~ FE5 Tier List ~

[Robert]

How is Conomore the worst unit in the game? What? He has auto A in swords AND lances so he can use master/hero weapons for the rest of the outdoor chapters, and the indoor ones. Eda or Miranda should be the worst

[Robert]

Dalsin dominates the manster chapters and the indoor chapters, and he has B in axes and joins when you get the Sety scroll and possibly leg ring.

[Yojinbo]

Conomore will rise and so will Eyvel. Conomore will still stay bottom though. Also, the reasons for Dalshin to rise are pretty poor. He sucks in every other chapter and he isn't really that good in the prison anyways...

[_____]

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.

So, it's a tl;dr way of saying "Hey, Lara can help kill 2 Ballistae." Best character in the chapter, amirite?

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.

Fine.

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.

All villages can be saved without Lara. I already pointed out that she speeds up this chapter.

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.

So, Lara's doing nothing along with everyone who isn't a Priest/Leaf/one other guy.

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.

Already noted she could help make grabbing items easier. Also, Rewarp staves are easy money, so I don't see stopping the Dark Mages from coming as a positive, especially since anyone can do it.

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.

By that point, you not only have Sleuf and Sara, but you also have Tina, Safy, and maybe even Nanna. It's nearly impossible for all of them to be fatigued during this chapter. Lara can do that, fine, but it's probably more efficient just to field two staff users.

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.

Same situation as last chapter. Points for helping Tina, I suppose.

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.

Same as the last two, but it's still a minor plus.

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).

How the hell is she helping to take on the Schwarze Rosen? It's impossible to even reach the room they're in without a Warp staff, and you can just warp Sety over to take out the Berserk staff mage, and then handle the rest. Also, why the fuck would you even mention 24x if you've been saying "oh, we're warp skipping half of the chapters in the 2nd half of the game"?

The only new things you've brought to this discussion are the Dragon Lance and Resire, and the fact that she can stand in for a staff user, which barely matters since you already have a fuckton of staff users, and Lara fatigues as easily as they do. Being useless nearly half of the time < Top Tier.

[Don Draper]

This tier list really needs too many changes to list them all. Can't we just take an ordered ranking of Mekkah's character ratings, and work from there (Ex: Lower characters with worse availablity)?

[Mekkah]

Also, the reasons for Dalshin to rise are pretty poor. He sucks in every other chapter and he isn't really that good in the prison anyways...

Excellent back-up to your claims here, bud. I agree Dalshien is pretty bad in outdoor maps, but for indoors he is acceptable, and he's actually very useful in Manster.

Dalshin*

"What? There's children in this dungeon I'm in charge of? I didn't know, I'll join your cause!"

As you'd probably expect, Dalshien is high in the manly stats (hp/str/def/bld), and low in the others (skl/spd/luk/mov). That's okay though, we love durable units, since offensive issues are easier to fix than defensive ones. And even if you don't fix them, all you have to do is just face a ton of enemies without dying to make up for it compared to someone who can only kill two enemies before dying.

Dalshien has a bit of trouble getting more exposal though. When he just joins, it's fine, since half of your team is forced to have his movement (Fergus, Brighton, Karin, and then for a short time Nanna), and most of the foot ones only have like one more movement than he does. And he's in pretty high demand when he joins anyway, with Brighton not being able to tank everything on his own. And even Dalshien takes some pretty hefty hits from those Battle Axe Armors, and he sure as hell hates Mages.

The first thing you want to do is get the Brave Axe to him: put it on Leaf/Lifis before seizing Ch3, then grab the chest it's in in Ch4. Maybe an Iron Axe too, if you have the room for it. Every bit of hit is welcome, because boy Battle and Hand Axes suck at hitting. This way, he can ORKO pretty much everything you come across indoors, and while he was already OHKOing Mages, now he can actually try twice before just failing and getting hit by something that nearly 2HKOs him. And of course, it helps you capturing.

When you go outside, problems start arising. Competition for axes pops up everywhere: first Brighton mounts himself and asks why Dalshien is keeping those pretty axes all for himself, then Hicks joins the party and wonders the same thing. And before long Othin and Halvan return. And then Marty, but I guess we don't care much about him...Dagda is viable though. And Dalshien certainly needs special axes to stand out, because his AS is just terrible. Fails to double 0 AS enemies until 13/0 on average, though Sety scroll can amend it a bit. After he promotes, he can double joke enemies with that 8 AS of his (more like 9-10 with Sety scroll), so I _suppose_ he does alright there. But before that +2 bonus, he has heavy offense troubles.

And movement issues too. From here out, you'll want to field people with 6-8 movement indoors, and ones with 7-9 outdoors, which leaves Dalshien hanging with his 5 movement.

Thankfully, his amazing durability keeps him from being a complete failure. His def isn't really going to improve much actually...it happens to be his second-lowest growth, behind mag. But that's okay, his base is awesome. But for some reason, this game likes to throw Hammers on a lot of random enemies...and Dalshien is literally the only unit who gets hit super effective by these. This is the only game where carrying an armor around hurts this much...come on, 24 might Hammers? Go away. Magic remaining common hurts him quite a bit too, also because magic users will always outrange him, so he never gets to go up at them and KO them before they can touch him.

If you want to use Dalshien seriously (like, after you're being given the option not to bring him along), I'd recommend Wrath on him. The Brave Axe doesn't last forever, plus Halvan and some others are really good at using that. Wrath allows him to just counterkill on enemy phase, pretty much the best way to put his durability to good use. Another way to help his offense is Sety scroll, but he's going to need tons of level-ups with it. Wrath is a hefty resource use alone - it's difficult to justify that AND that amazing movement ring. You can't really carry Dalshien around with a mount without cutting their move in half either, and at some point his build will max out and he cannot even be carried anymore.

5/10

[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.

???

[Yojinbo]

That looks like a solid description of Dalshien although I think 5 is a tad too high ... I never got the idea to use the Hero Axe though ... I'm gonna do that next time ^^

[Renall]

Conomore will rise and so will Eyvel. Conomore will still stay bottom though. Also, the reasons for Dalshin to rise are pretty poor. He sucks in every other chapter and he isn't really that good in the prison anyways...

If your sole reasoning for Conomore's low placement is route dependency, you need to get over that real quick, because route dependency has been roundly discredited in nearly every tier list debate I have ever seen: Karel and Harken (Harken still wins, but Karel is not auto-bottom just because he precludes a better unit), Olwen and Eyrios (the debate around them has always been more about whether Olwen's personals and potential are better than Eyrios's solid bases and high weapon ranks, and their placement usually reflects this closeness), Sety and Cyas (Cyas is not bottom tier just because Sety is better, especially given what he offers), Echidna and Bartre (lol who cares).

He's not a bad unit. He's not a great unit, but he's not bad by any means. And a free leadership star isn't unwelcome when he's fielded, as it means he can be useful without doing a goddamn thing. That's never going to be Bottom material.

Lara is not the 2nd best unit in the game. Dancers are massively overrated. But she's not a bad unit either. So I'd not say she should plummet as such. But she needs to go down.

[Yojinbo]

I updated the list. Keep input coming...

If your sole reasoning for Conomore's low placement is route dependency, you need to get over that real quick, because route dependency has been roundly discredited in nearly every tier list debate I have ever seen: Karel and Harken (Harken still wins, but Karel is not auto-bottom just because he precludes a better unit), Olwen and Eyrios (the debate around them has always been more about whether Olwen's personals and potential are better than Eyrios's solid bases and high weapon ranks, and their placement usually reflects this closeness), Sety and Cyas (Cyas is not bottom tier just because Sety is better, especially given what he offers), Echidna and Bartre (lol who cares).

The difference between Conomore vs Sleuf to let's say Cyas vs Sety is that Cyas vs Sety is a win/win situation. You decide to use Sety? That's awesome you get a rape unit. You decide not to use Sety? That's still good, Cyas is quite good after all.

Conomore vs Sleuf is a different story although I got your point

I will probably move him up...

Lara is not the 2nd best unit in the game. Dancers are massively overrated. But she's not a bad unit either. So I'd not say she should plummet as such. But she needs to go down.

Already done.

[Mekkah]

You're overrating Sleuf in importance for the route split. You have quite a lot of staves available, at least one of them at A, plus there's Lara to make her move again. And the non-Sleuf route has the advantage of Bargain.

[Yojinbo]

Only one A-staff user can still cause issues with the fatigue system ... otherwiswe Sleuf wouldn't be high. I'll probably put him lower though.

[Don Draper]

Alright, glad to see progress is being made.

Mareeta is way too high though. Overkill offense in a game where killing the enemy is trivial and bad defense don't really make that great a character. She also comes somewhat late with a weak start. Definitely below Homer, who should move up thanks to Elite and Resire removing his durability problems.

Fergus is also curiously low. Care to explain why he isn't higher in High tier?

[dondon151]

Guys why don't we amend the old tier list instead of this one

[Mekkah]

Yeah, that is less work by far.

[Renall]

You're overrating Sleuf in importance for the route split. You have quite a lot of staves available, at least one of them at A, plus there's Lara to make her move again. And the non-Sleuf route has the advantage of Bargain.

You get Bargain via Shanam, one more character than the other route if you keep Olwen (sort of, and it's Miranda so who gives a shit), access to more staves of certain types (but fewer Warps, I believe?), Luna manual instead of Sol, and a second Pugi. Certainly the stuff you can get from the other route (Warps, Sleep Swords, Sleuf and Eyrios) is also good. I don't think I'd say one choice is clearly better, but even if it were, I'm uncomfortable with ranking people in tier lists just because they're mutually exclusive with one another.

The only good example I can think of here is: Theoretically, it's possible for a replacement in FE4 (say Laylea for her Charisma) is better than some version of one of the children from that mother (Levin!Corple or something). Obviously Laylea is not below Levin!Leen just because not pairing Sylvia denies you the theoretical best Corple. Laylea is a better unit.

That's sort of a crap example but I don't own FEDS so I can't give some other example with those characters who replace others. Karel/Harken is I guess still the best I can offer.

[General Spoon]

What's Felgus doing so damn low?

And yes, I think we should improve the old tier list instead. Or, someone could merge the topics, and then we'd have to update the old one :)

Edited June 27, 2009 by Miror B.

[Don Draper]

This tier list is now in the OP

Edited July 1, 2009 by IOS

[Dr. Tarrasque]

On IOS' tier list, Shanam > Selphina instantly.

[Yojinbo]

Conomore/Eda > Eyvel?

[Don Draper]

You're actually right, Eda needs to move to at least the bottom of low. Conomore has a leadership star, nice starting weapon ranks, and passable starting stats. Although he probably has less overall chapters of worth (Eyvel has 4, Conomore probably has less), so yes he should probably go down.

I don't really see any worth in Shanam because buying things is pretty questionable in FE5.

Edited June 29, 2009 by IOS

[Robert]

Either Eda or Miranda (probably miranda) should be at rock bottom. Ronan has availability, marty is dagdar-capture and decent after promotion, and shanan has bargain which is all better than what they are doing underleveled on late chapters.

[Don Draper]

Your reasons for other units being ahead of Miranda/Eda are very vague (Who cares if Ronan has availability, he's terrible for every chapter he's in). However, they are going into bottom tier, and Marty is going out of it (For reasons that Mekkah outlined earlier in the topic.

As for Selphina, I really need to know why exactly she's worse then somebody like Tanya.

Edited June 29, 2009 by IOS

[Yojinbo]

I put the list IOS posted into the OP...so do we need to re-arrange bottom tier now?

[Robert]

Miranda should be the worst unit. She joins on chapter 16, on level 5, with atrocious bases. Not to mention you miss Eyrios on the better route