Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Maddening Unit Tier List

[@alcoremortis]

I agree on Warp. I would joke that Lysithea's best spell in my BL playthrough was Summon Dimitri.

[@shamussarrazine6623]

I had Lysithea Warp Dimitri behind Cornelia and he one shot her. Summon Dimitri is the best spell

[@dragonstouch1042]

@@shamussarrazine6623Death Knight Killer being a second

[@UniGya]

Unfortunately the cowards in the Wizard High Council decided Summon Dimitri was too similar to Summon Ketamine Ape, which they already banned last meeting, and banned that spell, too

[@crownlexicon5225]

Rescue would be summon Dimitri imo. Warm would be send Dimitri

[@RDA000]

Finally someone acknowledges how strong dedue is. My dedue took a death knight crit on part 1 endgame and was the only unit who could survive a fallen edelgard crit.

[@SniperYanda]

One thing I like with Dedue is if you get him up to D+ swords early on, changing him to a Thief gets him up to that 11 Dex/Spd minimum. Free, fairly low effort permanent stat increases that'll make him land hits and avoid some doubles to tank even harder!

[@beastbass1]

I love dedue just cause of his personal skill. It takes a lot less time for dedue to be able to go and be a reliable front line unit cause of it

[@GeraltofRivia22]

Eh, tank units are kinda meh on maddening because of poison strike. Dodge tanks are just superior.

[@winrina-00]

One thing about Raging Storm: You dont need to hit in order to attack again, you literally just need to attack. Thanks Aymr's designer

[@elwind762]

To make her good in the other routes

[@patrickripleyiii134]

Imagine if edlegard was a wyvern lord as an enemy unit lol

[@Floydpink68]

I am just learning today that she can chain this attack 😅 I've been using her as Wyern Lord and completely neglecting that function!

[@rolando_j_]

The biggest issue with Amyr is that it's an Act 2 weapon and raging storm has very limited access to forging ores. So, you have to be decisive about using Raging Storm. The most insulting thing is that Claude has better access to fighting Worms. Using it early makes the final map untrial and saving it for that map makes it trivial.

[@winrina-00]

@@rolando_j_ I never had any problem finding ores to repair it. Plus most CF maps are not rout map, so with stride + dancer + warp you can get around pretty much anywhere. She can use killer axe+ for that sweet crit too

[@dijonmustard4258]

something else Constance has going for her is the ability to generate her own exp with ward at C faith. during the busy intermediate class arc, when everyone is jockeying for all the battle and class exp they can get, Constance can casually spam ward next to Byleth whenever convenient, getting everything she needs (fiendish blow, rescue, lvl 20) while leaving more kills for everyone else. she tends to become my highest-level unit by some point in chapter 6 and then my first unit to reach advanced classes. it's enough to sneak her into A tier for me but it's hard to quantify.

[@JonoabboFE]

That's fair, so far Constance seems to actually be the most disagreed-upon placement so might be a unit I need to reassess and take another look at for sure!

[@hommefataltaemin]

@@JonoabboFEsorry I know this is an old video, but I’m about to do my first Maddening run ever! I’m doing an AM playthrough, and I’m very unsure which units to use. I don’t even know what I should make my Byleth to have her be the most optimal. I’m planning to use Felix and (obviously) Dimitri, and have a good idea of what to do with them as well as Lysithea. But outside of them, I have no idea who to use. Could you give some examples of what the best team would be for an AM maddening run for a first timer?

[@JonoabboFE]

@@hommefataltaemin Honestly, you should use whoever you want too. Any unit is viable in this game, but you will get a lot more out of it by using the units who's personalities you enjoy and you personally vibe with. Once you have figured out who you want, it might be worth checking out my Breaking Down series, which is basically a guide for how to get a lot out of any unit on Maddening. Good luck!

[@cuauhtlitorres3742]

It's really impressive to see how valuable things change a lot between Normal/Hard and Maddening. In Normal/Hard fast units are kinda broken since it's way easier to x2 and you can eat a bit more damage, which makes Felix and Ingrid much better. This also makes Swift strikes and other abilities not as useful as in Maddening.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Maddening really filters out units with poorly defined strengths. The poor "archers", for example, Ignatz is carried by his innate, and Bernie theoretically has some meme builds that might not be totally useless, and Ashe.... well..., but the units as a whole just aren't very good, and need to fall back on the old Wyvern special, or else more supportive roles. Ferdinand and Sylvain are pretty much the only across the board "meh" characters that really do work, in my experience.

[@drebyte]

then what is valuable in maddening mode? I'm about to finish a run in hard and it's as you say, fast units like felix petra or ingrid can really shine (but still can't outshine dimitri) and I'm considering playing my next run in maddening

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

@@drebyte Well, Hit is a pretty precious substance. Getting anything resembling a good hit rate is good. Related, the Iron Bow+ and Curved Shot are your friends. The first few maps are murder, so units with incredible bases, like Dimitri, Edelgard, Felix, and Leonie are essential. Units need decent growths to keep up without babying, and while you have enough resources to baby one or two units, that's about it. Speed is kinda awkwardly less valuable to have high, but more valuable to not have low. Characters with "okay" speed are fine, the main thing is that you don't want to be getting doubled, because then you'll probably diem

[@red5t653]

@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Wait, if hit rate is so good, shouldn't Ignatz be at least decent? The guy automatically has Hit +20 at ALL times, so...

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

@@red5t653 Ignatz is decent. He's incredibly useful for the early game, transitions into a rally bot and pinch chipper, before joining the masses of faceless Wyvern Lords or Bishops/Holy Knights for late game. He's a decent candidate for Dancer because of the incredibly low opportunity cost for doing so. Hell, the fact that he can pull off Bishop, Wyvern Lord, or Dancer roughly equally is a huge flexibility boost to using potentially risky units, who could get screwed out of a landmark role. Ignatz blows the other two "archers" out of the water for a reason, and tells damn near half the game's cast to sit down, but you'll notice that this is almost all auxiliary use cases that Ignatz can either do for a short period, or because he's "good enough" with justifiable early use, and next to no opportunity cost, because he's not really good later on. Ignatz and Ashe, statistically, are very similar, but Ashe is a contender for the worst unit in the game, while Ignatz is probably the best "bad" unit in the game because he has exactly the right traits to excel in the roles you want a unit like that to do. That's the power of difficulty in rating. If playing on a low difficulty, Ignatz and Ashe would be interchangeable because both are equally able to be forged into a Wyvern Lord that kills everything with a bit of babying.

[@aggressivelymediocre350]

The thing about Lorenz is that it feels like he was designed with Thyrsus in mind. Like if his Magic was too good you’d get a 7-move Dark Knight with Four Range attack hitting on res. The problem is because of the way Three Houses is structured, you can just give Thyrsus to a stronger unit (Lysithea memes here) and they’ll just perform better with it.

[@JonoabboFE]

I agree with this. Since Maddening was not in the game from release, I also don't think that was particularly factored in to his design, and on hard, with his passable speed, reasonable strength for a mage, and lighter spells, he can double quite a fair amount, which is obviously not the case on Maddening.

[@IntrusiveThot420]

@@JonoabboFE a bit of an old post, but I personally like to make mages into mixed magic bow snipers when I can. Lorenz in particular has pretty good strength bases and growths, so it's not too hard to end up with enough magic to one-round any enemy with low res with magic bow hunter's volley. And most mages and such evaporate to hunter's volley with killer bow or silver bow or something like that.

[@itsallwayspouringo]

Absolutely. Thyrsus is what makes Lorenz good, but why would you give it to him when it’s better used on literally any primary spellcaster with a crest, ie all of them but Dorothea, Hubert, and Manuela.

[@AGuy-vq9qp]

@@itsallwayspouringo if they’re not getting hit then you can still give them Thyrsus.

[@PurpleShift42]

@@AGuy-vq9qp aren't they taking (iirc, I don't have a guide on me right now) 10% damage every turn they have it equipped, which lore-wise given chapter 5 means they have 10 turns until they go the way of CF Dedue?

[@emmetwatcher3540]

Mercedes (in my slightly uneducated opinion) is a character that gets worse the better you are at the game. To a new player, she can be a valuable crutch. She has amazing healing, she does good damage, she can face-tank enemy mages like a champion. But... as you get better at the game, all of those things fall apart. Healing is easy to come by, magic damage rarely kills on its own, you don't often need to take a hit from enemy mages because of their low movement or some vantage strat, and her lack of movement utility becomes incredibly apparent. She really is the team mom. If everyone else doesn't know what they're doing she's an invaluable safety net, but as soon as the kids get their act together she's pretty much unneeded.

[@sharkwang1542]

I think your interpretation of “getting better at the game” is really subjective. I think her viability comes down to team composition more then anything. She can use fortify, which means literally all of your other units (in range) can use their turn to attack. Sure there’s a lot of ways to heal, but there’s always an opportunity cost to using up your turn just to heal. Building your team around Mercedes will allow you to make more aggressive (or non vantage/wrath tank) team comps, baiting a lot more enemies per turn, which speeds up maps quite a bit. Overall she’s so good at healing, that she enables the rest of your units to take more meaningful actions.

[@winsonzhu4427]

@@sharkwang1542 I think he's going off on "path of least resistance" for "better", here. Like sure you can deathblob your way to victory and Mercedes is amazing for healing for that with Fortify, but there are ways to play the game faster while securing at least as many objectives, which also not needing her. It's like that curve meme - "I don't use Mercedes cuz I don't die anyways cuz I blob" "I use Mercedes cuz she makes the blob so much better" "I don't use Mercedes cuz I don't need blob and still don't die" Also Fortify means it's harder to play around Vantage-Wrath, Defiant skills, etc., which are very strong and fairly easy to set up with guard adjutants, gambits, self-inflected chip via items that need crests, etc. Your units can get ways of being able to take more meaningful actions by *not* getting healed.

[@hussyweissshutup1275]

I did it as a joke but fortress knight Mercedes is actually good in maddening

[@ariwl1]

Pretty much how I feel. My friend who was new to FE and played Three Houses uses her constantly, but for me she's the "I've done goofed" character.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Agree. She's a dedicated healer (already a suspect role in 3 houses) that doesn't need to be babysat as much as most healers, and can mostly keep a team healthy on her own. I've been watching a buddy play, and between his work in character builds (That is, almost none, except making Mercedes and Annette hybrid mages, by my urging), his approach to maps, and more,, and Mercedes is pretty much the only reason he clears maps. Once you are more familiar at the game, are creating the horrendous, class defying abominations that define Maddening that can largely heal themselves, keep units safe by habit, and concentrating damage on a handful of units that are easy to maintain, Mercedes plummets in usefulness, to be, imo, one of the bottom 5 viable characters, because her strengths are largely subsumed by smart playstyle.

[@rhettmitchell]

I think Marianne having high crit black magic and a 1-3 range spell is something to note since hardly any of the other mages are going be hitting crits reliably early-mid game on anything that isn’t a monster with a broken shield. It’s not anything crazy but it’s great for a mage in a game where mages don’t really get the chance to crit

[@SparkBlazeWarriors]

I’ve been building my Marianne to Dark Knight in VW and it’s been very solid. Crits help with monsters, she provides safe chip from range with Caduceus staff+Thoron when needed (and Valkyrie from 20-29), and Physic access lets her still heal when needed. She’s no Lysithea but I’ve been pretty satisfied with her performance.

[@survivorofthecurse717]

Also underrated waifu

[@dylanmcnab2980]

Bernadetta’s enclosure combat art also gives her the ability to keep threats like divine beasts at bay if you need time to eliminate more immediate threats.

[@rhettmitchell]

I remember when people were putting Lysithea as the best unit when the game came out but solely bc she was one-shotting everything including the Death Knight. But now that maddening is out, it’s more bc of her warp and utility potential. I just think that’s kinda funny

[@allyrose9494]

She's still broken, just for different reasons than we thought-

[@Arkayjiya]

She still almost one-shot the Death Knight in maddening which is insanely useful (if you don't choose to speedrun warp instead of course). You just need two units, one to tank a hit and Lysithea to finish off the DK and that's a whole chapter made trivial. Lysithea is also still a fricking monster that one-shots most of what she fights in maddening, making her an actually good offensive mage since she won't really need that second hit anyway.

[@kevinkodalen2460]

Your Fire Emblem unit analyses are some of my favorite content on KZbin. I know that it is exhausting work, so I just wanted you to know that it does not go unappreciated. I always get so excited whenever a new video of yours pops into my recommended bar. Seriously, it always makes my day. This specific video must have taken you forever, so I especially appreciate all the time and energy that you’ve put into it. Thank you so much - for this video, and the rest.

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you so much, I really appreciate the kind words, it means a lot!

[@p0oka261]

Ooh another long form video to add to my "listen to while doing mundane tasks" collection. Jokes aside this is really great. I like that you're giving each unit the time they deserve without worrying about it being a really long video. Also the decision to do IH and OOH separately was really smart

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you so much! I hope you enjoy it, and I really appreciate the kind words!

[@windego999]

I played Golden Deer first and made Cyril a wyvern mounted archer. He performed amazing the whole time so when people say he's horrible, I just don't see it.

[@allyrose9494]

Simple, low bases and joining at arguably the hardest chapter in the game, before people realised how stupid combat arts were and that stats weren't everything, that was a death sentence for him, but now people are coming around more which is nice.

[@GeraltofRivia22]

Wyvern archer is one of the most OP things in the game so no surprises he performed well.

[@ThisIsntAYoutuber]

Yeah. Cyril’s one of the really good trainee units, but he gets overlooked because he’s a trainee unit. It’s a little unfair to him because he has early access to Point Blank Volley. Most other trainees don’t have early access to broken tools to get them off the ground, so Cyril having an amazing combat art helps him so much.

[@jamesfitzgerald8267]

To be fair, you can put anyone as a wyvern archer and they usually will be good unless you do it to like Flayn or something, but Cyril does have access to point blank volley which does help him a lot, he isn't bad but there are far better units you can use.

[@StefanIsReal]

I'm fine with Balthus' placement but I will say it's actually rather absurd how easily he can solo chapter 2 on maddening. If you max out whatever the battalion is that gives you +3 defense and give him a shield nothing on the map can do damage to him except for the boss, the mage guys that he can 1 round rather easily, and I think one random brigand(?) which still won't do much to him

[@JonoabboFE]

I agree, his early game is actually insane!

[@brickwallace99]

I never thought about how much mage problems affected my maddening runs until you put a name to it lol. I’ve messed around with dark flier ingrid on maddening and I find her so useful, if she has darting blow she’s fast enough to double most things with low enough res for her to kill them (her spell list is generally lighter spells with high crit which helps too). When I opt for it I find her more useful offensively than the usual bread and butter mages-now I see it’s because she avoids the mage problems. She’s fast enough to double, and her spells have high crit, so she kills more often than others.

[@Floydpink68]

I made Constance and Hapi into Dark Flyers and they were awesome, but I regret not making Hapi into a Valkyrie instead (with the added magic range). I also never really thought about the mage problems either, because I see them as being utility and safe damage dealers. They can typically kill an armored knight in one turn, which will save you from having to carry anti-armor weapons (which I think suck big time haha). They can also match up against other mages without taking fatal damage (with their naturally high magic resist). But the biggest draw for mage is their heals, over-the-wall attacks, limited skill focus-by that I mean you don't have to worry about leveling their weapons/heavy armor skills and just focus on reason, faith, authority and riding/flying (if they need it). Since the focus is much more narrow, you'll level these skills up early and gain a lot of XP in battle. So they will generally be at higher levels than your other characters. I think that makes up for the lack of doubling. But honestly, my top 3 mages can double most normal speed enemies, you just have to use lower weight spells.

[@dixienormus2802]

Ferdinand carried my Maddening run, and it's because of one thing: dodge tanking. With his personal skill, and Sword avoid from the dancer class, plus training him in a high speed class like swordmaster he snowballs unbelievably quickly where nothing can hit him. The black eagles really lacking a tanky character, particularly during silver snow, really shines this playstyle, I think.

[@GeraltofRivia22]

Petra is also a great dodgetank as a wyvern lord. She carried me on several maddening maps.

[@Fibless]

The opening part of this video where you say you can skip to the end and then jump to the timestamps that you'll be more interested in is such a smart thing to point out when you make long form videos like this Golf claps for you my friend

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you!

[@hecoand9155]

Maybe it's just me, but I found myself really enjoying hanneman with the Lorenz relic. Since he joins with thoron, he can start using 5 range spells and be a alright support. If he can't kill, then he has his own personal skill of rally magic to boost warp range of other units or allow others to get a kill if they barely miss it. He's not the best unit in the game, but I think his rally magic support and decent range can do some nice things.

[@saisis8984]

You said you can recruit Constance and Hapi at chapter 2 but I think that waiting for Ch 3 makes them even better. If you recruit them at Ch 3, they join as a Monk (no beginner Seal required) with D in Faith out of the box and it's super good especially because they don't even have a boon in It and most of their utility comes from that faith rank (Physic and Warp/Rescue). It's kinda the same deal as recruiting Bernie before Ch 6, when She Is still a Fighter. She will join with D in Axes that usually Is a bit of a pain to build since She has a bane for Brigand and Armored certification.

[@JonoabboFE]

I agree, that is the best time to recruit them.

[@greg6434]

I don't value warp incredibly high but I do find that I value it more the more I play maddening. With Lysithea even if you only value her for her warp, her black magic does play into her range since she's so easy to get to level 40 by the end of the game, whereas with Hapi and especially Linhart, it's debatable whether it's worth it to get them to level 30. Linhart usually finishes in the mid 20s for me and has a warp range of 6 compared to Lysithea's 11 or 12. Also I don't find Dimitri as easy as he is often made out to be because unless he's in swordmaster(lol) or has a weapon crit skill, the latter of which can potentially come very late if at all with no tutoring in 1st half of part 2. His crit rate is likely going to be sitting in the 90s with his luck growth. I would say Bernie edges him out slightly because her kit is guaranteed to work once set up and she's ridiculous in the early game. Divine pulse does solve Dimitri's problems somewhat but you have to scroll back thru the entire enemy phase and one of your units may have to not attack to push a different number of rn's. Also Falcon Marianne and Wyvern Annette aren't really worth it in my opinion. They add 3 points of damage since dark knight only gets +2 to magic. The issue with Marianne is that she is not gonna one shot without a lance of ruin, defiant magic or a magic stat in the 50s come endgame. With Annette it could be a little more worth since Lightning Axe has an extra point of base might and silver axe has 3 more might than silver lance, but she has a 30% resistance growth which might not back up the combat art too well. She will one shot very reliably in the advanced class but she can also just go valkyrie which has +4 to magic. With Wyvern she misses out on grounded battalions as well as mounted recover. Dark flier is also a consideration but it doesn't give a magic boost. I find it hilarious that you ranked Mercedes below Anna but it's not a bad take at all. Mercedes is a great example of how maddening turns the game on its head. Fortify is probably very useful on the lower difficulties where enemy phasing is easier and low hp strats are fun but not necessary at all.

[@JonoabboFE]

Thanks for the response! One thing to bare in mind with Dimitri is that the effort you put in to his Authority to get BW/BV can also be used to give him a high crit Battalion like the Fraldarius Soldiers. He can of course also use a Killer lance + and a Crit ring to pad this even further. I personally have never had too much trouble holding him at 100 Crit but I can see how you could have problems with it. The other thing here though is he is quite safe since he doesn't have to sacrifice his HP to activate BW/BV, so even if he does miss the odd crit, it likely isn't going to take him down.

[@greg6434]

Not running Fraldarius Soldiers is a miscalculation i made specifically at the end of part 1 because he shouldn't need an accuracy boosting battalion at that point.

[@justinmcclain6120]

I know I'm 2 years late to the party, but these videos ahve been extremely helpful in figuring out maddening!

[@OperaQueen85]

I really appreciate your content on Fire Emblem. This is my first Fire Emblem game. I'm doing my first Maddening run (Blue Lions) and I probably would have given up if it weren't for your videos. I would have never thought to train Dedue with lances. I just beat the Lorenz paralogue by warping Dedue and using Vengeance (again, not a strategy I would have ever thought of on my own). I doubt I would have beat this paralogue using conventional means. I've especially appreciated the Breaking Down series. The timing of Dimitri's couldn't have been more perfect. I just unlocked A Authority and I'm excited to see him become even more of a monster.

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you so much, I really appreciate the kind words and I'm so glad the videos have been so helpful for you!

[@Faliz18]

Just beat CF Maddening and I have to say I think definitely think this underrates Constance. Rescue is just so useful, and bolting helps out a lot as well. She's not gonna be one rounding most enemies but she does find ways to contribute and I feel like she's pretty low investment too

[@jinhunson3948]

I think alois is also a very solid enemy phase unit. With his class, He can easily stack wrath and battalion wrath. All he needs is vantage and hit+20 which are easy enough to get.

[@shawnlyons6543]

I used Ashe on chapter 1 for the simple reason that curved shot is the only way to hit Claude and Hilda without being retaliated on. This provokes them to move to a place that's easier for your other units to kill on the next turn

[@AngeloWAV]

Commenting to boost for the algo. Super thoughtful and thorough👌

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you!

[@thescarredraven2634]

Great Tier List! One note for consideration though. Alois is one of the better units of the game despite his issues. First off, his joining isn't terribly late, he joins before Chapter 11's mission and basically for free since all you need is Byleth at level 15. His bases are decent for a level 21 Warrior and so are his ranks. Those boons and ranks allow him to perfectly fit in the role of a Fortress Knight tank for EP or War Master for PP, and he does that role better than anyone else, minus Dedue. A fairer judgement would be placing him in A+ tier behind VW/AM Catherine but honestly, he could even go higher because his EP and late game is so much better. You can make him a War Master which he isn't far from, weapon rank and level wise and after you master that, you can either stay as a War Master and stack crit or go to Fortress Knight stack protection, both of which work fantastically with Batallion Wrath(he has at base) + Quick Riposte. Another thing I forgot to mention is 1-2 Punch which is a gauntlet combat art he has at base. It allows him to guarantee double and prevent doubling as well as +8 might and +20 hit. At base, he can one round every enemy in Chapter 14 besides Randolph or Fortress Knights, which you have other units, like mages, for. Alois is criminally underrated but it's not because he's blatantly useless but because many people often overlook him for the students or cooler knights.

[@g.n.s.153]

Ok so my thoughts. I'll preface this by saying that I play a little slower than other "good" players (really can't find another word here). Moving steadily through a map and playing it safe above playing it fast until I have a clear shot at the objective. I totally get what you're saying by "mage problems" but I can't help but feel that not killing is judged a bit harshly when they are some enemies that aren't too difficult to kill with magic (fortress knights being the prime example) and even when they don't kill it's generally good and accurate chip damage especially in maps with a lot of terrain bonuses (in the timeskip those are mostly paralogues but I say they still count). That being said, Mercedes is just too low for me. Like yes of course Fortify is never going to be on par with Warp or Rescue but when I have it I tend to use it. There's a good amount of times where I'd rather use 1 Fortify to free up the turns of my other mages so they don't have spend their time healing. When I have to resort to turtling, spreading out the damage on multiple units is usually the safest way to make it out alive. I admit I'm not the most avid user of low HP builds but I do use them and I'll live with the fact that I may have to set up again. There's some maps that I'll warp skip almost all the time when the side objectives aren't worth it or if the map gets harder (or just more annoying) when taking too much time. It's an amazing spell for sure even if I don't skip everything. Apocalyptic Flame is ok but otherwise I think Hilda's combat arts are very underwhelming. Even with Hit+20, Diamond Axe is too unreliable for me. Dedue is by far my favorite Vengeance user but I do like his Grappler/War Master build a lot too. One-Two Punch deceptively powerful with +16 damage and bypassing speed entirely. Full disclaimer here but I am what you'd call a Leonie fan. Still I think I can remain objective enough and call her S tier. Her availability is near perfect (the lords miss out on chapter 6 for example and Edelgard even a bit more) and she's fantastic in all the hardest maps of the game by being a great tank and damage dealer. Your first wave of chapter 13 tend to be underwhelming but she plays a huge part at making Verdant Wind's version noticeably easier. Outside of Golden Deer she's still great but when I'm playing that route, there's just no unit that can do everything that Leonie can. If someone traded her entire kit and availability to another character and I'd rate them the same. Felix is really good at giving a great impressions and I think that's what makes him so hard to judge. He's one of the few male unit that has a reasonable chance of reaching a comfortable speed tier paired up with a very good attack stat. Combine that with his crest and you get probably the only player phase unit that isn't impacted too negatively by a lack of good combat arts making him extremely easy to use. However yeah the authority bane, a personal that becomes useless past early game and the fact that he just relies on whatever class he's in to work makes it hard to rate him too high. Speaking of units that are easy to use, Claude is the most autopilot unit in the entire game. Getting his personal class for free makes him extremely low investment for what you get in return and let him trains whatever he wants without worrying too much. The house he joins in makes his job even easier with things like Hilda's personal and Ignatz/Raphael rallies. Even without the flashy killing power of the other lords, he makes up for it with all the small things.

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you for taking the time to write this up! I really appreciate you going in to so much detail!

[@sewnmind1786]

I find that Yuri makes for a phenomenal dancer mayve the beat. Fetters of Dromi give him canter so you could potentially have him dodge tank using sword avoid after dancing for another combat unit. I regularly had him back to back crane style levels with my war master Byleth to obliterate large swathes of maps at a time.

[@JonoabboFE]

Fetters of Dromi aren't really any better on Yuri than on any other unit, I agree that they should usually go on your dancer, but I'm not particularly fussed about the additional healing that is provided by Yuri's crest.

[@AlexKlindt]

I think you're failing to take into account Balthus's ease of Vantage/Wrathing from the midgame onward because he has strengths in everything needed to get there. He also has a Mt Support with Hilda that goes to A. You could alternatively do a Quick Riposte Grappler/Fortress Knight build leveraging his excellent strength and def as needed. Baltie has a huge amount of versatility and despite having a bit of trouble going into fliers, all of his boons tend to lead into pretty solid builds making him surprisingly less investment, especially if you don't mind him being landlocked. My current SS maddening run, I have him as an Assassin (Sword Prowess, Hit +20, Vantage, Wrath, Dex +4) with guard adjutant Hilda and the Cursed Ashiya Sword/Chalice of the Beginning. So long as you're aware of gambits, he kills everything. EDIT: Lysithea above Dimitri is a terrible take, I wouldn't be upset in S+ (even though I'd argue she's only slightly better than Hapi in practice) but Dimitri can literally solo the game with basically no investment. Earliest access to warp is extremely good, but not "solo the game good" by any stretch of the imagination. You are also putting her two tiers over the other warpers just for getting there first.

[@JonoabboFE]

Hi, thanks for the response! For Balthus, getting in to V/W is easily attainable for any unit, especially those with an axe boon. D+ swords is such a low requirement for Vantage that basically anybody can get there. He can lategame, but it's incredibly standard setups that basically any unit is capable of executing. For Lysithea, It isn't just getting there first ahead of Hapi/Lin, it's getting there with so much less investment too. Also, the chapters this allows her to skip - especially Chapter 5 - are hugely impactful. Lysithea offers so much more than Dimitri in terms of efficiency and turncount that is, for me, impossible to undervalue. Dimitri can solo the game, and whilst it is incredibly easy and consistent, it is not optimal at all, whereas Lysithea enables you to beat basically every map in 1 turn, and warp skips are also very easy to perform. For a reasonably skilled player with familiarity of the game - which was specified - Lysithea has the capacity to make the game just as easy as Dimitri, whilst also having much more of an efficiency impact. She is a lot less independent, she can't do it as 'alone' as Dimitri since she needs another unit to actually kill the boss, etc, but playthroughs typically aren't played as solo runs. It's a massive testament to Dimitri's strength that he is able to do that, and that reliability and independence is a huge influence on his placement, but not something which is actually useful in practice, because he isn't going to be alone, you're going to have a full squad deployed. In terms of which unit makes the game easier *and* more efficient, I can't see Dimitri above Lysithea. Both units have the capacity to trivialize the game, but one of them also significantly impacts turncount.

[@AlexKlindt]

Sure but every other warper can also leverage a similar ability to Lysithea here (save for maybe Manuela due to her middling magic), while Hapi offers more versatility and Linhardt demands basically no investment after warp. Yet you have Lysithea two tiers above them just for... the Miklan map really. I don't necessarily disagree with Lysithea being better than those two, but I certainly disagree with the extent that you have her. Hell, you get Hapi for free on any route while you do have to recruit Lysithea and Lin.

[@xyrushui8133]

I'm not very good at the game but if you kill milkan before killing the other thieves won't they still be on the map when he transforms into the black beast? When I played on hard mode the thieves that came from your starting position were still on the map after he transformed into a black beast. If that applies to all of the enemies then you'll have to kill them anyways so what's the point of warp skipping? Or I'm completely wrong and just have terrible memory

[@AlexKlindt]

@@xyrushui8133, when you kill Miklan, all of your units are repositioned by the Black Beast who's not too hard to kill before the remaining units on the map become a problem.

[@xyrushui8133]

@@AlexKlindt aren't there also a lot of enemies next to the place your repositioned?

[@XellossBoi]

So much work, but I'm soexcited to watch! Thank you!

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you so much!

[@noahsmith170]

The fact that I felt a little burst of joy when I saw this notification made me Subscribe and press that little bell. I haven't even watched the video yet! :)

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!

[@kiyuthakat4934]

Honestly, I'd put felix in A+ and Dorothea in C but except that.... I've never seen a tier list i agree more. Good job !

[@inept7247]

Haven't seen the video yet, but I always felt like Caspar was super underrated, heartseeker is very solid early game for getting hits to land

[@unovasfinest2623]

Idk how much this is based on my own playthrough of Azure Moon on Maddening, but i think that in-house Ingrid should be a bit higher, behind your placement Raphael. Ingrid, at least for me, is probably the premier mage punisher. There are a bunch of swarms of enemy mages and dark knights in Azure Moon and with an iron bow+ or chalice of beginnings with a good lance like the lance of assal for those dark knights, Ingrid is easily able to clear these guys out. Her strength is good enough to 1 round squishier mages with no effort and her high res allows her to shrug every hit off. And i dont think any other unit can really do both of those besides Byleth maybe

[@rhettmitchell]

I can’t wait to stay up all night watching this

[@JonoabboFE]

I hope you enjoy!

[@joeyjose727]

Definitely an interesting watch! I only play on Hard because it’s a nice easy ride where everything is able to be one shot. That’s my criteria lol: are you one rounding enemies? I think it feels easier than it technically is because I make sure my units get Fiendish/Deathly/Darting Blow, so their skills back them up nicely

[@jamesoakes4842]

I personally think that Lorenz is one of the most slept on units in the whole game. He makes an incredible Dark Knight, and actually has more going for him than people realize. The biggest reason of course being that his offensive output gets compared to Lysithea, who no one can match. He might only have a base magic growth of 40, but he actually has most of the tools to make a very solid magic unit. His offensive tools are both fairly powerful on their own, and they are obtained earlier than most people would get them (Frozen Lance at C+, and Ragnarok at B). His passive is basically free damage, and works on magic in addition to physical. The Crest of Gloucester is more free damage that only activates on magic attacks. Especially with a good battalion equipped, the amount of damage he will do with each attack is deceptively high. I think when evaluating units, people don't differentiate enough between weaknesses and weaknesses that can't be fixed. You get a lot more mileage out of dropping a few Magic Up items into Lorenz and equipping him with a Magic Staff to make him hit harder than you ever will trying to make Lysithea (or most other mages for that matter) not fold like a paper bag when they get hit. I can personally find a place for both of them in my team, but I can honestly say I think people would rate Lysithea far lower if Byleth didn't have Divine Pulse.

[@LAZERAK47V2]

With regards to Hubert, Hanneman and (potentially) Mercedes: Magic Bow Snipers. Hunter's Volley on these characters with a Magic Bow more than makes up for their lack of kill potential in the late game and completely throws the Speed stat out of the equation. The relative ease of investment (considering Magic bows require a rank of B to use) means far less grinding than with a mage like Annette or Lysithea. Speaking of Mercedes: Apparently (haven't tried it myself, but have heard some really good things) training her to Fortress Knight (yes, you read that right) makes her nigh unkillable. She gets such a thumpingly high Res and Def stat from this build, to the point where she can actually survive a Death Knight Crit.

[@danielgrotz6599]

The lack of easy arcane crystal access means that you often can't afford to use hunters volley every combat in the mid game. I think sniper is probably still hubert and hannemanns best class but it's debatable.

[@ultimaterecoil1136]

Something also worth touching on for Mercedes is she is also outclassed by gambits like impregnable wall in the keep your units alive category. Why risk one of your units being crit and heal them later when you can just guarantee they live? So not only is she outclassed by most if not all the cast but she is outclassed by their gear.

[@JonoabboFE]

Agreed entirely - I want to make a video dedicated to Healing in Three Houses at some point because I feel it is widely misjudged at large. Thanks for the response!

[@ultimaterecoil1136]

@@JonoabboFE I feel like healing should be tacked onto how gambits affects balance in the game as whole tbh. Not only do they cut into the value of healing( even without considering that they are the only option for keeping low hp builds like vengeance users both fully functional and alive) but they also serve as a buff to units that don’t fly as the gambit options for fliers are really limited.

[@memO15830]

Lysithea with Caduceus is basically a nuke every turn.

[@spacedoyster7686]

Neat tier list! I don't think I'd disagree with any of the placements. Anyway, here are some stray thoughts, in no particular order. One of my favorite things to do with Byleth is to turn them into a weird sort of tank with Faith. With White Magic Avoid, they can get pretty dodgy, and since they're mainly using Nosferatu, if they do take damage, they'll be able to heal back up, if they've got enough Magic. Every time I've used Byleth like this, I've always fed them stat boosters, so I'm not sure if it works well without extra help. Lorenz shines a bit in the mid game since he gets Ragnarok pretty fast. If I remember correctly, he can one shot quite a few enemies near the end of part one, although that's not saying much, to be fair. Lorenz might also be decent at tanking with Nosferatu with little extra work, thanks to Thyrsus giving him Pavise and Aegis. I've never tried it, though, so take that suggestion with a grain of salt. I always find Catherine tedious to use. Her base weapon ranks don't do her any favors, so she usually has to invest up from E to get into most good classes. I guess if you're looking for low effort Catherine, Assassin might be good. Her crest has a high activation rate, so she might be able to take a big chunk out of things with Astra, if she stays in Swordmaster, but being locked to 5 move and relying on a, frankly, garbage Combat Art probably isn't worth it. With DLC, she's funny as a War Cleric. One benefit to Lindhart out of house is that he auto levels Faith, so he can be recruited later and he'll still have made progress towards Warp, effectively making him a decent late recruit, unlike most students, I find. One other point in Lindhart's favor, as well as Annette's, is that they learn Wind. Wind is light and accurate, so they can chip effectively with it. Hilda can also be an interesting Magic unit. She gets Bolting. I haven't gotten past Part 1 using her as a mage yet, but she does pretty well early on. Unless my memory is lying to me again, she was able to double quite a bit once she got to Monk/Mage. I used Haneman as a Sniper once. He did quite a bit of damage with a Magic Bow, without Hunter's Volley. It's not all that unique, though, since any magic unit can probably get the same results as a Sniper, or any other class. Magic weapons are neat. With the late folks, like Alois and Seteth, I do find them to be valuable as free units that can be grabbed so late. If there are any gaps in your deployment slots, these folks can usually fill them quite well. With Manuela and Anna, they both get a long range spell, so if they go Gremmory and are mostly used for support, then they can keep the long range spell equipped to provide support, like Dancer Dorothea. Although, it's probably not a good idea with Anna, since she doesn't have supports. With the crestless students, the lack of crest might be more of a benefit. If they use a Relic, they'll take 10 points of damage, helping them to safely get their HP low for builds that want that. If they use two Relics, like the shield and a weapon, then they take 20. With Dedue, for example, if he pokes something with the Lance of Ruin while he has Felix's shield, he's lost at least 20 HP, boosting Vengeance by that same amount. As long as the enemy can't kill him on the counter, he can get all the way to 1, since Relic damage can't kill. Also, most Crests have low proc rates, so they're usually unreliable, at best. Lastly, an observation; most of the ladies have Crests. Unless I'm forgetting someone, the only crestless ladies are Leonie, Shamir, and Manuela. Quite a few dudes don't. Edit: I did forget some crestless ladies. Dorothea and best girl Petra.

[@brickwallace99]

Magic hilda is so much fun you’re in for a treat

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Ingrid is another good late recruit. Actually, she's BETTER if you recruit her late, the formula they use to autolevel her is almost always better than what she'd get by actually leveling up. The longer you can wait to recruit her, the better she ends up being, though you may have to accept not getting Wyvern asap. She, along with Seteth, Gilbert, and Alois are kinda nice as replacements to units that got a bit screwed, or weren't ever very good, but their support niche is now filled.

[@rhettmitchell]

I think you maybe underrated how useful Constance can be, just a smidge. 🤏🏼 Her crest activating on bolting (and her other low usage spells) is incredibly useful for taking out the far away enemies (namely, ballista units. Or even other siege mages), especially when she isn’t able to one shot. Getting around 6 bolting uses with her already busted magic stat, free exp from ward, and massive rescue range are super useful in my opinion, but maybe it’s just not something you really took into account since this list was focused on unit efficiency and ease. And a lot of what I said is at least mid-game stuff

[@Daydream_N]

I honestly kinda prefer constance to hapi tbh

[@cryguy0000]

Well a crest isn't a great thing to judge a character by, it's more of an added bonus than a real selling point. Because it's random when they do activate and there isn't a way to really consistently make them activate.

[@Daydream_N]

@@cryguy0000 that's fair but I'd also argue that Felix is one of the best units due to his crest and how frequently it activates. Crests are a nice bonus to have, and I think it does hurt units to not have one. I think Leonie, Ashe, Raph, etc. Would be a lot better if they had a crest of some kind.

[@GacLosen6556]

This makes me love Bernie even more. Thank you.

[@diegocorral8787]

Amazing list overall, only things I would disagree on are that Raphael is definitely a chore to use first half of the game and that Coco is pretty underestimated in this video. Comment section does a good job explaining for her, for Raphael he's incredibly unreliable and can only be used as a meat shield. I personally never had a playthrough in Golden Deer where I didn't need to baby him and make sure a mage doesn't one round him or I use multiple times pulses because he missed a 67%. I recently started to bench/stop recruiting him as he's not worth the investment.

[@jamu8060]

I'm late to the party but ty for making this. I'm finally getting around to playing the game (Black Eagles) and this helped me plan things out. I'm unfornately the target audience for being frozen with fear of making mistakes in RPG games and not wanting to keep going. So being able to plan a bit ahead and avoid bad mistakes helps.

[@JonoabboFE]

Glad you liked it! If you are new to the game, the Breaking Down series I have on the channel may also help you out!

[@printility9602]

Caspar is so weird for me in particular because I never use him in the final team but he refuses to fuckin die. I have tried my hardest to sack him but he will survive. He will dodge a 97 hit attack, he will crit in retaliation to avoid a double, he will live seemingly lethal hits on 1. Im sick of it he refuses to die but he doesn’t actually do anything on my team and is always replaced by balthus or Felix.

[@josemontoya8027]

Currently running trickster Constance in a AM run and she is easily OHKOing a lot of units. Stealth is allowing her to be front line and avoid enemy phase combat.

[@unknownmystery5373]

This is an interesting strategy. I like it

[@davidstone7257]

I think recruiting hapi or Constance at level 3 makes less sense than waiting till they are in the monk class and have D rank faith.

[@JonoabboFE]

I agree, they should ideally be recruited on Chapter 3 where they are level 5

[@Magic_Ice]

Unfortunately the social stigma of being a guy on a pegasus prevents Yuri from getting Darting Blow

[@RandyNgelale]

I disagree a little with Lorenz. I think the meme of him being both phys and mag but not a master of either is a bit overblown. As far as things to make him unique, bear in mind he is the earliest access to Ragnarok which is a 15 mt spell at B rank. Stacking this with a mag battalion like Gloucester knights and his personal with fiendish blow and you are easily capable of one shotting a fair amount of enemies around lv 17 ish, negating the point of doubling. As far as evading doubles, his 40% strength growth means he won't get weighed down as much as other mages. Second half this obviously doesn't matter but for the early game this is hardly trivial. Going forward I find frozen lance to not be all that great when he hits dark knight. Stacking tomefaire and fiendish blow on Ragnarok nets pretty comparable results without needing to swap in a prowess skill or deal with weird hit rates/enemy crit without it. No he isn't lysithea nor is he sylvain but I think b tier a bit behind Hubert especially is fine. C is unduly harsh. Much love for these videos as always 💪🏿

[@JonoabboFE]

Some good point's there! Thank you for the love

[@sizzle5775]

Don't forget his high HP and Charisma growths mean he can be surprisingly tanky for a mage

[@jamesoakes4842]

I pretty much agree with this. Lorenz is far better than many people make him out to be. He will never have the raw magical power of Lysithea, but he does have a lot of things going for him as long as you play to his strengths. One of the issues is that the game doesn't make it super obvious with his initial setup that he operates best as a magic using class. Build him toward dark knight from the beginning, and you seldom will ever regret using him.

[@RandyNgelale]

@@jamesoakes4842 yeah, the biggest watershed moment for me regarding him was just how insane Ragnarok is at how early in the game he has access to it. Frozen lance requires quite a lot of Dex to match it's power and is also a 1 range option vs Ragnarok benefitting caduceus or thyrsus.

[@allyrose9494]

I agree with this, but on Felix's personal in the late game, I find it to be a pretty good safety net, cause it activates if Felix's battalion breaks, so if he looses his battalion, he still gets +5 damage. A battalion is better, but as something to make sure Felix stays strong even if he looses his battalion, I like it

[@darkstalker696]

i say sylvain and felix are the 2 best students to recruit along with lysethia and linhardt.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Early Sylvain in Golden Deer is, imo, what makes Golden Deer overall the easiest. Golden Deer's main weakness is that your only frontline units are Byleth, Raphael, who is too slow and will fall off, and Leonie, who starts tanky, but doesn't stay that way. Sylvain is the front line that the house needs, and stays that way. I also find he's the best Dancer for the house, since it lets you use your Dancer very aggressively, and as a tank that can frequently save and enable the otherwise very offensively leaning house.

[@LadyViolet1]

I think if you value warp so highly than Constance should probably go up one tier because of rescue. Normally I wouldn't say this since mages have pretty poor movement outside of DLC classes, but since Dark Flier exists and Constance is DLC in the first place she can fulfill a similar role as a warper just using rescue and 7 move with flight instead while still keeping 3 uses of it. Rescue only being B rank in faith makes it so you can still get her rescuing and flying around the same time Hapi can get warp (I had her do it by chapter 9 by fudging a dark flier exam at a 74% chance). Warp is of course preferable, but I don't see how both a warp user and rescue user couldn't work really well together.

[@zenronez1158]

I watched the entire video really enjoyed listening to what you have to say. One thing you forgot about claudes barbarossa class is the exclusive combat art wing god. Which makes claude a flying player phase bow knight. Wing god outranges bow knight Bow knights without longbows and curved shot have 2-4 range Wind God is 2-5 range and adds 20 hit

[@JonoabboFE]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thank you!

[@shawnlyons6543]

Quick comment on reducing turn count like what you were talking about with Dimitri: Enemy phasing statistically allows one unit to kill the most amount of units in a turn. Player phasing can only kill 2 units maximum in all scenarios outside of using dance of the goddess gambits. Enemy phasing with batallion wrath Dimitri can kill as many units as can attack him in a turn. The only limitations are: 1. range, which retribution, chalice of beginnings, or even equipping a javelin can deal with depending on the map and the enemies attacking 2. Enemy miracle, if the Bishop who survives would kill you with their counter attack. You mentioned most of this, but just adding that enemy phasing does actually drastically reduce the turncount on maps with more enemies in range than you have deployment slots, such as hunting by daybreak (frustrating you have to set up batallion HP though).

[@gyletre675]

Lysithea is also so good because she can use Lorenz's heroes' relic, which gives her a permanent +2 to range. That working with all offensive spells gives her an edge from there and onwards. Hitting anyone from 4 squares with any spell is just busted at that point.

[@JonoabboFE]

It's true that it helps her out, but it isn't particularly unique to her, since anybody can use Thyrsus. It's not like your mages should be eating attacks anyway so the damage you take if you use a character without a crest, such as Dorothea, isn't particularly relevant.

[@Floydpink68]

I never used Vengeance in my last Maddening run. It's too much setup and I don't like intentionally damaging my units. I can one shot most enemies anyways (aside from certain bosses), so I didn't see the value in it. But I do understand why people like it.

[@DavidCosmanCozySmash]

Hey there, here's a totally random internet stranger long-commenting on your video. First off, I should mention your tier list is pretty on point in my opinion, I could nitpick that some characters should be higher than others within a certain tier but in general I think most of them are within where I'd put them. However, the one unit I think you really need to give another look at is Gilbert. A lot of the points you made against him are inaccurate. "Any unit will be notably better" - I'm not sure what this means to you, so I'll focus on his strengths. Gilbert has 29 base defense on join +5 added with his personal ability (+2) and join battalion (+3). Trading him a Silver Shield (+4) from Ashe's inventory in Ch13 - which is admittedly terrible inventory for a chapter that difficult - brings that to 38 protection. For reference the highest base damage you can expect is 43 from the Assassins and Snipers, so he's only taking 5 damage per hit from those enemies, 10 when doubled, before poison strike from the Snipers. That's out of his titanic 61HP so he can actually tank about 4-5 of them on his own (poison strike pending) and can get healed back up again without significant issues. There's no other unit in AM that can claim to tank well in that chapter, not even Dedue since he's absent. "Paladin ... takes a bit of effort" - no, he takes no effort at all actually! Already meets the lance rank (B to pass and he has B+) and is at C riding (B to pass), so he can actually just try the exam right at ch14. If you don't like the odds and don't like cheesing exam certifications via save scumming, then tutoring him in Riding and setting that as his goal before the mission, with Saint statue, brings it to C+ for a better pass rate (+160 skill rank experience). And it is absolutely worth it because it brings his speed from a measly 2 points to 15 points; still bad, but he stops getting doubled by other armored units in chapter 14. Not to mention how much more valuable his mobility will be for chapter 15. You can even reclass him back to Fortress Knight if you need back the bulk, and instead of 2 speed he'll have 8 speed as one to also stop getting doubled by enemy Fortress Knights while still tanking just as well. ^ Another option besides Paladin is Wyvern Rider, you do have to get his flight rank from E -> D+ with tutoring, but it can be done with goal and lecturing (+180 skill rank experience). He'll go from 2 speed to 17 speed as a Wyvern, and the reclassing back to Fortress Knight tidbit above also applies. "standout things" - he isn't far off from Alois honestly. A bit worse than him I'd say, but not enough to put him a whole tier below. Gilbert also has Battalion Wrath which lets him do enemy phase at least temporarily and synergizes well with his natural bulk, and if battalion abilities aren't your thing he can get Wrath just as early as Alois too since he can try the Warrior exam from join. Gilbert also has Smite and rally defense for free, which combine well with Paladin for movement shenanigans and rally stacking respectively. As for end classes, Great Knight is realistic to get him to thanks to his ranks and join level, and bumps his damage quite significantly with a brave axe and axefaire. Or a Wyvern class works too if you can afford to give him a flying battalion. Even if you just use him and drop him, he can be Annette's adjutant for +mt support. If you ask me, I'd bump him up to the bottom of B tier. Unless we're rating him as a dad, then he'd be F tier lol. I really encourage you to give Gilbert another try! He has a lot of qualities that let him be a very serviceable unit, and he joins in a part of the game that just happens to give you more deployment slots too. Cheers, and thanks for reading through my long comment.

[@colgado693]

War Cleric Constance is absolutely insane. One shots almost everything.

[@Ray-hx3rm]

I wonder how viskam would change this tier list 🤔

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Raphael S tier, since he's got almost the highest attack, but is so meh otherwise that there's almost no opportunity cost to turning him into an artillery piece.

[@sakutaro3musik486]

don´t know but mercedes AOE heal is really helpful atleast for me on maddening.

[@jinhunson3948]

Overall I think this is a very good tier list. But I think linhardt is A tier and constance is higher A tier than him. I prefer having a very good magic offense, dark flier B rank rescue(which is like a semi warp), 20% chance to ignore spell usage to having a A rank warp and accurate chip damage.

[@マリー-v4p]

Felt like this was just rengor list of approval (which is fine) but when you hyped up Felix I agreed. I think people overrate him as a myrm but the more casual parts of the fandom have always had a problem with that. Ot but literally just had a friend tell me lynn is s tier (maybe, when you feed her hundreds of kills and literally all the stat boosters and even then she had lit 7 defense and 4 res).

[@koyoyoyo1170]

lysithea is literally in every single one of my playthroughs. Most endgame teams are just Lysithea+Fliers.

[@rhettmitchell]

I’m a Mercedes fan so that kinda hurt, but I understand why you put her there. 😪 I’d at LEAST put her above Anna. I just like to be reckless sometimes in my playthroughs sometimes so I like to use Mercie. And she’s also my favourite character so I never bench her anyway

[@OperaQueen85]

Re: Mage problems: watching Failure Emblem has shown that speed is really the issue. The likes of Leonie or Petra perform surprisingly well as magical units, despite awful Magic growths and spell lists, just because they can double their Thunders or Winds.

[@greg6434]

Sylvain has the potential to do 11 extra damage if linked with Ingrid(also adjacent), Felix, and adjacent to Hilda.

[@JonoabboFE]

True! I think The Byleth's can both get up to 12 too with their 3 available might supports + Seteth/Hilda personals.

[@greg6434]

The funny thing about this is that with all the support boosting, he can use swift strikes with the inaccurate lance of ruin and deal insane damage.

[@JonoabboFE]

True!

[@kevinbach7148]

Solid Tier List !! 👍

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you!

[@sheko1615]

One thing I value a lot about Ingrid that I don't see discussed much is her personal ability. It's use is limited since battalion uses are very low, but paired with Hit+20, it makes her essentially the only unit who can pretty easily hit perfect accuracy without a linked attack to help start a chain to break a monster or target a specific enemy battalion user to clean up room for another unit to position properly. It would make me place her higher, but since it is a pretty small niche I can respect not valuing it too much.

[@scrapyarddragon]

I disagree with Hanneman over Ashe. Both are bad units, but even if sniper-ashe is still doing the bare minimum, at least he isn't using up valuable resources to do it. Meanwhile Hanneman is either a slow frail generic mage without any interesting spells, or a gimmicky sniper burning up rare resources you could be using elsewhere to accomplish something anyone else could do for cheaper with the option to use say, a killer bow if you absolutely need those crits. Like, lets look at what hanneman has and why you will almost ALWAYS have a better option even among the rest of the bottom of the barrel cast. magic bow shenanigans? expensive and doesn't do anything you couldn't do with a physical unit using normal bows. as a mage? the only spell of interest he has is meteor, of which he only gets the one use because he can't go gremory to double it. If you want artillery magic, constance exists and has other tools in her list that CAN be helpful, and dorothea also exists, has meteor, and can meteor twice with gremory in the late-game, and she is most certainly a unit that can be recruited easily enough since byleth is always going to have the charm and authority to get her out of house, and IN the eagles she's also gonna be doing that thing where she gives your entire team linked attack bonuses. And if all you want is a magic unit to smack low-res enemies, every house has at least one offensive mage already just use them. magic rallybot to squeeze out that one extra warp tile? constance can also do that, along with ingrid of all characters. I truly think Hanneman is actually THE worst unit in the game and not even in a funny ha-ha way like Anna is where you can use her KNOWING she's bad and doing it anyway for laughs. He's just slow, frail, and extremely uninteresting as a unit. Plus as a church unit his supports are pretty all-over-the-place in terms of who he has them with. The ONLY reason to consider using him is bringing him for a paralog or two in order to put levels into him to help him with his own paralog because the rapier and gem are extremely nice items to have and your deployment is so limited on that one that having your forced character be kinda sorta decent can be a viable move but even then I don't think its worth it.

[@takeyourheart1]

I’ll always just use the units I love and avoid the ones I don’t (sorry Leonie you’re on the bench forever) but this was still interesting to watch. Dimitri, Felix and Yuri supremacy though.

[@dragonstouch1042]

8:07 it’s not even just everything dies, it’s that they run to their deaths

[@CostabiIe]

Great to see another good maddening tier list on KZbin. Up until now I feel like the one Rengor made was the only one I could really agree with. I generally play the game with less planning than the average maddening player, so I value units that need little investment in tutoring and funds, like Alois and Shamir, higher than you and the average player do. My top ranks would look something like: Edelgard - Dimitri - F!Byleth - Shamir - Bernadetta - M!Byleth - Claude - Lysithea - Leonie - Balthus - Sylvain - Dedue. It gets fuzzy after that, but next are probably Petra, Hilda, Hapi and Linhardt in some order. Overall this is a great list! I also love the individual unit break downs you do, keep up the amazing work!

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you so much, I really appreciate the support and the kind words!

[@TheRagnarok428]

In my experience, Jeritza is a great player phase unit. Get him death blow, darting blow and battalion desperation and a good accuracy battalion and you'll murder everything on player phase. His personal skill is also helps here. Using a silver lance to just hit twice with battalion desperation is much more economical than using swift strikes and for the real challenges, use a brave lance to hit 4 times in a row. This was invaluable for me in killing Rhea in chapter 17 and 18.

[@JonoabboFE]

Erm, how are you getting Darting Blow on Jeritza? He doesn't have access to Pegasus knight since he is a male? There will be a lot of enemies you can't double without SS though, especially on male units without Darting Blow.

[@TheRagnarok428]

@@JonoabboFE it's his budding talent skill for flying. And yeah you can't double sword users for fliers, but you can do basically everything else. And you get 3 brave lances in that route, so I can just lean on them if I really need to double someone who isn't on a wyvern.

[@JonoabboFE]

@@TheRagnarok428 Oh shit yeah I forgot lmao, but brave lances are still kinda ass damage-wise especially if you arent using a CA since you wanna double, althought at the same time the faster units such as pegs and swordies also aren't the tankiest so it probably balances. I have became a big fan of Bat!Desp builds since the creation of the list and do think they are quite underrated but I haven't looked into Jeritza enough to see how well they would work on him, so I could honestly see it being a really strong setup.

[@TheRagnarok428]

@@JonoabboFE he'd probably do better on a wyvern with some brave axes which you also get more than one of, I was just out of good flying battalions. I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about batt desp seriously on KZbin, just batt wrath so I'd absolutely love to hear your take on how to make a good one. I feel like you absolutely need darting blow but that it also excels with brave weapons and gauntlets. Of course it's really hard to get someone good with gauntlets and have darting blow. So yeah, if you've got any ideas I'd love to hear.

[@JonoabboFE]

@@TheRagnarok428 Might be an interesting topic for a video as I doubt I am the only one who slept on it for a while, and it seriously changes the performance of a couple of units (Ingrid, most notably, as well as potentially Jeritza)

[@goldbananas608]

i'm still personally a claude>bernadetta person but I can understand the belief against it, I think claude's higher base authority give him that edge, he also doesn't struggle to get a kill in PP part 2. I also very highly value any unit that can EP early, and mini bow claude does that.

[@cosmictraveler1146]

Magic Yuri is probably the fastest mage, and good spell list too!

[@cloudunderweather9554]

lysithea being that high is not that weird. Because warp aside? She's kinda absurdly strong.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Agree. Lysithea definitely needs some favoritism to be good... but she's probably THE best recipient of favoritism in the game, anyways. Investing enough into Lysithea that she can survive one attack, for example, is a MASSIVE game changer, it's 100% true that Thyrseus can he used by anyone... but who else can even come close to putting it to as much use as her?

[@somedumb4450]

I genuinely thought this was Stampy just from hearing the intro.

[@FranTheNerd]

i disagree on ignatz simply based on the fact you can reclass him into magic classes with blizzard which increases his naturally high crit a FUCK ton he becomes critnatz

[@Alex-lj3sk]

I don’t know how you could dismiss the usefulness of bolting/meteor when it gives free hit for free if ur units are in 10 spaces especially to byleth. And rescue is so useful and constance can do this and fly away from enemy phase. You only need like 5 units to kill and having the rest be utility always works out nicely for me at least

[@JonoabboFE]

"I don’t know how you could dismiss the usefulness of bolting/meteor when it gives free hit for free if ur units are in 10 spaces especially to byleth" There's quite a few qualifiers missing there. It's only 10 hit when at A support ranks, which wont happen until those unlock in Part 2, by which point you probably wont be relying on Linked Attacks to make sure your attacks land, considering high level prowess tools, hit +20, more accurate weapons, high hit battalions, etc. You also need to have the spell equipped, and still have charges of it left. This isn't a problem for a dancer, since they can basically leave it equipped the entire time, but for somebody functioning as a combat unit, it's not a persistent benefit. Linked attacks are also only on the player phase. For a unit like Constance, she also only supports 8 units, some of which really don't benefit from this (Mercedes, for example). It's still a nice benefit, especially for hitting things like Falcoknights or Assassins, but it's nothing really extravagant.

[@RDA000]

Marianne also gets soulblade letting her one shot any non res non boss unit.

[@Cthight]

If Mercedes becomes mother her Sons name should be "Benz"

[@Flameo326]

Ive always wondered why units like Catherine, Cyril, and Hilda only join after you side woth the church in Silver Snow route . Its especially weird because Flayn joins halfway through pre timeskip no matter which route but they dont for some reason. I understand the technical reasons, its weird how its inconsistemt though.

[@waitingforwonderland6036]

I hate how much mages were nerfed in fe3h, like I wish there was more variation with them like Speedy ones. Idk I just miss Forseti spamming. Sobs. 50 speed on a mage in three houses never lol!

[@JonoabboFE]

Fast mages are so fun to use in the older games, I agree!

[@Xsksnssjccxghb]

Speedy ones and them Luna crit ones

[@waitingforwonderland6036]

@@JonoabboFE I know right, I just send Ced towards any enemy and he deletes them off the map!

[@waitingforwonderland6036]

@@Xsksnssjccxghb Homer my beloved!

[@Guacko]

Mages can absolutely dominate when used properly. They can outrange snipers when classed as valkyries and match bow knight range (without the range increasing staves). Also, accuracy plus on player phase is great. They can outspeed decently if they get darting blow (lysithea, annette, clnstance, marrianne, hapi, dorothea). Male mages get poison strike and lifesteal. They do struggle with non-chip damage, but if given enough stat boosters they can dominate because of their range.

[@evansmith2832]

Ash on chapter 1 is basically an alternate Annette, offering free chip damage without retaliation. He's definitely worse, but if you actually plan on using him, he gets more experience than ms. Rally strength

[@GigaReploid]

Rally Man is ancestors with Annette, Rally Strength Speed Res and Movement kinda goes Hard

[@waitingforwonderland6036]

Funny thing in war phase for me, mages had a better damage output, as there are more slower units. But I think it depends on what route you take.

[@waitingforwonderland6036]

great tier list

[@JonoabboFE]

Thank you!!

[@Aureels]

In maddening, the best units are your classroom units since the mission after the time skip become very difficult without them trained in 3 of the 4 routes. 9 classroom unit + 1 dancer (if you are the golden deer, if not, 9 classroom unit with a dancer chosen inside + Lysithea), and you have your roster. the other student are meant to be recruted just before the Battle of the Eagle and the Lion to make it a joke, and the rest of the unit just before to do their paralogue the later possible to get them the stronger possible for it. Adjudant only serve to get your unit that have reached the lvl 5, 10, 20 or 30 to let the other take all the xp without stopping to increase their talents. Put them on unit with large range spells like Marianne (silence, long distance cures, etc...) or the dancer to get xp every turns when training.

[@HenriqueRJchiki]

Not really, you can cheese hunting by daybreak with a flying byleth + stride

[@Aureels]

@@HenriqueRJchiki That implies a strats that not is "normal" game, if you play like a noob not looking internet's strats, this mission is really a wall if the class is not trained.

[@crownlexicon5225]

Oh, man, i thought Yuri would be higher. He ended up as SUCH a dodge tank for me. And, i understand now that others can use them, but his relic giving canto, and in trickster where he can use foul play, his ability to reposotion allies is useful.

[@cftncfjlphgfb]

Idk, I always thought Cyril was bomb and most people didn't like him cause they thought he was just a growth unit whos not a kawaii uwu girl like Nino or Amelia.

[@bigdragaobebe]

There was a twist for me, he was like Dorothea is so great, a lot of diferent things she can do and all, love it, C.

[@maximeminassian6002]

I think SS Cyril should be put down to C tier. He joins so late with such abysmal bases, he doesn’t have the time to master the classes he wants before the timeskip happens and I find him to struggle a lot to catch up

[@michaelpodgorski1692]

I make it a point to get Lysithea into Armored Knight, giving her a massive boost to defense, actually allowing her to take a hit. Even made her an Enemy Phase unit on one Maddening run (before DLC, as Dark Flier is just superior.) The Ashen Wolves joining at level 4 is incredibly helpful. Those early stats are a godsend. Turns early Maddening into a joke.

[@OneTrueNobody]

RE: Anna and "owning the DLC" I don't think Anna or Jeritza were tied to DLC, actually, I'm pretty sure they were added in free patch updates.

[@OneTrueNobody]

RE: Cyril He's just "underrated" because players don't like him as a character, rather than as a unit, and they tend to ignore him because of it. Narratively he's kind of uninteresting.

[@JonoabboFE]

Cyril used to be rated super low as a unit because on N/H he is kinda... bad. It has taken quite a while for the narrative to shift that on Maddening he is actually insanely good.

[@JonoabboFE]

That's true for Jeritza, but Anna was DLC.

[@OneTrueNobody]

RE: Felix's personal ability It also kicks in when your equipped battalion hits 0 endurance, so you can give him a batallion that outdoes his personal and rest assured that you have a buffer in the event that he runs out of battalion endurance. There's margin for error there.

[@OneTrueNobody]

@@JonoabboFE Hrm. Guess I lost track of which additions were DLC and which were just... update patches. I bought the Expansion Pass at launch so I never had to go out of my way for it.

[@Starwars-Fanboy]

First, can't wait to see what this list looks like

[@JonoabboFE]

Thanks! Looking forward to hearing what you think!

[@havoooooooooc]

I always have these girls in my maddening team; Dancer Marianne with levin sword, Dark knight mercedes with bolt axe, and hilda wyvern lord, idk why they are in low ranks they are so op lul

[@deathby1808]

lol honestly thought you were gonna throw Lysithea at the top of A+. She was my favorite unit to use in my first run.

[@selfsustainedautocannibalVampi]

12:45 Blessed lance does magic damage? I think I've used it less than 10 times.

[@JonoabboFE]

Nope it definitely does not! I think I meant frozen lance? Maybe? Slip up on my part!

[@selfsustainedautocannibalVampi]

@@JonoabboFE The Arrow of Idra does magic damage. It would have been cool if the Blessed lance also did magic damage considering you only get AoI at the end of two routes.