Path of Radiance Tier List

[samthedigital]

12 minutes ago, Uscari said:

I'm gonna level with you. Concentrating all battle exp on your armor knight in those chapters takes very long, I would say probably 120+ turns between Chapter 14 and Chapter 15. As for Bonus Experience, I was doing this in Maniac mode so I lost 150xp from Chapter 14 and 530xp on Chapter 15, but I should note that for the latter, you need to not kill any Laguz on that chapter in order to get about 1/3rd of the bxp.

Have you ever tried playing at a faster pace? You can certainly do all that grinding if you like, and it might be prudent if you're doing an ironman without meticulous planning, but it is otherwise completely unnecessary.

35 minutes ago, Uscari said:

You need your units as strong as possible for the late-game so maxing battle exp as much as you can is in my opinion a good move, at least for Maniac Mode.

Maniac mode can be completed with 0% growths; you don't need your units to be as strong as possible. It certainly helps to have more trained units for the sake of consistency, but it's far less efficient to play as you described than it is to do things like juggernaut with Titania early on and the like. It's not like the experience is wasted; she is going to be more useful for longer since she is getting a few more levels. It's not as if the other units will be getting no kills or experience either. They might get less, but it's also balanced out somewhat by getting more bonus experience and the experience formula working in the favor of units who are at a lower level.

[Shadow Mir]

22 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

You are free to doubt whatever you want. However, merely making a post say "I AM DOUBTING THIS" is useless (as well as rude). If your goal is to convince other people, be it the person you are responding to, or other people in the thread, the onus is on you to provide some sort of reason for why you have doubts. Otherwise, the assertion that Jill has more physical durability than Marcia given equal treatment stands.

Even something as simple as a bit of personal experience elaboration would be helpful here. "When I used both Marcia and Jill, and gave them equal amounts of bonus exp, I found Jill was only able to take one or two extra physical hits"* would be an example of a statement which would state your skepticism in a way which actually pushes discussion forward; at that point the two of you could compare notes further or somebody could pull out enemy stats, etc.

*not saying this particular statement is a true one, just an example

I wouldn't be the best person to make such a statement, though. It's not exactly a secret that I dislike Jill, mainly because every time I give her a chance, she blows it, I get pissed off and then cut her from the team. So if you're looking for a fair and impartial analysis of Jill's performance, you're looking at the wrong person for that.

6 hours ago, Reem said:

You all are crazy.  Ike and Titanic Titanium is the best characters in the game. There there every chapter, there's never a time YOU WON'T use them or LOSE them. 1 range and weapon triangles don't mean anything to them. This game doesn't punish you like the other Fire Emblem games because the enemy lack stats and SKILL. I can literally make a sandwich on enemy phase because I KNOW they won't die OR get crit. Also to finish this off Everyone else can't even dmg a feral one without supports. Their Atk power can't pierce them without Luna or Laguz weapon and even then their luck not that high because unlike your starting character; You get them early to boost their luck. Especially where majority of the Luck stat Booster are in the first 12 chapters.

lol
Nice joke. Ike does care about being sword-locked, because it means his enemy phase performance is diminished for almost all the game, and he struggles against lances. Also, FYI, Feral Ones are not common opponents, and second, they come in various classes. The only kind that units might struggle to damage is also the rarest one (of course, this ignores the fact that there's weapons meant specifically for defeating laguz units, which Feral Ones are). Also, the bolded is blatant arrogance. I've seen peeps make careless mistakes in Sacred Stones - the same Sacred Stones that many say is among the easiest games in the series - and pay dearly for it. If frigging Sacred Stones can punish recklessness and overconfidence, this game certainly can.

[Uscari]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

Have you ever tried playing at a faster pace? You can certainly do all that grinding if you like, and it might be prudent if you're doing an ironman without meticulous planning, but it is otherwise completely unnecessary.

Maniac mode can be completed with 0% growths; you don't need your units to be as strong as possible. It certainly helps to have more trained units for the sake of consistency, but it's far less efficient to play as you described than it is to do things like juggernaut with Titania early on and the like. It's not like the experience is wasted; she is going to be more useful for longer since she is getting a few more levels. It's not as if the other units will be getting no kills or experience either. They might get less, but it's also balanced out somewhat by getting more bonus experience and the experience formula working in the favor of units who are at a lower level.

I think we probably have a different definition of "efficiency". I consider it efficient to complete the game with the lowest number of unit deaths. I'm not trying to speedrun the game. I am trying to assemble the strongest team possible, capable of fighting the highest number of enemies, under the most strict conditions.

I suppose you could beat Maniac Mode with 0% growths by picking the best pre-promotes and retrying again and again, although I'd love to see someone do an Ironman with 0% growths in Maniac Mode, that would be very impressive to me.

[Shadow Mir]

31 minutes ago, Uscari said:

I think we probably have a different definition of "efficiency". I consider it efficient to complete the game with the lowest number of unit deaths. I'm not trying to speedrun the game. I am trying to assemble the strongest team possible, capable of fighting the highest number of enemies, under the most strict conditions.

I suppose you could beat Maniac Mode with 0% growths by picking the best pre-promotes and retrying again and again, although I'd love to see someone do an Ironman with 0% growths in Maniac Mode, that would be very impressive to me.

Ironman and 0% growths require completely different strategies; what works in one won't fly in the other. Trying to combine both is a recipe for disaster.

[samthedigital]

59 minutes ago, Uscari said:

I think we probably have a different definition of "efficiency". I consider it efficient to complete the game with the lowest number of unit deaths.

An "efficiency" playthrough generally has no unit deaths. They generally allow resets if that means the chapter is faster on average, but I'm not sure if you're doing an ironman tier list or not.

1 hour ago, Uscari said:

I am trying to assemble the strongest team possible, capable of fighting the highest number of enemies, under the most strict conditions.

If I have a character that can fill this criteria without spending a hundred turns grinding are they not better than the characters that need grinding to achieve the same goal? I can't imagine that my tiering philosophy is that different from yours. It's just that I would penalize a unit if they need a lot of help if they want to contribute to beating the game.

Quote

I suppose you could beat Maniac Mode with 0% growths by picking the best pre-promotes and retrying again and again, although I'd love to see someone do an Ironman with 0% growths in Maniac Mode, that would be very impressive to me.

0% growths runs are typically LTCs which can involve a lot of resets already. There have been 0% growths ironman playthroughs completed in some other Fire Emblem games though, so it might be possible here. You could always try if you want to see it done.

[Uscari]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

An "efficiency" playthrough generally has no unit deaths. They generally allow resets if that means the chapter is faster on average, but I'm not sure if you're doing an ironman tier list or not.

It's not really an ironman tier list, just a list I feel that captures the balance between a characters immediate practical use vs growth potential. It is supposed to factor in the things you're talking about with respect to availability and starting level, but I admittedly do weigh the endgame potential probably more than most commenting on this thread, generally due to my maniac mode experience.

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

If I have a character that can fill this criteria without spending a hundred turns grinding are they not better than the characters that need grinding to achieve the same goal? I can't imagine that my tiering philosophy is that different from yours. It's just that I would penalize a unit if they need a lot of help if they want to contribute to beating the game.

I would agree that such a unit would be better, which is why I rank Kieran and Oscar so much higher than say Brom or Gatrie, despite all 4 units in my opinion being near equal in strength as combat units. It's the reason I put Titania at the top of A tier rather than C tier.

So yeah our tiering philosophy isn't different fundamentally, I think it's a matter of us weighing certain considerations differently. I would agree with penalizing a unit due to needing help, that's actually why I put Brom and Gatrie in B tier rather than A tier, because they do require investment of resources and time.

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

0% growths runs are typically LTCs which can involve a lot of resets already. There have been 0% growths ironman playthroughs completed in some other Fire Emblem games though, so it might be possible here. You could always try if you want to see it done.

I could try it but honestly Maniac Mode Ironman all by itself was a huge challenge for me. I can't imagine putting myself through a 0% growths version of that. Being forced to use underleveled mediocre pre-promotes in the final chapters of the game which get kind of insane sounds like a special kind of hell I wouldn't want subject myself to.

[samthedigital]

28 minutes ago, Uscari said:

It is supposed to factor in the things you're talking about with respect to availability and starting level, but I admittedly do weigh the endgame potential probably more than most commenting on this thread, generally due to my maniac mode experience.

It's not your MM experience that's the main difference here. A lot of people don't value endgame potential as much because being slightly better in endgame isn't crucial to success. Having some decent lackeys and a unit to take on Ashnard (usually Ike) is enough. This is generally true in Fire Emblem too; there aren't really that many exceptions in the series.

43 minutes ago, Uscari said:

So yeah our tiering philosophy isn't different fundamentally, I think it's a matter of us weighing certain considerations differently. I would agree with penalizing a unit due to needing help, that's actually why I put Brom and Gatrie in B tier rather than A tier, because they do require investment of resources and time.

Gatrie does not require that initial investment. He's pretty good early on and doesn't require any additional work to be useful even if he falls off later. This is why I noted Gatrie in particular earlier in the topic, but there are a lot of units that fit this kind of mold that you have listed several tiers below Brom. Units like Stephan, Muarim, or Lethe for example can contribute regardless of the amount of time we spend grinding because of their bases.

[Shadow Mir]

20 hours ago, Uscari said:

I'm gonna level with you. Concentrating all battle exp on your armor knight in those chapters takes very long, I would say probably 120+ turns between Chapter 14 and Chapter 15. As for Bonus Experience, I was doing this in Maniac mode so I lost 150xp from Chapter 14 and 530xp on Chapter 15, but I should note that for the latter, you need to not kill any Laguz on that chapter in order to get about 1/3rd of the bxp.

You get far more in battle experience, particularly on Chapter 15 where the laguz are all effectively pre-promotes that give a lot of xp in battle. I found in general with Maniac Mode that bonus exp outside of the early chapters wasn't worth going for, and it was almost always better to take your time and route every map for maximum battle xp. Although on hard mode the bonus exp might be a lot more attractive, like twice as much.

So yeah, I would agree it's very tedious. However, I would not call it impractical. You need your units as strong as possible for the late-game so maxing battle exp as much as you can is in my opinion a good move, at least for Maniac Mode. It might be impractical for hard mode.

I'd consider it both tedious and impractical. Also, I consider it extremely telling that you have to do this at the expense of everyone else. No way in hell I could see someone who needs this level of babying and favoritism as B tier material. ...Speaking of, I still see Brom being in the same tier as Gatrie to be ridiculous, because he doesn't have the latter's early utility.

Edited May 19, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[ping]

So, following up my own MM playthrough, the tier list with only the characters I've used at least a little would look about like this:

All this based on how I played: semi-fast, no ironman, BEXP levels generally rigged.

S - dominant for a significant portion of the game, (almost) never a bad character to field.
A - Almost never a bad character to field, but more replacable than the S-tier units.
B - They'll do fine when you use them.
C - You might field them a couple times, but that's about it.
D - Usable, but there's basically always better options.
F - Bad and/or useless.

• Jill > Marcia because thanks to BEXP rigging, Jill's combat pulled ahead of Marcia's around Ch.20, which is early enough for me rank them in this order.
• Tanith only in B tier because I don't like using her Reinforce skill. With it, I'm sure she's an A tier unit.
• Because my Soren was so unbelievably Spd-screwed, I don't really have a good idea how his combat performance is supposed to be. I assume he's normally able to double enemies other than Generals. But even for me, he ended up being really useful as an offensive staff user, since his accuracy is better than anybody else's.
• Smite good.
• I think I overrated Boyd's combat a bit in the past, since his Def really is pretty low, but I do think there's some merit for his not-overkill-anymore Strength.
• Likewise, I'm sure there's some merit for Stefan's excellent base Spd, although I only fielded him a few times. No horse and swordlock is still really bad, although the latter does make him the best option to make use of the Brave Sword and his Vague Katti until Ike promotes.
• About the thieves - I kept Sothe in C because I like fielding two thieves in Astrid's joining map and the desert map, so I do "field him a couple times". Volke's contributions to your funds are more significant than on Hard, if you want to produce +5 forges continually, but his combat is really just awful on Maniac.
• Shinon and Gatrie are in C for their earlygame contributions; otherwise I'd put them in D (Gatrie) and F (Shinon), respectively.
• Chances are that Tibarn won't do anything after you call for his help.

And if I had to guesstimate where other characters would go:

• Marcia > Jill because I think that without BEXP rigging, Marcia remains the better unit for longer. However, because I found the midgame to be easier than the lategame, I'm not deeply convinced about the right order between these two at all.
• Kieran > Oscar because I didn't find that much value in Oscar's earlygame contributions. Sure, he does stuff by virtue of being one only a few units available, but his combat was really lackluster. Even considering that an average Oscar would have +2 Spd over what I was working with, I think that Kieran being a bit better once he joins outweighs what Oscar does with his availablity advantage.
• Ilyana is worse than Soren, but requires less investment.
• Muarim can be a Smite bot who is more likely to make useful combat contributions than Mordecai, but he comes later, not to mention that the Smite scroll comes later still.
• Calill seems perfectly fine if you didn't train Soren and Ilyana, or as an additional siege tome user.
• By my own definitions, Tormod probably should've landed at the bottom of B-. However, since he does require significantly more investment, I put him alongside all the "kinda OK for a few maps" characters in C.
• Mia > Zihark is one of those molehills that I'm absolutely not willing to die on, but she has a non-zero amount of usefulness in her joining chapter and in ch.9 (Gallia), if you want to save the villages at the top of the map. Zihark is a bit better as a longterm unit, of course, but since he still sucks at that, I don't value that a whole lot.
• Giffca as the best option among the royals because he gets a +2 Str bonus in Radiant Dawn if you call for his help.

[Arvis4Prez]

Behold, the only accurate Path of Radiance tier list. (Units are not ordered within the tiers)

My Reasoning for Tier List placements

[Original Alear]

Arvis4Prez, shouldn't you give Berserk Ashnard a separate icon from normal Ashnard, and his own tier?

[Arvis4Prez]

23 minutes ago, Original Alear said:

Arvis4Prez, shouldn't you give Berserk Ashnard a separate icon from normal Ashnard, and his own tier?

I would, but there wasn't a berserk Ashnard icon.

[Aedan7479]

6 hours ago, Arvis4Prez said:

Behold, the only accurate Path of Radiance tier list. (Units are not ordered within the tiers)

My Reasoning for Tier List placements

Why is Leakin in the Oliver tier? I believe it's a well established fact that the Oliver tier is only for Oliver. Joking aside, I don't want to call your tier list 'wrong' but what makes Sothe better than everyone in F tier? I'm curious.

[Arvis4Prez]

16 minutes ago, Aedan7479 said:

Why is Leakin in the Oliver tier? I believe it's a well established fact that the Oliver tier is only for Oliver. Joking aside, I don't want to call your tier list 'wrong' but what makes Sothe better than everyone in F tier? I'm curious.

Genuinely it's due to his thief utility and being able to open chests. Bastian's lowish speed means he won't double anyone, Lucia's got awful bases, Rolf, and then Tormod is someone who, in all my playthroughs, has never turned out very good. I've tried several times to train him up, but he's never been stellar, especially when compared to Soren and Ilyana, who you get earlier. I could see Bastian moving up a tier, and maybe the same with Lucia, but also just the fact that these two come so late, and are just so middling, that I put them in F tier.