"Sethskip," warpskip tier list

[-Cynthia-]

I'm fine with the criteria being 'should this character be used or not' I just wanted it clarified.

I'm still not seeing where Gilliam is ever better in any significant way than Ross or Neimi. Unless you're talking about long twerm potential, but then Lute should be > Gilliam.

[dondon151]

Gilliam is forced in chapters 2 and 3 and is useful for the chapter 4 rout. That's all that's keeping him in D tier.

Ross is also forced, but you can easily get away with him doing quite literally nothing.

Edited May 10, 2010 by dondon151

[CATS]

Cool list. I'd be interested in seeing one of these for a Seth-less game; seems like the game would be entirely different (and considerably more complex) if the player's instant-win button were removed.

[Colonel M]

Sorry, Int, that wasn't meant to be a jab at you. Even if they're terrible at the job, I think they can be made to be more suitable than the sort of tier lists that we have now which rank characters based on ambiguous and sometimes inconsistent criteria. Those provide a basis for some sort of discussion, but aren't always the most intuitive.

To be honest the inconsistent criteria is attempted to be cleaned up with people actually "playing the game.". Half of FE8 was based off of partial theory and not pressing the fastforward button with Seth. I'm making amends to fixing the FE6 list to be more accurate with the efficiency standards (putting Niime and other utility units above some of the troublesome growth units). Of course there are still some troublesome theories that lie within the tier lists atm. For example I thoguht of doing Klein > Fir > Lot, but the problem is, by maximum efficiency standards, Fir doesn't have "optimal deployment", or yet anyway.

To put it on a broader spectrum: it's finding out what consistent criteria works best. Obviously there will be people that just flat out disagree. I think that's why tiering itslef has died down aas of late. There will likely be others that disagree with me on the statement of a "tier process overhaul", but I feel that we are long due for it. It's a battle when you have to draw awkward comparisons like Priscilla vs Raven, Lot vs Thany, Fir vs Klein, Karel vs Vaida or something to that matter.

Tier lists are still evolving. Well, the "efficiency" ones anyhow. Over the year we learned about how units like Chainey have been overhyped by some people, ending of sandbagging towards other units (Selphina), and many other things that I can't list on all of my fingers. Playthroughs actually helped us a lot. Often times it was a missing piece to the puzzle (FE6 for example). We just need to hammer out how to draw a consistent and accurate criteria with said data.

[Anouleth]

Cool list. I'd be interested in seeing one of these for a Seth-less game; seems like the game would be entirely different (and considerably more complex) if the player's instant-win button were removed.

I agree with you, CATS. Seth has a massive impact on how FE8 efficiency is played, because he turns every earlygame chapter into a hilarious curbstomp - so fast that characters such as Ross and Franz do not have an opportunity to gain levels.

Edited May 11, 2010 by Anouleth

[Rewjeo]

Seth might be the best tool for FE tiering- even better than FEDS Warp!

Also, IIRC, Gill can double loldiers and revenants while taking no or practically no damage if he procs speed. 51% chance in two levels, 65.7% in three.. It isn't much, but it IS something. Although it's been so long since I used him that I may be thinking of NM.

Edited May 11, 2010 by Slize

[Aquilae]

Apologies if this is off-topic. I've finished the Eph Route part of my playthrough, and I think there needs to be a few changes for an Eph Route tier list:

Duessel should rise, obviously. Duessel rapes about 3/4s as much face as Seth, and he is the best candidate for the Boots. Duessel is around longer, and he helps out a lot in the Eph chapters.

Cormag should rise above Gerik and below Duessel. Cormag costs a turn at most to recruit, and he saves a ton of turns by himself. Cormag reaches promotion more easily than Vanessa and Tana due to his high base level, and can contribute a lot with 8 Mov and Flying.

Ephraim can rise a bit as he does decent in the rout maps, and has good offense with Reginleif. Gheb's chapter has quite a few Knights and Cavs and a few reinforcements, so he can grab EXP there while being ferried to the throne. I can't comment that much about Ephraim because mine was ridiculously blessed.

Gerik should drop due to his late jointime. He is useful in Eirika route because of the rout maps, but when he joins in Ephraim route only two rout maps remain, 15 and 18. Gerik should drop to B tier, or at least go below Cormag and Duessel.

Innes, Eirika and Saleh should drop, for obvious reasons. Saleh above Artur seems to be fine, and Innes should drop to C tier since he has limited contributions after he joins.

[Mekkah]

Gerik should drop due to his late jointime. He is useful in Eirika route because of the rout maps, but when he joins in Ephraim route only two rout maps remain, 15 and 18. Gerik should drop to B tier, or at least go below Cormag and Duessel.

Not that I disagree Gerik should drop that far, but note that his joining map is a rout as well and he joins very early into it. He's considerably more useful if you fly him some axes to work with, but even without that he can promote, get danced to and take a considerable amount of enemies by himself with just his Steel Blade.

[dondon151]

Ephraim's route list added with suggestions from Aquilae. Discuss, as I'm not even too clear on the correct positions. I'm not sure if Duessel should go up over any of the fliers, staffers, or Tethys.

Could a moderator also edit in "Ephraim's route" or something indicating that both are present into the subtitle?

Edited May 11, 2010 by dondon151

[Life]

Innes can drop on Ephraim's list to under Syrene. Even though he has 2 chapters on her, 1 of them is in the desert (he starts near the palace when he'd probably prefer to be with Ephraim's team to rip through Valter's army) while the other one is a Seize map with our mounted units rushing. After that, Syrene exists and can fly while Innes has gotten maybe 2 or so levels if he's lucky. I can do a stat comparison later, if you want.

[dondon151]

Stat comparison isn't really important here; utility comparison is. Syrene might or might not have a larger overall effect on turncount than Innes; I'm tempted to lean towards the former, so I'll move him below her.

[Fruitloop Multipuck]

Ephraim to at least top of C Tier on Eirika route? He's useful in Chapter 5x, probably useful in Chapter 15, promotes after Chapter 16, and is good enough to give you another solid combat unit from there on out. Difficult to see the likes of Joshua and Garcia competing with that when they're only particularly useful earlygame and Seth is rushing everything. Higher than that to B Tier seems possible too. "I deployed Innes for chapters 11-15 and 18 and never really used him otherwise, and he wasn't exactly essential in any of them." sounds like Ephraim might have a case against Innes.

[dondon151]

Ephraim to at least top of C Tier on Eirika route? He's useful in Chapter 5x, probably useful in Chapter 15, promotes after Chapter 16, and is good enough to give you another solid combat unit from there on out. Difficult to see the likes of Joshua and Garcia competing with that when they're only particularly useful earlygame and Seth is rushing everything. Higher than that to B Tier seems possible too. "I deployed Innes for chapters 11-15 and 18 and never really used him otherwise, and he wasn't exactly essential in any of them." sounds like Ephraim might have a case against Innes.

That's just 2 forced chapters for Ephraim. Remember that I didn't even deploy Ephraim from chapter 16 to Final (where he is forced, but doesn't do anything). This is worse than Innes being deployed but not being essential (he still helped out, just not to the magnitude of Seth or Gerik). Ephraim is not even that important on his forced chapters - he is only needed on 5x if you want Orson to nab the Killer Lance, and in chapter 16 he might pick off a cavalier or two because with Reginleif equipped, he can't do anything to Javelin cavs whereas Duessel ORKOs them with a Hand Axe.

[Mr. Francis York Morgan]

For the higher level versions of these characters, their stats will be slightly higher (since the game auto-levels the characters from their low level versions). Knoll receives 1 auto-level by default, so his listed stats are rounded to the nearest whole number. Also if the other Lord (who you did not choose after Chapter 8) is under Level 15, they will have their Level raised by 6 (up to a maximum of Level 15) and their stats adjusted accordingly when you get them back in Chapter 14.[/Quote]

This pretty much ensures both ephraim/eirika can instantly promote after chapter 16 and take advantage of their respective weapons. Even if they don't completely own face their still likely to be among our best non seth units. I'm not sure how they'd rate taking this into account. Haven't done the speedrun yet.

[Life]

I think we should put Orson on this list for his contribution in 5x. If we're talking about flat-out efficiency, using Orson is probably your best bet.

Also, I'm doing a run right now and I believe that trying to visit Amelia for the Torch in 5 is completely nonviable. We could just as easily field Colm in Chapter 6 and stick him in a forest or on a mountain.

Edited June 6, 2010 by Life

[Anouleth]

Or spam Torch staves with Moulder/Natasha since we want them to gain EXP anyway?

[Life]

Or spam Torch staves with Moulder/Natasha since we want them to gain EXP anyway?

Umm, where are we getting Torch from? Houses in 5 give off an Armourslayer, Dragonshield and Secret Book. Amelia gives us Torches but I fail to see how we're getting anyone there since Seth is moving for Saar and Franz and Vanessa are too weak to get us through half the map.

Truth be told, only Garcia stands a real chance of making it there (backed up by Lute/Artur to deal with the Merc) and he won't get there by Turn 5 (took me that long to clear the map entirely and get Seth to Saar regardless). And since Torch staves don't exist yet...

[Anouleth]

Torch staves are buyable in Serafew:

http://serenesforest.net/fe8/shop_map.htm

[-Cynthia-]

Visiting Amelia for the Torch means we visit all the houses, which gives us a Guiding Ring.

Torch staves are buyable in the Serafew shop (so we can can get them at base before C6).

Edited June 6, 2010 by -Cynthia-

[Life]

Wow, I am dumb. Pardon my comments then.

[dondon151]

Also, I'm doing a run right now and I believe that trying to visit Amelia for the Torch in 5 is completely nonviable. We could just as easily field Colm in Chapter 6 and stick him in a forest or on a mountain.

Easy enough in 3 turns. No chance of failure, either.

(Whoa, I did not know that videos self-embed.)

Edited June 6, 2010 by dondon151

[Espinosa]

iirc the policy here is that it's okay to bump up tier lists rather than make new ones and since there have been improvements in LTC play which this tier list addresses, I thought I'd revive the topic to bring up some questions instead of making a new one.

If Cormag technically saves exactly 0 turns or less, then he would be in "Don't use!" tier. But since he saves turns (until proven otherwise; I'm not claiming that I'm infallible), he's not. Additionally, he needs to be used extensively to make up for the turn "deposit" that the player makes to recruit him.

Horace skipped Cormag's recruitment in his recentest (and possibly most up-to-date) efficiency run and didn't suffer from his absence, training the pegs (namely Tana because the quick completion of early chapters with Garcia and speed-blessed Gilliam gave no chance for Vanessa to level up) and promoting them instead. So it's probably only a good idea to recruit Cormag in sethskip because the policy is to recruit everyone, rather than because he helps to save turns he cost (which is a few too many on Eirika route).

With level-up rigging, beamcrash's PT is an example of how Artur (he also rigged Ross but idk why, maybe to show off and beat up some spiders on cliffs) and Moulder can end up as ridiculous warpers.

On Eirika route, Saleh probably deserves the second spot after Seth, top of top (maybe below Vanessa?), due to being the only character with realistically massive Warp range that trained unpromotes have trouble reaching without level-up rigging. Also a candidate for Energy Rings and other resources to take more attacks while levelling up and increasing his warp range. Maybe dondon or Horace can say that a certain amount of Warp range is "too much"? I don't know.

I also think that the difference between Artur and Lute isn't that dramatic, and there's definitely motivation to use Lute. Artur has a level lead and extra time to train in his and Lute's joining chapter, and an extra point of AS means he will double more often (but not necessarily ORKO; you'll have to feed a lot of kills to him). Lute is weighed down by every single tome until promotion, while Artur is weighed down by anything that's not his Lightning tome, making it more difficult for Lute to start doubling. However, when both double, Lute hurts enemies more reliably (not relying on crits), and when neither doubles Lute is the better nuke, with Elfire having 10 MT and coming very early and beating Artur in magic growth.

Now, promotion time. Aiming at low turn completion (speaking from experience here, though I failed to match Horace's turn counts by 1 turn in a few of the early chapters), Artur can barely promote right after the route split. This is invaluable on Ephraim route, where Saleh joins too late to become the party's warper, so Artur needs to replace him (I believe the only non-draft attempt of LTCing FE8 so far on EphRoute is Aquilae's). By promoting earliest, he can start spamming staves to get to Warp and actually reach it much faster than Saleh would on Eirika route. The only reason why Artur isn't preferred over Saleh is because Artur's average magic isn't terribly high and promoting him early leaves his combat really impotent.

If Artur can promote almost immediately (immediately on beamcrash's normal mode run) after the route split, Lute might take 2 additional chapters to do so, but there's generally little difference between how easily they score their kills - you feed those to them either way when playing fast. Lute could go Sage for better combat or Mage Knight for generally better movement (same as Cavs), higher promotion bonus in magic and an increase in Con that lets her wield Thunder tomes without AS penalties. Though disadvantaged in the desert chapter, Lute would rather go MK. D staves is what she gets either way, which is certainly inferior to Artur's C staves as Bishop but...

...the thing is, Artur promoted early doesn't even need to spam Barrier a whole lot to get to A staves by the time Warp is available, not with all the good staves with high wexp gain around. D staves provides immediate access to Mend, Torch and Unlock, so Lute could instantly function fairly well spamming staves to improve her rank. So if we make a division by routes...

Eirika - Saleh is preferred over Artur as a warper for superior combat and reliability (Artur needs to get lucky to grow enough magic to surpass Saleh). As such, any other staff user is auxiliary, and if Lute can still use Physic, Hammerne and is a better Rescue staff user than Artur thanks to higher magic and better movement (gets allies to further places and they don't have to be very close to be Rescued).

Ephraim - Saleh never gets Warp, so we have to decide between one of Moulder, Natasha, Artur and Lute as to who our warper is. Moulder and Natasha grow slowly, but Moulder has the least trouble getting to Warp. Artur will have more magic and should get A staves as soon as the Warp staff is available with more magic and levels behind him than Moulder. Meanwhile, Lute takes more effort to get to A staves (more turns are wasted on Ephraim route however), but will have better warping than Artur on average, likely ramming MK's mag caps with Energy Rings helping out. She'll also get Excalibur, though not for the desert chapter (unlike a proper Saleh). Alternatively, she could go Sage for much higher magic caps (Horace's Saleh capped magic pretty quickly on Eirika route) and better mobility in the desert chapter (which takes a bit longer on Eph Route).

I feel that Lute could rise on both routes, with Saleh (Eirk) and Artur going over Moulder and Natasha easily (healing isn't absurdly useful in this game and anyone can use Hammerne, really). Moulder is just likely the sole user of Latona. I believe Horace rightfully deduced that Moulder doesn't help much on Eirika route, and that's the same conclusion I got out of my unfinished run.

Also, there's an early Hero Crest on Eph route that Joshua could use since you're not in dire of money anyway, perhaps lifting him up on EphRoute's tier with Gerik's later availability taken into account. He's pretty damn useful in the early-mid game when unpromoted anyway, and as a Swordmaster he could kick even more ass and help cut turns.

Also, on Horace's EirRoute run, Seth's growths left Duessel undesirable on all chapters besides the desert one (therefore Duessel got neither the Boots nor the Devil Axe), so Duessel could drop quite a bit, unless Seth's growths were inflated in comparison to averages on that run (which they didn't strike me as since they're generally really reliable).

[Psych]

I won't recant Tethys' contributions, but I feel like she can stand to go below Tana or maybe even Moulder in the Ephraim list, since she shows up about 3 chapters later than Eirika Route and Tana has more time to contribute something.

[Espinosa]

The absence of Tethys probably affects other characters more than it does her on the Eph route tier list I think. For example, Artur and Lute can't spam staves as often as they do on Eirika route and can't double their wexp as quickly, so maybe Lute is best entirely left out on an Eph Route run (trouble getting to Warp on time even with the absolute earliest promotion on, say, chapter 10). She costs a turn to recruit on her chapter's 2-turn clear too, I believe. Tethys's still making very serious contributions to chapter 13 rout due to her starting position (you can dance Gerik to instapromote and move in to start attacking enemies, then rescuechain Tethys to the other side of the map or help drop somebody over the river) and she doesn't stop being useful in the next chapters. I say Poor Warper < character who is necessary to support Good Warper.

I should really try going for absolute lowest (to my best ability anyway) turns for EphRoute and see which characters end up contributing what. Boots on Duessel doesn't seem like an entirely bad idea on EphRoute anymore (on Horace's run, I think he hesitated to give the Boots to anything until chapter 18 and even then he didn't really benefit much from it since Seth was stationary for like the last three turns of the map), but then again you do end up warping most of it anyway. Having a unit with 10 move could have more benefit though, like for rescuedropping the lord further on chapter 16.

I've been thinking lately how awkward of a game FE8 is. So many resources are pretty much entirely useless, like most of the desert items barring Warp. You don't need the Silver Card since you don't need to do any more shopping, or the Boots because they barely make any difference. I feel that even Tethys could get the Boots to keep up and that might even be better than giving them to a mounted unit, especially for the aforementioned chapter 18.

[Psych]

I'm pretty sure Lute is auto recruited as long as her village isn't destroyed. I've forgotten to visit it before, and she'll still join you at the end of the chapter.