performance than about the whole game in one post.

Do take note that the earlygame has the least weight. The prologue tiers, for example, are a total joke. The most efficient way would be to move just Seth and be done with it, but very very very little efficiency is lost by letting Eirika mop things up instead, and the next chapter has like three times as many enemies, and a chapter like Ch19 has about as many enemies as the first six chapters together.

=Prologue=

-God-

Seth

-Mortal-

Eirika

=Chapter 1=

-God-

Seth

-Mortal-

Franz

Eirika

Gilliam

=Chapter 2=

-God-

Seth

-Mortal-

Eirika

Franz

Vanessa

Moulder

Garcia

-Lame-

Gilliam

Ross

=Chapter 3=

-God-

Seth

-High-

Franz

Eirika

Colm

Moulder

-Mid-

Garcia

Gilliam

-Low-

Ross

Neimi

Vanessa

Edited February 1, 2009 by Mekkah

[Vykan12]

I dunno, a list for 20 different chapters would get tiresome, and isn't necessarily telling us more than an overall list would, just disambiguating their performance over time, which we should already more or less be doing in comparisons.

Anyway, I'd up Vanessa's rank in chapter 2. She is solely responsible for getting Ross and Garcia recruited as soon as possible, which not only gives you a couple extra enemies to kill, but also expels any risk of eg/ Ross dying as an NPC. Also efficient for visiting villages. Moulder, however, hasn't reached his prime yet since the enemies are just scraping your doods, so vulneraries are more than sufficient right now.

I'll assume Colm is so high in chapter 3 cuz of stealing. If I'm not mistaken, the items found in the chests are an iron lance, hand axe, and iron sword while the bottommost chest can be opened with a chest key acquired from the enemy in that room. Those items are pretty damn useless considering you can buy all of them and aren't exactly short on cash yet. Also, Colm opening doors isn't that important since the most efficient path to the boss involves breaking walls. So Eirika > Colm at least.

Edited January 26, 2009 by Vykan12

[HeroMystic]

I'd move Neimi to bottom of Mid. The structure of the chapter allows her ranged attacks to used effectively, and also she'd be the only one who has a support with Colm due to how insanely easy it is, so it gives her some extra attack power for the time being.

I also second Vanessa getting moved up, but only up one spot above Moulder. Saving Ross/Garcia is pretty important, but I don't think being able to visit villages should be accounted for her favor since while she's saving the NPCs, Franz/Seth will obviously taking care of the villages.

[Mekkah]

Vanessa can get the Pure Water village most easily out of anyone before the chapter ends, even if she goes to pick up Ross. Anyway, I already took all this into account when putting Vanessa there, but I agree she > Moulder.

I dunno, a list for 20 different chapters would get tiresome, and isn't necessarily telling us more than an overall list would, just disambiguating their performance over time, which we should already more or less be doing in comparisons.

A debate for 20 different pages gets tiresome too, and I think this way allows people to zoom into individual performance with more detail instead of generalizing their relative performance for a period of time.

I'll assume Colm is so high in chapter 3 cuz of stealing.

Yeah, you're right, those weapons suck, so I'll put Eirika back above.

I'd move Neimi to bottom of Mid. The structure of the chapter allows her ranged attacks to used effectively, and also she'd be the only one who has a support with Colm due to how insanely easy it is, so it gives her some extra attack power for the time being.

Note how everyone except Eirika can use ranged attacks if they want to. Her performance is still overall worse than anyone but Ross, even with that +1 Atk from Colm, since her durability fails and everyone else can lure peoples on enemy phase. Everyone else but Ross is 2-rounding, she is 3-4 rounding.

Edited January 26, 2009 by Mekkah

[Bananas]

O_________________o

is Seth going to be "God" ranked for every chapter...?

[Lord Raven]

Well yeah, he can solo the chapters pretty effectively.

[Vykan12]

O_________________o

is Seth going to be "God" ranked for every chapter...?

First consider that Seth beats everyone in the earlygame by a humongous margin. Like, he could beat everyone on offence while fighting with his fist (assuming his fist is a 0 atk weapon).

Now consider his growth rates: 90% hp, 50% str, 45% skl, 25% lck, 40% def, 30% res. That's one of the best growth spreads in the game, with his only weakness being the rather insignificant luck growth.

Then he has ridiculous supports. A Eirika B Franz happens by like midgame and gives him +5 attack, +5 defence, +12 avoid, +12 accuracy, +12 critical and +12 crit evade. Probably one of the best support combinations in the game.

And lastly, he can actually level up reasonably fast assuming you give him boss kills. Sure, that means that no one else can get them, but you profit more from having a pre-promo gain like 60 exp from the boss than a regular unit gaining 100 since the regular unit gains a lot more exp per generic kill than the pre-promo, and the pre-promo could always refrain from killing to visit villages/rescue/build supports/etc as compensation. IE, Seth has an efficient, non-abusive and entirely reasonable way to level up in a hurry despite being a pre-promote.

I do not see any way that any unit can possibly compete with that level of h3x in this game. Putting Seth in God for every chapter is almost a disgrace :P

Edited January 27, 2009 by Vykan12

[Mekkah]

Seth will be in his own tier until people start promoting, and from there he will still remain extremely high, though I can see Franz above him due to Seth getting some minor AS problems.

[Kriemhild]

I think this is a very accurate way of creating the tier list but I'm guessing it requires extreme patience. Eventually, there would be too many characters and you'll have to sort them out in each and every chapter. You might give up in the middle but I completely support this method.

The only problems that I can see would arise is with limited promotion items. Unpromoted characters obviously can't be judged as unpromoted throughout the whole game. It is entirely up to the player on who to promote with the limited promotion items. It's going to create problems then.

[Mekkah]

I think this is a very accurate way of creating the tier list but I'm guessing it requires extreme patience. Eventually, there would be too many characters and you'll have to sort them out in each and every chapter. You might give up in the middle but I completely support this method.

As I hinted at before, tier list topics can go on forever about the whole game, so I'm all for trying this method to actually work towards a goal more slowly.

The only problems that I can see would arise is with limited promotion items. Unpromoted characters obviously can't be judged as unpromoted throughout the whole game. It is entirely up to the player on who to promote with the limited promotion items. It's going to create problems then.

This applies to normal lists too. The idea is that you look at how much competition there is for promotion items, and how likely this competition is to be in play to judge whether a character is promoted or not. When two characters with an equally heavily competed-for promotion item are being compared, they can both be assumed as promoted.

[TheEnd]

I have a feeeling that this would only work in FE4 (due to the low amount of chapters) and maybe RD.

Otherwise, it'll either just start branching into a countless amount of "if" class or become a mass of oversimplistic and useless walls of text.

[Mekkah]

=Chapter 4=

-Top-

Seth

-Mortal-

Garcia

Franz

Moulder

Vanessa

-Bleh-

Gilliam

Arthur

Colm

Eirika

Ross

Neimi

Lute

Basically, Seth is king, and then there's two people who one-round and one person who heals others, which I suppose is better than all these people who 2-round, and most of them die in two hits.

Edited February 9, 2009 by Mekkah

[Kriemhild]

=Chapter 4=

-Top-

Seth

-Mortal-

Garcia

Franz

Moulder

-Bleh-

Gilliam

Arthur

Eirika

Ross

Neimi

Lute

Basically, Seth is king, and then there's two people who one-round and one person who heals others, which I suppose is better than all these people who 2-round, and most of them die in two hits.

I think Artur should be higher up. He's pretty helpful in this chapter.

[Rodykitty]

I really like this idea, and can see it being applied to other FE games.

[Kriemhild]

I really like this idea, and can see it being applied to other FE games.

It would be significantly easier to use this method to construct a FE4 1st Gen Tier List. 2nd gen would cause problems due to variable parents. I wonder if anyone's willing to make an accurate FE4 1st Gen Tier List.

[Rodykitty]

It would be significantly easier to use this method to construct a FE4 1st Gen Tier List. 2nd gen would cause problems due to variable parents. I wonder if anyone's willing to make an accurate FE4 1st Gen Tier List.

2nd Gen would cause problems regardless of how the tier list is done. For other games? It's about accuracy.

[Mekkah]

I think Artur should be higher up. He's pretty helpful in this chapter.

Well, "I think he should be lower. He's pretty bad in this chapter." I'm not going to consider changing anything without backing it up.

Artur is where he is because he dies in two hits to every physical monster, and because he is the only person outside of Gilliam and Lute who does not one-round the magic eyeballs. He's above Eirika and Neimi due to 1-2 range as opposed to either (they die in the same number of hits), and above Ross due to him being able to get exposed more (and I think it's more likely that Ross is still in trainee stage than normal tier), and Lute is at the bottom due to being basically Artur-level fail without doubling and having next to no availability.

I really like this idea, and can see it being applied to other FE games.

Thanks. :)

=Chapter 5=

-Top-

Seth

-Good-

Franz

Garcia

Ross

Moulder

Natasha

Joshua

Gilliam

-Bleh-

Vanessa

Eirika

Colm

Arthur

Lute

-Ugh-

Neimi

Vanessa vs other people comes down to how much you value her village visiting, which is a blessing if you take a mostly defensive approach. Since her offense/defense, you know, suck (some Archers that (nearly) one-shot her, Soldiers 2HKO, Fighters bring her to single digit). Eirika vs Colm comes down to some statistical edges vs 1 mov. Moulder vs Natasha is mostly about Natasha being forced vs having a fixed starting position, since both die in two hits and heal plenty. Joshua would be higher if he was there from the start.

Edited January 29, 2009 by Mekkah

[Admiral "Bull" Halsey]

So...what's the point of having a tier list if this games not ranked? Not to mention FE8 it's so easy...

Edited January 29, 2009 by Hyde

[Robert]

Good idea, but should be for a different game. Seth is just going to be god for a lot of the game.

[Admiral "Bull" Halsey]

Well Seth is already god on the start of the chapter.

[Rodykitty]

Good idea, but should be for a different game. Seth is just going to be god for a lot of the game.

Because there are a ton of characters below him that would like to be ranked as well.

So...what's the point of having a tier list if this games not ranked?

It's still very possible to make a tier list judging character quality and efficiency.

[Mekkah]

In fact, if you read one of vykan's posts on FEP, you'll see why it may even be better to not use rankings to judge.

[Vykan12]

=Chapter 4=

-Top-

Seth

-Mortal-

Garcia

Franz

Moulder

-Bleh-

Gilliam

Arthur

Eirika

Ross

Neimi

Lute

This is a really easy map compared to the others, in the sense that almost no one will have trouble doubling. For that reason, reaching the enemies sooner takes the most priority in this level, which is why Franz should be > Garcia. Vanessa also shines on this level though you didn’t include her. Probably around where Garcia or Franz is, though maybe even higher since she can really get ahead of the main group with her flying advantages, do things like javelin from a mountaintop, etc. I also think Artur could go above Gilliam since he is probably the best unit for taking out all those eyeball d00ds and the difference between Gilliam and Artur’s durability isn’t quite that large when considering 1-2 range and the low enemy frequency.

=Chapter 5=

-Top-

Seth

-Good-

Franz

Garcia

Ross

Moulder

Natasha

Joshua

Gilliam

-Bleh-

Vanessa

Eirika

Colm

Arthur

Lute

-Ugh-

Neimi

What puts Ross so much higher than Artur and Lute? Ross will basically be attacking with a hatchet all the time, and Artur and Lute are probably out-damaging him, though perhaps I’m under-estimating a 10/1 Ross. Plus of course Joshua is better than Ross even despite joining maybe on turn 3-5 since he comes with a killing edge you likely won’t trade away immediately (in fact I’m not sure anyone else has the rank to use it), and Joshua’s one of the only units who can consistently double anything at this point, meaning he’s out-damaging people like Garcia even if he has less attack power. Perhaps I should start running some numbers soon since we’re getting far enough into the game where these judgments aren’t just intuitive.

[Mekkah]

This is a really easy map compared to the others, in the sense that almost no one will have trouble doubling. For that reason, reaching the enemies sooner takes the most priority in this level, which is why Franz should be > Garcia.

Mobility isn't the only difference between the two though. Garcia one-rounds everything on the map except for the boss. Though then again, I recall Franz one-rounding most Renevants too (Mogalls and Wights are no-brainers). So after running some numbers I will probably change this.

Vanessa also shines on this level though you didn’t include her. Probably around where Garcia or Franz is, though maybe even higher since she can really get ahead of the main group with her flying advantages, do things like javelin from a mountaintop, etc.

Vanessa's offense is still rather ballsy though. I don't think she one-rounds Wights using Iron Lance without +1 or +2 in Str or Atk, let alone with Javelin. She has free shots at one or two Wights near the south village, I guess, but any other monster can just attack and 2HKO her. Well, maybe Mogalls don't 2HKO.

I also think Artur could go above Gilliam since he is probably the best unit for taking out all those eyeball d00ds and the difference between Gilliam and Artur’s durability isn’t quite that large when considering 1-2 range and the low enemy frequency.

Whenever there's 2+ melee enemies in range, Gilliam's durability is pwn. And both two-round everything, though Gilliam can one-round some stuff with one Spd level-up.

For Ch5:

What puts Ross so much higher than Artur and Lute? Ross will basically be attacking with a hatchet all the time, and Artur and Lute are probably out-damaging him, though perhaps I’m under-estimating a 10/1 Ross.

10/1 Fighter Ross has 23 hp, 11-12 str, 6 skl, 5-6 AS, 5 def, 3 res, 11-12 luk.

2/0 Lute has,,,,,,,,, 17-18 hp, 6-7 mag, 6 skl, 6-7 AS, 3 def, 5-6 res, 8-9 luk.

3/0 Arthur has,,,,,,, 19-20 hp, 6-7 mag, 6-7 skl, 8-9 AS, 2 def, 6-7 res, 2 luk.

Also, Ross has WTA over the Loldiers on this map and one-rounds them.

Plus of course Joshua is better than Ross even despite joining maybe on turn 3-5 since he comes with a killing edge you likely won’t trade away immediately (in fact I’m not sure anyone else has the rank to use it), and Joshua’s one of the only units who can consistently double anything at this point, meaning he’s out-damaging people like Garcia even if he has less attack power.

You could buy Natasha an Iron Sword if you wanted so he can trade for it, but it doesn't matter much. It depends a lot on playstyle. If you recruit Joshua as early as you say, he is probably >>, but if you try to take care of all the moving enemies first, his low availability hurts him a lot for that map.

[Vykan12]

You could buy Natasha an Iron Sword if you wanted so he can trade for it, but it doesn't matter much. It depends a lot on playstyle. If you recruit Joshua as early as you say, he is probably >>, but if you try to take care of all the moving enemies first, his low availability hurts him a lot for that map.

Generally I lure Joshua in with an unarmed Seth or Gilliam, then recruit him, something which can generally be done fairly quickly without employing any real risk. I don't see many outcomes where Joshua is recruited when the map's more than halfway done, especially since the majority of the enemies are at his longitude or higher (as in further north of his starting position).

Edit: Oh yeah, and I agree with everything else you said.

Edited February 2, 2009 by Vykan12