~ FE5 Tier List ~

[Yojinbo]

-Top-

Saphy

Fin

Othin

Shiva

Halvan

Fergus

Rifis

Pahn

Lara

-High-

Nanna

Brighton

Asvel

Linoan

Sara

Tina

Dean

Carrion

Homer

Sleuf

-Upper Mid-

Mareeta

Olwen

Hicks

Machua

Karin

Leaf

Sety

Galzus

Eryios

Salem

Trewd

-Lower Mid-

Dalshien

Xavier

Dagda

Delmud

Amalda

Glade

Kein

Alva

Robert

Fred

-Low-

Cyas

Ralph

Eyvel

Misha

Conomore

Marty

Tanya

-Bottom-

Eda

Miranda

Ronan

Shanam

Selphina

Edited July 1, 2009 by Yojinbo

[TheEnd]

High-Mid:

Sety

[Dr. Tarrasque]

Conomore's worse than Selphina?

Also, Olwen vs Eyrios has been discussed so many times here and she always wins so what's the reasoning in Eyrios being above her?

Edited June 24, 2009 by Sirius

[Mekkah]

This list seems to suffer from endgame syndrome.

Mareeta is not worthy of anything remotely awesome. Her offense is great, yes. Her defense is terrible. I'd put her below anyone with actual durability.

Sleuf is higher than Sara? Why? Or people who have been doing good for you like all game long? Staves are nice, but they're no auto high tier when everything else works against you.

Dagda >>> lots of people. Really strong earlygame, his durability is on par if not better than others throughout mid and late (great hp minus Charge), and he doubles quite reliably, too.

Miranda and Eda are like the worst units in the game. How come Eyvel ends up below them, with her 4 chapters of godliness?

- Excuse the lack of numbers, just wanted to point out global things that seemed wrong before digging them.

Edited June 24, 2009 by Mekkah

[dondon151]

There's already a tier list.

[Yojinbo]

You do realize that Sety has like 3 chapters of availability?

Conomore's worse than Selphina?

Also, Olwen vs Eyrios has been discussed so many times here and she always wins so what's the reasoning in Eyrios being above her?

This list seems to suffer from endgame syndrome.

Mareeta is not worthy of anything remotely awesome. Her offense is great, yes. Her defense is terrible. I'd put her below anyone with actual durability.

Sleuf is higher than Sara? Why? Or people who have been doing good for you like all game long? Staves are nice, but they're no auto high tier when everything else works against you.

Dagda >>> lots of people. Really strong earlygame, his durability is on par if not better than others throughout mid and late (great hp minus Charge), and he doubles quite reliably, too.

Miranda and Eda are like the worst units in the game. How come Eyvel ends up below them, with her 4 chapters of godliness?

- Excuse the lack of numbers, just wanted to point out global things that seemed wrong before digging them.

There are many flaws in this tier list, I know. It's just an approximation...just show arguments why X > Y instead of "X should be higher" then I can change that.

Also Sleuf > Sara because he can use Warp staves right when he joins. Having a second unit to use Warp (or third if you promoted a B-staff Salem) is amazingly useful if you need two of them or if Safy can't be deployed because of fatigue issues. Staves alone don't make a good rank but being able to use all the good ones right away is worth a lot.

I put Conomore below Selfina because recruiting him means skipping Sleuf as well as other units (while Miranda and Shanam are completely worthless) ... Selfina is garbage but she doesn't cost you a good unit in the process of recruiting her...

Yes, Miranda and Eda should be below Eyvel, I agree.

There's already a tier list.

I didn't see it one the first page, so I made this one.

Edited June 24, 2009 by Yojinbo

[TheEnd]

You do realize that Sety has like 3 chapters of godhood?

Fixed that for you.

After seeing Ninji's playthrough, I'm convinced that FE5!Sety can save even the most hopeless player's endgame.

Edited June 24, 2009 by TheEnd

[Rodykitty]

I haven't played all of FE5 yet, but I actually agree with High Mid based on how I treat Gato-like characters. 3 Chapters of availability > only one, and since I keep hearing that Sety is of no liability and huge benefit, I think his spot is good.

[Rei Rei]

Shouldn't be Halvan higher, as he's one of the few, if not the only unit worth the Hero Axe, and also a damn good unit on it's own?

I could see him switching places with Mareeta, though

Edited June 24, 2009 by Jagi

[General Spoon]

What the hell is Conomore doing at the very bottom? Being route dependent isn't that big of a deal.

Edited June 24, 2009 by Miror B.

[Don Draper]

Havlan is way too low. He's Othin, with better stats and Vantage instead of Wrath. Except that Halvan still has 4 PCR. No Pugi, but that becomes overkill anyways. And Halvan makes the best use of the Hero Axe, killing any enemy before they can kill him. He's top with the rest of the heavy hitters.

[grandjackal]

Uhhh yeah, wtf is Machua doing in upper mid? Lower mid or even low sounds better.

[dondon151]

I didn't see it one the first page, so I made this one.

Your laziness is not an excuse. If you have qualms with the current tier list, post in it.

[Vykan12]

Machua is most certainly not > Karin. That's a major under-estimation of flier utility, particularly when Karin is the only one you have until Dean and Eda IIRC. And as someone else said, Machua isn't that great. Mekkah was pretty spot on with his assessment of her in his character rating topic.

Machua is part of the club that comes to free Leaf from the claws of the empire, and she doesn't seem half bad at it.

Her stat spread is exactly as her initial class suggests: she's got speed, she's got skill, and she's got PCC. 3 of it, to be exact, so she has 10% crit on the first hit and 30% on the second, so a 37% chance to crit at least once. And with her 55% skl growth and the chance to increase it further with the Odo scroll whenever allowed to, that can increase quite rapidly. With just three skl level-ups, she has 13% on her first, 39% on her second and 47% overall chance of critting.

Unfortunately, that chance of critting will quite often be her chance of one-rounding, since her str is quite bad, not getting above 10 until her +3 promotion bonus allows her to. Thankfully, promotion also gives her axes, but those present another problem. She can use an Iron Axe just fine (averages 9.8 at 20/1, and Iron Axe is 10 weight), but from there she has to get her weapon level up in a game where that's quite slowly, and once she can finally use the axes, she realizes that her build sucks too much. She needs every point of speed, not to double, but to avoid. Hand Axe and Hero Axe are fine, that's just 4 avo, but Steel and Hammer just aren't going to work. The same goes for heavier swords, of course.

Because yes, Machua needs her avo. She's going to be using 1-range a lot, and her hp/def aren't exactly stellar. Not outright bad, but enough to get 2-3HKOed by the majority of weapons. Ambush can help her a bit defensively once she gets access to Brave/King Sword...alas, she can't exactly crit her way out of there due to the first hit being capped at 25% crit.

So we have large availability, reasonable offense, but pretty mediocre defense going on. I personally give a lot of weight to durability, because as Dagda demonstrated, killing enemies in one round really isn't that hard, but surviving is. On the plus side, she gives a support to Brighton, who definitely appreciates it. Shame he doesn't give her anything in return.

[Kriemhild]

Sara should go up to top tier.

[Icon of Sin]

I'd say the silent knights trio of the mansion should move down a bit. Definitely below Hicks considering his superior weaponry and availability.

[_____]

I don't see Lara as the second best character, to be honest. First of all, no build whatsoever. I don't care if you can steal if you're made of paper and can only steal Vulneries for your entire exsistence. So, prior to 12x, there's no point in even fielding her after the Manster Escape thing. She's just a burden.

Secondly, E swords sucks pretty badly. Have fun with your Iron and Slim swords. It takes forever to level up weapons in this game, anyway.

And here's the controversial part. Being a dancer. Man, do I feel dancers are overrated.

Lara's going to be one shotted by, like, everything, even seige tomes.

Let's do a chapter-by-chapter analysis.

Chapter 13: Ballistae everywhere. She's toast.

Chapter 14: More ballistae. I guess she can stay by the gate and dance people if you're not going for Resire and the Dragon Lance.

Chapter 14x: FoW, Rewarp Dark Mages, etc. Hell for Lara.

Chapter 15: Alright, Lara does pretty good here. She helps recruit Ralph earlier and stuff like that. It's a very short chapter, though.

Chapter 16A: Shiiiiiiiiit. Eyrios and his Bolting, more Ballistae, and then Conomore rushing you? That's not good for someone as frail as Lara.

Chapter 17A: Cyas and his 10 leadership stars came out to play, and now not only is Lara getting killed by everything, but they have, like, no chance to miss.

(Tbh, I haven't played 16B and 17B, but 17 B looks like hell, as well. Too many ballistae.

Chapter 18: Admittedly useful for nabbing treasure and and recruiting Xavier.

Chapter 19: I guess Lara can help some units escape, but the reinforcements are killers, and she can't get anywhere near the boss.

Chapter 20: Again, pretty good if she sits back and dances for someone so they can attack twice, but don't let her anywhere near the boss. lolreinforcementboltingsandballistae

Chapter 21: Fuck. A huge amount of ballistae, Dragon Knights, and different types of Cavalry attacking from behind.

Chapter 21x: She can help your thieves reach the prisoners before the Drak Mages come, sure, and maybe she can pick a lock or two herself, but the enemies near the boss have Boltings and such, and the boss has a Tornado. Not good.

Chapter 22: lolwarpskip

Chapter 23: She can help make reaching Cyas (and recruiting Sety) quicker, but the ballistae near the boss stop her from getting any farther, and the reinforcement Dark Mages can destroy her.

Chapter 24: Staves, Fenrir, staves, Fenrir, staves, Fenrir. It's terrible. She can help recruit Galzus, I suppose.

Chapter 24x: Why would you go to this nightmare of a chapter?

Endgame: Fenrir bishops everywhere.

As you can see, she's never really that useful as a dancer, as she's killed by everyone and their grandmother, and she fatigues quickly, too. Hell, she loses stats when she promotes to a dancer. She can't steal very well because her build is, well, nonexsistent.

She's way too high.

Sara should go up to top tier.

Ugh, I'm tired of all of this Sara love. She comes 2/3 of the way into the game and underleveled as hell. Her skills are awesome, I admit, and B staves is cool and all, but tell me why she should go above Sleuf, who comes a chapter earlier, and with a higher staff rank, really the only thing they'll ever do?

Edited June 25, 2009 by Ninji

[Kriemhild]

Chapter 20 Bolting users have horrible stats iirc. They're not gonna kill Lara.

[_____]

Even then, reinforcement Ballistae are bitches.

[Swordsalmon]

Hicks>Kein, Alva, Roberto, Xavier,Trewd, and Cyas. Bring him up enormously.

Let's see... an actual support with Leaf, several more chapters of utility (Virtually the entire game in the case of Xavier and Cyas), and has availability to Axes above the Selphina failures. Then of course, he can Brave Axe things to oblivion to make up for lower Speed. He also will have an enormous level advantage from his higher chapter count (And Poleaxing the common mounties ^_^), so he'll promote even earlier. ^_^

Also, Ralph and Glade above those Selphina failures, Dagdar should be considerably higher, Eyvel to the top of Low for being immortal and epic for the first few chapters, and the entire Bottom tier is completely screwed up.

Really, this list is absurdely screwed up, especially if it's considering ranking.

[General Spoon]

Chapter 13: Ballistae everywhere. She's toast.

Of course she's not coming here, nor is any other slow unit. You want to get the fuck to the exit asap.

Chapter 14x: FoW, Rewarp Dark Mages, etc. Hell for Lara.

This chapter is hell for most everyone, for the reasons you listed.

Chapter 17A: Cyas and his 10 leadership stars came out to play, and now not only is Lara getting killed by everything, but they have, like, no chance to miss.

This is a nice chapter to warp skip.

Chapter 21: Fuck. A huge amount of ballistae, Dragon Knights, and different types of Cavalry attacking from behind.

This is also a nice chapter to warp skip.

Chapter 21x: She can help your thieves reach the prisoners before the Drak Mages come, sure, and maybe she can pick a lock or two herself, but the enemies near the boss have Boltings and such, and the boss has a Tornado. Not good.

She can dance a staff user, allowing them to silence two guys with warp staves.

Ugh, I'm tired of all of this Sara love. She comes 2/3 of the way into the game and underleveled as hell. Her skills are awesome, I admit, and B staves is cool and all, but tell me why she should go above Sleuf, who comes a chapter earlier, and with a higher staff rank, really the only thing they'll ever do?

I hear you. She's good, but not what some people make her out to be.

[Yojinbo]

OK, thanks for the input. I'll go into details on your arguments later...here's some stuff.

Karin > Machyua. I can agree on that. But I think you give her a little less credit than she deserves...Ambush, decent bases and an instant support with another good unit - Brigthon - make he better than low-mid or low tier. Karins flying/rescuing utility is still better...

Sara won't move to top unless Sleuf goes top as well, which is out of the question. Even if she joins with a B-rank in staves, she still has to little availability to be top. Sleuf is longer in the party than her and joins with instant Warp utility. Sara is good when she joins but not top tier.

Lara is top tier for sure. With her help you can safe lots of trouble in 12x and you can one or two turn 16A, 17A, 21, 22 and 23 and she makes all the other chapters easier as well. She's always a good unit to have and dance + possible re-move = broken. If she has issues with the occasional ballista just have Karin/mounted unit rescue her.

Halvan will move up, although his growth rates are all lower than Othin's and he can't cover 1-2 range as well as him. Other units can use the Hero Axe too - Brigthon with his guaranteed counter criticals can make short work of many opponents with it. It's not locked to Halvan and should not count exclusively for him. Halvan is still pretty amazing too, especially with his early game utility.

[Mekkah]

Get Conomore out of bottom already. He actually has good offense (Master Lance near-monopoly)/durability for the chapters he's around, and he brings leadership, and high mobility in the few outdoor chapters left.

Marty out of Bottom too. The only period of time where he is bad is between Ch8 and his promotion. Earlygame, he is forced, so he can't really be much of a detriment if at all, plus you'll want to capture stuff with him, or use him to wall of Lifis/Saphy/Archers, perhaps even Leaf.

Then the only thing he needs to get on par is a promotion. When that comes? I'd say start of Ch14 is reasonable, since you have a vast majority of Knight Proofs already then.

He's in four earlygame maps, and then 8, 8x, 9, 10, 11, 12, 12x are available to him...he won't miss anything due to practically never fatiguing, but I can see him being left out sometimes due to inaccuracy, which also hurts his EXP gain when he is fielded. Nonetheless, I think he only needs nine levels to prove my point, so have a 10/1 Marty.

40 hp, 13 str, 6 skl, 7.3 spd, 12.6 def, 10.5 luk, 20 bld

Iron Axe: 22 atk, 77 hit, 7.3 AS -- 40 hp, 12-13 def, 25 avo

His offense is crappy due to low hit, but make no mistake about 7 AS: there's so many scrubs out there that get doubled by it. Never mind possible access to Sety scroll. And his durability is mighty as all hell. It takes 26 atk to 3RKO 12 def Marty, 27 for 13 def Marty. This makes him an excellent chokepoint holder in Ch14, since these Armors are pretty strong. And slow.

He should be above everyone in Low at least, except maybe Eyvel. But Eyvel seems too low anyway.

[_____]

Of course she's not coming here, nor is any other slow unit. You want to get the fuck to the exit asap.

So, she's useless.

This chapter is hell for most everyone, for the reasons you listed.

Doesn't make it any better for Lara.

This is a nice chapter to warp skip.

This is also a nice chapter to warp skip.

Even so, they aren't Chapter 22 or Chpater 24x bad, so we have to see how Lara is doing. It's pretty bad.

She can dance a staff user, allowing them to silence two guys with warp staves.

And when the Dark Mages appear, she's toast.

Lara is top tier for sure. With her help you can safe lots of trouble in 12x and you can one or two turn 16A, 17A, 21, 22 and 23 and she makes all the other chapters easier as well. She's always a good unit to have and dance + possible re-move = broken. If she has issues with the occasional ballista just have Karin/mounted unit rescue her.

So, I'm going to waste another unit's valuable enemy and player phase abilities just to ferry Lara? Also, I pretty much showed that her horrible, horrible durability (lol16H0defenseand0magic. Seriously, what the fuck is up with that shit?) prevents her from being as useful as you seem to believe she is, what with all of the ballistae. I'd much rather just field another character that can fight, and has an actual enemy phase, where 90% of any Fire Emblem's battles occur, than field a terrible character (statistically-speaking. Don't feed me that 3 promotions bullshit, either) just to have another character attack once. I'd like her to be in upper mid, but I know that will probably never happen, so I can see her underneath of Othin, Fin, and Asvel for now.

[Don Draper]

Counter to Lara being useless. Posted on gamefaqs by skadabra65

Now, dancing in FE5 is much more useful than in say FE7, because there is, umm, a much wider range of reasons to dance, you are not confined to simply giving a fighter unit another turn. I'll have to go chapter by chapter since it's very situational.

13 - this is quite important for a good advance on the first turn. The ballista at the top can be attacked with a range 2 weapon, but no one can actually get to it in time, so normally it would be a pain. With Lara, you can dance Leaf, Nanna, etc. into range 2 of it to kill it. This allows the rest of the party to advance, and whoever got the ballista can also handle the bow knights on the enemy phase. The ballista at the top is out of range to attack. Karin would be able to take care of that, except she cannot safely reach the ballista - it is range 10, and Karin has 8 move: the closest safe spot is 11 squares away and if she charges the ballista from there she ends up 3 squares away which is still in range. With Lara, she can go to 10 squares of the ballista, Lara steps to 11 squares away, refreshes Karin, and the turn ends with both of them safe: Lara outside the ballista's range and Karin inside it. Karin then kills the ballista on the next two turns. Alternatively if Karin has enough strength she can just 2HKO the thing and then you don't need to be as careful about positioning. Lara is fragile, but you can and should stick a guy on the bow knight reinforcement spot anyway, then Karin can fly her into the escape square.

This is of course not all required but it does make things easier to not have to deal with ballistas shooting at you on every turn. Plus you have to kill the one on the bottom anyway since most of the party cannot take two ballista shots without dying.

14 - Safy is most likely the only one with a B or above rank in staves at this point. Meaning Lara is required in order to get the Dragon Lance since Safy needs to pull off a Warp and a Rescue in one turn or Dean will be annihilated. Also this should be done early since there is only a window of a few turns for Dean to break out of the city and go towards the village with Resire. Also, your supply of vulneraries not being infinite, you will want the 3 defenders to be healed via staff. However, the healers are all somewhat fragile and if they heal a defender they will end up within range 2 of the enemy. Therefore the best healer in this chapter is Nanna, who can provide Charisma, and on every turn heal someone and return to her original position. Safy gives Nanna an extra turn of healing each time, or she can refresh a healer who is currently within range of the enemy (because they just healed) to let the healer get to safety. Trying to accomplish the same thing via rescuing and dropping is quite tricky because you have very little room to maneuver.

14x - useless

15 - whichever flyer is carrying Leaf gets there that much faster. I'm not sure if you can save the top village without Lara, you might do it with a re-move but the percentage chance of that is low.

16A - shouldn't be too useful here.

17A - when ranking is concerned, it really helps to be able to warp the assassin to kill the boss and warp Leaf to take the throne in the same turn since the assassin will have to take quite some hits otherwise, although this depends on how awesome your assassin is by the point. Without Warp you are basically doomed to have to face Cyas.

18 - The chest on the top left should be reachable in time; the thief gets there first but you can block him from getting to the exit and then capture him. The Body ring needs the thief staff to be gotten. But Lara can be very useful in letting you block the dark mage reinforcement point. If they start showing up and rewarping all over the place things get more complicated (then again, you may want them to show up so you can pick up some Rewarp staves). Also, again, you can pull the double warp trick again to kill Gustav and get Leaf to the throne in the same turn, although it is not as important here since the assassin will be standing on an evade boosting square so you can settle for sending Leaf in on the following turn.

19 - not too useful here, but no one is particularly useful here anyway - the only thing to do is run.

20 - not too useful here

21 - this chapter is really a pain unless you just assassinate the boss and warp Leaf to the castle (this should be in the same turn BTW, there's 3 ballistas and quite a few enemies around there). The number of ballistas is enormous and there is basically no way to easily proceed without waiting them all out. You do have Sleuf by this point and probably Sara, but fatigue being what it is, Lara acts as a stand-in staff user so you can let people rest.

21x - saves quite a few turns and possibly items since Tina probably needs a holy water in order to steal Warp staves, but the effect of that wears off with time. You also need some fast Rescues.

22 - Very important. You want to 1) get a magic boost on Tina 2) steal Coen's Berserk staff 3) warp a unit over to make Cyas leave, this will probably be Olwen if I am right about unit placement being the only factor 4) rescue the unit back all in the same turn. Lara makes this easier since otherwise you need... 1 M Up staff user, 1 Tina, 1 Warp user, 1 Rescue user all at the same time. Lara can stand in for any of them other than Tina.

23 - I don't really feel like typing any more other than to say that Tina is really useful in 24 and 24x because you need a really big round 1 assault in both maps (in 24 it's to neutralize the Schwarze Rosen and in 24x it's to storm the middle room, both cases it's because of enemy status staves).