Engage Unit Tier List Ages Poorly?

[@glowstickofdestiny1290]

Ages poorly? Impossible, our perception of unit quality is completely objective and permanent! It shall remain static forever and cannot possibly shift as our understanding of this month-and-some-change-old game further develops!

[@papita_vTuberFan]

I know you are joking but this legit made me quit watching sone content creators that failed to adapt to the meta shifs in three houses.

[@ConstantEntity]

@@papita_vTuberFan I'll always be baffled about meta shifts being a thing in a single player RPG game where you can quite literally do almost any strategy and still beat the game.

[@xevran8641]

@@ConstantEntity People take "optimization" in FE way too seriously. I cleared Maddening blind (no dlc) with like half my army being in Mekkah's C tier. Engage is just not that hard. You can use literally any unit because of the emblem system.

[@ConstantEntity]

@@xevran8641 Pretty much. Not even just Engage, but you can use the "worst" units in any Fire Emblem and it'll work lol. It makes me so confused going into the FE Discord/Reddit and seeing people absolutely *livid* when they see someone not running the most "optimal" strat. It's some sort of complex where they feel that everyone is inferior in their Fire Emblem knowledge in some way, shape, or form. It's one of the reasons I hesitated getting into the Fire Emblem community, but I learned that the narcissists are just a small percentage of the community. The amazing members are usually the ones that aren't saying much and just enjoying the game silently, but pop their head in to show support every now and then.

[@thomaslaing6800]

@@ConstantEntity heard Leon somehow became “the meta” in Echoes after initially hearing it was Palla/Catria. Baffles me, since I always used Leon as a carry and figured I was just missing what the pegasi did. I will say, I know Entrap got a lot more talk once Divine Pulse working on staves became more well known.

[@Docaccino]

I love how Sommie just casually spawns into S tier

[@mitchellmartin4580]

That's because he's the best boi

[@javymakesmusic]

As he should

[@mitchellmartin4580]

The beauty of Fire Emblem Engage is that no matter how terrible a unit is, there's probably an emblem ring you can put on them to make them useful.

[@shadowjeff18]

or bond rings especially claude +bow range ring and olwens dire thunder ring

[@louiesatterwhite3885]

​@@shadowjeff18 Mae S is also really good. Gives +20% damage to electric magic, which can enable Thoron to potentially outdamage dire thunder

[@thomasmitchell7815]

Doesn't matter, you don't evaluate units like that. There is an opportunity cost there you're not counting. If an emblem is that strong...and there are a few that are, it hurts your team to put let's say Lyn on Etie. You mightve made Etie more viable but you hurt someone else. Which means that unit now has an added cost to run and you can't ignore it.

[@louiesatterwhite3885]

@@thomasmitchell7815 right, but you can evaluate how well a unit uses a certain emblem compared to other users. This is a comparison of opportunities.

[@mitchellmartin4580]

@@thomasmitchell7815 Well, I'm not so much saying that unit+emblem1 can be a better option than unit2+emblem1 or even just unit2. I'm saying that even a terrible unit can make it to endgame and still have uses so the consequences of screwing yourself over with bad units are low. I would know, because I tried using all of the unique classes in a Maddening run no DLC- yes, even Alfred's Avenir- and turned out just fine.

[@Sector4AQA]

Characters timestamps: 0:00 Intro (Non-spoilery part) 1:58 Division into used/not used ~ Used ~ 7:05 Alear 7:05 Etie 7:53 Céline 10:02 Louis 11:53 Chloé 14:27 Yunaka 16:20 Diamant 19:12 Ivy 21:30 Kagetsu 25:12 Zelkov 27:14 Pandreo 28:28 Merrin 29:54 Hortensia 31:42 Seadall 33:19 Goldmary 35:28 ~ Not used ~ 37:27 Vander 38:03 Clanne 39:29 Framme 40:48 Alfred 42:14 Boucheron 43:37 Jean 45:20 Anna 46:50 Alcryst 49:07 Lapis 50:38 Citrinne 51:22 Amber 52:36 Jade 53:51 Fogado 54:45 Bunet 55:55 Timerra 56:38 Panette 57:39 Rosado 58:47 Lindon 59:30 Saphir 59:57 [[SPOILERS]] 1:00:00 Mauvier 1:00:48 Veyle 1:01:37 Sorry for the delay! Hope this helps^^

[@mikeyb1466]

One other thing, I think Mauvier is definitely underrated because even though he joins late, maps open up to 14 slots afterwards when every map before then maxed out at 12. For that reason, it's not all that likely you would have a unit that is better than him at that point to deploy instead, and his stats are not that bad. He also has 2500 SP at base, and you can get him some free skills as well. He's at least decent, I say.

[@samkeiser9776]

Also, he comes with staffs so you can use him for that at least.

[@Aurirang]

I really like using Mauvier. While his stats aren't completely off the rocks, he does have a decent spread for survival and still do a fair amount of damage. I'd say his biggest issue is the low build cap on his class (12 is not much) which he comes capped with. I ended up giving him Leif to remedy that issue and get him back into double range again with the flame lance. He's a sturdy unit that doesn't need all that much babysitting but he often has trouble actually killing enemies.

[@heroinhero]

Counterpoint: He goes in S because he's hot

[@samkeiser9776]

I think Mekkkah is just heavily valuing availability, which I think some people care a lot less about.

[@bravepotatoe7513]

I personally just made him a utility bot with staves and slapped on draconix hex so he could help soften units because he was never soloing anything anyway

[@Delicoms]

My only comment is that mages seem very undervalued across-the-board on this tier list. Some enemies cannot be scratched by physical weapons, and most mages aren't even that fragile. They seem to be more valuable per slot than most classes. Also - Radiant Bow, especially on Fogado, was absolutely killer with his growths. So I think his position is warranted for him serving a dual role (physical and magical nuke)

[@mitrettavrednik]

Definitely try Panette on your next playthrough. With a brave axe she immediately becomes a valuable player phaser and boss killer. She's also one of the best Ike users because Ike makes her surprisingly tanky, and with her high strength and good dex she can become an incredibly good enemy phaser. People tend to over-fixate on her ability to run vantage strats (which are definitely effective due to her personal as well as her stat spread). But with Ike she can survive multiple rounds of combat, can use tomahawk, Ragnell, and great aether for 1-2 range, and her high strength allows her to reliably kill in retaliation. Part of this is just Ike doing Ike things, but I feel that Panette is uniquely good at using Ike. You could put Ike on a tankier unit, but many tanky units like Louis, Diamant, and Timerra will struggle to kill in retaliation on enemy phase, and on Maddening, Ike might actually make them too tanky and enemies will just ignore them. Panette will never have these issues. And of course, her personal synergizes well with Wrath and allows for 100% hit and 100% crit with a Lyn engraved killer axe, and her high HP allows you to get into vantage range at a higher HP threshold, so vantage crit builds will completely trivialize groups of enemies locked to 1 range.

[@rvtbastard]

I put her as Warrior for that Longbow+5. Insane unit. Most of the time I wouldn’t have her tank unless I wanted her HP to go down at least 40 points to trigger wrath and her personal. Give her an engraved killer weapon that boosts crit, easily looking at a guaranteed 90-over 100 crit. With already monstrous strength, 1 round corrupted worms, boss killer. Ike and Panette were made for each other.

[@mitrettavrednik]

@@rvtbastard Yep, I made her a warrior too. She can one round things and contribute to chain attacks from 3 range with a longbow. She already pulls her weight enough as a player phaser, but Ike takes her to a whole new level. You definitely shouldn't be shoehorning her into enemy phasing as many enemies as possible every single turn, but I often find scenarios where I can use her to tank like 4 enemies at once and take them all out on enemy phase. Her greatest value is that she's incredibly flexible, and she excels in pretty much any role. She can player phase, enemy phase, tank on chokepoints, she's a good boss killer, as a warrior she can contribute to chain attacks from 3 range with longbow, she gets reposition for free from Ike for support utility, etc.

[@mateusgreenwood1096]

I love pannete because she is perfect for the otherwise mediocre leif: Wrath+engraved killer axe+vantage+leif's backup crit bonus+ her personal skill is great. Ironically engaging breaks the combo since it switches to leif's terrible weapons. I usually give ike to someone with better defense too.

[@rin2012]

my panette completely soloed saphir's join chapter on maddening, once all the ranged units were gone, she completely held the choke 100% and got at least like 4 levels from how many enemies she killed

[@wizardsweetflips59]

God I love Panette. Her strength is just so good.

[@DerDansl]

overall pretty solid tier list you got there mauvier is a bit low imo. he joins pretty late but he comes with super good bases jean and anna need a little investment but even on maddening you can reach pretty fast the threshold where they outperform their counter parts especially give physical jean a chance. i switched him to amour knight as fast as possible and leveled him with micaiah. he becomes a beast in berserker/great knight/wyvern knight due to how his personal works (i do realize this is quite the investment) if there is a unit i would have placed lower it would be lapis. i feel like every physical unit in the game outperformes her and her personal works against her with the -critt especially coupled with her low strength

[@samkeiser9776]

Lapis’s stats are actually a little bit deceptive, her strength isn’t great, because she’s a sword fighter, which has a base strength of 5, but she has 6 strength on top of that. Meaning that her personal strength stat is actually higher than Diamant’s (he has 5) her personal speed is also higher than Diamant’s (she has 6 he has 5) She benefits a ton from reclassing into a class with higher base strength, while admittedly she’ll have competition for the seals, if you promote her and then reclass her into a warrior, she ends up with 18 strength, and 13 spd, which is still pretty fast but also incredibly strong early on. If you want to use her, she’s definitely more than just usable as warrior, cause Warrior is a pretty good class in this game. Also she’s lvl 10 at base so you don’t even need to give her exp. Also sorta unrelated but funny enough, amber’s personal strength is 8.

[@IfWhatYes]

@@samkeiser9776 you can tell who hasn't played maddening when they underestimate lapis. The absolute best unit for lucina ring, reclass to Lance knight and give her forged ridersbane and she kills any mounted unit on counter since she can ignore weapon triangle and still give backup attacks with javelin. Or switch to wyvern for a player phase focused unit

[@chris.pbacon7949]

@@IfWhatYes Why would you give lucina ring to someone for a 80% chance at 10% max HP damage on a 4 move unit instead of giving it to a bulky cav/flier for a 100% chance to make adjacent cav/fliers straight up immune to damage yet still subjected to normal AI priorities. I'm genuinely curious. Because Bonded Shield will also make you effectively immune to non staff, non engage attack breaks. On units that are effectively better at tanking, since immune, and can do everything the build you just spoke about does, but with 6 move and better weapons (mage knight).

[@chris.pbacon7949]

Lapis is far from the worst but she's definitely not the best for lucina ring imo (she may play the role of a bulky cav for bonded shield as a GK though, maybe), neither is she some sort of maddening supercarry, with or without it. Having cleared maddening with a strat doesn't make it good and doesn't mean you should assume someone hasn't cleared it just because they don't think the same as you. Her fixed stats do look good as a warrior though, as far as I remember.

[@phoenixgemini42]

​@@IfWhatYes have played maddening and can say that lapis still isn't great. You could that with nearly any other unit as well.

[@nathancarlisle2094]

While talking about Yunaka the main advantage that I find she has over Zelkov is that Yunaka's res is so high that it doesn't matter if Mystic units can hit you in the fog because she takes no damage from magic anyway. Yunaka was far and away my best mage killer and has all the other great Dodge tanking for everything else as well.

[@samkeiser9776]

I’d say her main advantage over Zelkov is just that she joins earlier, and with a decent chunk of sp, so it’s not that hard to get canter on her before Sigurd gets stolen, which means she has canter for like 8 chapters before he can get it. Canter isn’t that useful for fog machine, but I don’t really put that much into fog machine strats.

[@gameboyn64]

Framme with renewal Dierdre is really good. Being able to just neutralize a hit every turn is extremely useful and the enemy can't see that they don't do damage.

[@W0nston]

I think one thing about seadall that makes him great not only as a unit but as a dancer is he is surprisingly bulky and has access to the defense fist that rasises his bulkiness further.

[@erthbound]

Anna can actually be pretty good when reclassed into a Mage, since she has a base Magic Growth of 50%, 75% in Mage, making her mag growth even higher than Citrinnes, actually having better growths across the board except 5% les Res than Citrinne. Even when not going for a mage reclass, she comes with inate Bow proficiency just like Etie, making her a really god user of a radiant Bow as Warrior with that 50% mag growth and Long Bow Chain Attacks which become insane with Lucina, or going for Sniper or Bow Knight with Axes for a more Critrelated build or to fix shaky hits with their class skills respectively

[@aidanfong9129]

It takes her a really long time to catch up to citrinne’s magic BASE though.

[@JohnDoe-kn7ex]

The best build for Anna is the bench build. It literally requires 0 investment.

[@levobertus]

Anna is worse than Citrinne tho. Even if you catch her up to the same level, she will still need 35 more levels to catch up to Citrinne's mag and her speed will only be 1 better by base level 15 and 2 better by 20. It's not enough to double without significant investment and it at most lets her use Elfire slightly more often. Citrinne reaches one round thresholds of nearly every enemy with a forged dire thunder even on maddening and it can be obtained after chapter 9 for a handful of bond fragments. Anna needs 5 levels of babying or Micaiah spamming in a bad class, obtain tome prof, second seal out and then she will still have to bridge the 4 mag gap somehow which will take until the literal last map to catch up. Idk, it's just a lot of work for something Citrinne can just do out of the box.

[@Stigmaphobia777]

@@levobertus Not a big fan of save abusing dire thunder. It's pretty obvious it wasn't intentional for you to have reliable access to it. Also, when both are promoted at 10 into Mage Knight, Anna is 2 spd ahead at 10/5 and 3 at 10/10, and will only widen the gap from there. It really doesn't take much to keep her doubling. The lategame is a much much bigger pain in the ass than the early game, imo. So I'd rather take some added difficulty early on for a unit that pays off in the last few chapters/paralogues. Micaiah spam + babying a few kills a chapter can get Anna to level 10 in 2-3 chapters. You promote and reclass at 9, and she'll just snowball from there. Only thing I had to invest in her at that point was her own SP points and I think one spirit dust (which was overkill 90% of the time) and she was one-rounding all the way up until the end of the game just with a bond ring and eventually Celica. Pandreo is better than her, but really, why not both? Having 2-3 magic units really isn't a horrible idea in Maddening.

[@levobertus]

@@Stigmaphobia777 10/10 mage knight won't happen until around chapter 13-14, at which point you got the lyn ring to fix any speed shortcomings. 10/10 mage knight citrinne with chaos style factored in has 23.5 speed on average with olwen s and tonic, the doubling threshold of chapter 17 is 23, so she clears that even without skills and can invest into Lyn's speed+ skills with any leftover sp easily. A +3 forged Elfire costs about as much as +5 thunder and has lower accuracy and only a 4 damage lead, which Sage boni and growths make up for alone, even not factoring in the Roy/Leif/Ike engravings that are good on thunder but bad on Elfire. So not only is her accuracy and range with thunder better, she also gets to go all in on her mag stat and benefits from the brave effect and can still double if you go mage knight. The 2-3 speed lead by the midgame is pretty meaningless all things considered and you get 2 speedwings in chapter 18 and 22 if you really want to fix speed. The mag lead is actually much more significant, because 10/15 sage Citrinne clears benchmarks of all enemies in chapter 17 while Anna misses a few enemies by 2, even with tonic. Without tonics, she misses several enemies more like the paladins. Pandreo doesn't reach them for shit because he's 4-6 mag below both of them which he can't even make up for with Bolganone even if he doubles. Also, you mention how you can "just" spam Micaiah for 2-3 chapters to get to 10 with Anna and get her snowballing, but all this does is catch her up to Citrinne's base speed and 4 below her base mag at base. If she snowballs from there, then so will Citrinne by that logic, not to mention in 3 chapters, Citrinne could be a 10/3 mage knight or sage by that point, which would make her significantly stronger than Anna still. Anna isn't just much worse because of her level gap at this point, but her bases also suck and take until the midgame to catch up (speed+mag sum is about equal around chapter 18, with Citrinne leading in mag and Anna in spd a bit). Whether Olwen S was intended or not is also pretty meaningless imo, because neither was DLC (it makes the game significantly easier lol) and people also use that. I prefer to play the vanilla game and just use everything I can get, but really, that's a preference argument. It doesn't change that it can be used and many people will.

[@neil5458]

The main disagreement is Panette is S tier , other than that this list is actually cracked ! Good video Mekkah

[@alemfi]

oh boy, can't wait to see which tier Etie is in!

[@Peter-wb7he]

Alear's personal skill and dragon typing make them such an easy S tier

[@leargamma4912]

S tier is a bit much. I would say A tier is a solid fit

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Eeeeeh. Pepsiman isn't great. The fact that one of their best builds is turning them into a Byleth carrier is telling. If, say, Rosado or Diamant were in the same position, people would be arguing about how valuable that actually is over using the unit. Pepsiman is ass so nobody thinks twice about trading their turn for +3 to everything and a megadance every few turns

[@diegoabreu6324]

@@aprinnyonbreak1290 while you present a valid argument its funny that you use two of the worst units in the game to portray it. Rosado comes with terrible bases (for the chapter he joins) and only catches up to actual good units near the endgame, wheras Diamant is even a worse combatant than Alear while tied to a horrible personal skill, his only comparative advantage being his high build , but whatever emblem/role you choose he's far from being among the top perfomers for it.

[@Ardiar21]

Alear imo is high B/low A. His growths are nearly identical to kagetsu, so he should have very good speed and dex stats. Having access to Marth early game you could teach him sword agility and avoid (as far as bond lv10 goes) + an engraving with an avoid bonus for a fairly consistent dodge tank. The dragon typing also gives pretty good emblem bonuses, so Alear having flexibility with ring options is nice. He's not a high damage powerhouse but in a game where avoid is pretty strong, he makes for a solid unit.

[@formy52]

Fighting isn't everything. Alear has such powerful support options that alone makes them A or S.

[@spacedoyster7686]

I'd be excited to see you revisit this Tier List after your first Maddening playthrough, then maybe once more once you've gotten even more experience with the game! Anyway, one more point in Yunaka's favor is that Thief has 5 move. She's essentially a Promoted unit, but without the limited exp, and she joins right before you get your first Master Seals.

[@MegaScytheman]

Well in this game the distinction of promotion does not affect exp gain but otherwise yeah she has a class with high base stats and weapon ranks, not to mention a high max level so it pretty much is joining promoted

[@jjilatt123]

Ivy's absolutely insane. The fact that she has top tier combat AND staffing AND flight all in a game that rewards all of these things is nuts. Literally you just fix her speed by slapping Lyn on her and she proceeds to mow over so much. I think she might even have a case for top 1 honestly. It's nuts how cracked she is compared to most of the other Royals.

[@MegaScytheman]

Tbf lyn ring is a huge commitment, a lot of characters want it and it should not be assumed that she gets it. That said, she is a great user of it, she gets to double a lot of enemies especially if you inherit the speed+ skills from lyn. My personal opinion is that Ivy is indeed cracked but she's not the only good lyn user, and I'm not convinced she's the best since she doesn't make great use of astra storm or the clones. Especially since even without lyn Ivy can already fill the role of an armor assassin with flex staff access

[@louiesatterwhite3885]

​@@MegaScytheman all fair points. I think the biggest draw of Lyn to Ivy is the flat speed bonuses and speedtaker, but those are great on anyone as speed is very valuable debatably as good as move.

[@jjilatt123]

@@MegaScytheman Astra Storm is valid but tbh I never found the clones that useful since they eat an action to spawn. And Ivy can still use Storm to pull from a distance too if need be.

[@nibraf]

She's by far my best unit, only issue is that archers are her kryptonite on enemy phase. Apart from that she had literally no other weaknesses if you keep Lyn on her

[@louiesatterwhite3885]

@@jjilatt123 the clones are useful for manipulating enemy ai. It can help you waste enemy turns as they try to kill doubles that die without consequence

[@DavidCosmanCozySmash]

Both Hard and Maddening are interesting difficulties to discuss in Engage, which is honestly a very welcome thing compared to 3H. There's definitely going to be changes between Hard and Maddening too. Personally I found that Yunaka, for instance, scales much worse in Maddening by comparison. She was just a Corrin-bot for me towards the endgame - aside fog, draconic hex + dreadful aura with knives applying poison is still pretty sick - which isn't bad but definitely not the AVO-tank you're used to having enemies suicide onto her in Hard.

[@IfWhatYes]

Whenever people hype up yunaka I instantly know what difficulty they play on. Worse than zelkov in every way and both kinda lose to merrin anyway and I'm only forging one dagger

[@mikeyb1466]

There is one thing about the weak early joiners like Jean and Anna that was not mentioned, and that is Micaiah Great Sacrifice. Micaiah is not as busted as late game with the AOE Warps yet, but the EXP it gives can easily let them catch up with basically free levels to get to promotion. Now, that still is favoritism that could go to another unit so I don't think it really changes much, but it is a factor worth considering.

[@206Sam]

It is favoritism, but there's its also a low opportunity cost to give Anna or Jean micaiah and just have them staffbot and spam great sacrifice. You cant really do that as easily for Chloe, Louis, or Alear, because theyre busy actually contributing to combat.

[@mikeyb1466]

@@206Sam The opportunity cost is relatively low, but you still could put her on *any* unit besides those you are leaning on for combat, in theory. Anna also needs an early Second Seal and Master Seal to get going too, which isn't insignificant either since you only get 3 before Chapter 10. Great Sacrifice certainly helps, but it isn't like now using her is free of cost now.

[@vallum12100]

​@@mikeyb1466 totally agree, but the payoff for that early seal on Anna is so big, it's hard to justify who needs the second seal more, ya know? Mages are vital for maddening runs, and mages are seldom better than Anna for that investment, especially when money hungry and bring one of the best candidates for holding onto Byleth for the range boost and using the luck bonus to best effect.

[@mikeyb1466]

@@vallum12100 The Master Seal is the bigger investment, not the Second Seal. She needs to take one of the first few Master Seals to really be able to get going and that is a pretty big investment cost. Plus it isn't like Anna is the only good magic option, Ivy and Pandreo are right there and are basically free, plus you could also use someone like Citrinne depending on the setup. Byleth also can be used on Alear for good utility, and if Anna is as good at combat you probably would want to have her be Goddess Danced instead, not doing that herself.

[@plentyofpaper]

Looking at this 6 months later... it's help up surprisingly well. Alcryst I think is definitely in the wrong third of the tier list. Hearing base stats of Lapis and Diamant being compared as similar really didn't do the situation justice though. Name HP Bld Str Mag Dex Spd Def Res Lck Lapis 26 5 11 2 12 14 7 6 7 Diamant 32 9 13 3 13 13 10 6 10 Out of the gate, Diamant is literally better at everything except a point in speed. And the speed advantage only applies for a slim or iron sword. Diamant is faster on literally any other sword, never mind heavier weapons. Defensively, 2 shotting Lapis takes 20 P. Attack, while it takes 26 for Diamant. It takes 21 to 3 shot Diamant, and 18 to 4 shot him. 2 shotting Lapis is easier than 3 shotting Diamant. Growth rates and class changes can kind of turn things around for Lapis in the long run. Diamant's strong stats are largely the result of his unique class, so a lot of his advantage disappears if he's trying to fill other roles.. But if we're looking at immediate benefits, Diamant is clearly a much stronger option.

[@superblanco444]

Also Amber is made for wolf knight he’s pretty bonkers 50 str, 40 dex, 50 spd, 40 def and it bumps up his measly base 5 res to 25.

[@lucitheunlucky]

Covert Snipers with Leif's adaptability on a fort is a fun combo. Killer Axe/Killerbow/Longbow makes them counter basically every possible enemy. On maddening, I think this would work better than thieves in mist, because of Sniper's lower speed, so enemies would actually try to hit them. You just need someone to set up mist for them or set them on a fort/forrest.

[@Meowmers1219]

Lindon with a forged thunder tome and Olwen ring is great. highly recommend trying him in your next play

[@amrithas182]

This game would be perfect for a draft race...looking forward to it if you guys ever decide to do it

[@agent006nb]

Anna and Timerra were probably the two best units in my Maddening run, shows how much tier lists depend on how you build things in this game.

[@Kasaaz]

Fixed Growths definitely change the tier list in a lot of ways.

[@superblanco444]

Yea they’re pretty good

[@crosswind2160]

Anna was also one of my better units for 2 of my maddening runs, but that's because I like the character and tried my best to make her work. She's definitely one of the weakest units in the game. Timerra's definitely at least a tier above where she ended, as much as she depends on RNG to kill she's one of the very few that can take on entire armies on enemy phase and survive with minimal investment.

[@takarahayashi4124]

Anna has the highest offensive magic growths in the game, 50% mag dex and spd, as a sage it's 80% MAG, 55% DEX, 50% SPD, no other mage comes close to her growths. In fixed maddening which most people play, she's unmatched. In comparison, Ivy a fan favorite, only 55% mag 30% dex, 40% spd total growths in lindwyrm

[@crosswind2160]

@@takarahayashi4124 I don't agree with most people on Ivy being one of the best units in the game, but Anna is hardly comparable. 0 investment Ivy is a unit with flier mobility (which is extremely valuable in this game), staff utility, high magic and incomparable bulk to your other mages. To make Anna work you basically have to give her the most valuable early game ring, Micaiah, removing the possibility of giving it to an actually good unit, since her bulk is almost non-existant, her damage is bad and her accuracy is subpar. Only then she'll even be able to gain EXP reliably. Once you've done that you also have to give her one of your first Master Seals, AND a Second Seal, which in the early game are so very scarce and important, so she can promote and instantly switch to a magic class of your choice. In your example, let's say she became a Sage. You've invested extremely hard to make her actually start contributing as a unit many chapters later, in a way that actively requires you to neglect better characters. At this point, you'll have Citrinne, who will have a 5% lower magic growth and MUCH better bases. And she's not even THAT good... Why would you ever do that if you're trying to play efficiently, and not just trying to make Anna strong because you like her?

[@TheBoodercg]

If Anna didn’t have her personal skill people would put her higher on teir lists because her growths are insanely consistent. But since the expectation is that she becomes the sorce of income its taking an effect on the general consensus of her overall utility. She will be your fastest mage for the entire game the very moment you second/master seal her. And even if the skill only procs twice per casual run, a profits a profit.

[@Roggentrolla]

Hortensia is probably slightly underrated here as her personal does allow for some 1 turn strategies that absolutely nobody else can replicate via Miciah, and even from the lens of casually playing on Hard her bonus healing range with otherwise 1-range staves is super nice, and nobody else can really do that either. World Tree is a bit of a meme but it can afford you bonus uses of Entrap if you're trying to have as much fun as possible with those kinds of goofy strategies.

[@Maroxad]

On my hard run, I was carried hard by Timerra. I plonked 2 dragonshields on her, and watched her solo entire lanes. With a vulnerary of course. Her solid resistance, defense and speed ensured she would never be doubled. And soon had enough speed to double anything that wasnt a swordmaster (with the Lyn skill inherited she could double those too). As a result, was basically has the defense of an armor knight, but with the utilty of a backup unit. Jean is an interesting unit, who works very well with the game's reclassing. Reclass him to a mage, and he will literally melt most foes with his fire spells. Louis is a really good and since armor knights move as fast as everyone else in the game. Clanne is a early game carry, he falls off for sure, but until you get citrine he is gonna be your best damage dealer. Alear is massively underrated, as a combat unit they kinda suck. But when you combine their skill with allied brave weapons or fists, their precense can make the difference between a ORKO and an enemy surviving. I made them an axe fighter, for the 1-2 range. which would allow me to utilize both their personal skill to maximum efficiency. Backup also helped. So yeah, alear sucked on their own, but they were a great support unit.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Clanne is great, he just needs a reclass after 10. If you don't, then yeah, he's not great, but if you have him jump over to like, Hero, or Wyvern, or Warrior or something he's fantastic Clanne and Jean actually work well together. Jean wants to become a mage, Clanne wants to become not mage

[@FirstLast-qq9zh]

I think what (most) early game units lack in terms of stats they can make up for in terms of canter. IMO units like Yunaka, Diamant, Celine etc. whom you’d otherwise bench can earn themselves a deplotment slot with canter utility over the 5-10ish maps where the midgame units dont have access to canter. Definitely not saying all the pre chapter 10 units should be moved up a tier but it’s an advantage worth considering.

[@gameboyn64]

Any unit joining after Yunaka is not going to get canter, at least not on maddening. There aren't enough maps or exp

[@alejandro_rodriguez_99]

​@@gameboyn64 specially Jade, that needs to battle skirmishes to obtain even some SP before chapter 10

[@FirstLast-qq9zh]

@@gameboyn64 it’s basically impossible for jade without dlc, but Diamant I found to be pretty easy. Joins with 800sp, an emblem equipped, solid stats for join time especially with roy engaged, and 2 chapters to get himself 2 levels. Alcryst’s squad and Amber need a lot more work, but with mercerius and micaiah it’s not easy but it is possible for a couple of them.

[@dylzoe]

45:10 Here's a special thing about Bouche that makes him stand out a little bit more: His personal and chloe's are the only two that add +2 DAMAGE instead of +2 STR when you attack, which effectively adds +2 damage regardless of enemy defenses. You can combine this with Alear's +3 damage adjacency bonus to get +5 damage. If you are doubling with a brave weapon (maybe reclass him to qi adept), then you get a minimum of 20 damage per round of player phase combat. Pretty cool! Maybe it could be useful in something like 0% growths?

[@bones9964]

Chloe's personal also does +2 damage rather than atk btw, so it's 1 of 2

[@dylzoe]

@@bones9964 oh oops i forgot about her. Thanks, updating.

[@icecoldnut5152]

Diamont is solid A tier. Could even be higher. He gets a free deployment slot and comes with Leif. He’s practically begging for you to use a master seal on him. He gets s rank swords and A rank axes and sol. if you leave Leif on him (which I think you should) he can learn vantage which actually works well with his personal. And he makes best use of the ability that lets you use weapon triangle advantage when a foe attacks because of his high weapon levels. Not to mention he joins with a whopping 900 SP

[@clockworkseal2135]

The big kicker with boucheron is getting both high spd/dex and high bld, so he ends up being like a swordmaster that works with heavier weapons and contributes by chain attacking when you dont have anyone else to do it before he gets his engine running.

[@Kasaaz]

He carried hard in the early and early-mid game for me, but I just couldn't keep him forever because he wouldn't get Strength... It was Noodle Arm Nolan all over again.

[@bravepotatoe7513]

ig I got unlucky with my boucheron because he ended up being my slowest unit after louis

[@Kasaaz]

@@bravepotatoe7513 I made him... the one that gets bows too. Was the only way he was useful later on, on maps with a ton of fliers. An archer that wouldn't necessarily explode from being attacked a single time not in deep cover.

[@reidinator13]

Considering how emblems can just completely carry units in this game, I feel like making tier lists for units in this game is more difficult compared to other FEs. I feel like if I were to make a tier list, I would judge each character based on their performance without the use of Emblems. This was still solid for a first Engage tier list and there’s still always playing through the game again trying out different units and combinations of emblems and other things.

[@mateusgreenwood1096]

Martial master Framme with eirika+ flashing fist is one of my favorite units, chain guard also becomes WAY better when you gain access to quality time.

[@kaeBR]

The actual real take is that classes matter much more than characters, most reasonable choices for a given role are fairly close to each other when played well and invested in S-D ranking implies some big power difference but in most cases it's just not there

[@randomtree0770]

Yeah we're working at fe11 levels of interchangeability

[@kaeBR]

In older games the big power diff often came down to chars being class or weapon locked. Since in modern FEs anyone can be anything, char-based power gaps narrow significantly

[@alejandro_rodriguez_99]

Also the character bonus weapon rank, one reason why Pandreo is so good in Sage is because he has double A rank and the only S rank staff is utterly trash giving him access to fortify and entrap that normal sages can't use. The same with,warriors archers warriors can use the Silver bow thing that Boucheron or Anna or anyone else that doesn't start with a bow can't do, except if theyhave abow proficiency.

[@Constro]

@@alejandro_rodriguez_99 I will note, even though Anna doesn't start with a bow, her innate proficiency is bow so she can use silver bow in Warrior like Etie or Alcryst.

[@alejandro_rodriguez_99]

@@Constro oh that is right, i will edit it

[@Katie-hb8iq]

Alear is S or at least A tier. Definitely a case where you didn't use him properly unfortunately. You can forge the Liberation to +5 for 1 silver early on which is probably the best forge you can do for him considering it has 4 weight and he has 4 build. It lasts for a really long time too. This allows him to snowball in the same way chloe does, especially if you go the Griffin knight route. I can't imagine alear not doubling most of the time. Yours must have been really rng screwed.

[@papita_vTuberFan]

I don´t think Alear is a bad unit she did well for me as a wyvern so i was watching Mekkah´s playthrough and he didn´t reclass his. And that´s the problem because divine dragon has awful stats but it gets balanced arround it having bonuses for different emblems. So you gotta take your pick either you make yours a kick ass support unit or a kick ass combat unit. So in that basis i could see him/her being placed higher.

[@eros439]

My alear was fine since I forged the weapon up to+5 in the very early chapters and got good lvl ups . Didn’t reclass to another just advanced class and started back to lvl 1 advanced once lvl cap hit .

[@pableitor2009]

My alear leveled up strength like 4-5 times in the whole game, but in the other hand leveled up def/res almost every level, so I ended up with a thicc Alear that hit like a wet noodle but was able to take hits like a champ

[@superblanco444]

Hero alear gang

[@nathancarlisle2094]

I agree Chloe and Alear were my two fastest units and doubled literally everything. Both had over 40 speed by end game and both had around 27 strength I believe. My Alear also had a lot of crit and combined with Marth for three attacks minimum or four on a break he turned into the delete enemy nuclear option.

[@evieeevee]

My Alear was trash on my first play through on Hard so I thought they were bad but that’s really just RNG screwing. On subsequent hard and maddening runs Alear is definitely S tier. Really good speed and solid strength growth, I like them a lot on wyvern.

[@HollowGolem]

Yunaka/Zelkov is a really tricky one, because once you get Zelkov he WILL be better, but late-game, he falls off behind a hypothetical Yunaka you kept using. So she takes more investment, but ends up better. That personal is just nuts (compared to his, which is overkill), her better Res growth helps her deal with one of the Thief's few weaknesses as a unit, and she has better speed.

[@MrShirotomo]

Yeah Yunaka is better if your willing to invest in her, she has the benefit of using Micaiah for exp early, and the ability to obtain early skills from the first emblems and get stuff like Marths avoid, Roy's strength, Leif's knife precision, Or Sigurd's Canter. While Zelkov is better if you wanted to invest in another early game unit instead. I do think Yunaka uses Corrin better too on lower difficulties due to the crit passive which negates Zelkovs str advantage imo.

[@HollowGolem]

@@MrShirotomo Beyond that, there aren't very many early-game units worth investing in BESIDES Yunaka. Basically she, Alcryst, Chloe, and Anna if you can get her over to Sage early enough, and everyone else falls off enough (especially on Maddening) that you replace them with later units as soon as you can.

[@takarahayashi4124]

thieves become kinda useless late game in maddening, their damage output is too low in general, and having too high of an evasion is a double edge sword as if you have 100% avoid, no one will try to attack you, and will kill everyone else in range

[@HollowGolem]

@@takarahayashi4124 Yeah, you don't want to stack forest/fog, but I was usually able to keep her evade low enough that enemies had about a 15-20% chance to hit her (so they'd try, and she could survive the odd hit or two; that's another reason she's better than Zelkov, because he ends up with more evade), and putting poison on during enemy phase helps with the bulk of some of those maddening guys late-game. She certainly wasn't as great as she started out as, but her utility made up for her lack of raw killing potential.

[@effluxi9587]

​@@HollowGolem lapis and Amber are both also pretty underrated, lapis especially with dlc for being the best user of tiki in the vein of using every skill like Alcryst is for lyn. Amber is very good if he gets an early master seal all the way to falling off a little in super late game

[@VioletLunaChan]

Yunaka is also pretty great as a Mage. She has more than double Clanne's magic growth. I'm not kidding.

[@VangolaGear]

15:37 honestly speaking, assuming you have the DLC you can put Edelgard on her and she will solo most the early game. And then, once she has built up some levels, you can swap it out for Camilla and Camilla’s Axe, Bolt Axe, Flame Lance, and Steel Lance will pretty much kill whatever the heck you want to kill.

[@vallum12100]

She is one of those units who can run a mix set and utilize Camilla beyond terrain making for sure. Bonus for getting even more movement range being a flying, it's like the ring was made for Chloe!

[@VangolaGear]

@@vallum12100 Chloé is just hyper versatile, which is always a great thing to have available. Sure, she is t as versatile as Jean. But her accessibility and ease of use are what make her better than him imo.

[@alejandro_rodriguez_99]

About Pandreo next time you should reclass him to Sage, the S rank in staves is useless and A rank in tomes give him access to Bolganone, Excalibur and Thoron and slightly better bases and growths overall. Also double A rank sage that first appear in a dessert with an elfire tome sounds familiar.

[@Kasaaz]

Proficiency Ranks are so WEIRD in this game. Sometimes their special proficiency does or doesn't work for certain classes and, I assume, in Pandreo's case, his doesn't do anything for the class you get him with. It's a strange system. If he does get boosted Staves, then it makes sense to move him to another class where the bonus actually matters. But again, who knows if it actually gets it or not.

[@twigz3214]

Pandreo is a lot better in mage knight, mage knight just has better offensive stats with 2 more base speed and 3 from the skill. At level 5 if you reclass him instantly he'll have 25 speed on player phase.

[@alejandro_rodriguez_99]

@@twigz3214 I was talking about him conserving staves and how Sage Pandreo invalidates High Priest Pandrel, but yeah if you want to make him a magic weapon of destruction mage knight is better, chaos style is so good. It is 2 less magic and a slightly worse growth but overall mage knight is better for the speed.

[@gameboyn64]

Yunaka>zelkov Yunaka's personal synergies with the covert classes really well. Zelkov's personal can actually be a hindrance on maddening sometimes as it can push his avoid to low to be targeted. Yunaka joins early enough to get canter. Zelkov won't be getting that till after ch 17 Unlike Zelkov, Yunaka actually has a res stat so magic isn't really an issue. She is probably one of the better units at enemy phasing mages in the entire game. The strength issue isn't that big. Yunaka joins basically 8 chapters before zelkov and like Chloe, has access to early game energy drops

[@wouterW24]

*spoilers* The weirdest thing is that Soren gives a utterly ridiculous power boost to Veyle that other units can't replicate unlike 95% of things in this game, so DLC changes the tier list a small bit. Timerra's sandstorm also stacks with Hector's engage skill in a weird way giving you a 195% of defense as strength attack should it proc enemy phase, but that's less reliable and gamechanging I think.

[@kaeBR]

That's true, but she's (veyle) not available for like 95% of the game, so I feel like that doesn't matter too much if availability is taken in to consideration for char strength

[@DARKMalice9000]

Also to me pair Timerra with Edelgard, Dimitri and Claude she is broken AF

[@randomtree0770]

Soren can make anyone into a good nos tank, you don't need his crit to one round so he isn't much more insane on Veyle than anyone else.

[@wouterW24]

@@randomtree0770 I haven't actually tested anything myself aside from postgame level 50 tempest trail(in which she is handy)but it has a niche on maddening I think where enemies are harder to kill? Or can inherited Lyn skills on Ivy or just a faster that produce reliable one-rounding on enemy phase come lategame too? I don't actually know and I'm curious. Veyle is powerful enough to not need doubling and can get hold out, and using only one blow tends to keep her HP high.

[@Sharie_mabari]

You should spoiler tag this, what is the point of letting people skip spoilers if people are gonna put them in the comments without warning.

[@thomaslaing6800]

Lindon and Saphir are great, 2k at base SP lets them inherit some fun skills, Canter, Dual Assist, Draconic Hex, or whatever. They’re great for support gimmicks that you wouldn’t want to invest a real unit to try out, blank slates for experimentation once you have an excess of resources. My personal favourite is turning one into a Griffon, inheriting Draconic Hex, and using Celica during warp skips to get an easy debuff on the boss.

[@im2fluxxed754]

Agreed on Saphir. I put Resolve+, Pair Up and Leif on her to make her a pretty reliable EP unit. Suddenly those average defences become really good once you engage with Leif.

[@val_halla7768]

8:30 Longbows are C rank, so anyone can use them as a warrior. However, Etie’s bow proficiency does allow her to use a silver bow as a warrior, which is still a pretty significant advantage.

[@alejandro_rodriguez_99]

Specially because with the extra strength that Warrior has is like using the S rank bow with a sniper. Sniper Etie only advantage is the brave vow and it isn't worth it for everything that Warrior Etie has

[@SaphySenchou]

In my run Ivy was my go to Unit to fix problems. Probably my Ivy was blessed as hell (she became very bulky) but once I put speedtaker on her she practically solo'd maps for me which in hindsight I shouldnt have done, because towards the late game my other units were a bit on the weak side.

[@birdbig6852]

She almost have everything, the only big problem is the lack of speed (luck being fixed with engrave) that Lyn and speed wing fix. The only unit that can do better combat wise is maybe Alcryst for luna+ but it's a big lose on the mobility department

[@urahara1446]

Used Vander long term in a plot important characters only run. His personal bases in Dex and Speed are actually just 0 so he just starts missing and getting doubled very quickly. Sadly he has no business hanging around past a certain point and that point comes early on. Louis and Yunaka are the real early game carries

[@SlitheringStevePhilips]

Fogado has a bigger magic growth and basically exists to use the radiant bow, has its uses on maddening since it’s a lot easier to one round endgame wyverns with that than regular bows

[@lanceareadbhar]

This will age like fine wine or at least better than Link's and Choop's from yesterday.

[@lanceareadbhar]

That said, I would put Hortensia in the Flawless category given all of the things she can do better than anyone else. I also think Framme, Alfred, Etie, and Timerra are all Decent or somewhere in between the Decent and Usable groups. Looking forward to your thoughts on Maddening as I feel Kagetsu and Ivy take a little bit of a hit while Seadall and Hortensia remain S tier for me. This is a hard game for a tier list since the Emblem Rings are so powerful that they can make or break a unit.

[@lanceareadbhar]

Lastly, if you want Alear to be more of a combat unit, I found Wolf Knight worked well since it's easy to forge the daggers, their speed gets a nice boost and found it easier to get kills that way. You give up the dragon class, but that frees up Byleth for Ivy giving you a flying four way dancer, a boost to her magic, and fixes her luck. I'm sure there are more optimal builds, but this has worked well for me so far on Maddening.

[@bdl6779]

This list is def better than the other you mentioned. I think Alear should be higher though. They are pretty cracked.

[@lanceareadbhar]

​@@bdl6779 I agree with you that Alear should be up a tier given their utility alone. I think I would put Hortensia and Chloe in Flawless and move Ivy down one to the top of Near Flawless. Chloe can have issues late game, but she has the distinction of being the only flyer early and can snowball quickly and her offense can be propped up with skills and rings and she can be useful with a staff as well with her only real cost being a master seal and forges. Framme should also move up a tier.

[@benzoFE88]

A virtue of every fire emblem tierlist. The dancer will always be S tier

[@Slenderquil]

Your dancer is always as strong as your best unit and I think that's really cool

[@DuoFaceGaming]

Overall though I will say this was quite interesting, according to the results of this video my final team in my hard mode playthrough consisted of 3 S tiers, 4 A tiers, 4 B tiers, and 3 C tiers, which implies that either the game is incredibly well balanced and/or the emblems can make effectively any unit shine

[@gameboyn64]

I personally would put alear in s or a tier. Alear is an incredibly flexible unit that gets a lot out of any emblem you give them. They are arguably the best or at least the second best unit in your squad at using any given emblem at all times. Alear is incredibly tanky starting from the mid game boasting good mixed defense and speed. Free deployment, perfect access to the convoy, one of the few decent personal skills, can support every unit and has the easiest time boosting supports, and has one of the best sp pools in the game.

[@Spark31Gaming]

Timera was really good after inheriting lief's build +4 in my experience. I slapped Sigurd on her for an additional build point and then spears never hurt her weight and sandstorm is a REALLY good class ability. Her dex is so good it procs constantly and does more damage than her crits.

[@Kasaaz]

I think as this game develops and people get better at it and play at higher difficulties, the biggest change will come from people using the Fist Arts more. The fact that you can break all other Gray Weapon Units is bonkers. In my late game, Framme would just solo anything that wasn't an Armored unit, but she did have some absolutely insane level ups. She ended up rarely using staffs, because she just hit so hard on Player Turn.

[@randomtree0770]

Wait, you are breaking after chapter 11? If your one-rounding breaking barely matters and enemy phases become way more valuable.

[@mitchellmartin4580]

Try using lunar brace with arts weapons. Just shreds everything.

[@Kasaaz]

@@randomtree0770 It definitely had me playing differently than I would in the past. Because you don't want to leave your fist users open for Enemy Phase. I may just be biased, because I liked the new kind of ways it made me think about Player Phase vs Enemy Phase. It was also easier to actually make use of Chain Guard when I was using the unit more offensively and didn't have an attack. With all the passive healing they give you through either Seadall or Corrin, you can sometimes Chain Guard multiple turns in a row. I just think the Qi units are underexplored at this stage and that the Fist Arts are undervalued by most people. The best Martial Master is probably someone reclassed to it. Maybe Anna. There's still a lot to explore.

[@Kasaaz]

@@mitchellmartin4580 I did without realizing it. I mostly had Eirika on her because I just didn't know where else to put Eirika most of the time. If the SP system didn't suck so much, I bet Eirika would be the best Emblem. The fact that you can inherit those Lunar Brace and the other skill and then when you swap the Ring user it swaps everyone, or when you Engage it gives both sides to everyone is crazy.

[@crosswind2160]

On my third Maddening run I focused all of my resources into making Flashing Fist Arts as soon as possible, which weirdly is incredibly easy to do, and Fist weapons are super cheap to forge. By chapter 6 I had Flashing Fists +4 which completely made a joke out of the early game, and made Framme scale as one of my best units till endgame, since she was my first early promote so she could actually use the weapon. And I was adamant on Arts being super nerfed on my first 2 runs, just thought about giving it another try on my 3rd bc it's my favorite weapon type...

[@pancakeoverlord1886]

I mostly agree with your list, though I do feel that Ivy, Diamant and Lapis is too high and Hortensia is S tier imo. Horte passive is actually a bit misleading, warp and rewarp also gets a staff range boost from her personal alongside all the heal staves. Alear being B on hard mode makes sense, but they're extremely useful on Maddening due to the myriad of bonus that they give.

[@GODHAND42]

Not sure if the opinion has changed yet, but Anna absolutely deserves a minimum B if not A. She's a medium investment-high reward unit, only taking a little bit of feeding (or Micaiah ring) and an early second seal to put her on track to become one of the best magic users. Her early availability and regular growths once you put her in sage have had her outclassing Ivy in speed, accuracy, and even damage on 3 of my playthroughs, the only drawbacks being her mobility and build (the latter easily fixable with a forged elfire or Build+ skill). The personal skill is just icing on the cake. Stick her with the Byleth ring and she's a monster who can one-round wyrms on maddening.

[@ajch22]

Is really interesting how much peoples's experiences differ. I would put Anna easily on S tier, her personal skill won't procc very often on early game, but later on is just gonna be poppin off once every 3 fights or so, especially if you pair her with either Leif or Byleth and you give her the luck +12 byleth provides.

[@Demonic0Jester]

>annah is bad > laughs in 41 magic 29 spd and 38 luck

[@gamefreak173]

swordmaster kagetsu works just fine. im looking forward to the revised tier list after playing maddening. Also if you reclass anna into a mage your mind will quickly change.

[@illialidur8244]

As one of the 4 staunch defenders of Clanne, I’ll put forward that my first play through was Maddening and Clanne was one of the few units who could reliably keep up with enemies in terms of speed. I even kept him as a Mage Knight which I’m pretty sure is just worse than Physical classes for him, I think I gave him 1 magic dust near chapter 16 or so and he was a consistently good fighter basically the whole game. Magic in the early game is so useful, and he’s the only magical unit with GOOD speed until like… ever, unless you use a second seal on someone not natively a mystic. Even when I got Celine, she just did less damage because she hit once for more damage, but she only hit once and it never OHKOd enemies whereas Clanne was a couple points of magic weaker (also a lower level) but he had enough speed to double enemies so his damage output was better in every scenario except when using Engage attacks or with weapons that can’t double. He is around longer than Celine, has access to all the same tools that she does and has a much better growth in a fairly critical stat. I think he should at least be B tier by virtue of that alone. That said, his personality is “Look, Divine One! Pickles!” and not everyone vibes with that.

[@urahara1446]

The game hates Timerra so much it's unreal. Last unit to join unprompted (in battle), the aforementioned bad stats, 4 move, weighed down to nothing by the weapon she's holding, fog of war map filled with destructible trash piles, and then the game straight up tells you to use her to one shot trash piles with Ike.

[@MiiRaGex]

Anna reclassed to sage made my playthrough. She was one of my best units

[@levobertus]

If you decide to use Citrinne, the dire thunder bond ring can be save scummed and it makes her reach thresholds for 95% of the enemies without stat boosters easily. It's also a great early forge and use for the roy engrave, which is otherwise useless. She's pretty much your best player phase combat unit all game, because everything she approaches gets one rounded at 3 range.

[@poodlep.9719]

Yea it's kind of crazy how much of a game changer Dire Thunder is for her. She's really bad if you don't have it, but once you do she gets such a damage lead over every other mage that she becomes very much worth her slot.

[@levobertus]

@@poodlep.9719 I wouldn't say she's bad without it, but she does get a significant power boost from it

[@Xetetic]

I haven't been counting precisely but I estimate that by Chapter 15 Make a Killing has procced about 2 times a battle for me on average. An extra ~10,000 gold over time is pretty good for forging but the limits on shop quantity for certain items kinda makes the benefit minimal imo. Especially on maddening where doing skirmish battles feels like a bit of a pitfall due to using up resources for barely any reward

[@StaleMoves]

While on both of my maddening playthroughs I initially put Ivy in S tier, I think I've mellowed on her a little to top of A tier. She is still an insane unit, but she does have a few issues that you need to fix compared to some of the other units that need no/low investment to carry you like Kagetsu. I think Merrin, Pandreo, Hortensia and especially Panette all deserve a place in S tier and I think Alear should be above B purely off of the Byleth value you get from them. I also personally think Jean should probably be bottom of B because it's comparatively easier to raise low exp units than in other fire emblem games and his stats after 10/1 promotion are actually pretty good, and he scales well into the game even without an emblem.

[@val_halla7768]

I would have to say Hortensia is pretty easily the best unit in the game. You need a staff unit no matter what, and her personal skill and unique class make her the best staff user by far. Aside from Seadall, she’s pretty much the only unit I would recommend always fielding in every chapter no matter what.

[@GIR177]

I dont think she's anywhere near the best or even worth fielding every map, but she's by far the unit that requires the least amount of work to be useful aside from Seadall. She even joins with enough SP to get Canter and Staff Mastery 3 and is just set for the whole game.

[@EatsukiOnlyEats]

It's insane how hard Hortensia's class carries her viability man, I usually like to patch up her magic with spirit dust to allow her to also hit hard when she's not using staffs.

[@thelazypandaman779]

I feel like it’s very easy to pick one of either Anna or Jean early and boost them with maciah pressing the funny great sacrifice button. On both my runs so far I’ve levelled her to 10 in her default axe just by healing with maciah and then benched her until I switch to mage knight and then she is a fast mage unit with good magic doubling most enemies. Give her byleth ring and inherit +lck and your off to the races and getting her to this point is honestly pretty painless. Although I haven’t used him she is apparently just outclassed by Pandreo as a mage knight tho.

[@levobertus]

Pandreo has lower mag but significantly more build and speed, so he probably is just easier to use for doubling reasons

[@shykey3749]

Timerra vastly underrated. She needs a moderate level investment at her join but more than makes up for it. Just build her around sandstorm and she obliterates everything. Her dex makes it a very reliable proc (even more with brave lance) and her naturally high speed and defense make her an amazing tank on maddening where not a lot of units can stand multiple hits. You can get her low SP skill costs to mitigate her stat deficits (dex+, defense+, build+). She rocks with Ike but is amazing with Sigurd as well who improves stats she wants, movement, and offense even more. Override will likely get off multiple sandstorm procs. Don't let her underwhelming join performance keep you from using her!

[@ranielle9271]

Yeah good thing I like her as a character cause with those base stats I may have bench her as well. Timmera/Sigurd on my hard run was great.

[@DerDansl]

^this

[@VegaMK2]

This is definitely one of the better tier lists I've seen. After playing maddening entirely too many times, I think you're mostly underrating alear, anna and especially mauvier. He just gets absurdly weighed down by his weapons which makes him look at a whole lot worse than he is, he's a perfectly good late game utility unit, should be B tier. Although Anna requires a somewhat specific setup, it's super easy to slap Micaiah on her and get her to 10 relatively painfully after which you can turn her into a sage or mage knight and she starts contributing, you only get 4 levels of slog which go by extremely fast with Micaiah. As for Alear, I find the liberation to be a bit of a trap, especially if you go the divine dragon route, since it gives so much build. A killing edge solves most of Alear's dps woes and you get a ton of build from promoting so it barely weighs you down if at all. Solid list as always!

[@VegaMK2]

Also forgot to add, both sides of the Anna coin think of her passive way too much, I think you'll make maybe 10-15k throughout your run which isn't bad but isn't making or breaking a character, Anna is just a really powerful mage, you use her for her amazing stats, not her passive.

[@TobbRobb]

I honestly think Chloé is RD Jill of this game. You can most definitely use and power up other early game units to great success. But IMO if you want to be most efficient with the exp/sp gain and snowballing the game, giving her a robe and energy drop, early game sigurd and then using her a lot will give you the strongest early game edge while retaining excellent late game scaling. You don't even need to keep Sigurd on her tbh. You use him to snowball early when no one else is around and you'll get the option to inherent canter. After that you can use just about any emblem on her and she will use it either good or great. She's also a decent place for awkward emblems like Leif or Roy that aren't that contested, but she will still be a really good unit with them. Louis makes the early game much easier if you snowball him, but he isnt as flexible late game, and I don't think any other unit in chapter 1-5 is a more efficient investment than Chloe. Celine has some neat stuff you can do, but I would hardly call it efficient. Alfred CAN do the same things as Chloe kind of, but he doesn't fly and has worse stats. Etie I think is underrated, but she isn't someone you really need to snowball, she just gets crumbs of exp as you go and she can stay relevant. TLDR: If you give Chloé early game favoritism and use Louis to tank through early game and then replace everyone except Chloé with new stronger units, I think it will be the most efficient way to move through the game. So S-Tier

[@levobertus]

I think the thing with Chloe earlygame is that no matter how long she can stay relevant, you don't really need it. You get 3 cracked units in chapter 11 and one more in chapter 12 where you can only bring 7, and one chapter later, 2 more great ones join. Unless your earlygame unit can be made to be ridiculous like Citrinne, Alcryst or Diamant with early investment like pre-ring-purge inheritance, your early team units get dropped like hot stones anyway. So using Louis to just make your earlygame easy and just benching everyone who doesn't become amazing by chapter 10 is the easier option imo. Maybe Chloe does bring that to the table, but I find it hard to compare to Jill, who's an op unit in a dogshit army, whereas Chloe is just a good unit in an also good army.

[@TobbRobb]

@@levobertus Yeah I think benching the entire starting roster is the other major strategy to go for, and its probably what LTC or very efficient playthroughs will do. It just feels like kind of a waste to not really retain any exp or sp at all from the first 11 chapters, and feeding it to chloe is easy to do and will give a lasting investment. The Jill comparison is mostly how much she stands out as a target to invest in compared to the firene contemporaries. Jill is more worthwhile overall for sure because you have plenty of dawn brigade chapters after part 1, while in engage firene squad gets replaced much faster. So basically I think you are largely right, but I still think she has merit as a mostly uncontested early game exp target that will be able to keep up with the prepromotes and will at worst be able to heal and repo with flying movement in lategame.

[@levobertus]

@@TobbRobb I'm gonna be real, I think flying too is super overrated in Engage. There are like 3 chapters in the mid game where flying offers technically some uses but the practical utility is very questionable (like why would you move into a longbow archer and wind mage and 6 or so paladins in chapter 14 when they all move towards you on turn 1 anyway? Chapter 17-25 offer basically no flier utility at all except maybe if you want to bring someone over from Griss's to Zephia's side of the port, but that only saves like 1 action that Hortensia would have to do for you and the utility is questionable to begin with considering you need to move southwest and the bosses all come for you anyway. Imo the only chapter where flying is really really good is 16, but that's really about it for the story chapters. The rest saves you at most a turn of moving towards an enemy that will come for you in the very next turn anyway or like 3 tiles because you don't have to move around a rock or something.

[@iamlordapollo]

I actually ran Byleth on Celine during the midgame when Celica was unavailable and got some great mileage out of the thyrsus. It patches up her movement by just increasing her range instead.

[@vallum12100]

Loved Byleth for safe Anna not just for the range, but that insane luck bonus she was able to utilize so hard

[@samkeiser9776]

Lindon’s most notable quality is that people make funny crit builds with his personal.

[@xMisterkinox]

Your tier list is the one that is very close to my view, I didn't see others players talking about pandreo potential + his start ability

[@paradoxwhite4894]

Spreading this info as far as I can, but Clanne is a very useful unit. In the early game, up until you get Citrinne, he is one of your best damage dealers due to magic, and once you do get Citrinne, you can promote and reclass him to a Wyvern. He is nearly identical to a level 10/1 Wyvern Chloe when promoted and changed into a Wyvern.

[@superblanco444]

Warrior Clanne is a beast as well

[@assortmentofpillsbutneverb3756]

Same with sword paladin using marth with exp sword. Easy to get speedy and then switch to other rings. Prob not efficient but easy and usable

[@samthedigital]

My favorite use of Martial Master is just to stick Lucina on them and make use of the 100% Bonded Shield. It gives Framme some utility later on since she doesn't really need stats for it and I don't think that many units can reclass into one before Byleth.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Personally I prefer Framme as a High Priest Corrin bot, cuz Lucina is pretty solid on a Wolf Knight

[@samthedigital]

@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Yeah, dagger poison on dual assist can be pretty neat; it really just depends on what you feel like running though since there are so many different build ideas and such.

[@Anakelinoid]

I've had my fun with the combination of Lyn - Louis. At first I also made him a great knight, but I really didn't like him in the class (couldn't one round or tank enough), but then I switched to wivern and I assure you, seeing him double everything (40 with speedtaker) with a killer axe is truly a sight to behold. It's really funny. Another highlight unit I had was Yunaka. When I got Corrin, my Yunaka routinely fought like half of a map by herself while my other units did the other one. I found her very reliable, most 3 range can be killed with some support and what she can't poison to death someone else can deal with. For example in chapter 17 she dealt with the left side alone and stalled some very dangerous units, giving me time to deal with the rest of the map with relatively safety (I am very bad at positioning).

[@vallum12100]

Fr, Yunaka having great resistance base and growth in top of being a thief means she's made to make fog and dodge tank. Utterly invaluable in my run to take hits and slow enemies down to have the army deal with manageable amounts of enemies.

[@OriginalRaisins]

How could you put Etie so low? Unbelievable!

[@truezephyr4431]

This comment is criminally underrated.

[@JetpackCat1106]

It's weird to be able to see the number go up when I hit like a year after it came out

[@samkeiser9776]

Pandreo has a personal strength of 4 (as in, his strength on top of his class’s stats) and a strength growth as 5% its really really funny.

[@hilldog4521]

the normal opinion of a trainee unit like jean or anna being bad doesn't really stay true in this game when you have the micaiah ring. You just wait for their paralogues until second seals unlock and can with pretty minimal effort grind them up in a more favorable class line, without having to actually deal with their underwhelming starting stats, and they will easily catch up to everyone else without taking any xp from anyone else since they arent actually fighting any of the enemies. Trying to use both Jean and Anna in the same playthrough might cause issues but if you just choose either one of them to give michaiah to they will easily level up and will far outpace the offensive stats of any of the other early game units by a lot very quickly. While you can do the same thing with anyone, giving the role of a staff bot who never fights things to someone who already would not be good at fighting things at base but will become a monster at the end of it is way better than just doing it on a normally fine unit just so they get canter earlier, especially since they also could just use Mercurius instead for similar effects while maintaining their combat usefulness(long as they aren't a mage).

[@levobertus]

Tbh the same criticisms still kinda apply. They need early resources that others may want to offer something that other units can do just as well for marginally better stats near the end of the game. Anna for example will not outgrow Citrinne until the 20s chapters. Jean can be made into anything, but with the midgame giving you a bunch of super jacked units, you really want someone who performs well before chapter 11, not after, and Jean won't do that. Late in the game, your power comes from skills, emblems and weapons almost more than the actual unit stats. They matter a lot too, but anyone who's trained at that point will be great. So in the end, you still need to favorise underpowered units for something you don't need and others can do better for the majority of the game anyway.

[@hounddogs3048]

Any warrior can use longbows and have 3 range chain attacks, they're only C rank. I personally used Boucheron with hit+15 from Sigurd in that role.

[@ochain224]

My initial impression was that Hortensia was the easiest S tier to ever S... Maybe not the best unit in the game, but +1 staff range, flying, AND world tree make her at least the best staff user. Coupled with what I found to be actually workable offenses since staves level her up so quickly, I personally dont see her anywhere outside of S for now.

[@laggalot1012]

I don't think World Tree is particularly valuable. Just convenient, but extra staff uses, sometimes, doesn't really change anything, I think. Additionally, she is at one-shot risk all the time, and while she can contribute good damage against low-Res units, her mediocre Magic does mean she contributes rather little offensively outside of Armors and maybe Berserkers and even her heals lack a little oomph sometimes. All that said, still a great unit, A-tier at worst as far as I'm concerned, because magic fliers are simply phenomenal to start with and she can have an additional evade-tanking niche in a pinch (though you don't want to bank on that without Hold Out...)

[@zuzie-zuzu]

A dedicated staff bot isn’t as valuable as one would think. Staves can break open the last chapters but that’s more because of micaiah than hortensia herself. And not relying on staff utility, in my experience (three maddening runs, one hard run) at least, doesn’t make the game that much more difficult, just a bit slower. Hort is definitely A tier though for the reasons you’ve said. Her poor combat performance really shows on maddening so I personally would rather use pandreo

[@pableitor2009]

Pannete with Ike and without Ike feels like 2 different units altogether. Ike fixes the major issues Pannete has, which are her paper-thin defenses: with Ike equiped suddenly her massive HP paired with Ike's resolve+laguz friend makes her able to wall a lot of units even with chain attacks involved. Not to mention that her personal skill stacks with wrath, and when combined with killer axe her crit chances reaches 100% even at half hp. And ofc her impresive attack makes great ether become a 1shot machine. The rest of pannete's issues which are hitrate and somewhat speed can be fixed with skill inheritance/forged brave axe. I also had a bad first impression of pannete by missing everything and dying way too often depsite her huge hp, but once I got to put Ike on her she became a monster. I didn't got the chance but I'm sure that if you give her vantage from Leif she can one-shot crit most if not any enemy stupid enough to attack her while in wraith range

[@mitrettavrednik]

I agree, I commented basically the same thing elsewhere. I gave mine Ike, vantage+ and pair up, which makes her practically invincible and completely trivializes entire groups of enemies that are locked to 1 range. I do think people tend to over-fixate on her vantage strats though. They're effective, but situational and are really just a tool in her toolbelt. Her player phase potential with a brave axe or a killer axe is on par with most of your other player phasers, and she makes an amazing boss killer. With Ike, she's tanky enough to survive multiple rounds of combat and can use tomahawk, Ragnell, and great aether to retaliate at 1-2 range. Ike also gives her reposition for free for utility. As a warrior, she also gets longbow access, so she can player phase or contribute to chain attacks from 3 range, and the +50% damage from Merciless goes even farther with her insanely high strength. She's just an incredibly flexible unit that excels in almost every role. With Ike, her biggest weakness is mages, but pure waters patch that up pretty well. Just don't put her in range of multiple mages simultaneously.

[@mrdrawinglover3278]

Merrin had good enough magic that she can reliably use the Levin sword, and that honestly makes her the best unit in the game. At least for me

[@mig_tf2323]

Your next playthrough you should give levin sword Chloe in sword griffin a shot. Imo it is her best weapon even until endgame maddening, consistently 2 round kos most enemies.

[@haxorinator8219]

This is also what I did for maddening! Enough magic to one round & double many armored units with Levin Can safely break and double axe users with Levin at two range Will poison units with daggers!

[@tbahr123]

Timerra started popping off for me almost right away in chapter 14 and never slowed down. My best unit by far by the endgame. Don’t know if I got lucky but I feel like a lot of the people ragging on her didn’t use her

[@Sashitoge]

She wasn't my best unit, but imo she's super undervalued. I def also feel like people haven't used her a lot. Imo she's very similar in viability to Diamant. Alcryst is praised for his luna, but nobody talks about sandstorm, which is basically the same skill but better, although with a bit lower activation rate I think. She's also surprisingly bulky, even without the Ike ring. She makes for a good Leif ring user, as it fixes her admittedly bad build, and also gives her a bit of extra crit and survivability.

[@mrbigglsworth]

Jean gets a bad rap because he's a trainee unit, but he arrives and is instantly a 2nd copy of Framme with upside. Staff access that early is unique and hard to replace without master seals. His floor as a unit is to be good staff utility until you get better ones (promoted mages, Hortensia, Pandreo) and his ceiling is to be invested in and compete with A-tier units. That should put Jean at least at the top of C if not bottom of B.

[@hajoeijgenraam295]

timerra in c tier is gonna age poorly for sure lol

[@Yangblaze11]

I agree she is one of the best units in the game, doesn't even need ike she's just just one of the best users.

[@levobertus]

How so? Her str and build are ass and she only brings defense to the table, which anyone with the Ike ring will have enough of anyway. On maddening, she'll do single digit damage even with forged weapons and she needs to proc sandstorm and crits to actually do damage. Meanwhile wyvern kagetsu will one round with a silver axe and panette straight up one shots everything. Damage output seems much more valuable than EP survivability in this game.

[@hajoeijgenraam295]

@@levobertus Sandstorm is kinda being slept on at this point. I'm not assuming she has the ike ring. In fact I don't think she's the best candidate for it. I use her with Lyn engraved killer Lance which is too light for build to matter. She will usually crit and if Sandstorm procs the enemy is straight up dead no matter who it is which can be about 30% to 35%. Doubling gives her like 50% and if you make her quad up to 80% of triggering it. You can do some fun stuff with Sandstorm Kagetsu will always be better of course but the offensive possibilities Sandstorm offers should definitely put her above c tier.

[@levobertus]

@@hajoeijgenraam295 the problems still remain. She's a foot unit who needs proc chances to kill a guy at 1 range and struggles with thresholds. It's just not that great.

[@sakutaro3musik486]

celine with levin sword and corrin was one of my best units all the time, I didn´t even tried hard to make her work but could have been lucky level ups

[@therealzeno2487]

I used sigurd on her with a Levin engraved for avoid, most enemies only had at max 20 hit on her and she annihilated armies on her own

[@IzzyBee99]

Mage Anna is very good, she has a huge magic growth so if you get her reclassed early she can out perform most other mages

[@jonnovision01]

He’s mentioned other growths but the fact that he didn’t mention Anna’s at all tells me he probably didn’t look into her at all beyond her ingame information

[@Katie-hb8iq]

I understand you're trying not to give Diamant credit for Ike, but you kind of should to some extent. I know you mentioned Lapis as a point of comparison, but Diamant honestly has a very large stat gain over her early on - similar speed and much higher strength and defense. On top of this, he has 5 more build than she does, which is precisely what makes him better at using Tomahawk, Urvan, etc. and why you should consider his Ike usage a benefit to Diamant specifically. Characters like Timmera also have build issues that make Ike worse on them too. The reality is, Diamant is one of the best candidates for Ike. On top of this, his personal skill gives him much higher hit rates compared to many other users with axes, especially the Tomahawk. It's also nice that his natural promotion gives him axes at level 10, so he doesn't suffer from experience losses the way another unit might if they had to change classes to move into axes later after Master Sealing. Diamant does have lower dex in the last few chapters of the game, but my Diamant had snowballed so hard - even with fixed growths - that I don't know who catches up to him. He was capable of solo'ing big parts of the map just by himself. Considering Kagetsu starts off in Swordmaster, if you look at the stats screen, you will find that Diamant and Kagetsu are performing pretty similar when using Killer Axe vs Killing Edge. I'd frankly put him in S-tier. The dex is not perfect, but Diamant is destined to MVP at least half the maps in the game that I think that warrants S-tier or at least a very high A.

[@thomasnguyen4427]

Best music for bgm, mulling over the perfect arrangement for optimal xp/sp gains for over 30 hrs on the same turn…

[@laggalot1012]

Having recently finished my first Maddening playthrough (but under no illusion I play at all optimally)... As a combat unit, I think Alear is pretty consistently good enough to not be a liability, provided you don't neglect them, but doesn't go any further than that until after chapter 22, and is never amazing at combat. Just serviceable. I'd say a support focus is probably the way to go, because Dragon perks and the personal skill are quite nice and would make Alear worth deploying even if they weren't mandatory. The Libération gets a quick note just for being an accurate and cheaply-upgraded generalist weapon that never weighs Alear down, so it's good for finishers, if nothing else. For Louis, consider also Divine Pulse. His hit rate tends to suffer after a while, and Divine Pulse is a very cheap way to up his consistency. ...Honestly, I like this skill for a lot of units with shakey hit-rates, whenever an engrave on a single weapon doesn't cover enough. Chapter 12 is kind of a checkpoint. A ton of units are very useful from their joining through chapter 11 and then get squeezed out by limited deployment and ruthless competition. Honestly, I think you could reasonably have a separate tier list for all up to chapter 11, because it causes such a massive divide. I did not speed invest Ivy myself, but she is so very easy to apply to meaningful effect that I finds value in her flexibility alone. Personally, I think you can never really go wrong with a strong Thoron spammer and staff access is the cherry on top. That said, I think tossing her just a bit of speed investment, even just a Speedwing should get her doubling armors in a timely fashion, which is very helpful. I didn't and she was just barely short of thresholds constantly. Then, engrave an Elfire/Bolganone to fix her Dodge issues, and she's a pretty mindless inclusion on most any map. Definitely an S-tier as far as my own playthrough was concerned, at least. I really enjoyed Merrin on Maddening, simply keeping her Wolf Knight and tossing her Eirika, for the nice type bonus and Eirika really wants to be on a fast unit. It was simply a good fit and she never really let me down. Certainly another key unit. I liked Staff Mastery for Hortensia, improved her status staff hit rate and improves her healing, so it's kinda multi-purpose. Hortensia's Magic stat isn't really amazing, after all.

[@damcuff9303]

Im excited to see you come back later and look at this. Some of these units definitely need some reevaluation.

[@MattRandomnumber]

Some of the characters, amber for example, made me so mad with their ridiculous cringe dialogue that I couldn't make myself even attempt to use them. Hortensia started like that but I eventually needed an extra healer and found out she was really good but I absolutely hate so many of the characters that I associated their personality with their status as a unit.

[@kappapride720]

If Ivy is S Panette should be S as well, she has the best physical offense in the game. Kagetsu can handle more roles than she can but no one can deal as much damage as consistently.

[@ziegfeld4131]

Pannette requires setup to be good and specific emblem rings where as the other S ranks need nothing to be amazing

[@GIR177]

​​​​​@@ziegfeld4131 Panette barely requires much setup at all to bring online and start murdering things. All she needs is a Warrior reclass, a Killer Axe forge with Lyn engrave, and giving her the Ike emblem for Wrath. This is not anymore investment than Ivy needs (wants Speedtaker/Speed +3 and a Bolganone forge, possibly an Angelic Robe), since the Killer axe forge is incredibly cheap to make for some reason and Ike is not a hotly contested emblem, and she is leaps and bounds the best Ike user.

[@mitrettavrednik]

@@ziegfeld4131 With a brave axe, she immediately becomes one of your best player phasers upon joining with zero investment. Reclassing to warrior gives her longbow access, which makes her player phase potential even better and lets her contribute to chain attacks from 3 range. Those things alone are enough to make her worthwhile. She doesn't need Ike to work well, but they synergize so well with each other it seems almost silly not to take advantage of it. And it's not just because of vantage/wrath. With Ike she becomes an incredibly potent enemy phaser and is surprisingly tanky. While engaged, she can easily tank multiple enemies and kill them from 1-2 range with tomahawk, Ragnell, or Great Aether. Her high HP and strength make her one of the best candidates for pulling this off. And on maddening her low defenses are actually kind of a benefit, since tankier units with Ike equipped will just get ignored completely if their defense is too high.

[@levobertus]

Citrinne with forged dire thunder one rounds every single regular enemy in chapter 17 (and most of the game really) with more accuracy and no reliance on crits, skills, emblem rings and can do it at 3 range. The advantage of panette is that she can do it on EP with Ike tho.

[@levobertus]

@@GIR177 lyn engraving is fiercely contested as one of the best engravings in the game and so is Ike. Any physical unit wants it, even Kagetsu (and he'll need it for the wyvern reclass). You can also only get that many killer axes in a game where axes and crits are op and everyone wants it. Just because she can use those well doesn't mean it's not without its opportunity cost.

[@mateusgreenwood1096]

I've beaten the game on maddening twice now, etie, boucheron and alfred belong in the lowest tier possible, celinne and her retainers are great early on and fall off VERY quickly after chapter 11 in either damage or accuracy. Anna can become the best magic nuke in the game if you have her spam heals with micaiah and promote her to sage or mage knight, add byleth and you get lisythea 2.0.

[@levobertus]

Citrinne has more mag until level 45 and reaches OR thresholds with a forged dire thunder of every single regular enemy in chapter 17 while Anna does not. She also comes with 5 more levels and much better base stats, already in the class she belongs in. She'll be better until the very very late endgame chapters. You can easily use both tho, so that you have 2 nukes.

[@boot-4704]

Imo Alear is a utility unit: Dragon for either corrin or Byleth and Rose’s Thorns are very good. A tier

[@nameuser.2141]

What are your thoughts on factoring the use of stat boosters on a unit when tiering a unit? I see this argument a lot like “use this on this unit and they become this tier” for example and personally, I think it is a form a favouritism and shouldn’t be included cause it does add a bit of inconsistency. I see this argued for Jean or Anne but for me I thought of Jill immediately and it made me wonder.

[@RagnellHD]

For me at least, when it comes to talking about Stat Boosters on units, it's usually talked about for units like Jill or Chloé as it's kinda a thing of who makes the best of the resource and how much reward you get out of doing that. A flier with stat boosters help them hit thresholds to do more things on a map, that other units with the same stat boosters can not due to terrain or their unit type. It's a force multiplier for them that other units may not benefit from as much. You can give your energy drops or speedwing to an archer, but you'll see much less use out of the investment since due to their limits and player phase focus being locked to 2 range. Though that's an extreme example. Though honestly even without favoritism Jill and Chloé typically turn out pretty strong with level investment. Or even one of the cheaper forges that you can trade around as needed.

[@nameuser.2141]

@@RagnellHD I’m just wondering if it’s fair to factor that in when making a tier list cause it does elevate their value by quite a bit. In a way, same can be said for growth units since you are funnelling resources into a unit. For example a common argument that I see, even in this comment section alone, is the use of micaiah’s ring on Jean and Anne to easily boost their levels to help them snowball and use a second seal. They’re the best use of that resource during that part of the game since they’re pretty useless so you’re not losing out on anything, and it doesn’t take much until you get really good results. To be clear I agree about Jill and Chloe getting the boosters, and also about Jean and Anne. Im just saying I think when it comes to tiering, it should be neutral across the board to make things consistent as possible

[@RagnellHD]

The limited resources offered in the game, I feel must be talked about to get a full picture of where a unit stands. Whether its stat boosters, rings, limited quantity weapons, and promotion items A good example of this is the first Knight Crest in FE6. There's a lot of units who want it but you only get one in ch 8 and then the next isn't available for several chapters. Something like ch 14/15 iirc. A big limited resource like that will effect how you talk about the units that need it to become stronger or even just keep up. With many cavaliers and knights in the game. Its something that determines the viability of using many of them. Some make better use of it then others like one of the starting cavalier units. A stat booster is a similar situation, but not nearly as detrimental to a unit's standings. Its a decision point of who you want to invest in as a unit and some make a better use of the resource and that should be discussed.

[@nameuser.2141]

@@RagnellHD my view on promotion items is that they generally go to units that are already good and should be prioritized anyways. In your example, I'm gonna assume you're not really gonna waste your knight crest to fix a "bad unit" but rather further improve an already good one so they can they more things. This also applies to limited items like rings and weapons cause even without them, good units will still be good but they're just way better with them if that makes sense. I'm not saying it can't be noted that this unit will benifit from using this and that when tiering. I just think it's very contradicting when you say this unit is not that good cause he/she requires investments, and then rank a unit high after roiding him/her up with stat boosters. I'm not specifically calling Mekkah out, I just see this topic reoccurring in a lot of tier lists I've seen

[@genevievesweet7741]

I find the best way for Vander to not fall off are to give him Edel's Lineage and Tiki's growth boost, but that's a high amount of investment for him and takes either both his skills, or 1 and the Tiki/Edelgard bracelet. He's not very useable beyond early game from my using of him in two playthroughs lol. I found the xp boost as the only way to salvage him but it does help a lot in my experience and he was able to keep pace with my team more.

[@ImportedCheese]

Really surprised to see Alear so low. I think Alear is an excellent unit if you don't use the "fight" command, but that might be because Alear's super buffbot dragon role is more important on madenning where his combat is even more pathetic and his personal / supports / byleth buffs are more impactful. Looking forward to seeing how opinions change after madenning considering how heavily madenning nerfs your unit - XP and SP gain is halved, making growth units even worse - Enemies are absurdly buff (Generals are invincible, Griffon Knights in the final chapter were doubling Kagetsu) - AI ignores units it cannot damage or hit, making covert dodgetanking impossible unless you pay $30 for Soren and his decoy skill