Best Swordmaster

[Espinosa]

Rutger doesn't clean enemies at 1-2 range (aside from Light Brand shenanigans, but these only serve to break the novelty sword prematurely), which Ryoma does nicely. Ryoma also sorta gets to 30-ish crit because of high skill, his Prf's crit bonus, SM's innate crit and his personal skill (which should pretty much always be active considering he'll be doing all the killing and not his support partner).

I think I'd still choose Rutger because he competes against total scrubs, whereas you could still go without Ryoma's help easily in Hoshido and Revelation.

[Dark Sage]

But they're both still worse than Haborym

[Espinosa]

But they're both still worse than Haborym

tbqh

You might as well compare them to Orlandu now

[Shadow Mir]

Well that doesn't have anything to do with him being a swordmaster in postfe6 does it

This is reasonable, but your original post says nothing of the sort, and instead takes into question swordmaster as a class post-fe6 when that's not horribly relevant to why Ryouma's good.

If you want to make a point then actually make the right point the first time around.

Fair enough. I only really said what I originally posted because of my cynicism with regard to swordmasters - when a new FE game comes out, a myrmidon or swordmaster is usually one of the first characters I see people hyping. More often than not, unfortunately, the hyped unit fails to live up to it; it's gotten to the point where if someone tries to hype one of them, I can't help but doubt it.

Edited December 26, 2015 by Levant Colthearts

[Espinosa]

Ryoma's stats are outright ridiculous when he joins. He's no common SM.

[Irysa]

I think you're overrating Rutger's availability. He's doesnt stand out at all in general map combat after the Western Isles are over, so thats a total of like 9 chapters of strong contributions. After that he's only really useful for helping to kill bosses (I guess he can Wyrmslayer some Manaketes or Wyverns but you've not got that many uses), but units like Miledy and Percival aren't bad at it either, albiet less reliable. Additionally, he has to fight a lot of high defence enemies by that point in the game, so his middling strength growth and weaker weapontype impede him quite a bit.

Although I think he's still the best out of the games I've played. But how many maps is Ryoma a great general combat unit compared to Rutger?

Edited January 5, 2016 by Irysa

[Cyas]

Out of the ones I've played (FE 4-8, 11-13), it's probably Rutger. The points that the above poster has made might be true but Rutger's contribution is still much bigger than the one from guys like Shanan/Shiva/Guy etc. hence why my vote goes to him (or rather would go to him if the poll would allow it. Oh well.)

[Trestkon]

I'm probably in the minority here, but Karel is my favourite from the ones I've played (FE 4,6,7,8,9,11,12), I believed his characterisation and personality were what a master of the sword would be like (though I know stats were questionable most of the time, FE6 he had those incredible growths but for only 1 level, then again different fire emblem games means different scalings I dont think there's a fair way to compare everyone if they weren't designed for each game).

Very close 2nd would be joshua because of his stat growth and appearance and the personality of a free going sword expert (and he reminds me of an actual pirate than an actual swordmaster).

Though I agree with Rutger points, from my own experience in FE6, Rutger could really clean house by himself so I give some credit for him there.

[Admiral "Bull" Halsey]

Why are my favourites not on the Polls?!

[Camus The Dark Knight]

Shannon because of the absurdly overpowered Balmung. 30 attack, 90 hit, 3 weight, +10 skill, +20 speed. Only Alvis and Julius can end his fun unless the RNG god decides to be evil and make a bunch of lance users with 5% hit rate gang up and kill him.

[henrymidfields]

Out of what I played: Shadow Dragon DS, Binding Blade, Sacred Stones, and Awakening

The best would be Rutger, due to his top-notch accuracy and his near-guaranteed avoid against axes, essentially making him a tank that avoids enemy attacks instead of withstanding them. (Even for lances-using enemies, it was often 20% hit rates against Rutger, and sometimes as low as 10%.) I think he also has a good backstory as well, shown in his support conversation with Dieck. A close second would be Fir, whose only shortcoming would be joining time - and even that needed babying got more than paid off in my two runs. Having one of them is genuinely helpful in Binding Blade due to worse accuracy issues that effectively rules out most ax-users, and the higher general difficulty compared to other games.

Karel's a fairly distant third, because his joining time is way behind most, and you probably already have a number of powerhouses at that stage anyway. Joshua, Marisa, Lonqu, and Birthright!Ryoma all have the advantage of being in easier games than Binding Blade, so I don't put them in regard as high as Rutger/Fir either.

The worst would be Navarre. Speed and skill that isn't much higher than Ogma, with much lower defense. His avoid being unreliable unlike in the other games, which diminish his usefulness as an avoid tank. (A couple of ax using enemies had hit rates as high as 60% against Navarre, which is just simply unthinkable if this was Binding Blade.) Furthermore, he lacks avoid/critical hit bonus upon promotion.

Edited June 30, 2016 by henrymidfields

[Jedi]

I've played all 14 FE games, and I can clearly state Ryoma is the strongest swordmaster in the entire franchise, not only does he have good AVO, he has one of the best personal swords in the series, which gives him +4 Strength and 1-2 Range.

Shanan is really good but in his game he's hampered by being on foot (FE4 focuses alot on mounts) and lacking 1-2 range.

Edited March 6, 2016 by Jedi

[Gradivus.]

> Marisa 16 votes, Owain 17 votes

> Lon'qu 14 votes

Does not compute. Lol at how other has 2/3 of the votes though.

I'm going with Sirius, he can hold his own throughout the whole game as a swordmaster, fits into every team and is relatively easy to train considering the amount of exp you get in FE12. Rutger is a close second due to his unique bosskilling qualities, but I discount him the fact that he's likely to drop off sometime in midgame due to swordlock and mov issues since other units have similar combat, but avoid one or both of these issues. Shannan is in a similar boat, he kills everything he touches, but units like Celice and Aless don't really have a harder time killing things, and they reach enemies a lot faster.

Edited March 6, 2016 by Gradivus.

[TheAstraWolf]

Joshua. Because...well...you know bestcharacter. Jokes aside I love his character and gameplay wise he is pretty g8 as a unit. He has your typical Myrm growths but he also has awesome bases for a LV5 unit especially his Skill, Spd and Str. Sure there are better Mryms in terms of stats but Joshua's amazing character combined with his growths makes him my main man in Sacred Stones.

Navarre, Fir and Owain would be pretty close seconds and depending on the Myrms of FE5, someone may or may not be added

Edited March 8, 2016 by SSL01

[Shadow Mir]

Shannon because of the absurdly overpowered Balmung. 30 attack, 90 hit, 3 weight, +10 skill, +20 speed. Only Alvis and Julius can end his fun unless the RNG god decides to be evil and make a bunch of lance users with 5% hit rate gang up and kill him.

On paper, sure. However, FE4's Horse Emblem, so...

> Marisa 16 votes, Owain 17 votes

> Lon'qu 14 votes

Does not compute. Lol at how other has 2/3 of the votes though.

I'm going with Sirius, he can hold his own throughout the whole game as a swordmaster, fits into every team and is relatively easy to train considering the amount of exp you get in FE12. Rutger is a close second due to his unique bosskilling qualities, but I discount him the fact that he's likely to drop off sometime in midgame due to swordlock and mov issues since other units have similar combat, but avoid one or both of these issues. Shannan is in a similar boat, he kills everything he touches, but units like Celice and Aless don't really have a harder time killing things, and they reach enemies a lot faster.

I don't think reclassing was ever a part of the discussion...

I've played all 14 FE games, and I can clearly state Ryoma is the strongest swordmaster in the entire franchise, not only does he have good AVO, he has one of the best personal swords in the series, which gives him +4 Strength and 1-2 Range.

Shanan is really good but in his game he's hampered by being on foot (FE4 focuses alot on mounts) and lacking 1-2 range.

Maybe, though honestly, I'd say that Ryoma's easier to get by without than Rutger...

Edited March 25, 2016 by Levant Mir Celestia

[Gradivus.]

I don't think reclassing was ever a part of the discussion...

My answer still fits the topic, since iirc the OP didn't state that reclassing doesn't count.

Edited March 25, 2016 by Gradivus.

[Shadow Mir]

My answer still fits the topic, since iirc the OP didn't state that reclassing doesn't count.

I guess that's true. though I don't remember anyone bringing up reclassing someone else.

Edited March 25, 2016 by Levant Mir Celestia

[Gradivus.]

I guess but that just means I'm the first one who had the idea to, there was no rule against it either way.

Edited March 25, 2016 by Gradivus.

[Jedi]

Maybe, though honestly, I'd say that Ryoma's easier to get by without than Rutger...

Rutger is just a simple boss killer, he doesn't absolutely annihilate the halves of two whole games by himself. Rutger struggles against bulky foes as well.

Like Rutger is good, but he falls off later, and like Ryoma is good right off the bat and never tires.

Edited March 25, 2016 by Jedi

[Espinosa]

Both Rutger and Ryoma need crits to ORKO bulkier enemies (FE6 just has much stronger opposition than Birthright). Rutger has arguably the higher crit score of the two.

[Thor Odinson]

Rutger's really good at killing shit, you point him at that boss you want dead and he'll get them dead, but he is rangelocked--well, mostly, there is light brand but that does a fixed 10x2 and has 20 uses an doesn't crit

Ryoma doesn't have a hell lot of defense but he sure as fuck can tank like, he's the kind of unit where you just guard stance with a flier (which also gives him 1 more mov once he's the lead partner) into a room and he stands there and wipe them out, maybe stay out of range of a lone general but they can't do shit to him if he switches to dual katana when the berserkers are dead, and when Birthright has so many rout maps, 1-2 range high offense with very low CoD is...pretty ridiculous.

Granted, I only played BR once and it was my first run blind straight on Lunatic, but I feel Ryoma reduces the difficulty of those later maps pretty significantly than if he didn't exist.

Edited March 26, 2016 by Thor Odinson

[Levin's Scarf]

Shanan with Balmung is definitely up there. Not only does he hit hard, but he's REALLY hard to hit. I also know that foot units get a lot of flak in FE4, but he mainly comes into play in the 2nd generation, where your best units don't start out with horses (when I was playing FE4, Lester and Delmud were okay- not excellent, although Oifey was pretty good).

Ryoma's also really strong. Hard to hit, can take a lot of hits, can dish out 2-range attacks, and he's not hampered by weapon durability.

[Shadow Mir]

Shanan with Balmung is definitely up there. Not only does he hit hard, but he's REALLY hard to hit. I also know that foot units get a lot of flak in FE4, but he mainly comes into play in the 2nd generation, where your best units don't start out with horses (when I was playing FE4, Lester and Delmud were okay- not excellent, although Oifey was pretty good).

Ryoma's also really strong. Hard to hit, can take a lot of hits, can dish out 2-range attacks, and he's not hampered by weapon durability.

As I see it, Shanan's problem is that he's stuck in a game where mounts are virtually guaranteed to reach the enemy several turns before anyone else - whilst my horses might not be as good, their getting theme several turns before Shanan can get there means he's either left with scraps to clean up or nothing at all, unless I routinely slow down.

Rutger is just a simple boss killer, he doesn't absolutely annihilate the halves of two whole games by himself. Rutger struggles against bulky foes as well.

Like Rutger is good, but he falls off later, and like Ryoma is good right off the bat and never tires.

Rutger's really good at killing shit, you point him at that boss you want dead and he'll get them dead, but he is rangelocked--well, mostly, there is light brand but that does a fixed 10x2 and has 20 uses an doesn't crit

Ryoma doesn't have a hell lot of defense but he sure as fuck can tank like, he's the kind of unit where you just guard stance with a flier (which also gives him 1 more mov once he's the lead partner) into a room and he stands there and wipe them out, maybe stay out of range of a lone general but they can't do shit to him if he switches to dual katana when the berserkers are dead, and when Birthright has so many rout maps, 1-2 range high offense with very low CoD is...pretty ridiculous.

Granted, I only played BR once and it was my first run blind straight on Lunatic, but I feel Ryoma reduces the difficulty of those later maps pretty significantly than if he didn't exist.

I'm not sure about BR Lunatic, but I generally consider Rutger a must if you don't want to spend turns struggling with the bullshit that's FE6 thrones. Also, I've heard that BR enemy density is way up there on Lunatic - that combined with evade not being as reliable a defense as it was in prior FE games makes me have my doubts about Ryoma.

Edited April 7, 2016 by Levant Mir Celestia

[Thor Odinson]

I'm not sure about BR Lunatic, but I generally consider Rutger a must if you don't want to spend turns struggling with the bullshit that's FE6 thrones. Also, I've heard that BR enemy density is way up there on Lunatic - that combined with evade not being as reliable a defense as it was in prior FE games makes me have my doubts about Ryoma.

BR enemy density is exactly the reason you want Ryoma. There's a massive amount of rout missions. Your lack of 1-2 is going to take forever.

Did I play the game on Lunatic or did you?

Ryoma is not a pure avoidtank. The combination of his sky-high offense with good avo and vantage is what makes him a tank. Sure, sometimes he'll take 1-2 hits and go below 1/2, but then he just starts killing everything in his way before they can attack him. Astra is also free dual guard whenever it procs.

I'd do a full mathematical analysis if I had the time but Ryoma's quite reliable at being immortal bar bullshit like 7% hits in which case, well, not like the rest of your units can do much better.

Edited April 7, 2016 by Thor Odinson

[Refa]

Both Rutger and Ryoma need crits to ORKO bulkier enemies (FE6 just has much stronger opposition than Birthright). Rutger has arguably the higher crit score of the two.

Maybe early on, but Ryoma can later get Life And Death and Swordfaire to have 100% reliability. Also, you know, 1-2 range.