Oh dear...

[chococoke]

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/wii/file/932999/59443

This character FAQ is beautiful. Beautifully retarded, if I do say so myself.

Some things of note:

Vika: 10/10 (yes, really.)

Lyre: 7/10 (again, really.) "...but if you do train her up, she becomes pretty good" Um...

Ilyana: 9/10

Meg is the only character below 5/10. Am I wrong in assuming that 5/10 is average?

Pleh, I may not know much about tier nonsense, but I thought a lot of these were funny. Again, Vika got a 10/10.

EDIT: How did I miss this... "-If you want a Tiger, try to raise Muarim instead, but if you find that too hard, you may want to wait for Kyza. Mordecai should be your third choice."

Edited April 4, 2010 by Chococoke

[Ansem]

The faqs are personal experience

In one faq it said Xiavier > Dalshien from FE5

[Tables]

From the FAQ writer.

One main thing that could clear a lot of this up is that I tried to avoid giving characters scores lower than 6. With the new system for Bonus EXP, the only real limits a character has is their stat caps. Every character has their uses, even some of the more useless ones. Think of it like this: 10/10 are the godly characters, 9/10 are the amazing ones, 8/10 are the great ones, 7/10 are the good ones, 6/10 are the decent ones, 5/10 are the mediocre ones, 4/10 are the bad ones, 3/10 are the really bad ones, 2/10 are the awful ones, and 1/10 is completely useless. You'd generally want to avoid using characters below 7/10, or even below 8/10. Scores are mainly calculated by overall usefulness, especially for the Part 4 Endgame.

I tried to completely forgo my own opinion in the writing, which can be an issue if many other people have a similar opinion on a character.

My main problem with tier lists, though, is that they are simply not a very good basis to rate a character on, especially when Path of Radiance bonuses are factored in. The Laguz royals are easily the most powerful units in the game, and their availability should not affect their score if they don't need to be raised in the first place. Lehran included, as he is incredibly useful, especially since he is present in the final battle.

Speaking of availability, most characters (with the exception of characters like Tormod) are around long enough to train, and with Bonus EXP, they may not need a lot of training in the first place.

As for specific characters...

I have trained Vika efficiently in all three difficulties, and she always comes out an incredibly powerful unit, capping nearly all (if not every one) of her stats. If you know what you're doing, you can level her fairly high back in Part 1, and with minimal training and a little Bonus EXP in part 4, she can cap her stats very quickly. Her low Strength is to be expected of a Raven, and her mastery skill and good crit rate help to even that out.

Lyre is tough to train, and while the payoff may not be as high as characters like Volug or Vika, her amazing Skill and Speed, coupled with her mastery skill (Rend) and its excellent activation rate, make her a fairly good unit. But not exactly good enough to justify training her.

Meg is probably the only character that I never really found a proper use for. 4/10 is an incredibly low rating for me.

One big issue I have with the tier list is the position of the Black Knight. He is basically invincible when you have him and can kill anything in one battle. If that doesn't get a 10/10, I don't know what does.

I will try to replay the game a couple times on varying difficulties, using and training all characters, with and without Bonus EXP, with and without Path of Radiance transfer data, etc. Writing this guide actually gave me a lot of new information about many characters, and with that new information, I can play through the game again and gain even more new information, helping me to make a better guide. If I find my original scores to be lacking in accuracy, I will definitely give this e-mail another read, and hopefully improve my guide with it. Looking back, though, I can see a couple 7/10s that should be 6/10s.

To be honest, it's a fair reply, he's explained his ratings and hopefully he's going to change some to be more representative. Note he's kinda rating characters based on what they're like when they're available, and kinda ignoring how often they're available.

[_____]

That doesn't explain Micaiah at 10, Edward at 9, Sothe at 7, Ilyana at 9, Fiona at 7 (the same rating as Sothe), etc., etc.

However, it's a known fact that almost all character rating guides for Fire Emblem games on GameFAQs are trash.