FE9 Hybrid Tier List

[Vicious Sal]

7) A 5 is average, not bad. Don't get mad because your guy got an average of a 6. That's still an above-average score.

Efficiency/Speed: 6.5: Aside from his solid combat stats, Boyd is about average in terms of speed-play focus.

Before anything, stay consistent.

Funny how you ignore an argument that you can't even try and defend against.

[Snowy_One]

I don't see a contradiction. Boyd's contribution is roughly average, but his solid stats allow him to become above-average, if only slightly.

[Baldrick]

It's a good theory, but I think the categories may need to be revamped.

Personally, if I was going to make a tier list like this, I'd have Short-term combat, Long-term combat, and utility.

1) Would focus on how well the unit performs in their first few chapters relative to the rest of the party, and how many resources they need, if any, to hold their own.

2) Would focus on what they can do later on. Do they need resources (including supports) to keep up, and how contested are those resources? Are the advantages they provide worth the cost?

3) Would focus on everything non-combat. Flight, movement and non-combat abilities for completing secondary objectives, and maybe difficulty to recruit since it doesn't fit anywhere else.

[Hawk King]

Snowy,

Oscar, Kieran, Marcia and Tanith form a support diamond. They are 4 of the top 6 or 7 units and they dont get a 10 on a category that is based entirely on their support options? Meanwhile, Reyson supports Ike, Tormod, and Tanith and that gets him a 10? This leads me to believe that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

That fact that you say that you, "dislike giving out 10's, especially since I'm trying to focus on 5 being 'average', not a 7." means that you are actively sandbagging scores to fit your mold of what you think a tier list should look like.

[Snowy_One]

Snowy,

Oscar, Kieran, Marcia and Tanith form a support diamond. They are 4 of the top 6 or 7 units and they dont get a 10 on a category that is based entirely on their support options? Meanwhile, Reyson supports Ike, Tormod, and Tanith and that gets him a 10? This leads me to believe that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Wow. You people don't read at all. Here, I'll even bold the essential part.

Utility/Flexibility: Reyson has a average-sized support list. Though he does not mesh the best with two of them, his supports are not negligible. Additionally, his refreshing ability is amazing for team utility and flexibility.

That's why he has a 10 there. Not because of his supports, but because of his refresh ability.

That fact that you say that you, "dislike giving out 10's, especially since I'm trying to focus on 5 being 'average', not a 7." means that you are actively sandbagging scores to fit your mold of what you think a tier list should look like.

The reason I dislike giving out high scores is because it eventually starts to migrate what 'average' means. This happens in other media. In games alone getting a 7/10 is almost expected for the average games now-a-days, and a 5/10 is practically an insult. I don't want that to happen regardless of who gets ranked where.

[Vicious Sal]

7) A 5 is average, not bad. Don't get mad because your guy got an average of a 6. That's still an above-average score.

Efficiency/Speed: 6.5: Aside from his solid combat stats, Boyd is about average in terms of speed-play focus.

Before anything, stay consistent.

Funny how you ignore an argument that you can't even try and defend against.

I don't see a contradiction. Boyd's contribution is roughly average, but his solid stats allow him to become above-average, if only slightly.

Let's break everything down ok?

- You keep hammering on a 5 being average. Correct

- You split your tiering into three categories. Correct

- Two of these categories are Stats & Efficiency. Correct

- In your Efficiency rating for Boys you state he is about average in terms of speedplay focus. This warrants a 5, yet he receives a 6.5.

- Also in the Speedplay rating his stats are mentioned, even though they are tiered in their own category.

If you say he is average in terms of speedplay focus, keep it to speedplay or stick to what you say is average. Otherwise you start judging units their strong points twice. You rated Boyd for his stats (which are great), but you also rated him for his stats in a second category. It would be the same as saying his stats help his utility rating because his huge HP allows him to survive on the battlefield for longer, giving him the opportunity to hand out supports for longer.

[Dr. Silent]

First off, the majority of characters are not rated yet.

Second off, while Oscar starts off good, it's no comparison for how good Titania is in the earlier parts, even when not playing by speed. Oscar starts good and ends good. Titania starts amazingly strong and ends up merely 'slightly below average'.

You know who also start out (if not quite amazingly) strong? Shinon and Gatrie! Yeah, so let's put them in 2nd and 3rd positions because they start out strong.

No, but seriously though, once Oscar hits around level 14, his stats will roughly be the same as Titania's, who most likely won't have grown more than two levels (thus most of her stats will have increased once). Considering Oscar is likely to hit level 14 somewhere between Chapter 8 and Chapter 10 (Difficult mode...he'll be even higher on Easy/Normal, but so will Titania) if you've been using him as one of your main units, Titania isn't hogging the spotlight for all that long.

Then again, you called Boyd an average unit, so you're clearly thinking about speed playthroughs too much.

[Hawk King]

Reyson's refreshing gets him a 10 in both categories? I thought they were separate...

"Utility/Flexibility: 7.5: Oscar offers all-around wonderful supports to his entire support list, bolstering evade immensely with his earth-element and matching up well with his entire list."

Zero negatives, all positive remarks for Oscar. He gets a 7.5.

I know you dont want everyone scoring 7's and above but your list is extremely flawed this way. Gatrie, Brom, and Tauroneo will all score roughly the same way despite the first 2 having a huge availability lead. Evidence: Marcia scoring slightly ahead of Tanith.

The average can still be a 5 as long as you get real with yourself and give out just as many 1's and 2's as you do 9's and 10's. Marcia, Jill, Titania, Oscar, and Kieran are all 9's and up. Lucia, Bastion, Tauroneo, ENasir are all 2's and lower. ding ding ding! We have an average of 5!

^ PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS LAST PART ^

I dont want you to ignore this and focus on my minor points. (like usual)

[Snowy_One]

Let's break everything down ok?

- You keep hammering on a 5 being average. Correct

- You split your tiering into three categories. Correct

- Two of these categories are Stats & Efficiency. Correct

- In your Efficiency rating for Boys you state he is about average in terms of speedplay focus. This warrants a 5, yet he receives a 6.5.

- Also in the Speedplay rating his stats are mentioned, even though they are tiered in their own category.

If you say he is average in terms of speedplay focus, keep it to speedplay or stick to what you say is average. Otherwise you start judging units their strong points twice. You rated Boyd for his stats (which are great), but you also rated him for his stats in a second category. It would be the same as saying his stats help his utility rating because his huge HP allows him to survive on the battlefield for longer, giving him the opportunity to hand out supports for longer.

Separate, but correlated. Having good stats doesn't automatically mean you are good in terms of efficiency/speed or support/flexibility. A general could have 60 HP and 30's in all stats, but have general-movement and, as a result, score lowly in efficiency/speed. Likewise a unit could be below average in combat, but have amazing movement and score high in E/S but get a low score in Stats/Combat.

I do understand what you're saying though and I'm willing to drop it down to a 5 if there are no objections.

You know who also start out (if not quite amazingly) strong? Shinon and Gatrie! Yeah, so let's put them in 2nd and 3rd positions because they start out strong.

There are other factors in play regarding Shinon and Gatrie which will result in their combat scores not being as high. If the game ended at chapter 8 they probably would have a very high combat score though.

No, but seriously though, once Oscar hits around level 14, his stats will roughly be the same as Titania's, who most likely won't have grown more than two levels (thus most of her stats will have increased once). Considering Oscar is likely to hit level 14 somewhere between Chapter 8 and Chapter 10 (Difficult mode...he'll be even higher on Easy/Normal, but so will Titania) if you've been using him as one of your main units, Titania isn't hogging the spotlight for all that long.

Do remember that Titania's stats only start to dip low towards the end of the game when she starts to max out their level. Oscar is above average in your argument at 14 and, if he's tying Titania, then she too is still 'above average'.

Reyson's refreshing gets him a 10 in both categories? I thought they were separate...

"Utility/Flexibility: 7.5: Oscar offers all-around wonderful supports to his entire support list, bolstering evade immensely with his earth-element and matching up well with his entire list."

Zero negatives, all positive remarks for Oscar. He gets a 7.5.

Namely because I don't want supports to become the only factor in this rating. It's becoming pretty clear I'm going to have to include things like rescue-drops.

I know you dont want everyone scoring 7's and above but your list is extremely flawed this way. Gatrie, Brom, and Tauroneo will all score roughly the same way despite the first 2 having a huge availability lead. Evidence: Marcia scoring slightly ahead of Tanith.

They aren't even scored yet. How can you say that they will score the same way?

The average can still be a 5 as long as you get real with yourself and give out just as many 1's and 2's as you do 9's and 10's. Marcia, Jill, Titania, Oscar, and Kieran are all 9's and up. Lucia, Bastion, Tauroneo, ENasir are all 2's and lower. ding ding ding! We have an average of 5!

^ PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS LAST PART ^

I dont want you to ignore this and focus on my minor points. (like usual)

That results in an overall average and makes the assumption that there will be just as many 1's and 2's as 9's and 10's.

[Baldrick]

When you say "5 is average", you mean you want the arithmetic mean to be close to 5, right? Here's what you should do.

Rank the characters in order from best to worst in one category. There are 46 units, so give the 23rd and 24th units (the medians) scores of, say, 5.1 and 4.9 . Then go up the list and give the units slightly better scores according to how they compare to the unit below them. (e.g. Suppose the places 21-23 are respectively Astrid, Makalov, Lethe. Lethe gets 5.1, Malakov is only a little better than Lethe so he gets 5.2, Astrid is a lot better than Makalov so shes gets 5.7, etc.) Do the same with the lower half of the list, and the other two categories. You'll want to keep the average increment to about 0.2 so you don't go beyond the 0-10 scale.

[Constable Reggie]

I honestly think you need to rethink your categories and ask others what they would do about them before continuing the scoring.

[Snowy_One]

I honestly think you need to rethink your categories and ask others what they would do about them before continuing the scoring.

Fine. Alright. We had that earlier suggestion for attack, defense, and availability and such. I don't want this turning into a mimic of the 'efficiency' tier list either, so make sure that's taken well into account when making suggestions.

[dondon151]

there needs to be categories like hair color, ratio of face width to face height, average number of characters spoken per dialogue, and a breakdown of the prime factorization of growth totals

Edited November 9, 2012 by dondon151

[bottlegnomes]

How about this? First, you make it a character guide; second you have stats (literally only concerns raw stats at like 20/10 or 20/20) and utility/efficiency/whatever (basically LTC or at least casual efficiency); then you have 1=bad, 2=mediocre, 3=average, 4=good, and 5=great. No decimals, no averages, only two categories of integers from 1 to 5. Basically, I'm saying fuck the tier list because the only people all that concerned about them are people who already know the game fairly well and it's half an academic exercise, so the current set up works. As far as I can tell, your purpose is to inform people not familiar with the game, and this is really all the information they need.

That said, I'm totally using that scoring system for my guide now, which I should really finish.

Edited November 9, 2012 by bottlegnomes

[Snowy_One]

How about this? First, you make it a character guide; second you have stats (literally only concerns raw stats at like 20/10 or 20/20) and utility/efficiency/whatever (basically LTC or at least casual efficiency); then you have 1=bad, 2=mediocre, 3=average, 4=good, and 5=great. No decimals, no averages, only two categories of integers from 1 to 5. Basically, I'm saying fuck the tier list because the only people all that concerned about them are people who already know the game fairly well and it's half an academic exercise, so the current set up works. As far as I can tell, your purpose is to inform people not familiar with the game, and this is really all the information they need.

That said, I'm totally using that scoring system for my guide now, which I should really finish.

That seems a bit over-simplistic. Especially with a lack of integers. There are finer points than just a general statement of how good the character is after all.

[dondon151]

That seems a bit over-simplistic. Especially with a lack of integers. There are finer points than just a general statement of how good the character is after all.

... do you know what an integer is

[bottlegnomes]

That seems a bit over-simplistic. Especially with a lack of integers. There are finer points than just a general statement of how good the character is after all.

Well, what dondon said. But also, what? Honestly, what more is there to a character guide than telling people how good a character is? All the numbers are is a way for people to know at a glance. What difference does it make if Kieran gets an 8.5/10 in combat and Ike gets an 8/10 versus both getting 4/5s? The real time and effort should go into the written part. Where you, ya know, go over their strengths and weaknesses and why they're good or bad characters. I do have 45 pages of PoR guide written by myself and Albin0 (which I really need to finish editing), so I'm fairly sure I don't need to be told the intricacies of rating characters.

Edited November 9, 2012 by bottlegnomes

[Baldrick]

What difference does it make if Kieran gets an 8.5/10 in combat and Ike gets an 8/10 versus both getting 4/5s?

Actually, Kieran got 8.25 and Ike got 7.75. So your argument is invalid.

I agree though. There doesn't seem to be any logic behind the numbers other than gut feeling, since the statements don't go into much detail, so that level of precision is meaningless.

Edited November 9, 2012 by Minor Baldo

[Life]

That seems a bit over-simplistic. Especially with a lack of integers. There are finer points than just a general statement of how good the character is after all.

It's not that complicated to come up with a system of how good a character is. It's called a verbal review, not numbers. If we really need numbers, use a 1-5 scale with no decimals.

And "lol" at the "lack of integers", like everyone else. An integer has no decimal.

Speaking of which, how does Ike get 7.75 on Utility just for his supports? That's just a silly score. No foot unit (least of all Ike who needs to be ferried to seize squares) should be getting more than a 2 in Utility unless we're talking about Reyson/healers/siege bombers.

Edited November 9, 2012 by Mr. Wanker