The Absolute Worst Fire Emblem Characters.

[Augestein]

Hit issues: forges exist for both.

In the long term Fiona is better because as a trained unit she can have a good role in 4-2 and 4-5. She can be the Paladin you use to quickly rout the map, while Meg's utility is bad, she just has low movement and her best aspiration is to be a filler unit in charge of killing some chumps your main unit missed due to positioning and deal with reinforcements in 4-1 and 4-4. You see the difference? The result in Fiona has more value than the result in Meg. Fiona can double auras in endgame with White Pool and get skill buffs with Blood Tide, dealing 4x damage with a Brave and taking out a good chunk of HP from them. Meg is limited in this aspect.

Except you're forgetting that Fiona needs one for attack and hit. That forge is literally going to eat away at half of your current funds. Even Meg doesn't need that , that much. The issue is that people keep going on about how good Fiona is in comparison to Meg when Fiona is just straight up worse than base stats Meg in every chapter for part 1 stat wise and joins AFTER Meg. Essentially, people are getting excited over 1 move and Canto (which really isn't terribly useful when you run at the same speed as everyone else). That's not utility nor is it useful at all.

As a promoted Sword Knight Meg would have enough capacity to put on Celerity. That gives her +2 movement. The difference in movement would be Canto and +1 movement. Canto isn't that useful in these maps because of how they are shaped, and 4-5 has a swamp, so again, Fiona's movement is limited here and even if she has more movement, it hardly matters as Fiona doesn't fly. Meg with Celerity would be better than Fiona here by virtue that Meg can actually walk in the water here. In 4-1 she'd be okay in assuming you raised her, but 4-4, once again, she'd have to take the long route where climbing the cliffs would be better, and she has -2 movement. So Fiona would need Celerity to be have better movement here than other units-- and being the worst choice that's a mounted unit. Even worse, is that because so much time with Finoa is spent actually not fighting and getting BEXP instead, you're probably going to have to spam arms scrolls or put discipline on her to get her to have enough WEXP for stronger weapons. White Tide Meg can also double Auras. You need 34 speed to double auras, and white tide gives +5 speed. And now that I think about it, Meg has better hp and res than Fiona, so she'll be taking less damage from most attacks as well. I'm not seeing any point where Fiona just hits such a huge margin of win over Meg that I could even bother to call Fiona "better" than Meg.

Meg has a considerably less rocky start than Fiona, and is consistently better throughout the entire game without having maps take a dump on her and randomly not being available. I'm not even trying to be stubborn here, but I'm just starting to realize that people massive overrate movement.

[Shadow Mir]

^A forged iron with the Mt of a Steel and 10 extra Hit doesn't cost that much. Also, FYI, Meg caps at only 32 speed.

[Quintessence]

Except you're forgetting that Fiona needs one for attack and hit. That forge is literally going to eat away at half of your current funds. Even Meg doesn't need that , that much. The issue is that people keep going on about how good Fiona is in comparison to Meg when Fiona is just straight up worse than base stats Meg in every chapter for part 1 stat wise and joins AFTER Meg. Essentially, people are getting excited over 1 move and Canto (which really isn't terribly useful when you run at the same speed as everyone else). That's not utility nor is it useful at all.

As a promoted Sword Knight Meg would have enough capacity to put on Celerity. That gives her +2 movement. The difference in movement would be Canto and +1 movement. Canto isn't that useful in these maps because of how they are shaped, and 4-5 has a swamp, so again, Fiona's movement is limited here and even if she has more movement, it hardly matters as Fiona doesn't fly. Meg with Celerity would be better than Fiona here by virtue that Meg can actually walk in the water here. In 4-1 she'd be okay in assuming you raised her, but 4-4, once again, she'd have to take the long route where climbing the cliffs would be better, and she has -2 movement. So Fiona would need Celerity to be have better movement here than other units-- and being the worst choice that's a mounted unit. Even worse, is that because so much time with Finoa is spent actually not fighting and getting BEXP instead, you're probably going to have to spam arms scrolls or put discipline on her to get her to have enough WEXP for stronger weapons. White Tide Meg can also double Auras. You need 34 speed to double auras, and white tide gives +5 speed. And now that I think about it, Meg has better hp and res than Fiona, so she'll be taking less damage from most attacks as well. I'm not seeing any point where Fiona just hits such a huge margin of win over Meg that I could even bother to call Fiona "better" than Meg.

Meg has a considerably less rocky start than Fiona, and is consistently better throughout the entire game without having maps take a dump on her and randomly not being available. I'm not even trying to be stubborn here, but I'm just starting to realize that people massive overrate movement.

No the wrong part here is that you're missing the 'what's the best thing this unit can do?', you're just looking at stats, bases, growths, and looking only one side of unit performance and missing and disregarding the counterpart; you need to look beyond that and realize the utility units can have.

DB has plenty of funds to get plenty of forges, like 5 or more throughout the Part. Sothe can get the bunchton of knife forges if you want quick clears or rather save it and still have more funds. The cost of Fiona's lance should be by 4K or 5K idk the exact numbers, but iirc it should be in that range. Both of them have terrible performance no matter what in Part 1, and will be dedicated on growing, getting stats, forges, boosters and whatnot to be decent at best. They'll promote either by 1-8 for Meg or 1-E for Fiona with some exp abuse tactics like boss abuse or priest abuse.

Giving Celerity to Meg is not a good idea because Tigers will wreck her given her low def growth, and she isn't the type of tanking hits, because she's a terrible knight. Fiona will also suck because her caps suck and she'll need like 10 Tier 2 level ups to actually cap most stats, if not all. Btw if you consider Celerity on Meg, consider it on Fiona, and even then it's not even a good idea to keep Celerity on DB because GMs will make a better use of it with chapters like 3-3 and 3-5.

Fiona's C base lances is not an issue because she'll either have a forge, a killer lance (3-12) or just keep some forged javelins by Tier 3, nothing else. Really, none of them will be outstanding on either 3-6 and 3-12. Their differences are so irrelevant next to non existent that it is pretty useless to talk about their contributions on Part 1 and Part 3. Maaayyybe in 3-13 where both can be bulky enough to handle Laguz or even kill Ike, assuming tier 3 for both; where Fiona has the upper hand for having access to Steel/Killer Bow and Sol for snipping Ike.

And now, where things get different is in Part 4. What's best for Meg? Greil Army. What's her best role? A secondary unit dealing with dudes going for Ena on 4-1 and dealing with reinforcements on both 4-1 and 4-4; meanwhile, there should still be the need of Ike as main unit and another filler to scout the map and rout. What's the best route for Fiona? Hawk Army. What's her best role? A main unit that takes the lead of the strategy: rush into Valtome in 4-2 and deal with the lot and bunch of units with ranged weapons, and on top of that she has Reyson to support her; meanwhile there should still be the need of a filler and Tibarn/Pelleas to deal with reinforcements on the starting point. There's clearly a huge difference on the role both perform at their best, and this is what makes me give Fiona an extra credit, because she can actually be worth of taking main roles in strategies, and not a secondary/filler unit.

Aaand, Order Incarnates have 35 AS so Meg will never double them.

Edit: I experienced both of them, Fiona in the end satisfied a quite good spot and her contributions, after the huge investment, were ok and decent. While Meg, that has a more comfortable position, felt short of the investment you need to do.

Edited July 31, 2016 by Quintessence

[JasonMendez]

I'd say Cath is worse than Sophia and Wendy because Theives don't promote and she comes later than the other options.

Shanam is garbage and is really only there to use his skill to buy stuff (which is hardly used in a game with capturing).

Half of Akaneia's characters aren't good.

Arden and Midayle. Neither are impressive due to their growths, starting stats and classes.

[Augestein]

No the wrong part here is that you're missing the 'what's the best thing this unit can do?', you're just looking at stats, bases, growths, and looking only one side of unit performance and missing and disregarding the counterpart; you need to look beyond that and realize the utility units can have.

Then objectively the worst unit in the series would be Ardan/Arden. Because if we're going off of that, he can't do anything later on. His movement is low on huge maps, he doesn't pass anything but Vantage/Ambush to his children, and he doesn't give them any good stat spreads and he lacks holy blood. He never excels at any point even if you arena abuse with him. He's only okay at first.

DB has plenty of funds to get plenty of forges, like 5 or more throughout the Part. Sothe can get the bunchton of knife forges if you want quick clears or rather save it and still have more funds. The cost of Fiona's lance should be by 4K or 5K idk the exact numbers, but iirc it should be in that range. Both of them have terrible performance no matter what in Part 1, and will be dedicated on growing, getting stats, forges, boosters and whatnot to be decent at best. They'll promote either by 1-8 for Meg or 1-E for Fiona with some exp abuse tactics like boss abuse or priest abuse.

Boss abuse? This really doesn't make any sense for how we're determining bad units then. Like at all. So basically Wendy shouldn't even be in this conversation at all, and neither should Sophia, because I clearly just arena abuse them until they are 20 and promote first and they have no problems for the rest of the game.

Giving Celerity to Meg is not a good idea because Tigers will wreck her given her low def growth, and she isn't the type of tanking hits, because she's a terrible knight. Fiona will also suck because her caps suck and she'll need like 10 Tier 2 level ups to actually cap most stats, if not all. Btw if you consider Celerity on Meg, consider it on Fiona, and even then it's not even a good idea to keep Celerity on DB because GMs will make a better use of it with chapters like 3-3 and 3-5.

But I abused her to have max defense, so clearly it's not a problem (which is why abuse should never be brought up), and Fiona's defense is worse anyways, so this really isn't helping at all. I'm really not understanding why you keep flopping back and forth between how you're playing. One second you're abusing units and the next second you're suggesting don't leave Celerity because GMs are better with it. You can give Celerity to both, the issue is that in one scenario, all it does is restore Fiona's original movement, and in Meg's it eliminates Meg's movement problem. And Celerity still doesn't let Fiona move through swamps. That's the issue. Why are we saying "oh, well by endgame Fiona ends up fine so clearly she's better than Meg." Meg starts out bad, and ends up mediocre. Fiona starts out bad and with a ton of abuse ends up mediocre.

And now, where things get different is in Part 4. What's best for Meg? Greil Army. What's her best role? A secondary unit dealing with dudes going for Ena on 4-1 and dealing with reinforcements on both 4-1 and 4-4; meanwhile, there should still be the need of Ike as main unit and another filler to scout the map and rout. What's the best route for Fiona? Hawk Army. What's her best role? A main unit that takes the lead of the strategy: rush into Valtome in 4-2 and deal with the lot and bunch of units with ranged weapons, and on top of that she has Reyson to support her; meanwhile there should still be the need of a filler and Tibarn/Pelleas to deal with reinforcements on the starting point. There's clearly a huge difference on the role both perform at their best, and this is what makes me give Fiona an extra credit, because she can actually be worth of taking main roles in strategies, and not a secondary/filler unit.

Both are filler units. And Fiona is barely even considerable for a filler unit you'll spend most of your time dumping resources on her for a good endgame (which like... Every unit has). Tibarn will still beat her there and still finish before she can help because Tibarn absolutely needs no help to do Hawk Army chapters. The maps have thickets which slows everyone down but fliers anyways and Tibarn can target any archers that could bother him and avoid Crossbows. Meg would be doing exactly what a knight would be doing. Fiona would be doing what a cavalier would be doing. Both are worse at it than their other respective classes at this. Fiona will barely have an A rank with anyone (if she even has one), and force someone else to go along in the army to help her.

Aaand, Order Incarnates have 35 AS so Meg will never double them.

Edit: I experienced both of them, Fiona in the end satisfied a quite good spot and her contributions, after the huge investment, were ok and decent. While Meg, that has a more comfortable position, felt short of the investment you need to do.

But they are weighed down IIRC by 6 for some odd reason. So their AS should be lower. I believe that was the problem. 34 spd doubles everything by endgame. That's what makes Nephenee a better choice over Devdan and Aran for instance. Or are you talking about the auras themselves? Because if so, just skip it by killing Ashera in 1 turn with Rafiel / Reyson.

And Fiona in the beginning is so wretched that at that point I'd say that anyone was more useful than her before that. Fell short by endgame but was okay before that is better than "sucked the whole game but was okay in the end where you'd be hard pressed to actually find someone that sucked."

Shanam is garbage and is really only there to use his skill to buy stuff (which is hardly used in a game with capturing).

I guess you could give him scrolls if we're absolutely abusing the hell out of characters.

[Lord Raven]

I'd say Cath is worse than Sophia and Wendy because Theives don't promote and she comes later than the other options.

Cath can dodge bandits in the desert, Sophia can get mutilated by said bandits, but honestly that's a shitty tactic.

However, Thieves can steal from anyone regardless of their speed, as long as they're steeling an item. She can also raid chests, and there's a lot of useful stuff in chests. That alone is better than Wendy/Sophia's contributions. If you analyze from a pure combat standpoint, they're all bad, but Cath has superior utility to many of the lower tiers.

Shanam is garbage and is really only there to use his skill to buy stuff (which is hardly used in a game with capturing).

No, but you should still be able to buy more stuff without selling too much. That bargain utility is, again, much better than purely trash units.

Arden and Midayle. Neither are impressive due to their growths, starting stats and classes.

Ardan is decent at defending the castle (which rarely happens) but otherwise he is trash, but not Wendy/Sophia tier. Midayle is pretty good, despite not being amazing he is still a decent unit since he has a mount and can attack from two range. He also has pursuit, which is a very good thing to have in FE4.

[Jedi]

Ardan is decent at defending the castle (which rarely happens) but otherwise he is trash, but not Wendy/Sophia tier. Midayle is pretty good, despite not being amazing he is still a decent unit since he has a mount and can attack from two range. He also has pursuit, which is a very good thing to have in FE4.

Ardan also gets the pursuit ring, and Midir also has charge which he can constantly attack and even destroy heavy units, much better contribution than quite a number of people that people suggest in this thread haha.

[Lord Raven]

Sophia gets a guiding ring, so I'll have to pass on giving Ardan credit for the pursuit ring.

Ardan can still play defense, and he's not totally useless in his join chapter. Wendy is totally useless.

[Augestein]

Ardan also gets the pursuit ring, and Midir also has charge which he can constantly attack and even destroy heavy units, much better contribution than quite a number of people that people suggest in this thread haha.

But we're apparently allowed to boss abuse and the pursuit ring is I guess a nice pass to a child unit, but I'm starting to get confused on what we're actually counting as unit performance or what, because even if he's the only one that can get the pursuit ring, are we counting that as HIS performance as a unit? I mean, do we count Ayra being able to talk to one of her possible lovers and getting a brave sword as a bonus for her performance? And apparently we're counting them as "not terrible if they're okay even if they sucked the whole way through."

At this point I'm almost ready to throw in the towel as I'm not longer understanding what people are counting as "bad" anymore. I was under the impression we were talking about assuming you played a normal game and weren't going out of your way to abuse the systems of EXP for a unit that sucks. What confuses me is that really I'd find that Fiona and Wendy should really be the only acceptable answers as both are damn near useless and require a crapton of stuff to use.

Edited July 31, 2016 by Augestein

[Lord Raven]

Your definition of worst unit though is Ardan, who is okay in the first map then falls off heavy.

The thing is that Wendy is below average when raised, as is Sophia. They are also largely a waste of resources, because the resources and time invested into them just doesn't pull through.

The same can be said about Ardan, but Ardan has at least competent combat in the chapter he arrives in and the subsequent chapter. Wendy/Sophia grow from complete unusability to like somewhat usable but still very mediocre at best. That's the issue. At least Ardan's mediocrity doesn't require much effort.

Not everyone has the same metric for "worst unit," which is part of why this argument is interesting. I don't agree with boss abuse in the slightest as an argument or metric, nor do I believe in getting items as a metric. I mean, you could actually 3 turn Chapter 14 and get the Guiding Ring with a ton of reliability without exposing Sophia to any combat. Ardan doesn't need to ever enter combat to get the Pursuit Ring. They just exist and it doesn't require any extra resources for them to get said item. This is why I do not believe it is an argument.

Edited July 31, 2016 by Lord Raven

[Augestein]

Yeah, I felt that both Wendy and Sophia were awful. The thing was is that I still put Sophia as better because at least you could level her up 9 times and promote her to be a healer. It's still not good, but I'd argue that she'd be less of a pain to carry from that point.

Wendy is pretty garbage, and that's mainly because the maps seem to hate her too. After she joins, the gaiden chapter is like the only chapter to use her and then you go to a bunch of axes, and after that point, Wendy is really screwed. She's stuck using Slim Lances to have a chance to hit someone, but doesn't have the speed or strength to really do much in the event that she does hit. What an awful unit.

And yes, I agree with you about Ardan. That point I made was that you can't just be like "at endgame if I jam a ton of resources into them, they're good." Otherwise I'd be giving Wendy boots and every stat booster in the game and saying "see she's fine!"

[Lord Raven]

She gets 6 EXP per heal. She needs to heal 17 times in order to get a single level up in that way, and she needs to heal 50 times in order to get a weapon rank up to use a better healing staff, and on top of that she'd only heal 20 HP - which any natural staff user can heal by that point anyway. This is very low quality utility, with too much costs and far too much effort.

The thing about Ardan is that there is very little effort involved in making him usable, but there is still a lot of effort in those 9 levels on Sophia. She has like 2 base skill and has to use inaccurate Flux tomes which also weigh her down, so she will have an incredibly difficult time hitting.

[Flee Fleet!]

I'm gonna assume no one talked about Alec or Noish from FE4 so...yeah.Alec and Noish. They're not that bad but not really good either.Especially Alec. Sure , Alec has Nihil that prevents enemies activating their skills as well as Pursuit , but I always found him doing less damage than Noish , even when using Pursuit , which makes him look like doing as much damage as one single hit by Noish can do. Also, he starts dodging lesser as chapters go on, mainly starting from ch.2. At least Noish has Critical, even though he doesn't activate it much. And he also starts off with a steel sword rather than an iron sword , thus gaining some advantage in offense during the prologue.

Still, I find Arden better than those two weaklings. Too bad he doesn't have much of a use most of the time thanks to his slow movement, something that Alec and Noish don't have, being that they're mounted units.

Edit: Lel noticed my wording was um wrong but w/e. Hope it's grammatically or w/e is correct now

Edited July 31, 2016 by Flee Fleet!

[Lord Raven]

I'm gonna assume no one talked about Alec or Noish from FE4 so...yeah, they're the worst. Especially Alec. They're not that bad but not really good either.

please tell me i read this correctly...

[Flee Fleet!]

please tell me i read this correctly...

Edited it. Still, Alec and Noish ain't the best amongst all the other units in first gen, in my opinion.

[Lord Raven]

so i dont get it are you saying alec and noish are some of the worst characters in FE history

cause again, alec and noish have a much easier time in their join chapter than sophia/wendy do in like... most of their time in FE6

[Jedi]

Alec and Noish have decent skills and are good Dads. They are average in an army of badasses, they'd do better in most other FE's.

[Kon]

Alec and Noish are pretty okay units, even without Holy Blood bonuses, lol. They even have some good skills to use and pass down to kids so I don't really get them being absolutely bad?

And I'm tempted to say that Hannibal is worse than Ardan, because at least Ardan gets points for netting the Pursuit Ring, and he can make some tanky kids if you're in the mood for some weird shenanigans ~o3o~

Wendy and Sophia are absolute garbage though, especially Wendy.

[Flee Fleet!]

I kinda worded it like that but what I meant was that Alec and Noish aren't really that great characters amongst the playable characters in gen 1 of FE4, in my opinion. Of course , they aren't the worst.

Heck I've used Noish to save villages and Alec to lure Ayra away from Genoa Castle. It's just that it's their high movement that ever really came useful for me or to kill off already weakened enemies.

And most other characters from gen 1 are useful than them , except for maybe Arden, in case of movement, or Dew and Lachesis before they're promoted.

But it's just my personal opinion so....yeah.

[Roger Wilco]

Well in my opinion:

FE4: Arden/Midir

(They are the worst parents in the game, Midir does to often and as for Arden, terrible speed)

FE5: I didn't get to play this out, but I must say Shanam is in no way even CLOSE to Shan an, his is just terrible

FE6: I actually played this game (without cheats) and every character is good when promoted, all except Wendy, Sophia becomes much much better when she promotes, she used Apocalypse for me, not Reigh

FE7: Erk is not a good sage, Pent is SO much better, and Nino is better as well

FE8: I'd have to say Gerik and Marisa, enough said.

FE9: Mist is the worst troubadour ever

FE10: Mist is the worst troubadour ever

FE11: Okay I saw a lot of negatives about this one, but I recently played it and I agree with one thing, too many cavaliers, vyland is by far the worst, Wolf re classed as a general is pretty good.

FE12: let's see, I really enjoyed playing this game, but my lease favourite character was roshea and vyland again

[Troykv]

Well in my opinion:

FE4: Arden/Midir

(They are the worst parents in the game, Midir does to often and as for Arden, terrible speed)

I don't think so, Midir doesn't have a extreme power like Sigurd right... But he at least will be fast, and the Killer Bow is a great weapon.

[Quintessence]

I didn't bring boss abuse as part of the argument but rather as a way to train her if you're desperate on making her a good unit; sorry if how I said it was misleading. But still, I recall using her without issues without boss abuse and instead used Bexp, seraph robe, drop, shield and a forge.

@Agustein, why bring Tibarn to the discussion, by that standards let's just say use Gatrie instead of Meg and use Titania instead of Fiona. The problem I have with Meg is that needs basically Fiona's same treatment: An energy drop, a Dracoshield, a forge and BEXP throughout all P1 and P3. She just needs less care because you have more time to take care of her. But she'll forever be used as a filler and just that, while Fiona has a chance to shine in Part 4, and then continue to be a filler.

Why do I defend Fiona, after all? Because it is dumb to make such an argument when you have a generous game like RD, where literally every unit is viable if you know how to manage them. That's why I see unreasonable to argue FE10 has the worst unit of the series.

Edited July 31, 2016 by Quintessence

[JasonMendez]

I don't think so, Midir doesn't have a extreme power like Sigurd right... But he at least will be fast, and the Killer Bow is a great weapon.

True, but I think he means that Midir is outclassed by Jamke early one with better starting stats, growths and he has the same skills as Midir as well as continue.

[Roger Wilco]

True, but I think he means that Midir is outclassed by Jamke early one with better starting stats, growths and he has the same skills as Midir as well as continue.

You got it spot on. Thats exactly what I meant.

[Irysa]

Midir has a horse and passes down pursuit. I mean his combat isn't even bad in FE4 because of how good the Killer Bow is, and keeping it on Jamke is frankly overkill.

Edited August 1, 2016 by Irysa