FE6 HM Tier List

[Espinosa]

Klein is also available in one of the maps best-suited for bow users (chapter 12), and has interesting utility before Igrene even joins. Bow rank is important too.

The Bolting mage in C16 has 27-29 atk (not sure how much exactly when restarting the map), so Chad needs to be 8/- on average in order to take a hit at max HP and with a full Barrier boost, no robe needed. If you've been feeding him kills since the beginning of the game (namely, chapter 3), then it's not a nonsensical expectation. So Chad should be able to perform some of Astor's functions equally well.

Now, if you wanted to Warp him north (holding Roy), in order to steal Hugh's Member Card and get the Delphi Shield while clearing in, what was it, 5-6 turns? - then it's pretty clear that Astor is the main to choose, with C swords to wield Killing Edge/Light Brand, very helpful weapons in soloing the mages near the boss, but I don't think this tier list assumes units being skipped, does it?

We're probably skipping that Halberd chest though (and I don't think Lott can quite OHKO cavs with it? not the HM ones I'm pretty sure).

[PKL]

Klein is also available in one of the maps best-suited for bow users (chapter 12), and has interesting utility before Igrene even joins. Bow rank is important too.

The Bolting mage in C16 has 27-29 atk (not sure how much exactly when restarting the map), so Chad needs to be 8/- on average in order to take a hit at max HP and with a full Barrier boost, no robe needed. If you've been feeding him kills since the beginning of the game (namely, chapter 3), then it's not a nonsensical expectation. So Chad should be able to perform some of Astor's functions equally well.

Now, if you wanted to Warp him north (holding Roy), in order to steal Hugh's Member Card and get the Delphi Shield while clearing in, what was it, 5-6 turns? - then it's pretty clear that Astor is the main to choose, with C swords to wield Killing Edge/Light Brand, very helpful weapons in soloing the mages near the boss, but I don't think this tier list assumes units being skipped, does it?

We're probably skipping that Halberd chest though (and I don't think Lott can quite OHKO cavs with it? not the HM ones I'm pretty sure).

IIRC, Lott's Halberd was a gamble on the cavaliers, considering they could also ORKO him in my playthrough if he missed...anyway, why is Lance below Alan? Is it because of Alan's better base str? I feel like Lance's spd matters more. I think Lott is overrated in this current list and should go down. Lugh is also a bit underrated and should go up a bit. He at least hits his targets and hits res. And raigh shoud go down. Im pretty sure Treck is better than him. Considering Raigh's hit issues and his base spd. Fa and Gonzales could stand to go down. Fa's best use is mainly sleep tanking with dondon's deployment order trick and nuking maybe 5 dragons at best. Gonzale's growths are great, I get it, his offense in theory should be monstrous, but it's too unreliable to be worth it.

[-Cynthia-]

Is this an Ilia tier list or a combination of both routes tier list?

Only change I would second is Lance>Alan, the Spd should be more important than the Str long term.

I think Ellen is missing.

Edited April 12, 2014 by -Cynthia-

[dondon151]

Regarding the thieves, Chad's thievery contributes us...Let's see.

chapter 3 chests: probably not happening; map can be cleared in 6 turns and it requires at least 7 turns to grab one of the items in the chests, let alone both.

chapter 6 chests: if you're recruiting sue + cass, you can grab everything on the RHS; if you're only recruiting sue, i'm pretty sure you can 4-turn this map, which lets you grab 8000G from the LHS.

klein is only slightly slower than igrene at base and has a couple of level ups to work with before igrene joins. his higher bow rank is not negligible and they're otherwise pretty much the same unit.

The Bolting mage in C16 has 27-29 atk (not sure how much exactly when restarting the map), so Chad needs to be 8/- on average in order to take a hit at max HP and with a full Barrier boost, no robe needed. If you've been feeding him kills since the beginning of the game (namely, chapter 3), then it's not a nonsensical expectation. So Chad should be able to perform some of Astor's functions equally well.

i already mentioned how stupid it is to feed kills to chad, and i'll mention it again. L8 chad is laughable. his combat is worse than shanna's, he's deployed far less often, and when he is deployed, he spends almost zero time fighting.

you can reasonably have a L16 astor by chapter 16, who doesn't need a barrier boost at all to take a hit from that mage.

Edited April 12, 2014 by dondon151

[Colonel M]

To clarify - the tier list represents both routes and is not exclusive to either route. I felt the differences were very minor anyway.

I will also re-add Ellen in a bit. She will join Gonzo in Mid. I also am willing to say Lance > Allan too. In realistic growths, Lance is probably a little easier to salvage with his Speed.

[dondon151]

i think the only major differences are that shin is a bit better in sacae and niime is a bit worse. i agree on lance > allen; didn't really think too hard about putting them wherever because they both kind of blow in my opinion.

[BBM]

Aren't Tate/Shanna also quite a bit worse in Sacae? Been a while since I've played it, but they're probably not getting the Delphi Shield over Miledy, so they get wrecked by all the Nomads, and I think there's also a lot less terrain in it compared to Ilia, so a lot of their rescuing utility can probably be replicated by Paladins.

And speaking of Paladins, I think Noah could move up over at least the Snipers. Bows are nice but are also bows, and Shin is probably taking Brave anyways. I feel like a lot of their utility comes in killing Wyverns, but you might as well bring along Bartre if that's all they're doing.

[-Cynthia-]

Zeiss would also struggle in Sacae I think- Miledy using the Delphi Shield is probably our best bet and he's likely doubled by many of the nomads and he doesn't counter them all that well. The route specific maps are about half his overall availability so it's more important for his positioning than many other characters. Based on this, his current position might be too generous.

Why would Shin use the Brave Bow when he can usually double with Killers/Silvers instead? Bartre may not even be recruited and has inferior bow ranks to Klein and Igrene.

Dayan should be added.

[Refa]

For breaking walls/to avoid a counter. Dunno how hard it is for him to double in efficiency context, though.

[-Cynthia-]

Those are pretty specific uses considering Shin usually doesn't get countered in the first place.

[Toothache]

Wouldn't Delphi Shield!Zeiss tink a lot of enemies in Sacae, or at the very most take a single digit of damage? In fact, he can be reasonably useful as the AI still likes to go for fliers even with Delphi Shield, it's a bit of an exploit that you can use, draw the enemies to your flier that can't take much damage at all, and use that to either draw the enemies away from other units or use them to pile up enemies that you can farm for exp. May not be immediately useful for the seize around Sacae maps, but in terms of general usefulness in dealing with the enemy units that are around, Zeiss is great for exploiting the AI's natural weakness.

[dondon151]

Aren't Tate/Shanna also quite a bit worse in Sacae? Been a while since I've played it, but they're probably not getting the Delphi Shield over Miledy, so they get wrecked by all the Nomads, and I think there's also a lot less terrain in it compared to Ilia, so a lot of their rescuing utility can probably be replicated by Paladins.

the FKs are not fighting much anyway. they would only be worse in sacae because flying is not as useful in chapters 18 and 19. it's actually not even a huge difference.

i have to address an error in thinking when people make statements like "x is not getting the item over y." this is not really how things work out when actually playing the game. for example, if you stuck the delphi shield to milady in chapters 18-20 on ilia route because she's the better unit, you're going to have problems reaching the minimum turncount on those maps because other units need to use the delphi shield from time to time. so you can't say, for example, that every flier but milady is going to be useful in ilia route because of ballista when the optimal way to play those maps is to trade around the delphi shield as needed.

And speaking of Paladins, I think Noah could move up over at least the Snipers. Bows are nice but are also bows, and Shin is probably taking Brave anyways. I feel like a lot of their utility comes in killing Wyverns, but you might as well bring along Bartre if that's all they're doing.

noah is only as high as he is because he does well for a few chapters if you don't use either allen or lance as your third mid-game paladin. snipers are actually far more important. aside from instantly killing most flying enemies, they also attack across walls (useful in chapters 12, 16, 22) and do heavy damage in a pinch to mercenaries. pretty much everything useful that they do involve one of the C+ rank bows, and bartre's base bow rank is D.

(btw aside from killing the chapter 16 wall, there's hardly any reason to use a brave bow on shin at all. maybe if he wants to kill a druid near the end of the game without a counter.)

Zeiss would also struggle in Sacae I think- Miledy using the Delphi Shield is probably our best bet and he's likely doubled by many of the nomads and he doesn't counter them all that well. The route specific maps are about half his overall availability so it's more important for his positioning than many other characters. Based on this, his current position might be too generous.

zeiss actually doesn't even fight all that much in ilia. his combat is super mediocre. again, the only reason to penalize zeiss in sacae is because flying is less useful in chapters 18 and 19. i think he would fall halfway through upper mid tier at worst.

Edited April 13, 2014 by dondon151

[General Horace]

I'm pretty sure bartre costs turns and the like, but isn't his combat with an iron bow comparable to what Klein does with Silver on nonflying enemies? Unless you're talking about just instagibbing stuff with the killer bow, in which case you don't need a sniper to do that.

[dondon151]

I'm pretty sure bartre costs turns and the like, but isn't his combat with an iron bow comparable to what Klein does with Silver on nonflying enemies? Unless you're talking about just instagibbing stuff with the killer bow, in which case you don't need a sniper to do that.

bartre's combat with an iron bow is hardly relevant. you have basically 3 modes of usage for an FE6 sniper:

1. attacking a flying unit. klein/igrene do way more damage than bartre because they double and bartre doesn't, or they use a brave bow and bartre can't, or they use a higher MT or higher crit bow and bartre is stuck with iron/steel.

2. attacking a fast non-flying unit. klein/igrene use the brave bow; bartre can't.

3. attacking a slow non-flying unit. klein/igrene can double with killer or silver. bartre probably can't double and can't gamble with killer.

and i'm not sure what you mean by the last sentence. there's no way you're using a killer bow without an NT or a sniper.

[Espinosa]

I think he meant rigging killer crits in general, like Noah using the Killing Edge? Though a lot of the time, the opposition is strong enough to not be OHKO'd with a crit.

[General Horace]

So snipers are good because they can brave bow stuff. Gotcha.

I was just confused when you were pointing out chipping faster enemy types like mercs and stuff and thought you just meant reaming on them with silvers.

and yeah Espi said what I was trying to say

[dondon151]

but it's not like one guy with a killer lance is interchangeable with another guy with a killer bow. sometimes you can only attack at 2-range, or only your sniper is available to perform the attack, etc.

EDIT: i sort of got ninja'd by horace

Edited April 13, 2014 by dondon151

[Espinosa]

Or the boss is an axe guy on a throne and a trained bow user just happens to be your best way of ORKOing said boss with a crit. There's lots of utility for a bow user in the grand scheme of teamwork.

[Colonel M]

Bartre isnt too bad but he wont ever see Upper Mid. In the midgame portion he just functions effectively thanks to his monstrous Str and access to Bows. Bartre is one of the best units to survive Enemy Phase against a Wyvern Knight and then KO on Player Phase (assuming Bartre had an axe on EP and hit). His middling Speed is somewhat mitigated with the capability of OHKOing units with axes too. On top of Halberd for Chapter 13, Bartre can use a Killer Axe to OHKO the 29 HP / 4 Def Mage. He can try with Hero Axe too.

Bartre is just slewed by Axes being godawful in general with their Hit rate, D Bows, and that 9 Speed. But as far as midgame is concerned Bartre can hold his own for a while.

(Also I do not take recruitment costs into account of a unit ever).

[charlie_]

Assuming Killers are always going to crit is kind of flawed logic too (which is partly why I disagree with Rutger being so high, but eh.)

[Colonel M]

It would be flawed logic to assume a critical every time - we use them more for power / accuracy / occasional crit is nice.

[Toothache]

Well, it's hard not to crit with Rutger every time, since he can achieve such high crit rates even without using a crit boosting weapon, and you can change the action order to time a crit every turn with little effort. It isn't too hard to do the same with Killer weapons either.

[General Banzai]

Assuming Killers are always going to crit is kind of flawed logic too (which is partly why I disagree with Rutger being so high, but eh.)

Isn't a promoted Rutger with a killer gonna have around 70% crit chance right off the bat

I mean that's not assuming it every time but at 70% it gets to the point that you can reasonably rely on at least one crit per double attack

[XeKr]

I always thought we were assuming/pretending that the RNG wasn’t fixed (Colonel M's recent comments also suggest this). Though it doesn’t bother me too, too much (either way) I can already imagine the potential absurdities (that I’m sure some people will bring up)

For me, even if you can’t necessarily Killer crit every time, the chance to crit still noticeably improves reliability (and facilitates a faster progression in general. Sometimes much much faster). In addition, Rutger in particular has perhaps the best combination of Speed + high hit + effective/crit weaponry, so he’s by far the best bosskiller even when taking into account the actual probability of his criticals. So basically, atm the current rankings look reasonable to me, despite the fact that I probably prefer far more reliable clears than some others.

Edited April 13, 2014 by XeKr

[Espinosa]

FE6 is the one game where the contrast between lowest turns possible and reliability is most pronounced, I think. I'd expect that if you moved at a slower pace to allow your efficient, not-quite-lowest-turn strategies to succeed, you'd not only have time to bring up Allen and Lance, getting them to a decent support level early without stopping to do it, but even find use for guys like Geese (whom I don't imagine being any useful in LTC play at all, unlike the archer units in the bottom tier who do offer some utility).