FE5 Tier List

[Salad Utensil]

Leaf doesn't just have Light Brand though. He also has leadership stars, supports, huge availability...and move stars, but Sleuf has those as well.

Its not that Sleuf is inherently better than leaf, it's just Sleuf's position on the tier list is not reflective of the utility he provides. Sleuf is the second best Staff user in the game, period (unless you count Tina's staves). Because around chapters in the teens, high end staves become very important in order to complete the game without severe RNG abuse and important to complete the game efficiently. This tier list seems to value high end staffers and healers highly (and with good reason). I find it strange for Sleuf to be found between the super awesome lategame characters, Carrion, and Makua. His utility doesn't really come close to that of those characters and closer to the likes of Sara, Salem, Tina, and Linoan only better. He need to be in High (not sure where though).

I feel like Sety needs to go up a bit too, but thats another argument...

Edited November 16, 2009 by Brighton

[Dark Sage]

Leaf to lower mid. He has leadership stars and supports, plus availability, but Fin also has leadership stars. And Eveyl. And Conomore. And Pahn. And Lifis. And it just goes on.

Leaf really doesn't have a lot going for him except killing straggling axefighters. Light Brand's great, but it really weighs him down. At least early on.

Point is, show me why Leaf is above, say Amalda, who has a mount, leadership stars and staves. Or anyone else really.

[cheetah7071]

Leaf to lower mid. He has leadership stars and supports, plus availability, but Fin also has leadership stars. And Eveyl. And Conomore. And Pahn. And Lifis. And it just goes on.

Leaf really doesn't have a lot going for him except killing straggling axefighters. Light Brand's great, but it really weighs him down. At least early on.

Point is, show me why Leaf is above, say Amalda, who has a mount, leadership stars and staves. Or anyone else really.

Leadership stars stack. It's not like bringing Fin stops you from having Leaf's leadership. Also, what? Half the characters you listed don't have leadership, and half of those that remain have sucky availibility. Not to mention Lead having double their leadership for a good swath of the game.

He also has a billion and a half outgoing supports, many of which are to really good people (Fin, Asvel, Nanna, Carrion and Hicks being the cream of the crop).

He also has remove stars on top of that, as well as enough durability to be able to take care of himself as long as you don't fling him into a big mass of enemies, and then just heal himself off with the light brand.

As for Amalda specifically, Leaf has like triple or quadruple her availibility (joining in chapter 1 and appearing in both Fiana and Manster chapters >>> joining in chapter 19).

[Dark Sage]

[quote name='cheetah7071' date='December 13 2009, 02:36 AM' post='733436'

Leadership stars stack. It's not like bringing Fin stops you from having Leaf's leadership. Also, what? Half the characters you listed don't have leadership, and half of those that remain have sucky availibility. Not to mention Lead having double their leadership for a good swath of the game.[/end quote]

He also has a billion and a half outgoing supports, many of which are to really good people (Fin, Asvel, Nanna, Carrion and Hicks being the cream of the crop).

He also has remove stars on top of that, as well as enough durability to be able to take care of himself as long as you don't fling him into a big mass of enemies, and then just heal himself off with the light brand.

As for Amalda specifically, Leaf has like triple or quadruple her availibility (joining in chapter 1 and appearing in both Fiana and Manster chapters >>> joining in chapter 19).

I guess you're right about the leadership stars. It's just I read somewhere that these people had leadership stars. Sorry about that.

You're also right about the supports as well. However, while they do grant awesome critical bonuses, Leaf just doesn't have very good stats to use them as well as, say, Fin. Leaf's HP is good admitedly, but he doesn't really have good defense. He has only 7 at 20/0 and he doesn't reach promotion until chapter 17, so he doesn't really have good durability. Well, he could heal himself with his Light Sword, but it wastes a use that you could have saved using a vulnerary. So it's really not that great healing. His other stats are also subpar, especially strength and he loses a decent amount of AS even using Light Brand. Base level Leaf has 0 AS using his his Light Sword. He does have availability that no other character has, but he doesn't really do well against many enemies, such as lance users (which this game loves) or mages. He's not crap though, I just think those advantages just aren't enough to be higher than many other people.

Edited December 13, 2009 by Dark Sage

[Narga_Rocks]

Um, the thing about Leaf and his supports was about those other units. Leaf himself only gets a support from Nanna.

The idea is, there are a lot of characters to whom Leaf gives +10 crit/critevade/hit/avo (many of them good), and that's pretty good considering this is 1 RN.

He's basically responsible (a lot of the time) for giving those units +16 hit/avo and +10 crit/critevade.

[Dark Sage]

Yeah, I see. It's just he's not completely responsible to giving a lot of units their supports.

But yeah, boosting other people's avoid, hit, and critical at once is a great advantage.

On the other hand, what does Leaf offer beyond leadership stars and supports? Not a whole lot. Light Sword is good, but it weighs him down to much early on. It's essentially a slightly better Fire Sword with healing, which isn't bad. In fact, that's good. It's just he doesn't really wield some good swords really well due to below average build. Or maybe I'm just floundering here.

Leaf is easy to train though. It's easy to get him up to level 20 at level 12. But besides providing leadership and supports, he doesn't really do well in combat. He can only 2RKO or 3RKO at best really.

You know what? Don't drop him a tier. Just drop him one slot below. He's pretty good.

[Mekkah]

I've updated the list the way it is at FEG.

[PuffPuff]

Leaf probably should go below Dean, since he has better availibility even though Dean has better durability than him even upon his later joining time, and that Leaf will have to carefully be used until

after Chapter 18

a certain point in the game.

And why is Misha at bottom tier? I don't think that she is too bad considering her stats are worthwhile and not costing you a Knight's Proof to promote her.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

Posting since there might be more discussion here than in FEG:

Just argued this with Ninji, the only person who's really defended Robert and he pretty much conceded. I can go into more detail if necessary but for now I'll leave a summary. Basically...

1. Selphina's offense starts out better than Robert. He's using Iron bow and until he gets some STR, SKL and WEXP, his offense will be inferior to Selphy's due to her Duel skill which gives her better offense to start and sufficient later on and doesn't cost you the hassle of training Robert. Then there's of course the monopoly she has on the Killer Bow she starts out with and the Brave Bow up until another one of the bow users gets to B rank (keep in mind how slow Weapon level ups are in this game).

.

2. Robert has a durability lead that will continue to increase. This much is undeniable but since they're limited to 2 range and have Canto to work around 1 range issues, this means that said durability lead obviously has less merit than when you compare 2 units that have 1 or 1-2 range.

3. So Robert wins durability which ain't much, possibly later on but Duel makes Selphy's offense sufficient and better early on. So what's left? Supports.

Robert supports no one and needs Selphy's to boost his crit since his ATK is awful early one when you consider Armors while the other support comes from Glade. Selphy on the other hand, gets support from Leaf who is always played, then Glade like Robert. Finally, she supports the following:

Carrion

Glade

Kein

Alva

Robert

Carrion in particular because his 4 PCC means +40% crit boost on the pursuit attack. She gets 2 supports like Robert though one is always in play and although what he gets out of his supports is superior to what Selphina gets, she helps others, Robert is selfish.

Edited April 7, 2010 by Speedwagon

[grandjackal]

Wow, I could have sworn I made basically the same exact argument a good long time ago, but apparently when I say it, it's crazy!

Hmph...

[Dr. Tarrasque]

Wow, I could have sworn I made basically the same exact argument a good long time ago, but apparently when I say it, it's crazy!

Hmph...

Almost exact. A couple of factors would be that Robert's poor start wasn't as obvious since the E bow vs armors argument wasn't brought up until I worked on Tanya. I think the whole Selphina vs Robert discussion was pretty much dropped after I argued Tanya up and then there's also the fact that you forgot to point out Carrion's love of Selphina's support which is an asset to both.

Edited April 7, 2010 by Speedwagon

[Sophius]

this is going to seem rather random, especially considering that I am just jumping on this whole tier list , but I believe Shanam should be ranked a bit higher. He offers bargain which is extremely useful in purchasing more expensive weapons, master seals, and rings in the secret shop. Also, a neir and odo scroll would rectify his unsavory stats. He is a bit more useful than ronan or marty anyways.

[Scarlet]

this is going to seem rather random, especially considering that I am just jumping on this whole tier list , but I believe Shanam should be ranked a bit higher. He offers bargain which is extremely useful in purchasing more expensive weapons, master seals, and rings in the secret shop. Also, a neir and odo scroll would rectify his unsavory stats. He is a bit more useful than ronan or marty anyways.

The thing just is, what exactly is there that we'd want to buy that we can't buy enough of without Shanam? 17B has silver bows and axes for sale, but nobody really wants bows, and chances are that nobody will need silver axes either (Othin has Pugi h4x, maybe a master axe, and generally does well with steel or iron anyway, thanks to wrath. Then there's also the brave axe for the other axe dudes...)

Chapter 20 doesn't really have anything useful for sale.

Chapter 21 has wind and all silver weapons; maybe some wind tomes and/or silver swords, but chances are that you could've bought as many as you want even without Shanam's help anyway.

Then chapter 22 finally has some useful stuff, but knight proofs are not among them. What exactly would you gain from promoting someone this late? The game is almost over at this point, and since 19 enemy leadership stars are really annoying to deal with, chances are that this chapter is simply warp-skipped anyway, meaning that there's no opportunity to buy stuff.

Then there's the secret shop in chapter 24, yeah - but again, the game is almost over at this point. We hardly gain any benefit from it.

And Shanams stats suck really bad for his join time. He joins in chapter 16B with an amazing 5 Str and 9 Spd for non-existant offense, and mage-level durability with an amazing 24 HP and 4 Def. And his growths really don't help him out there either; and with such base stats, you can just completely forget scrolls.

Marty on the other hand makes for a decent tank if you train him; his promotion bonuses really help the player to be able to look over Marty's... ...uh, amazing base stats. But at least Marty doesn't join promoted with such bases - there are scrolls to help fix his Spd. In particular the Sety scroll, which appears very early and isn't heavily contested anyway.

Ronan... Yeah, his growth is utter nonsense, but again, he joins early enough and with a low enough level for scrolls to be able to fix that somewhat. His Spd is fine, his Str can be fixed to some extent, and while is Def utterly blows, he isn't supposed to take counters anyway. On the other hand, with that 55% Mag growth, he at least makes for a decent mage killer.

I say that the tier gap between Marty/Ronan and Shanam is very much justified.

[Dat Nick]

I still insist on Saphy tier, and I won't budge until I'm given a legitimate reason as to why not. Othin's a pretty cool gai but his primary factor, bosskilling, can be replaced by so many other units. Halvan, Asvel, Fin, Dean, even Mareeta. Warp+Repair can replaced by nobody (Warp can't be replaced for liek half the game anyway), Saphy is the only one who can do it, so she's a lot more of a key element to warp skipping than Othin is, however much of a hax guy he is.

I highly doubt Saphy would be where she is on the list if this didn't take into account warp skipping, btw.

Edited April 14, 2010 by Detective Badd

[Don Draper]

Saphy doesn't get A staves until around Chapter 12. So thats beneficial from Chapters 12-15. Then by Chapter 16, Salem will probably have A staves with an early promotion, you have Sleuf who already comes with A staves, and you have Sara who will reach A staves soon thanks to starting with B staves. Warp helps out in Chapters 12, 12x and 14, but that short lived monopoly isn't worth putting her in her own tier.

Edited April 17, 2010 by IOS

[Narga_Rocks]

Saphy doesn't get A staves until around Chapter 12. So thats beneficial from Chapters 12-15. Then by Chapter 16, Salem will probably have A staves with an early promotion, you have Sleuf who already comes with A staves, and you have Sara who will reach A staves soon thanks to starting with B staves. Warp helps out in Chapters 12, 12x and 14, but that short lived monopoly isn't worth putting her in her own tier.

No, that's what "Repair" is for.

Isn't "Thief" what puts Tina above all the other staff users? Tina starts with E staves and it takes 50 uses of heal to get to D. I mean, sure, Thief and Unlock give her 10 wexp, but still promotion only gives her a +1 and I have to think it will take nearly forever to get her to A.

[Don Draper]

Thief>Repair if you want to go down that route.

Tina gets A staves surprisingly fast. Even a miss with one of her prf weapons gets her the 10 wexp. I'll check Speedwagon's playthrough to see when he got her A staves but it was only after a few chapters.

[grandjackal]

Saphy doesn't get A staves until around Chapter 12. So thats beneficial from Chapters 12-15. Then by Chapter 16, Salem will probably have A staves with an early promotion, you have Sleuf who already comes with A staves, and you have Sara who will reach A staves soon thanks to starting with B staves. Warp helps out in Chapters 12, 12x and 14, but that short lived monopoly isn't worth putting her in her own tier.

Which nets you the following.

-Sleep Staff in-tact.

-Thief Staff in-tact.

-Makes 12x a cakewalk compared to the sheer annoyance it would be otherwise (oh boohoo, no Trewd...)

-Dragon Lance

-Rezire

That's a LOT she's getting us that these other staffers are not.

Even then, you're forgetting about something she has that no one else has-Repair. She's the only one who can use it, and to give you an idea of how valuable this thing is, it basically equals 15 Warps. Or 6 warps and 180 brave lance uses, or 3 warps, 40 Graphcalibur, 40 Fire Sword, 60 Light Brand and...whatever durability the Pugi Axe has of which it would all add to be that many uses. Brave weapons in general, status staffs, more Rezire, there are just so many ways she just haxes the game outside of warp, and that utility is simply unique to her.

She's like this game's Konami Code.

EDIT: GODDAMMIT NARGA, don't ninja me! T.T

Edited April 17, 2010 by Cait Sith

[Don Draper]

I'm not saying Saphy isn't the best character in the game. I'm saying that I don't know if her contributions are enough to put her in her own tier considering how much of a liability she is on any ballista map.

[Mekkah]

The map with the most ballistae is also the map where she gets you the Dragon Lance and keeps your frontliners alive with Physic. Dunno how I feel about Saphy tier regardless.

[Narga_Rocks]

EDIT: GODDAMMIT NARGA, don't ninja me! T.T

a: I'm a mod. YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! Go away! ... ...who said that?

b: your post had a lot more content than mine anyway.

The map with the most ballistae is also the map where she gets you the Dragon Lance and keeps your frontliners alive with Physic. Dunno how I feel about Saphy tier regardless.

It's not as if she is in her own tier anyway. I thought he was just talking about being a tier up on all the other staffers, not everyone. I could support no saphy tier, but before I made my other post I didn't notice bblade's other post.

I could also kinda support saphy tier depending on how necessary her repair is towards warpskipping as much as possible (and if we assume massive warp-skipping happening). There is no Caeda in this game since I'd assume a few characters are capable of doing the boss killing for warpskipping so there is nothing like Caeda preventing Lena tier in shadow dragon. But in this game there are a fair number of warp staves along the way. Also you can get a crap-ton of rewarp staves and if you have a really good mage with a rank staves then you could probably two turn instead of one turn for half the cost in warp staves. If you could do that then repair is less necessary for skipping because while it isn't as fast it is still close enough that it should prevent Mechanic Tier.

Then there is the question of whether or not we are even skipping. Repair is still cool and all for max use sleep and repair staves, but that's about it. All the other cool weapons she can fix for us aren't enough to put her over the other epic units.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

depending on how necessary her repair is towards warpskipping as much as possible

Quite necessary. The more warpskip you're doing, the more valuable repair becomes considering Warp Staff's availability:

C7

C12x

C17A x 2

C21x x 6

C22

C24x

I suggest watching YayMarsha's SSS rank run, he even gave Saphy the Elite skill and promotion for earlier Warp (which on most non-skip playthroughs would require Repair to be spent once or twice to get her A rank by C12's beginning).

I wouldn't object to Saphy in her own tier due to that Repair Staff.

Edited April 18, 2010 by Speedwagon

[Salad Utensil]

Quite necessary. The more warpskip you're doing, the more valuable repair becomes considering Warp Staff's availability:

C7

C12x

C17A x 2

C21x x 6

C22

C24x

I suggest watching YayMarsha's SSS rank run, he even gave Saphy the Elite skill and promotion for earlier Warp (which on most non-skip playthroughs would require Repair to be spent once or twice to get her A rank by C12's beginning).

I wouldn't object to Saphy in her own tier due to that Repair Staff.

Well considering the warp staff on 12X will never appear if one is playing efficiently, you are stuck with the 3 use's Corple gives you after chapter 7 until you reach chapter 17A. Repair alone probably justifies a tier gap. Warp is invaluable for chapter 10 and 12 and 12X and helps get all the items in 14 (unless you decide to use a risky thunderstorm strategy).

Edited April 18, 2010 by Brighton

[BEST TRYNDAMERE PLAYER]

I actually think Othin should have his own tier more than Saphy. Repair staff is VERY nice and all but c'mon, Othin is capable of wiping out 10+ enemies in a single enemy phase with just a Hand/Iron axe. And remember how important the enemy phase is in this game. And not just that but amazing availability and pretty good durability. And then he even has Pugi, which is practically a Killer and Hand Axe in one with 80 hit, which is the most accurate axe and since it has 30 crit, top that with his 3 PCC he's nearly guaranteed criticals even on Player phases.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

I actually think Othin should have his own tier more than Saphy. Repair staff is VERY nice and all but c'mon, Othin is capable of wiping out 10+ enemies in a single enemy phase with just a Hand/Iron axe. And remember how important the enemy phase is in this game. And not just that but amazing availability and pretty good durability. And then he even has Pugi, which is practically a Killer and Hand Axe in one with 80 hit, which is the most accurate axe and since it has 30 crit, top that with his 3 PCC he's nearly guaranteed criticals even on Player phases.

All that stuff is why he's already there. Non S-rank tier lists are usually based on efficiency and Saphy's utility affects turn count more than Othin and if not used for Warping, there's still repairing awesome weapons like the Brave Axe, Thief Staff and lots of other items I'm too lazy to list because doing so is unnecessary and has been said a million times already >_>.

Edited April 18, 2010 by Speedwagon