FE7 HHM Ranked Tier List

[Narga_Rocks]

This isn't a "who's best to use" tier list, or else Hector wouldn't be tiered either. It's a "who helps most with S-ranking" tier list.

Mekkah's post seems to indicate he knows that.

Still, even in the case of a "who's best to use" tier list you could still tier Hector because the player would need to decide how worthwhile giving Hector experience is. There is a great difference between Hector and FE SD Marth.

[CATS]

I don't even know how to put in words how stupid tiering Merlinus is. Why exactly do you want him tiered? So you can just make the tier list way more complicated then it has to be? Do you really want to see Raven vs. Merlinus comparisons? Its a waste of time. If Merlinus was Upper Mid, its not like somebody reading the list is going to say "Guess I'm going to use High tier characters instead of Merlinus now!"

Is the "completeness" of the tier list that important to you all? Honestly.

I don't understand your complaint. Those who don't want to talk about Merlinus don't have to. I hardly see how it's a "waste of time"; it's still tier discussion, so unless you think tier list topics are a waste of time in general, I don't really see where you're coming from.

[Colonel M]

A Merlinus > Rebecca argument is not difficult. Although it would require that you assume "Send to Merlinus" counts as using Merlinus first, so I guess there wouldn't be much point in discussing it until that is settled.

Assume, in a hypothetical sense (and by this I am not saying I will abide by it just yet) that you can. Let's see if you can actually fabricate this argument.

Apparently Inui can't do it, so I'd like to see it from you instead.

Edited February 26, 2010 by Colonel M

[Reikken]

Mekkah's post seems to indicate he knows that.

My post wasn't to Mekkah.

[Narga_Rocks]

My post wasn't to Mekkah.

IOS then? Somehow his is the only post in the last 5 or so pages that I somehow missed so I didn't think of it at the time. Sorry.

Edited February 26, 2010 by Narga_Rocks

[Crimson_Edge]

Merlinus is the only unit who comes back to life after dying. The game box says that units not coming back to life makes FE unique. The game box > this discussion. Merlinus shouldn't be tiered.

[frat_tastic]

It's not hard to fabricate a Merlinus>Rebecca argument. It's not hard to create any of these arguments, because the criteria for the list is stupidly simple (which is a good thing)- How do the playable units contribute to S-Ranking HHM?

All we'd have to do is weigh Merlinus's contributions to the ranks of HHM compared to Rebecca's. Rebecca will easily win EXP for instance, while Merlinus will contribute more to the funds rank and make the Survival rank easier to S-Rank. Rebecca eventually wins combat, but she drags it down at the beginning, although I suppose thats better than Merlinus never helping it.

And then comes the part where tier list discussion always happens, how much is each contribution worth? I'm more inclined to say that Merlinus's funds rank contribution is more significant than Rebecca's EXP rank contribution, etc.

The problem with this argument is that people don't think that Merlinus counts as a "unit" for some silly reason. He is controlled by the player, has to be deployed (with no cost, which is just a positive for him, not something that doesn't make him a unit), levels up, can move on the map, and has support conversations. FE6 and FE7 are unique in that they made your convoy a separate, deployable unit. This should be reflected in their respective tier lists based on the criteria of said list. Under this lists criteria, I would say Merlinus's contributions to the Ranks when weighed against his negative aspects would put him somewhere in Upper Mid or High tier. This shouldn't even be a question of "should we tier Merlinus" it should be "where should we tier Merlinus". He is a playable character, thus needs to be tiered just like the rest of them.

[Narga_Rocks]

It's not hard to fabricate a Merlinus>Rebecca argument. It's not hard to create any of these arguments, because the criteria for the list is stupidly simple (which is a good thing)- How do the playable units contribute to S-Ranking HHM?

All we'd have to do is weigh Merlinus's contributions to the ranks of HHM compared to Rebecca's. Rebecca will easily win EXP for instance, while Merlinus will contribute more to the funds rank and make the Survival rank easier to S-Rank. Rebecca eventually wins combat, but she drags it down at the beginning, although I suppose thats better than Merlinus never helping it.

And then comes the part where tier list discussion always happens, how much is each contribution worth? I'm more inclined to say that Merlinus's funds rank contribution is more significant than Rebecca's EXP rank contribution, etc.

The problem with this argument is that people don't think that Merlinus counts as a "unit" for some silly reason. He is controlled by the player, has to be deployed (with no cost, which is just a positive for him, not something that doesn't make him a unit), levels up, can move on the map, and has support conversations. FE6 and FE7 are unique in that they made your convoy a separate, deployable unit. This should be reflected in their respective tier lists based on the criteria of said list. Under this lists criteria, I would say Merlinus's contributions to the Ranks when weighed against his negative aspects would put him somewhere in Upper Mid or High tier. This shouldn't even be a question of "should we tier Merlinus" it should be "where should we tier Merlinus". He is a playable character, thus needs to be tiered just like the rest of them.

Isn't he rather similar to a Defend square for a while, though? There are differences, sure, like the stats that give you a better argument, but there are similarities as well. You don't want the enemies getting to him or you lose (something). You either lose the map or you lose the ability to send stuff to the convoy, but either way something is lost. For a while there he's just a convoy that is so bad that it has to be on the field to pick stuff up. Until he promotes the difference between him and a defend tile in another game (like fe9 where the convoy is off the field) aren't very significant.

[Colonel M]

It's not hard to fabricate a Merlinus>Rebecca argument. It's not hard to create any of these arguments, because the criteria for the list is stupidly simple (which is a good thing)- How do the playable units contribute to S-Ranking HHM?

All we'd have to do is weigh Merlinus's contributions to the ranks of HHM compared to Rebecca's. Rebecca will easily win EXP for instance, while Merlinus will contribute more to the funds rank and make the Survival rank easier to S-Rank. Rebecca eventually wins combat, but she drags it down at the beginning, although I suppose thats better than Merlinus never helping it.

How does Merlinus contribute more to the funds rank and Survival Rank? Because in Funds he doesn't swallow a resource?

And then comes the part where tier list discussion always happens, how much is each contribution worth? I'm more inclined to say that Merlinus's funds rank contribution is more significant than Rebecca's EXP rank contribution, etc.

Except as people say: funds rank is a joke. EXP rank, on the other hand, is something that is needed at all times. Rebecca contributes to that.

The problem with this argument is that people don't think that Merlinus counts as a "unit" for some silly reason. He is controlled by the player, has to be deployed (with no cost, which is just a positive for him, not something that doesn't make him a unit), levels up, can move on the map, and has support conversations. FE6 and FE7 are unique in that they made your convoy a separate, deployable unit. This should be reflected in their respective tier lists based on the criteria of said list. Under this lists criteria, I would say Merlinus's contributions to the Ranks when weighed against his negative aspects would put him somewhere in Upper Mid or High tier. This shouldn't even be a question of "should we tier Merlinus" it should be "where should we tier Merlinus". He is a playable character, thus needs to be tiered just like the rest of them.

Except this is the problem: he doesn't contribute to ranks whatsoever. The only one you can, literally, fabricate is that he doesn't eat up a resource, which is one of those "big deal" situations.

[frat_tastic]

I mean if you want to look at it that way, every unit is essentially a defend square, and even more so than Merlinus (other than the fact that they move, and he only moves in the lategame) since if they die, you either get a game over or HAVE to reset since you won't be S-Ranking Survival now.

I see what you're saying, but Merlinus has so much more in common with a unit than with a defend square, or a terrain tile, or whatever other inanimate object can be thought of, that he should count as a player unit, and thus be tiered. He's listed under your units under the unit menu, he has stats, he even has support conversations with people. He definitely counts as a unit and units get tiered. He's not an exception.

EDIT: Merlinus is just as much responsible for making Funds a joke as Matthew. Matthew gets you the means to start making funds a joke by stealing the Silver Card. Merlinus finishes it by allowing you to keep enough items to make the rank a joke.

Edited February 26, 2010 by frat_tastic

[Colonel M]

I mean if you want to look at it that way, every unit is essentially a defend square, and even more so than Merlinus (other than the fact that they move, and he only moves in the lategame) since if they die, you either get a game over or HAVE to reset since you won't be S-Ranking Survival now.

Technically, he CAN force a restart. Assume the scenario of Chapter 14 for example when shopping. If he dies, we cannot buy more than 5 items with Marcus.

[frat_tastic]

That doesn't force a restart at all. Yeah, it sucks, and you might want to consider restarting to purchase more items, but it doesn't FORCE anything. On this list, any other unit dying DOES force a restart so you can S-Rank Survival.

[Colonel M]

That doesn't force a restart at all. Yeah, it sucks, and you might want to consider restarting to purchase more items, but it doesn't FORCE anything. On this list, any other unit dying DOES force a restart so you can S-Rank Survival.

I guess in this scenario, you are right. But him dying is still a negative, which is my point.

EDIT: Merlinus is just as much responsible for making Funds a joke as Matthew. Matthew gets you the means to start making funds a joke by stealing the Silver Card. Merlinus finishes it by allowing you to keep enough items to make the rank a joke.

Except Matthew actually contributes to more than just the Funds Rank. He's an actual combat unit. What is Merlinus doing?

Edited February 26, 2010 by Colonel M

[CATS]

Assume, in a hypothetical sense (and by this I am not saying I will abide by it just yet) that you can. Let's see if you can actually fabricate this argument.

Apparently Inui can't do it, so I'd like to see it from you instead.

You know why the silver card is so good? Because you can spam that 30K gold in Battle Preparations for huge funds rank boosting. This can't be done without Merlinus on the map, or can't be done quite so easily. The most expensive thing you can buy there is Elixir, but it's still 20 of those to eat up the 30K and give you the full doubled funds effect, and every unit needs to have silver card in their inventory while buying, so each unit can only buy 4 with the card. That's 5 units to buy all those elixirs. And in reality it'll be more than that, since you'll earn a little extra from the arena during the chapter, and will likely have some more left over from earlier in the game.

Meanwhile, you want to use the arena on every turn, as much as possible, which requires a complicated set-up involving 2 or 3 fighters, a healer for each one, and mounts to rescue people. Let's see if I can work out how much you can use the arena......

1 guy goes in and fights

1 guy rescues him and moves away

1 guy uses take/drop

1 guy heals

repeat

1 guy goes in and fights

1 guy heals, next turn, last guy can just fight again

So that's 3 times per turn with everyone contributing on every turn. You'll have 2 units left over to go buy stuff without interrupting your arena use. Not enough to buy all those elixirs. And keep in mind those things are pretty worthless, if you wanted to buy some reavers or silvers that will actually help you with Tactics or something, you'll need more spots to hold everything. You have to sacrifice some arena use for more people to go over to the shop and buy elixirs.

Throw in Merlinus, now those two units left over can easily buy everything you need and just send the massive surplus to him when their inventories get full.

Now that's just one specific chapter. Let's consider other chapters in general; being able to send shit to Merlinus lets your units walk around with a full inventory of equipment and not worry about having to discard something when an enemy drops an item. This is especially notable after promotion when mostly everyone has atleast 2 weapon types and pallies have 3, and when your magicians now have a wide variety of different staves they want to carry in addition to their tomes (on CoD for example, you want Barrier, Restore, Physic, and Mend at a very minimum). You can't always control who those random enemy drops will go to, since sometimes they'll be counter-killed on the enemy phase, and being able to kill them with anyone without losing the item helps anyways. You can also now have a random fighter like Kent hold a chest key, hold 4 weapons, and grab a chest without having to discard for the item, allowing you to clear chests in multiple locations without fielding two thieves or other units specifically for that purpose, etc.

Basically, Merlinus has a measurable contribution in general. To what exact rank it goes to is hard to determine, since it can benefit multiple ranks depending on how you would choose to handle situations without him (for example if you buy the elixirs in exchange for less arena use in 31x, then Merlinus being present would help Exp, if not, then Merlinus being present would help Funds, etc).

What does Rebecca do? She is your worst unit in 12, 13 and 13x and probably gets benched after that. She is a weak fighter, mediocre at best, and there is little reason to use her. She wins those 3 early chapters, but Merlinus wins the rest of the game after that.

[frat_tastic]

I guess in this scenario, you are right. But him dying is still a negative, which is my point.

Except Matthew actually contributes to more than just the Funds Rank. He's an actual combat unit. What is Merlinus doing?

Sure it's a negative, just not nearly as bad as someone else dying.

And obviously, he's sitting there not fighting. Which is part of the reason why Matthew is top tier and Merlinus clearly isn't, duh.

[Colonel M]

Sure it's a negative, just not nearly as bad as someone else dying.

And obviously, he's sitting there not fighting. Which is part of the reason why Matthew is top tier and Merlinus clearly isn't, duh.

Think about this very carefully.

Matthew can fight. This means he can actually contribute to one of every rank... I guess barring Survival, but that rank is only discussed in detrimental situations. While Ninian / Nils cannot fight, they can at least contribute to EXP and Tactics. You could argue Survival in some situations (i.e. using a Dancer to make the unit move away from danger).

Because Merlinus cannot fight, he literally contributes very little, if at all. He cannot dance a unit. He cannot heal a unit. What he does is simply allow us to carry 5 items.

[frat_tastic]

And allows us to S-Rank funds by allowing us to send him massive amounts of items. Without Merlinus, S-Ranking funds becomes extremely difficult, because now we have no way of amassing items in a simple fashion. It now involves deploying units solely for the purpose of purchasing items, and then it is long and tedious and starts to tank the Tactics rank.

Sure, Merlinus doesn't contribute to every rank in a seemingly obvious way like Matthew does. However he does contribute to all of them (maybe sans combat, but lolcombat) in minor, non-obvious ways that CATS pointed out, and then his huge, massive contribution that allows us to easily S-Rank funds makes him Upper Mid, High tier easily. Not top, duh, I've stated that since the beginning of this whole thing.

Edited February 26, 2010 by frat_tastic

[CATS]

Because Merlinus cannot fight, he literally contributes very little, if at all. He cannot dance a unit. He cannot heal a unit. What he does is simply allow us to carry 5 items.

And it's both entirely unique/irreplaceable and also useful, therefore still better than units who suck or are just mediocre at best.

[Inui]

This isn't a "who's best to use" tier list, or else Hector wouldn't be tiered either. It's a "who helps most with S-ranking" tier list.

Indeed.

Apparently Inui can't do it, so I'd like to see it from you instead.

I can. I just know you don't care about what I say since you and most of SF hates me. It's okay, I'm bound to be banned with the new rookie moderators in place. XD

Matthew can fight. This means he can actually contribute to one of every rank... I guess barring Survival, but that rank is only discussed in detrimental situations. While Ninian / Nils cannot fight, they can at least contribute to EXP and Tactics. You could argue Survival in some situations (i.e. using a Dancer to make the unit move away from danger).

His contributions to other ranks come in the form of Funds and carrying items. Is that hard to see?

Because Merlinus cannot fight, he literally contributes very little, if at all. He cannot dance a unit. He cannot heal a unit. What he does is simply allow us to carry 5 items.

I believe CATS clearly demonstrated that Merlinus's contributions are significant.

[Interceptor]

Oh sure, X+N differences is great, fair game. If you want to take it that far, you can. Draw the line wherever you want.

I appreciate your blessing in this, of course, but whether I can or cannot do something isn't really subject to your approval.

I'm simply in favor of including as many units as makes sense. Why leave anyone out? More units makes for a more interesting list.

You are making the argument for me. If more is better from the perspective of being interesting, there's should be no objection to tiering Fort, Arena, Peak, and all of their friends.

What makes sense is only a matter of perspective to a small degree. Even you can see that your ULE stuff makes no sense; you're just doing it for the sake of argument.

What makes you so sure about that?

They're very clearly not player units. Common sense is a large part of the difference between human thought and machines. We're all humans here. Don't act like we can't use common sense.

Merlinus is not a player unit, either, by a number of measures.

You mention "common sense", but do not get into specifics. You don't make any arguments about, for instance, the logistics of putting terrain tiles on the list, or concerns about comparisons, you just declare that it's common sense that we can't do it. The only conclusion that I can draw from this, is that your idea of "common" sense is simply what you yourself see as reasonable.

Also, Int's logic has some flaws. The tiles lack levels, growth rates (stats at all, actually), and individuality. You can't tier, say, fort. That would be akin to tiering myrmidons/swordmasters as one entity.

This is not a flaw in my logic, since my logic was not that terrain tiles are equal to units. They are Unit-Like Entities, or ULEs for short. Inherent in the description is that they are not units, they only resemble them in some aspect or another. Merlinus is also a ULE.

You would have to tier every tile in the game. Do you realize how pointless it would be to tier every single grass tile in the game when they literally make no difference?

Indeed, I am pretty confident that Plains would be Bottom tier. However, Arena would be pretty high, and I'm sure that some average-value could be figured out for situational-but-common tiles such as Forest.

This isn't a "who's best to use" tier list, or else Hector wouldn't be tiered either. It's a "who helps most with S-ranking" tier list.

This is an excellent reason to tier the Arena. It gives you leeway on Funds, and provides CEXP above and beyond the default available for combatants.

[CATS]

Merlinus is not a player unit, either, by a number of measures.

The measures required to define Forest as a PC are greater in number, more complicated, or simply more far-fetched than the measures required to define Merlinus as a PC. Hence, we can see that tiering Merlinus should not immediately lead to the conclusion that Forest is therefore also a PC.

[Colonel M]

And it's both entirely unique/irreplaceable and also useful, therefore still better than units who suck or are just mediocre at best.

He doesn't even follow the normal characteristics of a unit:

Merlinus is the only unit who comes back to life after dying. The game box says that units not coming back to life makes FE unique. The game box > this discussion. Merlinus shouldn't be tiered.

His contributions to other ranks come in the form of Funds and carrying items. Is that hard to see?

They're so minuscule if you can even accredit him to it. Remember that I still didn't give the flag of "we're crediting him for Sending". I asked for a hypothetical comparison.

I believe CATS clearly demonstrated that Merlinus's contributions are significant.

Hardly. He probably contributes on maps that allow us to buy things and that's about it. Are we freaking serious that we're going to tier some dumbshit of a unit that just carries 100 items? Why don't we credit Hector for seizing while we're at it.

And allows us to S-Rank funds by allowing us to send him massive amounts of items. Without Merlinus, S-Ranking funds becomes extremely difficult, because now we have no way of amassing items in a simple fashion. It now involves deploying units solely for the purpose of purchasing items, and then it is long and tedious and starts to tank the Tactics rank.

Either way you had to actually field units and they're the ones buying the items. Now do we credit Geitz for buying us 2 Swordreavers!?!

Sure, Merlinus doesn't contribute to every rank in a seemingly obvious way like Matthew does. However he does contribute to all of them (maybe sans combat, but lolcombat) in minor, non-obvious ways that CATS pointed out, and then his huge, massive contribution that allows us to easily S-Rank funds makes him Upper Mid, High tier easily. Not top, duh, I've stated that since the beginning of this whole thing.

Most units can at least contribute to a rank in an obvious way. There are minor, minor, exceptions to such rule. He's holding items. Again, how about I credit Marcus for holding 5 items after he isn't deployed.

You know why the silver card is so good? Because you can spam that 30K gold in Battle Preparations for huge funds rank boosting. This can't be done without Merlinus on the map, or can't be done quite so easily. The most expensive thing you can buy there is Elixir, but it's still 20 of those to eat up the 30K and give you the full doubled funds effect, and every unit needs to have silver card in their inventory while buying, so each unit can only buy 4 with the card. That's 5 units to buy all those elixirs. And in reality it'll be more than that, since you'll earn a little extra from the arena during the chapter, and will likely have some more left over from earlier in the game.

Then how about we credit said units for buying trivial things such as Elixirs. Merlinus just holds the damn items. ANY UNIT CAN HOLD A DAMN ITEM!

So that's 3 times per turn with everyone contributing on every turn. You'll have 2 units left over to go buy stuff without interrupting your arena use. Not enough to buy all those elixirs. And keep in mind those things are pretty worthless, if you wanted to buy some reavers or silvers that will actually help you with Tactics or something, you'll need more spots to hold everything. You have to sacrifice some arena use for more people to go over to the shop and buy elixirs.

Throw in Merlinus, now those two units left over can easily buy everything you need and just send the massive surplus to him when their inventories get full.

This sounds eerily similar to making it be more "story-like" than an actual contribution. Once again, Merlinus is not buying said items to begin with, it's the two units that are running around fetching the item. Without them, said Merlinus cannot hold said items. So now do we credit those two units for buying the shit?

Your argument basically hinges on the fact that the units that are buying these items are sending the items. Yes, I will admit that Merlinus can hold 100 items. We get the picture. Is it so fucking gamebreaking that we have to be narcissistic with tiering the unit?

[Inui]

Wow @ Colonel M.

In fact, wow @ SF in general. It's like a new concept or idea can't be handled here and it makes people explode into raging elitists and tyrants or something. I made a totally legit argument that Priscilla may not be top tier, and it was met with nothing but flames and trolling until someone else finally stepped up to agree with me. That seems to be the trend here. We have someone likening Merlinus to map tiles, despite the very clear differences that have been pointed out. Then we have someone else just saying "well it makes me mad" or something with regards to tiering Merlinus.

The fact that we must convince Colonel M of something in order to make a change is quite bothersome.

[CATS]

He doesn't even follow the normal characteristics of a unit

Yeah, if you think he's not a unit, that's a totally different argument. You asked me to provide an argument under the assumption that he is in fact a unit and X are his contributions, which I am attempting to do.

Then how about we credit said units for buying trivial things such as Elixirs. Merlinus just holds the damn items. ANY UNIT CAN HOLD A DAMN ITEM!

THAT'S NOT THE POINT!

Merlinus isn't being credited for holding the items. His credit is for allowing you to buy 20 elixirs with one unit, on one turn, without discarding anything.

The difference between this and the units buying the elixirs is that anyone can go and buy those elixirs. If I don't use Rebecca, anyone else can buy the elixirs instead of her. If I don't use Merlinus however, I lose the ability to buy more than 4 at a time without discarding items, and no one can replicate that.

This sounds eerily similar to making it be more "story-like" than an actual contribution. Once again, Merlinus is not buying said items to begin with, it's the two units that are running around fetching the item. Without them, said Merlinus cannot hold said items. So now do we credit those two units for buying the shit?

Storyline argument? I don't see how it has anything to do with the storyline.

Your argument basically hinges on the fact that the units that are buying these items are sending the items. Yes, I will admit that Merlinus can hold 100 items. We get the picture. Is it so fucking gamebreaking that we have to be narcissistic with tiering the unit?

Again, it's not about him holding a shitload of items. He can store a ton of crap without being on the map. It's about the fact that you can obtain items with a full inventory on your unit and not have to discard anything for it.

[Florete]

At this point I'm ready to just agree with tiering him. As I mentioned before, even if you don't think he should be, it's not as if his existence will kill discussion for you or anything. Just ignore arguments involving him, move him when a move is agreed on, etc.