FE13 Skills Tier List

[Bryan]

Sexy Skill Tier:

Rainbow Cry

Lightning Speed

Top Tier:

Love Cry

War Knowledge

Weapon Saver

Sword Expert

Magic Expert

Lance Expert

Axe Expert

Bow Expert

High Tier:

Discipline

Aether

Astra

Magnificent Flame

Lucky 7

Medium Tier:

Bad Tier:

Worthless Skill Tier:

Gamble

Skill +2

Refresh

Concentration

Enemy Skill Tier List:

Evil Dragon Scale

Divine Weapon

Vantage+

Luna+

Absolute Hit

Great Shield+

Holy Shield+

Accuracy +10

[spoiler=Skill List]

Dual Attack+

Charisma

Royal Weapon

Magic Square

Outdoor Battle

Defender

Holy Shield

Luna

Dual Guard+

Defence +2

Indoor Battle

Defence Cry

Great Shield

Avoid +10

Vantage

Late Initiative

Sol

Axe Slayer

Max HP +5

Fiery Heart

Strength Cry

Counter

Mug

Wrath

Early Initiative

Accuracy +20

Skill Cry

Bow Slayer

Picklock

Movement +1

Lethality

Pass

Acrobatics

Speed +2

Speed Cry

Movement Cry

Strength +2

Ride Fast

Hot Start

Sword Slayer

Carrier

Lance Slayer

Magic +2

Magic Cry

Curse

Crimson Curse

Vengeance

Magic Slayer

Slow Start

Life Absorb

Miracle

Healing Heart

Luck Cry

Renewal

Resistance +2

Secluded Lady

Resistance Cry

Dual Support+

Good Growths

Weak beats Strong

Luck +4

Special Dance

Even Biorhythm

Beast Buster

Odd Biorhythm

Dragon Buster

Resistance +10

Quick Slash

Bonds

Dark Blessing

Conqueror

All Stats +2

Paragon

Iote's Shield

Limit Breaker

Tier List for Skills. You guys all know the rules of tiering so I'm not going to link them or anything.

A couple of things to consider:

1. Consider skill combinations. (Rainbow Cry+Love Cry)

2. Don't restrict just the skill because of who can get it. (Good Growths:Donny.)

3. Don't just consider postgame. Think about the whole value of the skill.

4. Likewise, don't make a skill bottom tier just because you get it late. (Limit Breaker.)

5. This tier list is for hard mode.

I'm making this to aid in creating the "Best Skillsets" for characters and as resource for deciding class trees. For example, Lighting Speed > Life Absorb, so go for Dark Peg then Dark Knight.

Suggest where the skills should go! Happy Debating!

Edited September 13, 2012 by Bryan

[Ema Skye]

Dark Blessing should be pretty high because more Nosferatu tanks.

Gamble and Skill +2 for worthless tier. Gamble's effect is really tiny (+10 Crit), and 2 points of skill will generally have no effect.

Love Cry should be pretty high as well, because it's basically Rainbow Cry Jr.. Carrier should also be pretty high if we're looking at LTC.

[Lord Raven]

Rainbow Cry is definitely top, and I would say Discipline is fairly high on the list as well. Lightning Speed is overrepresented because it doesn't exist for a significant portion of the game and it can be hard to one round units at a certain point in this game anyway, so...

[BBM]

Okay, before we decide the positions of most of the skills, we need to decide a difficulty the game is being played on. Something like Speed Cry, for example, is probably much more vital on Lunatic than it is on Normal, where your units can probably double most non-SM units. Conversely, the AVO boosting skills become much less useful on harder difficulties where you're highly unlikely to dodge much.

[Agro]

So who here has actually played the game?

[Bryan]

Okay, before we decide the positions of most of the skills, we need to decide a difficulty the game is being played on. Something like Speed Cry, for example, is probably much more vital on Lunatic than it is on Normal, where your units can probably double most non-SM units. Conversely, the AVO boosting skills become much less useful on harder difficulties where you're highly unlikely to dodge much.

I would probably say hard, just because normal is normal.

So who here has actually played the game?

Not me, but I figure enough people have imported it.

Edited September 11, 2012 by Bryan

[Othin]

Gamble isn't much worse than the +15 Crit from classes like Swordmaster and Berserker in other recent games.

And what BBM said. The difficulty level makes a huge difference in the tiering for most of the Cry skills, although I'd say Rainbow Cry should be at the top no matter what. Meanwhile, Avoid +10, an otherwise decent skill, is nearly worthless on Lunatic and especially Lunatic+, where a third of the enemies can bypass the Avoid stat entirely.

[arvilino]

Gamble isn't much worse than the +15 Crit from classes like Swordmaster and Berserker in other recent games.

And what BBM said. The difficulty level makes a huge difference in the tiering for most of the Cry skills, although I'd say Rainbow Cry should be at the top no matter what. Meanwhile, Avoid +10, an otherwise decent skill, is nearly worthless on Lunatic and especially Lunatic+, where a third of the enemies can bypass the Avoid stat entirely.

I think Avoid+10 is pretty good early on in Lunatic, specifically for Ronku it's what makes him a pretty good unit against Axe users(especially the chapter 9 Dracoknight reinforcement swarm) and Dark Magic users for about 5 chapters.

I'd consider it being comparitively more useful/applicable when it's available than the Slayer Skills are when they are available.

Miracle should be somewhere near the bottom, since it can only activate when a unit is going to be defeated and is only a chance to survive, it doesn't really serve any practical purpose unless you're playing casual mode where you're not risking anything by your unit losing all their HP.

Edited September 11, 2012 by arvilino

[cheetah7071]

Sol deserves at least high tier if not god tier if postgame is being considered at all. It's only decent in the main game, but postgame it can be as powerful as Nosferatu--only ~50% activation rate, but you get to use far more powerful weapons that can actually one-round Light vs Dark and Ultimate Training enemies (which a 4-might tome has a lot of trouble doing in lunatic, I haven't verified for sure in hard), and you heal more per activation than a single nosferatu hit.

Bonus points if you do Krom/MU and have Lucina with Sol, Aether, and Royal Weapon (and why not holy shield and great shield too, for good measure).

[Dat Mattress]

Hang on, gamble is amazing. Mix that with fiery heart and you can have a nostalgic berserker.

[Anouleth]

Terrible skills: Concentration (very situational, small boost), Luck+4.

Top Tier: The various Expert skills except for Bow Expert. Essentially, Weapon Saver lets you use limited powerful weapons, but Expert skills are such a significant boost that it's comparable to using a powerful weapon. For example Silver Sword on an Expert has almost as much attack as Mercurius, with the additional benefit that you don't need to wait until A rank to use the Silver, you don't have to take the Mercurius away from another unit, and an Expert can still wield Mercurius occasionally for really tough enemies even if he can't use it all the time. So Expert skills should be close to Weapon Saver, except Bow Expert which is more limited.

[Othin]

The Expert skills let you match the raw power of vanilla ultimate weapons like Mercurius, but there's often more to the story. Combine Magic Expert with Nosferatu and you've got effectively 12 Mt. Combine Weapon Saver with a forged Inverse's Darkness and you've got up to 20 Mt. Only really relevant under postgame conditions, but then, so is Weapon Saver.

But yes, Concentration for worthless. Maybe Refresh, as well. Not even being able to be near enemies to get the healing is rather limiting.

Edited September 12, 2012 by Othin

[Bryan]

What is the ranking for the expert skills?

Tome is high and Bow is low, right? What about the rest of them?

[Trickster]

I'd think that weapon saver would be in the good tier, it has its uses and isn't hard to activate. Lethality would probably go in bad for being skill/4%, yeah not something to rely on.

[Edward]

Best combinations for lunatic+ : Weapon Saver , Vantage , Vengeance ,Limit Breaker , Lightning Speed / All + 2 / Bow Slayer

Edited September 12, 2012 by Edward

[cheetah7071]

Weapon Saver doesn't do anything in the postgame. All weapons are infinitely available, so there's just no point.

It isn't even very good in-game, as the game gives you a ton of money to just replace your weapons.

[Lakmé]

Weapon Saver doesn't do anything in the postgame. All weapons are infinitely available, so there's just no point.

It isn't even very good in-game, as the game gives you a ton of money to just replace your weapons.

Inifinite glass weapons seems useful when you reclass and start with a E-rank... (same for max-forged weapons)

Is Slow Start useful ? I don't think you are supposed to spend 15+ turns on many chapters... (Hot Start & Lucky 7 look much better)

Good Growths sounds nice but becomes useless in postgame when you have capped everything.

Charisma sounds awfully useless if it cannot stack with itself, and I wonder if wielding Royal Weapon really makes a difference... (though a 60-70% Miracle can be nice if Nosferatanking fails at some point)

Also, what would be the best male-exclusive skill (excluding DLCs) ? Maybe Counter ? Or Axe Expert ?

[arvilino]

Lockpick should be in top because there aren't enough chest keys appear pretty rarely and the stuff you can get from treasure chests(Gold bullions, the only non-fame menu, non-streetpass team Boots, Fortify Staves,master and change seals) are nearly always really good for the chapter you can get them in.

Crimson Curse and maybe Curse(though a little lower) should go in good, some enemies(Swordmasters,Valkyries) can reach some pretty high dodge rates and even if the user of the skill is the support unit of a double it still works(so you can pair Sariya or Henry with a physical melee unit and benefit from both Curse and Crimson Curse).

Lucky 7 should go in to the top tier, the 20/20 accuracy/evade boost is really significant, while it lasts 7 turns that's still pretty high because beyond a few chapters 7 turns is usually more than half the number of turns you'll need and in certain boss kill chapters more than enough.

Edited September 12, 2012 by arvilino

[Othin]

Weapon Saver doesn't do anything in the postgame. All weapons are infinitely available, so there's just no point.

It isn't even very good in-game, as the game gives you a ton of money to just replace your weapons.

Completely false: infinitely available doesn't mean easily available. You want to run through IDW over and over again hoping to get more Holy Tome Nagas or Swanchikas, or go for shiny tiles over and over again hoping to get another Inverse's Darkness and then run through Gold and Silver again to get the colossal amount of gold to forge it?

Weapon Saver is without a doubt one of the best postgame skills. Without it, the time investment required to use the best weapons is prohibitive.

[cheetah7071]

Completely false: infinitely available doesn't mean easily available. You want to run through IDW over and over again hoping to get more Holy Tome Nagas or Swanchikas, or go for shiny tiles over and over again hoping to get another Inverse's Darkness and then run through Gold and Silver again to get the colossal amount of gold to forge it?

Weapon Saver is without a doubt one of the best postgame skills. Without it, the time investment required to use the best weapons is prohibitive.

Well, I'll blame our disagreement here on extremely fuzzy explanations for what we're tiering on. We can both agree that putting Weapon Saver on a character doesn't make them more powerful in the slightest. All it does it save (a lot of) effort. If that's sufficient for high tier, then so be it, but it seems kind of odd to me.

[arvilino]

Weapon Saver is quite good during the story as well.Slightly rarer weapons or expensive such as the Killing Edge or forged weapons can last longer on your Mercenary-->Hero characters(Grego,Flavia and possibly Donny and Tiamo), you also get alot of Goddess Icons in-game and outside of selling them boosting the luck of a unit with Weapon Saver is the best you can get out of them.

It's definitely up there with Rainbow Cry and Lightning Speed during post game only, but it's about good in the main story so top is probably the best place for it(just not too high on it).

[Onestep]

Lucky 7 should be either Top or Good tier. Seven turns is generally enough to get a lot done, and 20/20 Acc/Avd can make a huge difference on an already fast character. Magnificent flame should also be top tier. It's basically a free 10+ damage at a decent activation rate. And unfortunately, I'm going to have to say that the Slayer skills are only good tier. While their bonuses are frankly incredible, the sheer work involved in sticking them onto a class in whic they'd be useful just doesn't seem worth it.

[MajorMajora]

I think gamble should be higher. I haven't played the game yet, but I can definitely tell. Extra 10% regardless of where you are deserves to be at least in the medium (if not good) tier.

Cries should be in good tier, maybe with speed in top tier and skill in medium.

Magnificent Flame is very good, like Onestep said, but top tier might be pushing it a little bit, maybe in the the lower end of top. Also, Luna is a very similar skill, only it adds damage based on half of your enemies stat rather than half of your stat, which isn't always as reliable, so maybe that is good tier.

Edited September 12, 2012 by MajorMajora

[Othin]

% skills are also highly situation-dependent. In the main story, where you have 20-30 Skl most of the time, maybe 40 at the high ends? Nothing too special. In postgame, where you can get 50-60 Skl with Limit Breaker? Much more relevant. This is especially true for Sol and Luna, as their effect is so much more noticeable at higher levels. Magnificent Flame is highly dependent on its activation rate as well, but its effect is solid throughout the game. I'd say in the main story, Magnificent Flame is the best of the three, while in postgame, Sol is the best.

[Bagfisch]

I would say limit breaker for top tier because having 52 strength instead of 42 permanently is a huge advantage in combat and it's not just strength we're talking about .

Also you only need limit breaker late/postgame and that's the moment where you get it.

Fun fact:Tier is the german word for animal.

Edited September 12, 2012 by FTW