FE6 HM Tier List

[dondon151]

i'm not terribly interested in the lower tiers, but my suggestions right now would be:

1. gonzalez and garret below fir. fir can be like secondary rutger, which could be useful on the very off chance that rutger blows. gonzalez and garret are simply never useful.

2. dorothy and bors at least above barth. barth does literally nothing.

3. people haven't tried to use roy seriously yet, so he might be better than we think.

[Toothache]

It is hard to use Roy in efficient play when he is best being ferried all the way to the seize rather than contributing to combat. But I guess there is a good niche for him, with his access to Rapiers, and can even do decently with Light Brand. And of course, once he gets the SoS he can go to town on a bunch of enemies there, so he gets a generous endgame section.

[grandjackal]

One thing I will say in favor of Roy is that his Rapier is an underappreciated utility. Sword Cavaliers can be difficult to deal with without having Marcus or Zealot dealing with them directly when they have better shit to be doing. It's also an accurate weapon, something that's absurd in FE6.

Outside of that...Meh.

[dondon151]

the issue is that you want to use roy as much as possible because it's important that he be durable enough in later maps to shave turns. if he's good enough offensively, it creates a positive feedback loop where he can improve even more just by dropping him near some enemies in every map.

it certainly worked out that way in my FE6 NM speedrun. the important question is, where is the critical point at which roy can become self-sustaining? if it's at too high of a level, then he doesn't have much of a chance at being good at all.

[Shin]

i'm not terribly interested in the lower tiers, but my suggestions right now would be:

1. gonzalez and garret below fir. fir can be like secondary rutger, which could be useful on the very off chance that rutger blows. gonzalez and garret are simply never useful.

2. dorothy and bors at least above barth. barth does literally nothing.

3. people haven't tried to use roy seriously yet, so he might be better than we think.

Whilst I agree with 1, Garret has some use in luring fliers. He can sit on a mountain with a Killer Axe and is generally pretty safe from death. Of course this isn't exactly a stellar contribution, but it proved useful in my FE6 "Chumps" run. Barth is pretty much useless, he can't hit and everything doubles him.

With Roy, I've noticed that he only really needs to be able to survive to do a decent job. He's swordlocked with fairly pathetic strength, I can't see him being used to clear enemies. I normally dump the first robe on Roy so he can actually survive being dropped, but he doesn't really get much exposure since he's only really dropped the turn before he seizes.

[ZemZem]

Geese isn't dropping below Lilina? I mean, it's already been stated that Lilina can provide some nice chip by nuking the enemy with Elfire since she has it at base, while Geese...doesn't do anything at all.

[Shin]

Geese is just... sort of there. He costs a few turns and isn't terribly useful. Waterwalk would be more of a thing if there were maps where you needed to cross large bodies of water and his stats aren't terribly impressive.

[XeKr]

A number of Mid characters aren't really that great to be fair. I mean Garret only has 11 base AS (and is a few chapters after Ray) and is axelocked so he has poor hit as well.

Ray isn't good, but I haven't seen any comparisons that indicate Lower Mid units are much better. Lilina seems pretty much untrainable on an efficient playthrough and Oujay is very difficult as well (2HKO'd by everything, takes counters).

Garret doesn’t take a promotion item, has up to like 70 crit with existent Str, can take a few hits and peak/waterwalk, and base Skill/Luck comparable to Percival (Axes still suck, etc). Clearly not great, but I could see some uses.

(I could see Fir being better though)

I’d be fine with dropping some of the worse Mid characters down. Some others aren’t that bad (Sue, Chad, Ellen, even Fir), just outclassed. Bartre, Fa, etc also have their uses.

Geese isn't dropping below Lilina? I mean, it's already been stated that Lilina can provide some nice chip by nuking the enemy with Elfire since she has it at base, while Geese...doesn't do anything at all.

Again, to be fair, Lilina’s “nuking” starts at 13 att, 87 hit or so (marginally improving per level). Nuking might apply better to what enemies do to her. >_>

EDIT: Mainly nitpickying here, but Geese can promote and Brave stuff with some crit. Or something.

Edited April 15, 2014 by XeKr

[Colonel M]

Though Lilina wont do a whole lot, she likely contributes more than Geese does.

I want to do a comparison between Garret and Fir. The only issue is Garret only excels in Ilia. In Sacae he is a sham. Meanwhile... Fir at least can be good. Her major flaw is supply / demand of Hero Crests and her durability being godawful.

To be fair, Deke might not even be promoted. This leaves Gonzales as her likely other sole contender.

[aquamarin]

I think it should be clear by now that FE6 can't be summarized in 1 tier list. You have to AT LEAST specify how reliable your strats need to be, what route you are taking, whether you are recruiting everyone, whether you are going for best ending, etc etc.

Perhaps someone could think of a way to reflect these variables.

Edited April 15, 2014 by aquamarin

[Colonel M]

I will attempt to work things out with the other ladies / gentlemen in the tier list. For now we'll play it by one tier list with the efficient standpoint etc etc. If we need to split the tier list up a bit into different ones we will do so.

Also I meant Gonzales vs Fir, not Garret. >_>;

i'm not terribly interested in the lower tiers, but my suggestions right now would be:

1. gonzalez and garret below fir. fir can be like secondary rutger, which could be useful on the very off chance that rutger blows. gonzalez and garret are simply never useful.

2. dorothy and bors at least above barth. barth does literally nothing.

3. people haven't tried to use roy seriously yet, so he might be better than we think.

Pre-1: We know you're a liar dondon. Deep down you care about those lower scrubs. :)

1: We'll look into this, but being a secondary Rutger is probably not the best way to look into it. The only reason I state this is because it is pretty hard to be RNG-screwed on someone like Rutger. Even if he lacked slightly on Str he has a shitload of Crit with Killing Edge. I think Narga_Rocks had some moments where Fir was a little better in the bosskilling department than Rutger, though, or when both were decent to be used as a team. I'll look into it either way because Gonzales vs. Fir looks closer than it did waaaaay back in the day.

Also - no one tells Narga_Rocks about what is going on with Fir. HE MUST NOT KNOW THE SACRILEGE TAKING PLACE IN HERE!

2: But Barth smashes a wall that's so OP

Iunno about Bors (Bors doesn't really do a hell of a lot either in earlygame), but I can't really be arsed to find a counterargument to defend Barth other than "lolKnightCrest" which can easily be countered by "lolNoah / Allen / Lance".

3: Roy is really hard to use. He really blows. To be effective even in the Western Isles, the place where Sword-users are born as good, is hard. There is one thing to note that many people take for granted and that Grandjackal has a good point in:

One thing I will say in favor of Roy is that his Rapier is an underappreciated utility. Sword Cavaliers can be difficult to deal with without having Marcus or Zealot dealing with them directly when they have better shit to be doing. It's also an accurate weapon, something that's absurd in FE6.

Outside of that...Meh.

Though it is also true a trained Roy means less reliant on stat boosters to bolster his durability. I don't know about his offense ever really improving, though - even casual players tend to hate him and Roy is considered a growth unit in every aspect.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Colonel M

[XeKr]

1: We'll look into this, but being a secondary Rutger is probably not the best way to look into it. The only reason I state this is because it is pretty hard to be RNG-screwed on someone like Rutger. Even if he lacked slightly on Str he has a shitload of Crit with Killing Edge. I think Narga_Rocks had some moments where Fir was a little better in the bosskilling department than Rutger, though, or when both were decent to be used as a team. I'll look into it either way because Gonzales vs. Fir looks closer than it did waaaaay back in the day.

I’ll throw out some numbers to see what people think. From my (very quick) calculations, level 10 Rutger (Espinosa achieved this by 8x. So the situation is you’re deciding whether to promote or not, and perhaps whether to switch to Fir or not) has BINOMDIST(5,6,0.7,1) = 88.2% chance to get at least 1 Str proc, BINOMDIST(4,6,0.7,1) = 58.0% chance to get at least 2 Str (around his average), BINOMDIST(3,6,0.7,1) = 25.6% chance to get at least 3 Str.

Transparency if the calculation is not intuitive (well, it’s not to me…) and so people can verify my terrible/rushed math.

My general interpretation is similar to yours. In the cases Rutger has below average stats, his lead (Weapon rank+potential promotion for Str and Crit) is most likely such that it’s still worth sticking it out with him (switch to Percival, etc later), over slowing down to train Fir. Though I suppose it’s possible you’re in that 42% chance of 9 or 10 Str Rutger who is level 10 (or 12% of 9 Str Rutger), and looking at 9 Str Fir who is level 1, and maybe it becomes debatable for some players.

It does require some leniency/flexibility in strategy, admittedly, especially since Fir still needs to reach promotion/higher Sword rank. The main use of Fir, imo, would be in no-Rutger teams. (This may be relevant to Gonzales’ use as well, so I’m still certainly interested in a Fir vs. Gonzales analysis.) swords ftw

Edited April 15, 2014 by XeKr

[PKL]

I’ll throw out some numbers to see what people think. From my (very quick) calculations, level 10 Rutger (Espinosa achieved this by 8x. So the situation is you’re deciding whether to promote or not, and perhaps whether to switch to Fir or not) has BINOMDIST(5,6,0.7,1) = 88.2% chance to get at least 1 Str proc, BINOMDIST(4,6,0.7,1) = 58.0% chance to get at least 2 Str (around his average), BINOMDIST(3,6,0.7,1) = 25.6% chance to get at least 3 Str.

Transparency if the calculation is not intuitive (well, it’s not to me…) and so people can verify my terrible/rushed math.

My general interpretation is similar to yours. In the cases Rutger has below average stats, his lead (Weapon rank+potential promotion for Str and Crit) is most likely such that it’s still worth sticking it out with him (switch to Percival, etc later), over slowing down to train Fir. Though I suppose it’s possible you’re in that 42% chance of 10 Str Rutger who is level 10 (or 12% of 9 Str Rutger), and looking at 9 Str Fir who is level 1, and maybe it becomes debatable for some players.

It does require some leniency/flexibility in strategy, admittedly, especially since Fir still needs to reach promotion/higher Sword rank. The main use of Fir, imo, would be in no-Rutger teams. (This may be relevant to Gonzales’ use as well, so I’m still certainly interested in a Fir vs. Gonzales analysis.) swords ftw

It happened to me in my casual HM playthrough. Where Rutger only got like 1 str proc before Fir. Fir is surprisingly easy to feed kills to with that wo dao and axe enemies being all over the place and thanks to her level, each kill is like 62 exp. I feel like she should definetely move up a bit. At least above Gonzo. Gonzo would be OP in any other game, just not in FE6 with those axes. And Lilina definetely sounds better than Geese. Geese has the same problem Gonzo has of being axelocked, except he has super mediocre bases unlike Gonzo. Lilina might also be better than Ward, but he should drop down instead of her rising because shes not better than Oujay etc. Chad Lott Garret and Raigh could also stand to drop a bit.

-Mid-

Sue

Fir

Gonzales

Ellen

Fa

Bartre

Lugh

Chad

Lot

Garret

-Lower Mid-

Treck

Roy

Raigh

Oujay

Lilina

Cath

-Low Tier-

Wolt

Ward

Geese

etc.

is what I propose.

[Colonel M]

Not sure if Lugh should stay that high up, and I am a little leery on Fir shooting that far up too. Also, I'm not sure if Fir is over Ellen. Aside from D Staves, Ellen's main issue is her base Mag is awful; however, in growths her Mag can at least keep up a bit better.

[Colonel M]

So Mekkah and I decided "eh let's make dondon's videos even more beautiful."

We got two more. I'm working on them as I type this.

[-Cynthia-]

PKL's list looks good to me, although not sure about Ward in low. He can ORKO Soldiers which is pretty useful for some of the earlygame chapters.

[Espinosa]

Ward and Lott are way too similar to be two tiers away from each other. Same tier is fine IMHO.

Sue and Fir should go up, too. Sue actually has one advantage over Shin - a much higher chance of hitting S-rank bows. If we stop assuming that Rutger appears in 100% of all playthroughs, then Fir's utility rises, though still at the cost of having to train her a bit late into the game.

Ellen should probably go up too. She should be able to promote and reach A staves for Warp before chapter 16, which is when the (rather brief) warping starts (100 staff uses is realistic enough for 17 chapters of existence).

And does Fa do anything in a run with growths? I don't think I was even able to have her tank siege tomes in a C16 warpskip strat.

[General Horace]

fa's pretty useless, she only has 30 attacks for the whole game and has mediocre movement and bad stats

edit - lol i actually thought she had 6 move, turns out she has 5

Edited April 15, 2014 by General Horace

[charlie_]

What does raising Fir actually contribute though? Rutger isn't exactly exceptional lategame himself and Fir is stuck playing catch up for a while.

[Espinosa]

10/1 HM Fir stats:

35/14/18/20/10/9/6

So:

- high hit

- high crit for high chances of ORKOing (generally hard to achieve on HM)

- high AS for avotanking foes and doubling with Wo Dao and, upon promotion, storebought KEs

Unlike Echidna, doesn't require turns to be recruited. Unlike Rutger too, lol, but I haven't seen anyone low-turn Rutger's chapter before he shows up (might need low% crits? if enemy luck is even low enough). I think Toothache was planning an ambitious tool-assisted run?

[PKL]

Fa is like a status staff lightning rod and not much else.

[General Horace]

you have to remember that said 10/1 fir is going to be leaving the isles and entering wyvern and cavalry land where there are little to no axes, then going on to either ilia where theres just a ton of magic and lances or sacae where there's a bunch of bows that she can't counter.

like sure, she's competant enough in the isles, but someone like astohl has similar or better offence, and well, he's nothing special.

[charlie_]

By what point is she reasonably at 10/1 though? It can't be long before Percival shows up, and by then he's fairly competent with bosskilling without having to ferry.

[-Cynthia-]

We don't care about recruitment costs for this list.

I think Fir's main use would be as a bosskiller for some of the midgame warps, not for her ability to fight cavalry.

[General Horace]

What bosses can she effectively even kill though? She won't have the speed or levels to be able to kill the bosses in the midgame except that terrible paladin boss in Percival's join chapter, and then suddenly bosses become a lot easier to deal with when other higher mobile units like Miledy and Percival exist.

Although I guess the same could be said for other units trying to kill bosses, it is pretty easy to just say "Miledy and Percival do it better" so that is kind of a copout.

Edited April 15, 2014 by General Horace