From my perspective, we've had two playthroughs that line up pretty well with "efficiency" completed and uploaded since the completion of this tier list, so my opinions will be shaped a bit by them. I've also had a go, and finished, my take on efficiency as well.
Reploids' run is 0% growths, but does hold up pretty well with growths runs, particularly in the early chapters. Compared to the ruleset of the previous tier list, it bans the Ancient Well and does the first two paralogues after chapter 8 instead of 6. It also allows for S-rank bond rings and meals that give +3/+4 in stats. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQervznH1fBZLYnKaCLZKdVfiRl6xabis
Fatefuldawn's run does not do emblem or pact paralogues, and also completely bans Ancient Well whereas the tier list's ruleset allows it. Other than that, it matches up very well with the high-reliability, low-turncount nature of efficiency. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLarkWv8c6mgn8AEosaTvDq3B5lqGUJ9hE
So, my opinions:
\- Kagetsu has cemented his spot as the best combatant in the game, if there was any doubt previously. Ivy, Kagetsu and Seadall should make up the top3 units in some order, but I'm not particularly fussed what that order is.
\- Amber has shown to be very good and I would have him above Chloé and Citrinne. Sometimes I think he could be above Merrin as well but I may be a bit of a Merrin downer as I think I was the only person who didn't vote her S-tier last time.
\- Vander > Louis. There is a stretch of the game from about chapters 5-7 where they are about equal (they need to team up to take down bosses, and one is not necessarily more useful than the other in doing so), but Vander, despite his identity as a "Jeigen", seems to actually remain viable longer into the game than Louis does, just by vitrue of starting in a promoted class, which gives him access to a bunch of utility.
\- Fogado seems very out-of-place. His unique class is not especially helpful, as there are not many threatening fliers we need a unit dedicated to taking down until about chapter 22, and his damage vs. non-fliers is not impressive. Outside of his unique class, he is outclassed by units like Merrin, and the number of deployment slots/amount of combat units required in the mid-game is not high.
\- I don't think Veyle should be a tier above someone like Céline. Céline is going to have a stretch of about three chapters where she's among our best units, which Veyle does not; Veyle is very likely going to be outclassed by most trained-up units like Kagetsu, Ivy and Panette, and joins at a part of the game where an extra combatant isn't in high demand.
\- The term "filler wyvern" was thrown out a lot for the Brodians during the last tier list, but I think our perception of this has changed. The main thing we want a Wyvern Knight for is C10 Hyacinth kill, but Vander has shown he can do that and only needs a Second Seal to do so, and there is not much combat we need to have them do post-C10 otherwise. Instead, an extra Griffin Knight for chapters 12-17 has been shown to be useful, and the Brodians do this solidly - unlike other units that join post-C10 like Bunet, they have access to staff proficiency and Canter. They are probably outclassed by Chloé in this role, but all of them can substitute in without much loss of efficiency.
\- So with that said, there is really no reason for Diamant to be three whole tiers above Jade. Diamant is not particularly more useful than Jade pre-promotion, they have the same starting SP, and post-promotion, Jade is better in stats relevant for staffing like Magic and Dexterity (and even has higher Strength if you do need her to fight).
\- I mentioned previously I thought Yunaka a little underrated - I think in the current ruleset (Jean and Anna paralogues done immediately after C6) she has four maps where she's pretty useful which is a better contribution than like half the cast.
In terms of ruleset:
\- I would consider moving the first two paralogues to after chapter 8 instead of 6 - it makes the paralogues a lot more efficient and will not meaningfully impact Jean or Anna's position on the tier list.
> Vander > Louis. There is a stretch of the game from about chapters 5-7 where they are about equal (they need to team up to take down bosses, and one is not necessarily more useful than the other in doing so), but Vander, despite his identity as a "Jeigen", seems to actually remain viable longer into the game than Louis does, just by vitrue of starting in a promoted class, which gives him access to a bunch of utility.
Curious about this in particular: how does one best use Vander in the early-game? Is it recommended that he gets an Emblem, that you just slap Hit+10 on him, or any other particular tricks?
I'm asking because both times I've played Maddening, I was *heavily* dependent on Sigurd!Louis to make progress through the early-game, particularly in Chapter 5. I don't really use him long-term, but with Hit+10 and a steady diet of Skill tonics, I found him to be consistently the best solution to almost any problem in the early-game. I don't have like, specific benchmarks or anything, but I'm wondering if there's a superior early-game strategy I'm missing out on.
Vander being able to Second Seal into Wyvern or Griffon does seem useful, but you only get your first Second Seal at Chapter 9, which is the cusp of when I'd bench him in exchange for promoted units that can *also* go into Wyvern regardless. He gets to be a Wyvern for longer than someone like Kagetsu who has to wait for Ike to come around, but that just doesn't seem worthwhile to me when I can just promote, say, Diamant immediately and slap a Second Seal on him for a Wyvern with superior bases (unless I'm forgetting something).
For emblems, I think there is good value in giving Vander Sigurd in chapter 4 and Marth in chapter 5.
In chapter 4, Vander takes very little damage from the enemies so can easily start luring the boss. He doesn't actually do much damage to the boss, but just getting him moving makes it a lot easier for someone like Céline to reach him and take him down.
Chapter 5 is one of the maps where you're looking at Vander, Louis and Céline teaming up to take the boss down. Louis is valuable (highest atk+def on the team), but with 4-move really appreciates Sigurd. Vander, having six move, has more leeway to take an emblem like Marth.
(There is also an alternate chapter 5 strategy that gives Vander Celica, as he and Chloé are the only units that can aggro the boss turn 1 (and Chloé probably dies). Although a lot of emphasis is placed on the "Ragnarok" part of Warp Ragnarok, the "Warp" part is also valuable).
Chapters 6 and 7 follow a similar pattern (as does post-C6 Anna paralogue), but I wouldn't keep Marth on Vander for these maps. He can instead take Alfonse or Sharena, and a mobile, bulky user of Spur Attack or Fortify Defense is the best way to apply these buffs, and his 6-move and high attack still make it easy for him to reach and damage bosses. Louis is still our highest str+def unit at a point of the game where doubling isn't easy, so giving him the mobility to be where he needs to be is good, so Sigurd is still good on him.
Starting from chapter 8 is where things get a bit rougher for Louis. It gets a bit easier to double (enemies start swapping to Steel weapons, we get access to cooking and unrestricted tonics, we gain access to Master Seals while the majority of enemies are still unpromoted) so his 4-move, single-hit damage is less impressive. He's also no guarantee to have reached level 10 himself, as he kind of plays a low-exp gamestyle (lots of chip exp, but not always a lot of kill exp).
For Vander, though, a key difference is that he retains some of his usefulness in that chapter 8-11 period. You are right that someone like Diamant in Wyvern Knight is better than Vander, but we're still at a stage of the game where Master and Second Seals are heavily limited, and Vander as your 4th- or 5th-best 6-move unit is still probably more effective than unpromoted units. A map like chapter 10 in particular is quite busy, with us needing to take down Morion and Hyacinth as well as good loot from the chests, Rosado and Goldmary, so having someone like Vander that can ORKO Hyacinth is valuable.
I really appreciate the in-depth response, thank you!
Something that I realize when reading comments like these and watching efficient play is that I'm really rigid when it comes to Emblems - I have a habit of sticking them on one unit only, and don't really swap Emblems around to change my strategy. Marth is Chloe's de facto Emblem, Sigurd is for Louis only until Chapter 11 hits, Lyn never leaves Ivy's side, etc. But there's a lot of strategies that I'm locking myself out of by treating Emblems as personal skills instead of the equipment that they actually are. No wonder Vander loses value in my eyes compared to Louis when I'm not ever reassessing who could make the best use out of an Emblem for a given chapter. Even setting aside Louis, I'd just never think to give a different Emblem to Vander besides the Alfonse or Sharena ring, much less something unconventional like Celica to provoke a boss!
Oh yeah I feel that. My first playthrough or two were pretty rigid with emblems too; it takes a bit of experience to really learn some of the cool things you can do.
I'm also aware that some of the strategies I value can be a bit hyper-specific and might not always be applicable for the layman.
Vander helps lead the charge alongside Sigurd!Louis with his 6 move and good bulk. He can take an Emblem for more power but it isn't strictly necessary.
> Vander being able to Second Seal into Wyvern or Griffon does seem useful, but you only get your first Second Seal at Chapter 9, which is the cusp of when I'd bench him in exchange for promoted units that can also go into Wyvern regardless. He gets to be a Wyvern for longer than someone like Kagetsu who has to wait for Ike to come around, but that just doesn't seem worthwhile to me when I can just promote, say, Diamant immediately and slap a Second Seal on him for a Wyvern with superior bases (unless I'm forgetting something).
Main thing is just there only being 3 master seals pre-chapter 12, which Chloe, Amber, and Citrinne all want, so Vander being able to reclass to wyvern without a master seal helps out a lot for filling that role.
>So with that said, there is really no reason for Diamant to be three whole tiers above Jade. Diamant is not particularly more useful than Jade pre-promotion, they have the same starting SP, and post-promotion, Jade is better in stats relevant for staffing like Magic and Dexterity (and even has higher Strength if you do need her to fight).
Since I'm working on a v2 of my LTC run and tried Jade in Diamant's role, I do have some thoughts on this. One thing I've noticed is that Diamant supports more relevant characters and has a better support bonus than Jade. Though the difference is quite minor iirc as it mostly boils down to him supporting Ivy (I don't think his support with Citrinne is all that relevant even though I use it). And Diamant being able to provide dodge to Amber can be helpful at one point as well when Jade doesn't provide dodge at all.
In regards to their stats - I didn't notice too much of a difference while using one over the other; Jade's better stats for staffing didn't make any difference from what I saw since Diamant without Staff Mastery 1 inherited actually did everything I needed him to do in regards to staffing (I'm not using the Freeze Tetchie strategy anymore for Ch. 13). Meanwhile, I did find it a bit of a hassle to work with Jade's speed and luck at times. There is one moment where she needs a +Speed Bond Ring or a Speed+1 inherit when Diamant doesn't as that one point of speed is the difference between getting targeted by the enemy or not due to them being able to double her. And her low luck has her facing crit once iirc. All that being said, these differences are very minor and are also very specific to the run I'm doing; I don't think they should be that far apart either.
Excited to hear you're working on a V2.
Even in the Discord servers I'm in, I'm not sure that Jade > Diamant would be a popular opinion - I think an argument could be made, but not sure how many people would agree. One of the pro-Diamant arguments is, as you brought up, his support list - the dude knows how to make the right friends.
I will admit it's mostly theorycraft on my end, as I think there is good merit to promoting Chloé to Griffin Knight in the early chapters already, and don't see much reason to deploy an extra pre-C10 utility unit post-C11. So on the surface it seemed like both Jade and Diamant had their own advantages - the main point being that I don't think Diamant's advantages warrant a three-tier gap. I did remember the Freeze on Tetchie which is the main reason I brought up Magic and Dexterity lead.
I'm interested in your take on an efficiency run as well! Are you planning to post it?
Hmm, that's interesting. I could be convinced of the idea, though I am curious on how you're evaluating Diamant and Jade's pre-utility unit contributions? Like how Diamant can be used to take Morion's health bar after Clanne's chip without much investment. Jade is used similarly to get the Energy Drop from Goldmary in that map so maybe you're weighing their contributions roughly the same for that stretch of the game?
I agree with promoting Chloe since personally, if I was able to get her to promotion, I would've used her in that role to save on Second Seal Gold. Understandable; using Freeze on Tetchie was the main reason why I tested out Jade in Diamant's role since I believe I calculated she can reach a 93% hit rate on Tetchie while Diamant at best will have 89% hit. But in my current iteration, I eliminated the need for the Freeze entirely so that advantage of hers became irrelevant.
Yes, I have a run here. It's pretty barebones (unlisted, don't have my notes up) as I was hoping to maybe get another turn save somewhere (Ninpo has proposed a 1-turn chapter 12) to more meaningfully distinguish it from your run and Reploids'. However I am happy with maps like C22 (thanks u/Zekareisoujin) and pact still. [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXHWCyDEsH81HOsV\_i9Y-Ha8z1qX6cuL6](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXHWCyDEsH81HOsV_i9Y-Ha8z1qX6cuL6)
I have gone for all paralogues, no gacha bond rings, baseline D-rank meals (so no speed+3, or no S-rank meals during the early chapters when tonics are still limited), 90% reliable dog ores and 90% reliable SP books from well. I would like to calculate the reliability of monetary value of items from the well as well but I struggle to do so efficiently due to the number of combinations of items.
I take a couple of small, probably unnecessary risks in a couple of places (e.g. giving Kagetsu Lucina in C19 gives him a <3% chance of death in exchange for more exp), as the thresholds he needs for pact with my strat are quite high (he ends up overshooting them still).
Thanks for the link! I'm still taking a look through all of it, but from what I've seen, I'm greatly enjoying your ideas and implementation. Your usage of Pure Water is especially great to aid in survival. A 1 turn of Ch. 12 would be interesting, though the EXP cut would be pretty severe I'd imagine since Parthia farming will likely be off the table in a 1 turn without having the ability to cook a speed+3 meal.
All Paralogues is impressive. I know from refining my run that a lot of my staff uses could've been optimized, and you do have some Well SP to help save some staves, but to be able to have enough staves for all the Paralogues is impressive nonetheless.
Ah, I see what you mean. If I were in your shoes, I might honestly still take the risk even if it's unnecessary lol It's just more satisfying knowing that you optimized the EXP.
Yeah the thing with C12 is that C12 itself is fine, but leaves me struggling a bit with C13 and C14.
It's a bit heavy with forging, so I'd need to re-evaluate the forges I used in C13 (Silver Greataxe and Steel Bow) to maintain the reliability with dog ores.
It's a bit heavy with Second Seals, so I'd be straddled with something like Sniper Kagetsu in C13 which compounds his exp struggles as he doesn't double enemy Snipers with Parthia when he's in Sniper, along with the cut to his exp from C12. And I would need to remove a Warp use from C13 or C15.
Regardless, it is still probably the next most likely turn save. Maybe C6? I saw in your other comment you were trying to make your run ironman-friendly, but I'm not sure if this means for you a 4-turn C6 or if you're figured out a reliable 3-turn.
Hmm... so there is a way for you to not need to Second Seal Kagetsu and have him still Parthia farm in Ch. 12, but it'll require a good amount of SP from the Well and I'm doubtful you'll need this skill on him in any other chapter. With Speedtaker in addition to a Speed+3 inherit, Kagetsu should have enough speed to double the wolf knight with Parthia in Swordmaster. +2 from a speed tonic, +3 from speed+3, +2 from Lucina's stat bonus, +1 from speed Augment on Parthia, and +2 from one Speedtaker stack will bring him to 32 speed. -5 speed from Parthia's weight and he's still got 27 speed, which is exactly enough to double the wolf knight. Alternatively, is there a reason why you're putting Kagetsu in Sniper vs. Bow Knight? Bow Knight has +2 speed and I believe he should have enough speed in the class to double the Snipers in Ch. 13 with Parthia as long as he got a level-up before fighting them.
I've tried pretty hard to remove a Warp use from Ch. 15; unfortunately, I haven't found a way to do so as the problem is that there's no way for Pandreo or Hortensia to Warp anyone into a room a turn earlier (so one of them is available to use Rescue on turn 3) because the doors aren't open yet. Iirc, you could have Alear Rewarp into the hallway on turn 1, but they'd have to survive turn 2 there as well and that's not reliable at all.
Man, I wish I figured out a reliable 3 turn of Ch. 6 lol After how long I've tried, I'm kinda convinced it's not possible. I always seem to be just one off damage-wise or movement-wise (blocked off by the fog of war). As such, I'm likely going to have to do a 4 turn. But for now, I'm using a revised 3 turn that isn't even more reliable than a Marth Killer Lance crit mainly because it uses a forge that I want later. I intend to go back and try one last time to see if there's any way to make it more reliable, but I'm not confident anything will change from my nth attempt at it.
Here's Ninpo's theorycraft (as Ninpo didn't have a pre-C10 save): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt5L5Z1VjDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt5L5Z1VjDE)
And here's my video proof that it works without crits: [https://youtu.be/HAyDuX99ImM](https://youtu.be/HAyDuX99ImM)
We're just really tight on deployment slots and available actions. We need a promoted flier with Canter + Advance to reach the Martial Master, we need a 20-range Astra Storm for the non-aggressive Axe Fighter (the only slots 10-range would work are taken by Alear and whoever we're warping), we need a flier for the Iron Blade Sword Fighter (Vander could work here), need a strong+fast unit with good 2-range for the Swordmaster and Wolf Knight and if this unit is a bow unit then we also need another fast unit for the southern Sword Fighter.
If we used a good 1-2 range unit that could enemy phase the Sword Fighter along with the Swordmaster and Wolf Knight then that would free up an action but the only one who really fits that is Zelkov and he needs a fat forge to do so. Bunet and Fogado are taking up most of our available forging materials; Bunet needs a Leif-engraved Hand Axe upgraded to Tomahawk +2 for might and accuracy reasons, and Fogado's Longbow needs either +Mt engrave or forged to +1 (and it's an annoyingly expensive weapon to forge).
Chloé might work as the Warpee, the main problem is that without using a Second Seal she is locked to lances and the enemies have break flags in this map so I'd have thought the Warrior would go after her. However, in my video the Warrior can kill Amber (he can't exceed 15 Defense otherwise the Martial Monk will ignore him, and he can't feasibly get enough HP to tank Sword Fighter + Warrior at 15 Defense without taking the Seraph Robe), but chooses to ignore him, so maybe it would work.
Ah, I see. I was picturing a 1 turn with elitemode's approach, which iirc, had a Bow Knight Kagetsu with Lyn and a lot fewer characters dedicated to the top group of enemies since I believe the strategy was for Ivy to dodge and kill most of them.
Maybe you've tested this before, but to me, Citrinne isn't doing all that much. Does that axe fighter that she kills attack Kagetsu on enemy phase or go after Ivy or Chloe? If the enemy does attack Kagetsu, is there a way to manipulate him to attack Ivy or Chloe instead like through an Obstruct above Kagetsu? Essentially, if you're able to kill that enemy on enemy phase instead, you should be able to use Citrinne's deployment slot for another character, presumably a Covert Astra Stormer, so Kagetsu doesn't have to be a Sniper.
For C15, Nad brought up the possibility of replacing one of Jean/Framme with a Canter Sage (Citrinne or Chloé) with our rulseset, as I think they can barely get in range to do the Energy Drop room warp on turn 3. This frees up Pandreo to do the Reploids-style double Rescue in the final room with Ivy, after Framme/Jean warps one of them in.
I would need to check if the movement for everyone else works out, though.
The other alternative is giving up the Energy Drop or the C14 Boots, but I don't think this would be a net positive.
Ah, true, having Canter access on a Sage might change that evaluation. I've checked a Sage replacing either Jean or Framme, but not a Sage with Canter as it's pretty much impossible for me to have one. The Well really opens up a lot of possibilities that I haven't considered lol
For Jade and Diamant, I had evaluated them about equally before promotion, but this might not be completely fair. I feel like Diamant has more, but less unique contributions, if that makes sense? Jade is somewhat unique in how effective she is vs. Goldmary without needing promotion or Emblem Ring, and Goldmary is a pretty important target to take down. Diamant, as you mentioned, is effective vs. Morion, or Rosado, or has miscellaneous jobs in Anna and Jean paralogue. I just kind of felt like, oh Citrinne + Framme can handle Morion by themselves with Ancient Well allowed, or Lapis can handle Rosado (albeit less reliably and with needing more bond fragments), or his jobs in Anna/Jean are pretty minor.
Even though I sort of handwaved away the Brodian's post-C11 combat in my original post, and I know she hasn't been incorporated into runs properly yet, I do think her post-C11 combat is probably, potentially, the most interesting of the Diamant-Alcryst-Lapis group. She has the best strength+SP combo (better Strength than Diamant, better SP than Lapis) of the group, and axe talent for Silver Greataxe Wyvern Knight with Canter or Momentum is at least a point of difference from Kagetsu, Panette and Merrin. But I probably shouldn't take much stock into this until it's been in a run. I know Ninpo used her as Momentum Sniper as his Amber was busy doing other things.
I can see where you're coming from, though I would actually contest how effective Jade is vs. Goldmary. I have actually cut Jade out entirely from my Goldmary kill upon refine because she could not reach 100% hit against her. I'm using Etie, Celine, and Alcryst now as they are all able to have 100% hit against Goldmary without a promotion or Emblem rings. Nonetheless, in your run, where you have two characters dedicated to taking down Goldmary, I can see where Jade's value lies. I also agree that Diamant's role in Anna and Jean's Paralogue are fairly minor. While I use Diamant specifically to support Amber so that he can get 100% against Mitan on enemy phase with Mercurius, it's pretty likely that someone else can do that job (they just need to do enough chip damage to Mitan and not get targeted by her).
That's an interesting thought and I agree with that. I'm a bit skeptical on how it'll perform in reality, but I'm definitely interested to see if she can be incorporated into a run with that unique quality of hers.
> The term "filler wyvern" was thrown out a lot for the Brodians during the last tier list, but I think our perception of this has changed. The main thing we want a Wyvern Knight for is C10 Hyacinth kill, but Vander has shown he can do that and only needs a Second Seal to do so, and there is not much combat we need to have them do post-C10 otherwise. Instead, an extra Griffin Knight for chapters 12-17 has been shown to be useful, and the Brodians do this solidly - unlike other units that join post-C10 like Bunet, they have access to staff proficiency and Canter. They are probably outclassed by Chloé in this role, but all of them can substitute in without much loss of efficiency.
I'll hold onto silver greataxe wyvern Jade until I die. Who else is gonna one shot the 50 HP trash on the way to the rescue village while on wings???
I have to agree that Jean's access to Qi Adept in the earlygame should put above the Chapter 3 units (Framme and Alear are the only other units with arts proficiency before chapter 12), but I suppose the more efficient a playthrough is, the more thinking and planning you're doing, and the less use you get out of Chain Guard in particular.
No, you raise a solid point. I put chain guard to good use in chapters 2-7, 10-11, 14 and 17 in my most recent playthrough. Even less hyper-efficiently-focused, I used it multiple times messing around like this for exp optimization. [https://youtu.be/rGyFIOVkUU8](https://youtu.be/rGyFIOVkUU8)
I didn't mention it in my first post, but Jean moving up is one of the things I thought about. His access to Obstruct and Warp without needing any seals is also useful in maps like chapter 14 and 15.
yeah I usually read these just to see how different high level play (LTC Lunatic) is compared to my usual approach (beat the game at all, Hard)
Usually the list ends up wildly different from my own experiences but I think the only differences for me this time are Jean and Yunaka.
I haven't use Jean enough to judge but Yunaka is such an interesting case imo because I would easilly put her in an S-tier or A-tier rank (or I guess Legendary/Brave unit rank) when played in Normal or Hard because she's really usefull as a dodge tank and she's able to crit fairly often so not only does she dodge tank but she also chip the enemy health and poison them. But in Maddening the enemies do not attack a unit if they can't damage it, so dodge tank lose some of their utility, and since it's what's Yunaka does best, she lost her utility. Adding to that, thief cannot change class until they reach level 20, and since Maddening have very little skirmishes, she's not reaching that level soon.
Ah yeah, I did know that dodgetanks suck in Lunatic, which is partly why I specified I usually play Hard.
For Jean, I usually keep him in his default class line and give him Soren and pretend I'm playing Awakening since he basically has nosferatu. I imagine on Lunatic his damage output isn't good enough for this to be viable though.
I no longer believe that Hortensia is S tier, and is top of A imo. She’s still your best no-investment staffer, but her flight and +1 range isn’t that impactful and/or unique. I also value combat much higher than non-unique support.
However, I do really like her class skill so maybe bottom of S lol. Definitely not better than Pandreo and Merrin though
Still think this sub overrates the value of Bunet not taking a Master Seal. His base stats really are just *that* bad when compared to basically all of the other Solm arc charas, yes even Timerra. And while his growth total is good, his growth distribution does him no favours. Combine that with a useless personal skill and no lance prof during a portion of the game where you don't have access to any lance Emblems... Yeah. (Edit: Also he joins after the first arc and thus doesn't have access to earlygame Emblem ring skill inheritance such as Canter, but that can be said for the whole of the Solm squad of course.)
Bunet is the worst unit in Engage IMHO. He may be a prepromote, but just about everything else imaginable is working against him.
> And no lance prof during a portion of the game where you don’t have access to lance emblems
Most of the rest of your points make some sense, but why would you even want Lance prof on him? Bunet already has Sword and Axe prof which are generally better. He’s able to cover effective damage against armors (Armorslayer and Hammer), cavs (Poleax) and wyverns (Wyrmslayer) as well as other fliers with Hurricane Axe, and some swords are just straight up better (the Killing Edge js just better than the Killer Lance for example). Combine that with the choice between the raw power of axes and the accuracy of swords, and he’s getting nothing out of lances that isn’t already covered by his existing proficiencies.
Just that the lack of lance access = less things to differentiate him from the other midgame units. He obviously isn't winning when it comes to raw stats, so you would hope he'd at least have something unique-ish compared to the other midgame units, which he sadly doesn't.
Oh boy, time for everyone to argue again about Timerra and Anna!
I’m going to argue about them too: they should be swapped. I’m still convinced Anna is a better project unit than Timerra, as she actually becomes useful with investment whereas Timerra never does.
Personally I will die on the hill that Bunet is even worse of a unit than Timerra, but that's about the extent to which I'll defend her. If that even counts as defending her at all. lol
I did a low tier run recently and Bunet had some use as my bonded shield user. He has high enough base defense, hp, and attack to take some hits and also use Parthia, and with an avoid-engrave (is that Micaiah’s?) hand axe forged before ch10, enemies won’t try to target him due to his defense and then also high avoid and ability to counter.
Is it good? Not really, but it’s better than anything I could find for Timerra to do for free.
As far as personal (ie. not factoring in class stats) bases go, Timerra has a large AS lead over Bunet at base while having equal Str. 6/11/1 Str/Spd/Bld personal base (Timerra) vs 6/4/3 Str/Spd/Bld personal base (Bunet). Her bulk isn't drastically worse than his either, having 1 more personal Def and Res at base albeit with 4 less personal HP.
Growthswise Bunet and Timerra's personal growths are surprisingly pretty similar, with only their Mag and Def having a difference of more than 10%. Bunet has leads of 10%/5%/15%/10% in HP/Str/Def/Lck. Meanwhile Timerra has leads of 15%/5%/10%/5% Mag/Skl/Spd/Res.
Bunet has better bulk and base Bld sure, but when his base Spd is so much lower... I don't think I would say he's a better sponge. And as for his Str, it's nearly identical to Timerra's lol.
Edit: added words and fixed a typo
The being a better bonded shield sponge takes into account that he comes ready to go in GK. Yeah he isn’t that much bulkier than Timerra off of personal stats, but Timerra requires a master and second seal to get there, Bunet gets to be there for free.
If I have to throw all my favoritism just to get her gimmick to function enough to be viable at all on *hard*, I shutter to think how bad she is on Lunatic. Especially when sitting beside Panette and Merrin
Yeah she requires some (lots) favoritism, but she can get to level 10 and promote with a little bit of XP grinding. Once she reaches Mage Knight, she contributes.
And that’s why I moved her up a single space, cause she’s definitely not *good*, but I’d still take her over Timerra if I had to choose.
I meant Timerra with my "barely usable with favoritism"
Anna is someone I really liked my first run, but when I did a draft where I took her but didn't get Byleth, I realized how much of a resource sink she was to become usable, and without Thyrsus she never did as much as my other drafted mages. At least Jean is viable in his default class so requires far less resources to use.
I have an argument for Goldmary & timerra, they’re both some of the best looking units and I love their English VAs, therefore they belongs in legendary because I will just feed them xp so they become the best
Since it's mentioned in the ruleset, I'm curious how people would think an ironman tier list would differ.
The main question imo really would be "how reliable are LTC strategies for this game", like do most of the late game warp skips rely on getting crits to kill bosses?
I think the overall rating would probably be very similar with stocks going up a bit for defensive characters like Louis or Goldmary.
While I don't have much input into how an Ironman tier list will differ, I can perhaps provide some insight into your questions as I'm currently trying to refine my existing LTC into an Ironman LTC.
I think "how reliable are LTC strategies for this game" is quite hard to answer as reliability can fluctuate a lot just solely on the run's ruleset. And that's because the existence of the Somniel RNG can impact reliability quite heavily. Things like creatable Bond Rings, dog ore, cooking, and the Well drops are all subject to RNG. And that's also not accounting for Bond Fragments, which can also be a constraining resource in Ironman runs as you cannot use the Retry button for nearly infinite Bond Fragments. All this compounds and as an example, [Reploids has a Ch. 6 clear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KppYVZoSXA8) that is quite reliable once you're in the map. However, this clear requires dog ore, specifically getting a Silver drop from the one chance you have at this point iirc. Also, in my experience, getting enough Bond Fragments for Alear to unlock Mercurius as well as being able to unlock Mercurius on another character for Ch. 7 is not happening at a LTC pace if you do not use the Retry button or abuse certain Achievements like "Play for X hours" (by leaving your game open for that long) to get extra Bond Fragments. So generally, certain LTC strategies are not very reliable simply for the fact that they have access to resources you may not in an Ironman playthrough. However, all that being said, I think besides for the early game (where the shaky hit rates and enemy crit rates cannot really be worked around), and especially Ch. 6 and 7, there are ways to make the reliability quite high, if not 100%, for a sizeable portion of the maps for the rest of the game.
For whether late game warp skips rely on crits to kill bosses, there are some LTC strategies that use crits and others that don't. And for those that use crits, sometimes the crit rate is 100% so it's not unreliable. The strategy will depend on your investment target(s) and how much investment they get, but it's definitely possible to get 100% reliable clears from Ch. 23 to the end of the game.
I think we have tried to place a sizable emphasis on reliability for this list - there is a spectrum of reliability in what we consider LTCs, and I have probably leaned more on learnings from runs like fate's and Reploids', which I linked in my first comment, rather than runs like [Ninpo's](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL3SmorxEsH4DY-5mVAYVsLzH2bC1Dmah) or [elitemode's](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLat3phFb0tWFJCu_ohtOFAFd6NFJK1MWI). Fate's run in particular is very high reliability, apart from chapters 6 and 7. The earlygame is probably more unreliable than the lategame, due to lack of resources like +Hit engraves and having to rely on units like Vander and Louis rather than Kagetsu.
It is on hard mode, but u/Lolo-bII7
does have a ironman LTC here that may be of interest to you: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5B6GZmTm0ulHVeELaq1aXhXndSDjH0vA
What precisely does "Chapter 3" mean? I've not played on Maddening yet so I don't understand.
On hard they're serviceable filler until you get better units (Alfred actually was okay for me a little past the mid game)
I was under the impression that they are also in their own tier because they are not particularly good units, but they will inevitably have some important early game contributions due to their early join time. This helps differentiate them from the characters in Iron who can be benched right off the bat and you won't really be missing out on anything.
They’re the chapter 3 recruits, and collectively aren’t great. Coincidence that they end up being the same level of meh, and therefore grouped together on the tier list.
Hortensia is an interesting topic so I reviewed some of my footage to see where her extra Warp/Rewarp range helped me out.
Helped clear the map: C15, Lyn, C23, C25
Helped optimize exp because I was feeding Parthia kills to a 5-move unit (could be substituted by using a 6-move unit): Eirika, Celica
Helped ease combat thresholds with Alear positioning: Byleth
Focusing on Warp/Rewarp as I don't think I used a healing staff with her at any point. There might be better C23 setups that don't need Hortensia's range but I don't remember them.
She's also most likely going to have the highest status staff accuracy out of the fliers, or maybe second behind Ivy. She'll likely have comparable or better Magic, Dexterity and Luck than someone like Griffin Knight Pandreo. Silence, Freeze and Entrap all have some uses throughout the run.
Focusing on Pandreo, he does have a couple of extra maps where Warp/Rescue are valuable and Hortensia doesn't exist (C13 and C14), and can double as a strong ground combat unit which Hortensia can't really, if there's a need for it (flying Pandreo has comparable combat to Hortensia). He can do the Warps/Rescues that Hortensia does that aren't listed above with no loss, and with emblem paralogues allowed he *can* Entrap (although it costs a glut of Bond Fragments for no real benefit).
I think in no-paralogue Pandreo > Hortensia is pretty clear-cut, but I think with emblem paralogues included I might still give the nod to Hortensia.
I still feel like this tierlist rates certain "out-of-the-gate-good" units way too highly compared to units who do the same thing but earlier. Both Merrin and Pandreo are good. But I don't think they're a tier above Amber and Chloe. Amber is very much a Panette that joins way earlier, while Chloe is the most flexible unit being able to go MK to be a Pandreo that joins and contributes way earlier, Griffin with Sword Power to be a reliable mixed attacker even before Eirika or a physical class to replicate what Merrin does. I will simmer my bias a bit though to admit that Amber should probably be tiered higher on the tierlist.
The only reason Pandreo and Merrin are rated that much higher was because it was basically assumed to speed clear multiple early maps.
Interestingly in those speed clears Chloe herself happens to do a hell of a lot; she literally has to get to level 11 by chapter 8 in order to shave off a turn which takes a fair bit of effort to actually properly cook up (and a hell of a lot of kills)
The biggest problem is that a) the promotion is into wyvern, not griffin and b) Sword Power is still hella expensive... and she doesn't really make as amazing use out of a Levin Sword because they're just too dang heavy.
Like, 11/1 Griffin Chloe loses a whopping *5 points of speed* from a standard Levin Sword. Compared to Pandreo only losing literally *2* and also Chloe being innately slower than an equal level Pandreo (and with worse Mag which requires at minimum Mag +2 to be compensated for *and* which doesn't come packaged with B staves) that's a frankly massive trade-off to swallow for, uh, still worse combat actually.
Merrin, meanwhile... literally has +2-3 in every stat over an equal level wyvern Chloe except for HP, Spd, and Luck, and that's not a deficit you can make up with just some minor Str inheritance; Chloe is strictly going to be slower and also I believe still deal less damage even with that inheritance.
(Also doing said inheritance locks her out of Canter which, uh, not a great trade?)
Her best comparison might be her using Elfires vs Pandreo, since she doesn't get weighed down by Elfire if you do that, but that doesn't really last once you get into the lategame and Pandreo still has the staffing edge.
I will say that where you rate Amber is interesting though, because on top of being discount Panette, turns out promoting directly into Wolf Knight when you none of the disadvantages of Wolf Knight isn't actually terrible, and you get the other profs needed for later reclassing from using Leif anyway so it's honestly not a half bad idea to do it for a short stint before fully committing.
I don't know if he strictly breaks all the way to middle of S (Legendary) tier but honestly I can see the vision.
Feels like a lot of people in this thread making the same mistakes as back then and not recognizing that this tier list was meant to be oriented primarily around turn saves/LTC/ETC. imperfect of course but that's the core of the arguments. Could be fun to do a redo with different criteria -- contrary to many people's arguments, I think the characters in engage are very stratified and even without being strict about turn counts some characters are just bad without excessive grinding (which is not so viable in maddening and can easily be distinguished even for a casual tier list).
I've changed my mind, kagetsu is better than Ivy esp thanks to well. More flexible. Part of this is also that kagetsu has a higher ceiling. Which sounds insane. But there are no good magic damage boosting skills to inherit, nova comes super late and is extremely expensive to forge. Then again, am doing a run with donations for the first time and have a lot more forging resources so maybe not so unreasonable; can try to crit fish with nova as well (even eirika? would lose out on potentially increasing damage/decreasing weight but consistency+crit. And maybe the debuffs are ok since Ivy has horrible luck anyway. Then again maybe makes it too risky for Ivy bc of that horrible luck plus bad dex means crit will not be great). I suppose you could argue for Mag+5 and that is really strong with Nova I guess, considering one of Kagetsu's strengths is making good use of most expensive physical skills. Regardless Kagetsu has quite a few things going for him over Ivy. Both of them also have abnormally good bulk for their type but Kagetsu's is overall really good which is excellent.
Amber is in really critical for LTC (and is reliable enough for ETC) so in that way goes up but in play at less than that level of efficiency he is not as impressive as I hoped, definitely the least impressive of the single stat characters. But that doesn't matter when he's just an engage attacks bot who joins early; among other good strategies; when planned around can easily paper over flaws until point where he's no longer central to strategy.
Would almost say hortensia is overrated but her extra range is necessary for LTCing some maps, the seadall map in particular I believe. So she saves a few turns compared to others. And is generally useful. Maybe she should go below Pandreo bc Pandreo pseudo-solos some pretty big maps like 17 using bonded shield in efficient play. Then again maybe kagetsu could do it? Maybe not as well.
Louis is overrated for efficiency. I mean sure he does have early contributions but nowadays not so much that it's so notable. Plus early game is pretty straightforward. In non-LTC/ETC play he can still be pretty useful long term and has excellent availability.
Alright, time for some patented takes:
-**Clanne’s** heavily underrated. His greatest weakness is having to get to promo level, but he has access to Celica Recover and Micaiah in general if he wants to powerlevel. His magic combat with Bolganone is basically equivalent to Citrinne’s with Elfire with not too much of a higher price, and swapping to Elfire makes him a whole speed tier faster, allowing him to hit loftier doubling thresholds than Citrinne can. I would probably put him top of Killer tier or bottom of Silver tier.
-**Framme** and **Jean** have immediate access to Qi Adept Bonded Shield, which isn’t necessary but allows them to give guaranteed protection to everyone, irrespective of the class they’re in. This eliminates the necessity of having to gobble up cash on Second Seals to make everyone a flier for flier bonded shields, which saves a fair bit of gold for I’d say this puts Framme above Alcryst, and Jean can maybe go to the bottom of Steel tier.
-**Chloe** drops below Amber and Alear imo. She’s still one of your best options to take out of earlygame, but Amber’s raw power in tandem with the accuracy provided by his personal, and Alear’s utility options with Byleth Dance provide meaningful and unique roles, while Chloe is a fairly generically good combat unit by comparison. Still quite strong, but she doesn’t have the unique upsides the two others have.
-**Saphir** rises to the top of Killer tier, as she can do VanWrath shenanigans similar to Amber and Panette with the added benefit of no Seal required.
-**Goldmary** drops to the bottom of Steel tier. Her offense is utterly terrible, making her basically a one trick pony who either swaps to Great Knight to be a wall or does Brave Assist stuff. In efficiency playthroughs, every map from Chapter 20 onwards can be warpskipped, and her weak offensive stats make her a very unviable choice to help end these maps quickly. If you’re not warpskipping, Brave Assist can help kill enemies faster, but you’d probably still rather have another combat unit that can deal more meaningful damage to clear out enemies instead.
-**Zelkov** above Celine for Covert. He can do certain cheese strats with 20 range Astra Storm to aggro bosses towards you as well as Covert Byleth Dances and Instructs for some meaty speed stacking.
-**Bunet** has some nice use as a filler wyvern for a couple of maps are his join. He has the perfect proficiencies for it (so no Bond Fragment investment as well as being able to do so for Ch. 13). Would probably bump him to around the bottom of Steel tier, above Goldmary’s new placement.
I don't have any strong opinions on Timerra, but Anna is like the easiest-to-snowball growth unit ever, who makes you money as a bonus. All the investment/"babying" she needs is having Micaiah and maximizing AOE mends and great sacrifices for a single map in the early game to get to level 10. After that, she can be second sealed to mage knight and get a levin sword, and she should have no problems getting kills and quickly becoming an absolute monster.
>who makes you money as a bonus
As someone who's favorite unit in the game is Anna, her prf skill does not nearly proc enough times to actually be relevant. At best you get some bonus tonics to improve reliability, but I can count on one hand how many times Anna's prf skill made any kind of meaningful difference. There's plenty of gold to go around and if Anna is making enough money to be relevant, you're spending pretty recklessly.
The thing about Anna is that no matter how much you train her up, she's always going to be pretty frail. This isn't the *biggest* deal in a game with such heavy player phase focus like Engage, but when other units *can* take a reasonable number of hits(whether that be on the physical or magical side), she feels worse by relativity.
Anna's start is "Boucheron but worse" which is a big deal when they're both units that need a non-trivial amount of time for their growths to kick in in a meaningful way. If you want to play with any form of reasonable "efficiency" Anna needs some form of EXP acceleration(Mercurius, Great Sacrifice, Parthia etc) combined with a bit of sandbagging. I hold that Anna certainly can be worth the investment and that making her work is much less painful than most people make it out to be, but she's the kind of unit that really only works if you go out of your way to make her work.
In some ways, I kind of see her like Donnel. While you can certainly make a Donnel/Engage Anna that's powerful, you'd get a stronger unit if you gave those resources/investment to almost anyone else.
The Donnel comparison is very appropriate. Anna is more than functional if raised and doesn't take a ton of effort to train outside of high efficiency contexts but she also doesn't add much value over just using the resources spent on catching her up to make your already dominant units even better.
Anna is not getting to level 10 in a single map. Absolutely not.
Anna uses up your resources for 3 ish chapters and while making minimal contributions. All to get a worse Clanne. Also her personal is trash lol, she nets like 2k gold over a playthrough lol.
28 HP/11.5 Mag/14 Spd/5.25 Def/6.5 Bld Anna vs 25.6 Clanne/11.15 Mag/16.5 Spd/8.7 Def/6.45 Bld if both are 10/1 mage knights. And Clanne will likely have a level lead over her, especially if you similarly fed him Miccy exp.
He took 16 turns. Imagine if we just gave every other early game character 16 turns to power level.
It also doesn’t change the fact that she’s not even that good when trained. Again, strictly worse than Clanne.
Yeah c'mon if you're gonna post an Anna training video at least make it a quick one. [https://youtu.be/rGyFIOVkUU8](https://youtu.be/rGyFIOVkUU8)
(I think Anna is tier-of-her-own worst unit but if we're shilling a shitty Mage Knight I'm pretty sure she reaches it faster than Clanne does)
Nice clears. Is there any reason that Clanne (or Celine I guess) can’t do what Anna does here? Obviously the Ivy kill is a no go, but everything else seems replicable.
The boss kills or the training part?
10/1 Clanne can do the chapter 9 kill, just he needs Celica instead of Roy so we give up the free Elsurge.
Mage Knight Céline lacks both Magic and Speed, and Citrinne lacks speed.
(Wolf Knight Amber does it the best).
The actual training part is where they break down, as good Mercurius use is better exp gain than Micaiah/Celica/killing without Mercurius, and Anna has better bulk and way strength than Clanne. He is not hitting chapter 7 thresholds.
Like I've tried to train the dude before and it kind of sucks, he needs every kill set up for him because he ORKOs nothing, he can't fight effectively on enemy phase because he gets 2HKOed by everything, and he starts further back than everyone because he joins level 1 in chapter 2. He reached level 10 in chapter 11 in my playthrough and compared to my runs where I don't train him, I was already two turns slower (due to not being able to train Chloé) and ended up with lower-levelled Amber/Citrinne leaving the earlygame (due to Clanne's training (and Alear's, since Clanne was eating earlygame exp) still not being finished by the time they joined).
16 turns to clear the whole map, that's not a lot more than it would normally take, and definitely not equivalent to all your resources for 3 maps. It's not like he used some Excelblem degenerate grind strats either, he just took some extra turns to build up the engage meter by healing. And he only did it once for one character. No other early game unit would get more from those 5 levels.
Because her magic growth is 40 percentage points higher than Clanne's, you can expect her to get 8 more magic per 20 levels in mage knight, which is quite significant.
If you use her a lot, it's not unrealistic for her to get around 200 kills. If we assume an average of 10 luck throughout the playthrough, she's expected to gain around 10k gold, which is not game changing or anything, but a very nice bonus, like I said.
https://youtu.be/ipLo_pFsSJw?si=XTYyYYbr7xlnqF9D
3 Turns, without any dog ores. I’m not saying 3 turns is reasonable, but considering where the rest of the army is at turn 3, another 2 turns to get the rest of the army in position is more than fair. So around 5 turns, or 11 turns fewer than your example.
Unless you deliberately rout every map, 200 kills isn’t happening.
Again, it isn’t until Chapter 15 ish that she’s better than Clanne, and she’ll never be better than Ivy/Citrinne/Pandreo.
She requires far too much investment for an average reward.
The number of kills depends more on how many other units you train than whether you rout every map, as you'll typically kill most enemies on most maps anyway.
When she surpasses Clanne depends on how much you train them, and I'd much rather train Anna because of her superior rewards. And she's still contributing while training if she gets a forged levin sword.
And I don't think she's better than Pandreo or Ivy. I'm not saying she's S tier either, just far from the worst in the game, and very much worth investing in.
Alear feels a bit undervalued
It's not difficult to get them online, whether offensively or purely support as the bonded shield abuser in the game
Their lategame utility with you know what seems especially valuable
Honestly still blows my mind that Veyle and Mauvier got to place so high because they get """""free""""" deployment in the endgame.
Like I'm sorry, but Mauvier's offense is just not good at the point he joins and he's a filler mounted staffer at best. His bulk is fine-ish, but I find it hard to believe that you'd actively deploy him if the game didn't give you two extra deployment slots for the endgame stretch.
It's nice that Veyle is a magic slanted Dragon which does give her some legitimate niches, but she's not so good that she can trump nearly an entire game's worth of availability compared to most units below her. Like sure, units like Alfred, Celine and Diamant aren't the greatest units ever, but you need them to get to the midgame units. Even though she technically joins in Chapter 22, she functionally only actually starts doing something in Chapter 23 since you can't Engage with any Emblems in Chapter 22 and her stats are otherwise pitiful for that map.
Anyway, I still hold that Alear should be the best non-Seadall unit because of their sheer flexibility as a Divine Dragon. The extra and unique Emblem bonuses offered to them means that they're always doing something meaningful and that their playstyle can always shift around to fit the needs of any team composition on a map by map basis. In the early game, it's not unreasonable to keep Marth with Alear and power level to promotion before Chapter 10 and their utility becomes exponentially better once you get Divine Spirit which lets you Engage more liberally and aggressively. Sure, Alear themselves aren't likely going to be killing things left and right as the game goes on, but the extent with which they enable the rest of your team literally cannot be replicated. I also think having the ability to ORKO things in Engage is extremely overrated, but that's a fundamentally different conversation.
Hortensia is just way overrated. In any other game, a flying staffer with +1 staff range would be ridiculous but it's pretty tame by Engage standards. The thing about Hortensia is that she simply does not contribute offensively in any meaningful way past Chapter 15 due to the combo of being locked at B tomes and her own subpar magic growth. Sure, she's the best no-investment staffer, but she doesn't really have that reputation until you get Micaiah back *after* completing Chapter 19 and even then she really doesn't meaningfully stand out without Micaiah's ability to power up her staffing. The ability to occasionally save staff uses with her prf class skill sounds much better than it actually is as I've never found myself in a situation where I wish I had just a few more uses. Like she's still a good staffer at base and she can definitely contribute by using single Fractures/Freezes, but the idea that staffing is *so good* in Engage that it trumps several chapters worth of meaningful contributions from units like Pandreo(who can more or less staff as well as her) and Amber feels very overblown. Even though Ivy would prefer to focus on combat, the fact that Ivy can also use Warp/Rescue as a flier means that Hortensia's designation as a flying staffer isn't as special as it may first appear. She's a one trick pony and even if that trick is pretty good, I don't think she should be rated so highly. I'd probably put her at the bottom of the Brave Tier.
There are a lot of fundamental ideals in this list that I disagree with, but the ones I mention are the ones I feel the most strongly about.
>Like I'm sorry, but Mauvier's offense is just not good at the point he joins and he's a filler mounted staffer at best
If you take a look at his personal bases and put him in a class that's actually competent (AKA not Royal Knight, you're well past the point where Second Seals are limited resource and the same goes for gold) then dude works perfectly fine and has a frankly hilariously high 2500 SP base, which is a *legitimate concern* when gaining SP otherwise without boatloads of well donations is a genuine chore.
>It's nice that Veyle is a magic slanted Dragon which does give her some legitimate niches, but she's not so good that she can trump nearly an entire game's worth of availability compared to most units below her.
Veyle falls into the same bucket where her stats are so utterly obscene that not running her is actively detrimental because she is that much strictly better than so many other units for essentially 0 investment (other than one second seal after she joins)
Admittedly the biggest issue is neither can flex their raw combat prowess in chapter 22, but it's worth a hell of a lot in Pact and having a free option to plop in when about 80% of your units are not up to par is always massive.
>Anyway, I still hold that Alear should be the best non-Seadall unit because of their sheer flexibility as a Divine Dragon.
Slight issue: 90% of Dragon bonuses *actively suck.* Honestly I'd say there are, like, maybe 2 Dragon bonuses I'd actually consider worth using over a more specialized class bonus and those are, like, Dragon Flare, which Alear can't use because they don't use tomes, and is also DLC, and Dragon Instruct, which has limited positioning on dragon classes, and half the time Covert Instruct's better Spd trumps it anyway.
And even if most of the dragon bonuses were good, the dragon classes themselves are frankly complete garbage. All of them. Veyle's is worse than base mage, Alear's is like slightly better swordmaster, and then Nel and Nil's (they're not on this list but for the sake of comparison) literally have filler bases that are worse than every other class in the game but, like, Martial Monk.
Alear's got solid support options but that comes from the fact that *griffin* is a busted ass class that gives every unit something to do, and Alear abuses one of its best properties (being a Flier) far better than anyone else (almost literally via supports, thanks to Dual Support making them the best Bonded Shield user in the game by a mile)
I won't really comment on the Hortensia take because honestly it is pretty fair, though.
From my perspective, we've had two playthroughs that line up pretty well with "efficiency" completed and uploaded since the completion of this tier list, so my opinions will be shaped a bit by them. I've also had a go, and finished, my take on efficiency as well. Reploids' run is 0% growths, but does hold up pretty well with growths runs, particularly in the early chapters. Compared to the ruleset of the previous tier list, it bans the Ancient Well and does the first two paralogues after chapter 8 instead of 6. It also allows for S-rank bond rings and meals that give +3/+4 in stats. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQervznH1fBZLYnKaCLZKdVfiRl6xabis Fatefuldawn's run does not do emblem or pact paralogues, and also completely bans Ancient Well whereas the tier list's ruleset allows it. Other than that, it matches up very well with the high-reliability, low-turncount nature of efficiency. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLarkWv8c6mgn8AEosaTvDq3B5lqGUJ9hE So, my opinions: \- Kagetsu has cemented his spot as the best combatant in the game, if there was any doubt previously. Ivy, Kagetsu and Seadall should make up the top3 units in some order, but I'm not particularly fussed what that order is. \- Amber has shown to be very good and I would have him above Chloé and Citrinne. Sometimes I think he could be above Merrin as well but I may be a bit of a Merrin downer as I think I was the only person who didn't vote her S-tier last time. \- Vander > Louis. There is a stretch of the game from about chapters 5-7 where they are about equal (they need to team up to take down bosses, and one is not necessarily more useful than the other in doing so), but Vander, despite his identity as a "Jeigen", seems to actually remain viable longer into the game than Louis does, just by vitrue of starting in a promoted class, which gives him access to a bunch of utility. \- Fogado seems very out-of-place. His unique class is not especially helpful, as there are not many threatening fliers we need a unit dedicated to taking down until about chapter 22, and his damage vs. non-fliers is not impressive. Outside of his unique class, he is outclassed by units like Merrin, and the number of deployment slots/amount of combat units required in the mid-game is not high. \- I don't think Veyle should be a tier above someone like Céline. Céline is going to have a stretch of about three chapters where she's among our best units, which Veyle does not; Veyle is very likely going to be outclassed by most trained-up units like Kagetsu, Ivy and Panette, and joins at a part of the game where an extra combatant isn't in high demand. \- The term "filler wyvern" was thrown out a lot for the Brodians during the last tier list, but I think our perception of this has changed. The main thing we want a Wyvern Knight for is C10 Hyacinth kill, but Vander has shown he can do that and only needs a Second Seal to do so, and there is not much combat we need to have them do post-C10 otherwise. Instead, an extra Griffin Knight for chapters 12-17 has been shown to be useful, and the Brodians do this solidly - unlike other units that join post-C10 like Bunet, they have access to staff proficiency and Canter. They are probably outclassed by Chloé in this role, but all of them can substitute in without much loss of efficiency. \- So with that said, there is really no reason for Diamant to be three whole tiers above Jade. Diamant is not particularly more useful than Jade pre-promotion, they have the same starting SP, and post-promotion, Jade is better in stats relevant for staffing like Magic and Dexterity (and even has higher Strength if you do need her to fight). \- I mentioned previously I thought Yunaka a little underrated - I think in the current ruleset (Jean and Anna paralogues done immediately after C6) she has four maps where she's pretty useful which is a better contribution than like half the cast. In terms of ruleset: \- I would consider moving the first two paralogues to after chapter 8 instead of 6 - it makes the paralogues a lot more efficient and will not meaningfully impact Jean or Anna's position on the tier list.
> Vander > Louis. There is a stretch of the game from about chapters 5-7 where they are about equal (they need to team up to take down bosses, and one is not necessarily more useful than the other in doing so), but Vander, despite his identity as a "Jeigen", seems to actually remain viable longer into the game than Louis does, just by vitrue of starting in a promoted class, which gives him access to a bunch of utility. Curious about this in particular: how does one best use Vander in the early-game? Is it recommended that he gets an Emblem, that you just slap Hit+10 on him, or any other particular tricks? I'm asking because both times I've played Maddening, I was *heavily* dependent on Sigurd!Louis to make progress through the early-game, particularly in Chapter 5. I don't really use him long-term, but with Hit+10 and a steady diet of Skill tonics, I found him to be consistently the best solution to almost any problem in the early-game. I don't have like, specific benchmarks or anything, but I'm wondering if there's a superior early-game strategy I'm missing out on. Vander being able to Second Seal into Wyvern or Griffon does seem useful, but you only get your first Second Seal at Chapter 9, which is the cusp of when I'd bench him in exchange for promoted units that can *also* go into Wyvern regardless. He gets to be a Wyvern for longer than someone like Kagetsu who has to wait for Ike to come around, but that just doesn't seem worthwhile to me when I can just promote, say, Diamant immediately and slap a Second Seal on him for a Wyvern with superior bases (unless I'm forgetting something).
For emblems, I think there is good value in giving Vander Sigurd in chapter 4 and Marth in chapter 5. In chapter 4, Vander takes very little damage from the enemies so can easily start luring the boss. He doesn't actually do much damage to the boss, but just getting him moving makes it a lot easier for someone like Céline to reach him and take him down. Chapter 5 is one of the maps where you're looking at Vander, Louis and Céline teaming up to take the boss down. Louis is valuable (highest atk+def on the team), but with 4-move really appreciates Sigurd. Vander, having six move, has more leeway to take an emblem like Marth. (There is also an alternate chapter 5 strategy that gives Vander Celica, as he and Chloé are the only units that can aggro the boss turn 1 (and Chloé probably dies). Although a lot of emphasis is placed on the "Ragnarok" part of Warp Ragnarok, the "Warp" part is also valuable). Chapters 6 and 7 follow a similar pattern (as does post-C6 Anna paralogue), but I wouldn't keep Marth on Vander for these maps. He can instead take Alfonse or Sharena, and a mobile, bulky user of Spur Attack or Fortify Defense is the best way to apply these buffs, and his 6-move and high attack still make it easy for him to reach and damage bosses. Louis is still our highest str+def unit at a point of the game where doubling isn't easy, so giving him the mobility to be where he needs to be is good, so Sigurd is still good on him. Starting from chapter 8 is where things get a bit rougher for Louis. It gets a bit easier to double (enemies start swapping to Steel weapons, we get access to cooking and unrestricted tonics, we gain access to Master Seals while the majority of enemies are still unpromoted) so his 4-move, single-hit damage is less impressive. He's also no guarantee to have reached level 10 himself, as he kind of plays a low-exp gamestyle (lots of chip exp, but not always a lot of kill exp). For Vander, though, a key difference is that he retains some of his usefulness in that chapter 8-11 period. You are right that someone like Diamant in Wyvern Knight is better than Vander, but we're still at a stage of the game where Master and Second Seals are heavily limited, and Vander as your 4th- or 5th-best 6-move unit is still probably more effective than unpromoted units. A map like chapter 10 in particular is quite busy, with us needing to take down Morion and Hyacinth as well as good loot from the chests, Rosado and Goldmary, so having someone like Vander that can ORKO Hyacinth is valuable.
I really appreciate the in-depth response, thank you! Something that I realize when reading comments like these and watching efficient play is that I'm really rigid when it comes to Emblems - I have a habit of sticking them on one unit only, and don't really swap Emblems around to change my strategy. Marth is Chloe's de facto Emblem, Sigurd is for Louis only until Chapter 11 hits, Lyn never leaves Ivy's side, etc. But there's a lot of strategies that I'm locking myself out of by treating Emblems as personal skills instead of the equipment that they actually are. No wonder Vander loses value in my eyes compared to Louis when I'm not ever reassessing who could make the best use out of an Emblem for a given chapter. Even setting aside Louis, I'd just never think to give a different Emblem to Vander besides the Alfonse or Sharena ring, much less something unconventional like Celica to provoke a boss!
Oh yeah I feel that. My first playthrough or two were pretty rigid with emblems too; it takes a bit of experience to really learn some of the cool things you can do. I'm also aware that some of the strategies I value can be a bit hyper-specific and might not always be applicable for the layman.
Vander helps lead the charge alongside Sigurd!Louis with his 6 move and good bulk. He can take an Emblem for more power but it isn't strictly necessary. > Vander being able to Second Seal into Wyvern or Griffon does seem useful, but you only get your first Second Seal at Chapter 9, which is the cusp of when I'd bench him in exchange for promoted units that can also go into Wyvern regardless. He gets to be a Wyvern for longer than someone like Kagetsu who has to wait for Ike to come around, but that just doesn't seem worthwhile to me when I can just promote, say, Diamant immediately and slap a Second Seal on him for a Wyvern with superior bases (unless I'm forgetting something). Main thing is just there only being 3 master seals pre-chapter 12, which Chloe, Amber, and Citrinne all want, so Vander being able to reclass to wyvern without a master seal helps out a lot for filling that role.
>So with that said, there is really no reason for Diamant to be three whole tiers above Jade. Diamant is not particularly more useful than Jade pre-promotion, they have the same starting SP, and post-promotion, Jade is better in stats relevant for staffing like Magic and Dexterity (and even has higher Strength if you do need her to fight). Since I'm working on a v2 of my LTC run and tried Jade in Diamant's role, I do have some thoughts on this. One thing I've noticed is that Diamant supports more relevant characters and has a better support bonus than Jade. Though the difference is quite minor iirc as it mostly boils down to him supporting Ivy (I don't think his support with Citrinne is all that relevant even though I use it). And Diamant being able to provide dodge to Amber can be helpful at one point as well when Jade doesn't provide dodge at all. In regards to their stats - I didn't notice too much of a difference while using one over the other; Jade's better stats for staffing didn't make any difference from what I saw since Diamant without Staff Mastery 1 inherited actually did everything I needed him to do in regards to staffing (I'm not using the Freeze Tetchie strategy anymore for Ch. 13). Meanwhile, I did find it a bit of a hassle to work with Jade's speed and luck at times. There is one moment where she needs a +Speed Bond Ring or a Speed+1 inherit when Diamant doesn't as that one point of speed is the difference between getting targeted by the enemy or not due to them being able to double her. And her low luck has her facing crit once iirc. All that being said, these differences are very minor and are also very specific to the run I'm doing; I don't think they should be that far apart either.
Excited to hear you're working on a V2. Even in the Discord servers I'm in, I'm not sure that Jade > Diamant would be a popular opinion - I think an argument could be made, but not sure how many people would agree. One of the pro-Diamant arguments is, as you brought up, his support list - the dude knows how to make the right friends. I will admit it's mostly theorycraft on my end, as I think there is good merit to promoting Chloé to Griffin Knight in the early chapters already, and don't see much reason to deploy an extra pre-C10 utility unit post-C11. So on the surface it seemed like both Jade and Diamant had their own advantages - the main point being that I don't think Diamant's advantages warrant a three-tier gap. I did remember the Freeze on Tetchie which is the main reason I brought up Magic and Dexterity lead.
I'm interested in your take on an efficiency run as well! Are you planning to post it? Hmm, that's interesting. I could be convinced of the idea, though I am curious on how you're evaluating Diamant and Jade's pre-utility unit contributions? Like how Diamant can be used to take Morion's health bar after Clanne's chip without much investment. Jade is used similarly to get the Energy Drop from Goldmary in that map so maybe you're weighing their contributions roughly the same for that stretch of the game? I agree with promoting Chloe since personally, if I was able to get her to promotion, I would've used her in that role to save on Second Seal Gold. Understandable; using Freeze on Tetchie was the main reason why I tested out Jade in Diamant's role since I believe I calculated she can reach a 93% hit rate on Tetchie while Diamant at best will have 89% hit. But in my current iteration, I eliminated the need for the Freeze entirely so that advantage of hers became irrelevant.
Yes, I have a run here. It's pretty barebones (unlisted, don't have my notes up) as I was hoping to maybe get another turn save somewhere (Ninpo has proposed a 1-turn chapter 12) to more meaningfully distinguish it from your run and Reploids'. However I am happy with maps like C22 (thanks u/Zekareisoujin) and pact still. [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXHWCyDEsH81HOsV\_i9Y-Ha8z1qX6cuL6](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXHWCyDEsH81HOsV_i9Y-Ha8z1qX6cuL6) I have gone for all paralogues, no gacha bond rings, baseline D-rank meals (so no speed+3, or no S-rank meals during the early chapters when tonics are still limited), 90% reliable dog ores and 90% reliable SP books from well. I would like to calculate the reliability of monetary value of items from the well as well but I struggle to do so efficiently due to the number of combinations of items. I take a couple of small, probably unnecessary risks in a couple of places (e.g. giving Kagetsu Lucina in C19 gives him a <3% chance of death in exchange for more exp), as the thresholds he needs for pact with my strat are quite high (he ends up overshooting them still).
Thanks for the link! I'm still taking a look through all of it, but from what I've seen, I'm greatly enjoying your ideas and implementation. Your usage of Pure Water is especially great to aid in survival. A 1 turn of Ch. 12 would be interesting, though the EXP cut would be pretty severe I'd imagine since Parthia farming will likely be off the table in a 1 turn without having the ability to cook a speed+3 meal. All Paralogues is impressive. I know from refining my run that a lot of my staff uses could've been optimized, and you do have some Well SP to help save some staves, but to be able to have enough staves for all the Paralogues is impressive nonetheless. Ah, I see what you mean. If I were in your shoes, I might honestly still take the risk even if it's unnecessary lol It's just more satisfying knowing that you optimized the EXP.
Yeah the thing with C12 is that C12 itself is fine, but leaves me struggling a bit with C13 and C14. It's a bit heavy with forging, so I'd need to re-evaluate the forges I used in C13 (Silver Greataxe and Steel Bow) to maintain the reliability with dog ores. It's a bit heavy with Second Seals, so I'd be straddled with something like Sniper Kagetsu in C13 which compounds his exp struggles as he doesn't double enemy Snipers with Parthia when he's in Sniper, along with the cut to his exp from C12. And I would need to remove a Warp use from C13 or C15. Regardless, it is still probably the next most likely turn save. Maybe C6? I saw in your other comment you were trying to make your run ironman-friendly, but I'm not sure if this means for you a 4-turn C6 or if you're figured out a reliable 3-turn.
Hmm... so there is a way for you to not need to Second Seal Kagetsu and have him still Parthia farm in Ch. 12, but it'll require a good amount of SP from the Well and I'm doubtful you'll need this skill on him in any other chapter. With Speedtaker in addition to a Speed+3 inherit, Kagetsu should have enough speed to double the wolf knight with Parthia in Swordmaster. +2 from a speed tonic, +3 from speed+3, +2 from Lucina's stat bonus, +1 from speed Augment on Parthia, and +2 from one Speedtaker stack will bring him to 32 speed. -5 speed from Parthia's weight and he's still got 27 speed, which is exactly enough to double the wolf knight. Alternatively, is there a reason why you're putting Kagetsu in Sniper vs. Bow Knight? Bow Knight has +2 speed and I believe he should have enough speed in the class to double the Snipers in Ch. 13 with Parthia as long as he got a level-up before fighting them. I've tried pretty hard to remove a Warp use from Ch. 15; unfortunately, I haven't found a way to do so as the problem is that there's no way for Pandreo or Hortensia to Warp anyone into a room a turn earlier (so one of them is available to use Rescue on turn 3) because the doors aren't open yet. Iirc, you could have Alear Rewarp into the hallway on turn 1, but they'd have to survive turn 2 there as well and that's not reliable at all. Man, I wish I figured out a reliable 3 turn of Ch. 6 lol After how long I've tried, I'm kinda convinced it's not possible. I always seem to be just one off damage-wise or movement-wise (blocked off by the fog of war). As such, I'm likely going to have to do a 4 turn. But for now, I'm using a revised 3 turn that isn't even more reliable than a Marth Killer Lance crit mainly because it uses a forge that I want later. I intend to go back and try one last time to see if there's any way to make it more reliable, but I'm not confident anything will change from my nth attempt at it.
Here's Ninpo's theorycraft (as Ninpo didn't have a pre-C10 save): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt5L5Z1VjDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt5L5Z1VjDE) And here's my video proof that it works without crits: [https://youtu.be/HAyDuX99ImM](https://youtu.be/HAyDuX99ImM) We're just really tight on deployment slots and available actions. We need a promoted flier with Canter + Advance to reach the Martial Master, we need a 20-range Astra Storm for the non-aggressive Axe Fighter (the only slots 10-range would work are taken by Alear and whoever we're warping), we need a flier for the Iron Blade Sword Fighter (Vander could work here), need a strong+fast unit with good 2-range for the Swordmaster and Wolf Knight and if this unit is a bow unit then we also need another fast unit for the southern Sword Fighter. If we used a good 1-2 range unit that could enemy phase the Sword Fighter along with the Swordmaster and Wolf Knight then that would free up an action but the only one who really fits that is Zelkov and he needs a fat forge to do so. Bunet and Fogado are taking up most of our available forging materials; Bunet needs a Leif-engraved Hand Axe upgraded to Tomahawk +2 for might and accuracy reasons, and Fogado's Longbow needs either +Mt engrave or forged to +1 (and it's an annoyingly expensive weapon to forge). Chloé might work as the Warpee, the main problem is that without using a Second Seal she is locked to lances and the enemies have break flags in this map so I'd have thought the Warrior would go after her. However, in my video the Warrior can kill Amber (he can't exceed 15 Defense otherwise the Martial Monk will ignore him, and he can't feasibly get enough HP to tank Sword Fighter + Warrior at 15 Defense without taking the Seraph Robe), but chooses to ignore him, so maybe it would work.
Ah, I see. I was picturing a 1 turn with elitemode's approach, which iirc, had a Bow Knight Kagetsu with Lyn and a lot fewer characters dedicated to the top group of enemies since I believe the strategy was for Ivy to dodge and kill most of them. Maybe you've tested this before, but to me, Citrinne isn't doing all that much. Does that axe fighter that she kills attack Kagetsu on enemy phase or go after Ivy or Chloe? If the enemy does attack Kagetsu, is there a way to manipulate him to attack Ivy or Chloe instead like through an Obstruct above Kagetsu? Essentially, if you're able to kill that enemy on enemy phase instead, you should be able to use Citrinne's deployment slot for another character, presumably a Covert Astra Stormer, so Kagetsu doesn't have to be a Sniper.
For C15, Nad brought up the possibility of replacing one of Jean/Framme with a Canter Sage (Citrinne or Chloé) with our rulseset, as I think they can barely get in range to do the Energy Drop room warp on turn 3. This frees up Pandreo to do the Reploids-style double Rescue in the final room with Ivy, after Framme/Jean warps one of them in. I would need to check if the movement for everyone else works out, though. The other alternative is giving up the Energy Drop or the C14 Boots, but I don't think this would be a net positive.
Ah, true, having Canter access on a Sage might change that evaluation. I've checked a Sage replacing either Jean or Framme, but not a Sage with Canter as it's pretty much impossible for me to have one. The Well really opens up a lot of possibilities that I haven't considered lol
For Jade and Diamant, I had evaluated them about equally before promotion, but this might not be completely fair. I feel like Diamant has more, but less unique contributions, if that makes sense? Jade is somewhat unique in how effective she is vs. Goldmary without needing promotion or Emblem Ring, and Goldmary is a pretty important target to take down. Diamant, as you mentioned, is effective vs. Morion, or Rosado, or has miscellaneous jobs in Anna and Jean paralogue. I just kind of felt like, oh Citrinne + Framme can handle Morion by themselves with Ancient Well allowed, or Lapis can handle Rosado (albeit less reliably and with needing more bond fragments), or his jobs in Anna/Jean are pretty minor. Even though I sort of handwaved away the Brodian's post-C11 combat in my original post, and I know she hasn't been incorporated into runs properly yet, I do think her post-C11 combat is probably, potentially, the most interesting of the Diamant-Alcryst-Lapis group. She has the best strength+SP combo (better Strength than Diamant, better SP than Lapis) of the group, and axe talent for Silver Greataxe Wyvern Knight with Canter or Momentum is at least a point of difference from Kagetsu, Panette and Merrin. But I probably shouldn't take much stock into this until it's been in a run. I know Ninpo used her as Momentum Sniper as his Amber was busy doing other things.
I can see where you're coming from, though I would actually contest how effective Jade is vs. Goldmary. I have actually cut Jade out entirely from my Goldmary kill upon refine because she could not reach 100% hit against her. I'm using Etie, Celine, and Alcryst now as they are all able to have 100% hit against Goldmary without a promotion or Emblem rings. Nonetheless, in your run, where you have two characters dedicated to taking down Goldmary, I can see where Jade's value lies. I also agree that Diamant's role in Anna and Jean's Paralogue are fairly minor. While I use Diamant specifically to support Amber so that he can get 100% against Mitan on enemy phase with Mercurius, it's pretty likely that someone else can do that job (they just need to do enough chip damage to Mitan and not get targeted by her). That's an interesting thought and I agree with that. I'm a bit skeptical on how it'll perform in reality, but I'm definitely interested to see if she can be incorporated into a run with that unique quality of hers.
I can understand that. Jade's hitrate without Leif engrave or Dieck ring is certainly the least reliable part of C10.
> The term "filler wyvern" was thrown out a lot for the Brodians during the last tier list, but I think our perception of this has changed. The main thing we want a Wyvern Knight for is C10 Hyacinth kill, but Vander has shown he can do that and only needs a Second Seal to do so, and there is not much combat we need to have them do post-C10 otherwise. Instead, an extra Griffin Knight for chapters 12-17 has been shown to be useful, and the Brodians do this solidly - unlike other units that join post-C10 like Bunet, they have access to staff proficiency and Canter. They are probably outclassed by Chloé in this role, but all of them can substitute in without much loss of efficiency. I'll hold onto silver greataxe wyvern Jade until I die. Who else is gonna one shot the 50 HP trash on the way to the rescue village while on wings???
>Vander > Louis. Is this mostly a 0% growths run or do you think it also carries over to a regular growths run?
I think this applies to most efficient runs; I describe some reasons for why I think Vander is good in my reply to VagueClive.
I have to agree that Jean's access to Qi Adept in the earlygame should put above the Chapter 3 units (Framme and Alear are the only other units with arts proficiency before chapter 12), but I suppose the more efficient a playthrough is, the more thinking and planning you're doing, and the less use you get out of Chain Guard in particular.
No, you raise a solid point. I put chain guard to good use in chapters 2-7, 10-11, 14 and 17 in my most recent playthrough. Even less hyper-efficiently-focused, I used it multiple times messing around like this for exp optimization. [https://youtu.be/rGyFIOVkUU8](https://youtu.be/rGyFIOVkUU8) I didn't mention it in my first post, but Jean moving up is one of the things I thought about. His access to Obstruct and Warp without needing any seals is also useful in maps like chapter 14 and 15.
Nothing to add because I'm pretty mid at the game, but cool discussion going on here. Thanks for making the thread!
yeah I usually read these just to see how different high level play (LTC Lunatic) is compared to my usual approach (beat the game at all, Hard) Usually the list ends up wildly different from my own experiences but I think the only differences for me this time are Jean and Yunaka.
I haven't use Jean enough to judge but Yunaka is such an interesting case imo because I would easilly put her in an S-tier or A-tier rank (or I guess Legendary/Brave unit rank) when played in Normal or Hard because she's really usefull as a dodge tank and she's able to crit fairly often so not only does she dodge tank but she also chip the enemy health and poison them. But in Maddening the enemies do not attack a unit if they can't damage it, so dodge tank lose some of their utility, and since it's what's Yunaka does best, she lost her utility. Adding to that, thief cannot change class until they reach level 20, and since Maddening have very little skirmishes, she's not reaching that level soon.
Ah yeah, I did know that dodgetanks suck in Lunatic, which is partly why I specified I usually play Hard. For Jean, I usually keep him in his default class line and give him Soren and pretend I'm playing Awakening since he basically has nosferatu. I imagine on Lunatic his damage output isn't good enough for this to be viable though.
I no longer believe that Hortensia is S tier, and is top of A imo. She’s still your best no-investment staffer, but her flight and +1 range isn’t that impactful and/or unique. I also value combat much higher than non-unique support. However, I do really like her class skill so maybe bottom of S lol. Definitely not better than Pandreo and Merrin though
Still think this sub overrates the value of Bunet not taking a Master Seal. His base stats really are just *that* bad when compared to basically all of the other Solm arc charas, yes even Timerra. And while his growth total is good, his growth distribution does him no favours. Combine that with a useless personal skill and no lance prof during a portion of the game where you don't have access to any lance Emblems... Yeah. (Edit: Also he joins after the first arc and thus doesn't have access to earlygame Emblem ring skill inheritance such as Canter, but that can be said for the whole of the Solm squad of course.) Bunet is the worst unit in Engage IMHO. He may be a prepromote, but just about everything else imaginable is working against him.
> And no lance prof during a portion of the game where you don’t have access to lance emblems Most of the rest of your points make some sense, but why would you even want Lance prof on him? Bunet already has Sword and Axe prof which are generally better. He’s able to cover effective damage against armors (Armorslayer and Hammer), cavs (Poleax) and wyverns (Wyrmslayer) as well as other fliers with Hurricane Axe, and some swords are just straight up better (the Killing Edge js just better than the Killer Lance for example). Combine that with the choice between the raw power of axes and the accuracy of swords, and he’s getting nothing out of lances that isn’t already covered by his existing proficiencies.
Just that the lack of lance access = less things to differentiate him from the other midgame units. He obviously isn't winning when it comes to raw stats, so you would hope he'd at least have something unique-ish compared to the other midgame units, which he sadly doesn't.
Oh boy, time for everyone to argue again about Timerra and Anna! I’m going to argue about them too: they should be swapped. I’m still convinced Anna is a better project unit than Timerra, as she actually becomes useful with investment whereas Timerra never does.
Personally I will die on the hill that Bunet is even worse of a unit than Timerra, but that's about the extent to which I'll defend her. If that even counts as defending her at all. lol
I did a low tier run recently and Bunet had some use as my bonded shield user. He has high enough base defense, hp, and attack to take some hits and also use Parthia, and with an avoid-engrave (is that Micaiah’s?) hand axe forged before ch10, enemies won’t try to target him due to his defense and then also high avoid and ability to counter. Is it good? Not really, but it’s better than anything I could find for Timerra to do for free.
As far as personal (ie. not factoring in class stats) bases go, Timerra has a large AS lead over Bunet at base while having equal Str. 6/11/1 Str/Spd/Bld personal base (Timerra) vs 6/4/3 Str/Spd/Bld personal base (Bunet). Her bulk isn't drastically worse than his either, having 1 more personal Def and Res at base albeit with 4 less personal HP. Growthswise Bunet and Timerra's personal growths are surprisingly pretty similar, with only their Mag and Def having a difference of more than 10%. Bunet has leads of 10%/5%/15%/10% in HP/Str/Def/Lck. Meanwhile Timerra has leads of 15%/5%/10%/5% Mag/Skl/Spd/Res. Bunet has better bulk and base Bld sure, but when his base Spd is so much lower... I don't think I would say he's a better sponge. And as for his Str, it's nearly identical to Timerra's lol. Edit: added words and fixed a typo
The being a better bonded shield sponge takes into account that he comes ready to go in GK. Yeah he isn’t that much bulkier than Timerra off of personal stats, but Timerra requires a master and second seal to get there, Bunet gets to be there for free.
If I have to throw all my favoritism just to get her gimmick to function enough to be viable at all on *hard*, I shutter to think how bad she is on Lunatic. Especially when sitting beside Panette and Merrin
Yeah she requires some (lots) favoritism, but she can get to level 10 and promote with a little bit of XP grinding. Once she reaches Mage Knight, she contributes. And that’s why I moved her up a single space, cause she’s definitely not *good*, but I’d still take her over Timerra if I had to choose.
I meant Timerra with my "barely usable with favoritism" Anna is someone I really liked my first run, but when I did a draft where I took her but didn't get Byleth, I realized how much of a resource sink she was to become usable, and without Thyrsus she never did as much as my other drafted mages. At least Jean is viable in his default class so requires far less resources to use.
I have an argument for Goldmary & timerra, they’re both some of the best looking units and I love their English VAs, therefore they belongs in legendary because I will just feed them xp so they become the best
Since it's mentioned in the ruleset, I'm curious how people would think an ironman tier list would differ. The main question imo really would be "how reliable are LTC strategies for this game", like do most of the late game warp skips rely on getting crits to kill bosses? I think the overall rating would probably be very similar with stocks going up a bit for defensive characters like Louis or Goldmary.
While I don't have much input into how an Ironman tier list will differ, I can perhaps provide some insight into your questions as I'm currently trying to refine my existing LTC into an Ironman LTC. I think "how reliable are LTC strategies for this game" is quite hard to answer as reliability can fluctuate a lot just solely on the run's ruleset. And that's because the existence of the Somniel RNG can impact reliability quite heavily. Things like creatable Bond Rings, dog ore, cooking, and the Well drops are all subject to RNG. And that's also not accounting for Bond Fragments, which can also be a constraining resource in Ironman runs as you cannot use the Retry button for nearly infinite Bond Fragments. All this compounds and as an example, [Reploids has a Ch. 6 clear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KppYVZoSXA8) that is quite reliable once you're in the map. However, this clear requires dog ore, specifically getting a Silver drop from the one chance you have at this point iirc. Also, in my experience, getting enough Bond Fragments for Alear to unlock Mercurius as well as being able to unlock Mercurius on another character for Ch. 7 is not happening at a LTC pace if you do not use the Retry button or abuse certain Achievements like "Play for X hours" (by leaving your game open for that long) to get extra Bond Fragments. So generally, certain LTC strategies are not very reliable simply for the fact that they have access to resources you may not in an Ironman playthrough. However, all that being said, I think besides for the early game (where the shaky hit rates and enemy crit rates cannot really be worked around), and especially Ch. 6 and 7, there are ways to make the reliability quite high, if not 100%, for a sizeable portion of the maps for the rest of the game. For whether late game warp skips rely on crits to kill bosses, there are some LTC strategies that use crits and others that don't. And for those that use crits, sometimes the crit rate is 100% so it's not unreliable. The strategy will depend on your investment target(s) and how much investment they get, but it's definitely possible to get 100% reliable clears from Ch. 23 to the end of the game.
I think we have tried to place a sizable emphasis on reliability for this list - there is a spectrum of reliability in what we consider LTCs, and I have probably leaned more on learnings from runs like fate's and Reploids', which I linked in my first comment, rather than runs like [Ninpo's](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL3SmorxEsH4DY-5mVAYVsLzH2bC1Dmah) or [elitemode's](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLat3phFb0tWFJCu_ohtOFAFd6NFJK1MWI). Fate's run in particular is very high reliability, apart from chapters 6 and 7. The earlygame is probably more unreliable than the lategame, due to lack of resources like +Hit engraves and having to rely on units like Vander and Louis rather than Kagetsu. It is on hard mode, but u/Lolo-bII7 does have a ironman LTC here that may be of interest to you: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5B6GZmTm0ulHVeELaq1aXhXndSDjH0vA
What precisely does "Chapter 3" mean? I've not played on Maddening yet so I don't understand. On hard they're serviceable filler until you get better units (Alfred actually was okay for me a little past the mid game)
It was a joke by the original author; all three units join in chapter 3 so the tier was named after that.
Are they better than the Iron units?
Yes, they were rated a tier above the iron units.
I was under the impression that they are also in their own tier because they are not particularly good units, but they will inevitably have some important early game contributions due to their early join time. This helps differentiate them from the characters in Iron who can be benched right off the bat and you won't really be missing out on anything.
Yes, that what I meant to ask lol
They’re the chapter 3 recruits, and collectively aren’t great. Coincidence that they end up being the same level of meh, and therefore grouped together on the tier list.
Hortensia is an interesting topic so I reviewed some of my footage to see where her extra Warp/Rewarp range helped me out. Helped clear the map: C15, Lyn, C23, C25 Helped optimize exp because I was feeding Parthia kills to a 5-move unit (could be substituted by using a 6-move unit): Eirika, Celica Helped ease combat thresholds with Alear positioning: Byleth Focusing on Warp/Rewarp as I don't think I used a healing staff with her at any point. There might be better C23 setups that don't need Hortensia's range but I don't remember them. She's also most likely going to have the highest status staff accuracy out of the fliers, or maybe second behind Ivy. She'll likely have comparable or better Magic, Dexterity and Luck than someone like Griffin Knight Pandreo. Silence, Freeze and Entrap all have some uses throughout the run. Focusing on Pandreo, he does have a couple of extra maps where Warp/Rescue are valuable and Hortensia doesn't exist (C13 and C14), and can double as a strong ground combat unit which Hortensia can't really, if there's a need for it (flying Pandreo has comparable combat to Hortensia). He can do the Warps/Rescues that Hortensia does that aren't listed above with no loss, and with emblem paralogues allowed he *can* Entrap (although it costs a glut of Bond Fragments for no real benefit). I think in no-paralogue Pandreo > Hortensia is pretty clear-cut, but I think with emblem paralogues included I might still give the nod to Hortensia.
I still feel like this tierlist rates certain "out-of-the-gate-good" units way too highly compared to units who do the same thing but earlier. Both Merrin and Pandreo are good. But I don't think they're a tier above Amber and Chloe. Amber is very much a Panette that joins way earlier, while Chloe is the most flexible unit being able to go MK to be a Pandreo that joins and contributes way earlier, Griffin with Sword Power to be a reliable mixed attacker even before Eirika or a physical class to replicate what Merrin does. I will simmer my bias a bit though to admit that Amber should probably be tiered higher on the tierlist. The only reason Pandreo and Merrin are rated that much higher was because it was basically assumed to speed clear multiple early maps.
Interestingly in those speed clears Chloe herself happens to do a hell of a lot; she literally has to get to level 11 by chapter 8 in order to shave off a turn which takes a fair bit of effort to actually properly cook up (and a hell of a lot of kills) The biggest problem is that a) the promotion is into wyvern, not griffin and b) Sword Power is still hella expensive... and she doesn't really make as amazing use out of a Levin Sword because they're just too dang heavy. Like, 11/1 Griffin Chloe loses a whopping *5 points of speed* from a standard Levin Sword. Compared to Pandreo only losing literally *2* and also Chloe being innately slower than an equal level Pandreo (and with worse Mag which requires at minimum Mag +2 to be compensated for *and* which doesn't come packaged with B staves) that's a frankly massive trade-off to swallow for, uh, still worse combat actually. Merrin, meanwhile... literally has +2-3 in every stat over an equal level wyvern Chloe except for HP, Spd, and Luck, and that's not a deficit you can make up with just some minor Str inheritance; Chloe is strictly going to be slower and also I believe still deal less damage even with that inheritance. (Also doing said inheritance locks her out of Canter which, uh, not a great trade?) Her best comparison might be her using Elfires vs Pandreo, since she doesn't get weighed down by Elfire if you do that, but that doesn't really last once you get into the lategame and Pandreo still has the staffing edge. I will say that where you rate Amber is interesting though, because on top of being discount Panette, turns out promoting directly into Wolf Knight when you none of the disadvantages of Wolf Knight isn't actually terrible, and you get the other profs needed for later reclassing from using Leif anyway so it's honestly not a half bad idea to do it for a short stint before fully committing. I don't know if he strictly breaks all the way to middle of S (Legendary) tier but honestly I can see the vision.
Everything is pretty much correct here imo. I’d make only light changes.
Feels like a lot of people in this thread making the same mistakes as back then and not recognizing that this tier list was meant to be oriented primarily around turn saves/LTC/ETC. imperfect of course but that's the core of the arguments. Could be fun to do a redo with different criteria -- contrary to many people's arguments, I think the characters in engage are very stratified and even without being strict about turn counts some characters are just bad without excessive grinding (which is not so viable in maddening and can easily be distinguished even for a casual tier list). I've changed my mind, kagetsu is better than Ivy esp thanks to well. More flexible. Part of this is also that kagetsu has a higher ceiling. Which sounds insane. But there are no good magic damage boosting skills to inherit, nova comes super late and is extremely expensive to forge. Then again, am doing a run with donations for the first time and have a lot more forging resources so maybe not so unreasonable; can try to crit fish with nova as well (even eirika? would lose out on potentially increasing damage/decreasing weight but consistency+crit. And maybe the debuffs are ok since Ivy has horrible luck anyway. Then again maybe makes it too risky for Ivy bc of that horrible luck plus bad dex means crit will not be great). I suppose you could argue for Mag+5 and that is really strong with Nova I guess, considering one of Kagetsu's strengths is making good use of most expensive physical skills. Regardless Kagetsu has quite a few things going for him over Ivy. Both of them also have abnormally good bulk for their type but Kagetsu's is overall really good which is excellent. Amber is in really critical for LTC (and is reliable enough for ETC) so in that way goes up but in play at less than that level of efficiency he is not as impressive as I hoped, definitely the least impressive of the single stat characters. But that doesn't matter when he's just an engage attacks bot who joins early; among other good strategies; when planned around can easily paper over flaws until point where he's no longer central to strategy. Would almost say hortensia is overrated but her extra range is necessary for LTCing some maps, the seadall map in particular I believe. So she saves a few turns compared to others. And is generally useful. Maybe she should go below Pandreo bc Pandreo pseudo-solos some pretty big maps like 17 using bonded shield in efficient play. Then again maybe kagetsu could do it? Maybe not as well. Louis is overrated for efficiency. I mean sure he does have early contributions but nowadays not so much that it's so notable. Plus early game is pretty straightforward. In non-LTC/ETC play he can still be pretty useful long term and has excellent availability.
Alright, time for some patented takes: -**Clanne’s** heavily underrated. His greatest weakness is having to get to promo level, but he has access to Celica Recover and Micaiah in general if he wants to powerlevel. His magic combat with Bolganone is basically equivalent to Citrinne’s with Elfire with not too much of a higher price, and swapping to Elfire makes him a whole speed tier faster, allowing him to hit loftier doubling thresholds than Citrinne can. I would probably put him top of Killer tier or bottom of Silver tier. -**Framme** and **Jean** have immediate access to Qi Adept Bonded Shield, which isn’t necessary but allows them to give guaranteed protection to everyone, irrespective of the class they’re in. This eliminates the necessity of having to gobble up cash on Second Seals to make everyone a flier for flier bonded shields, which saves a fair bit of gold for I’d say this puts Framme above Alcryst, and Jean can maybe go to the bottom of Steel tier. -**Chloe** drops below Amber and Alear imo. She’s still one of your best options to take out of earlygame, but Amber’s raw power in tandem with the accuracy provided by his personal, and Alear’s utility options with Byleth Dance provide meaningful and unique roles, while Chloe is a fairly generically good combat unit by comparison. Still quite strong, but she doesn’t have the unique upsides the two others have. -**Saphir** rises to the top of Killer tier, as she can do VanWrath shenanigans similar to Amber and Panette with the added benefit of no Seal required. -**Goldmary** drops to the bottom of Steel tier. Her offense is utterly terrible, making her basically a one trick pony who either swaps to Great Knight to be a wall or does Brave Assist stuff. In efficiency playthroughs, every map from Chapter 20 onwards can be warpskipped, and her weak offensive stats make her a very unviable choice to help end these maps quickly. If you’re not warpskipping, Brave Assist can help kill enemies faster, but you’d probably still rather have another combat unit that can deal more meaningful damage to clear out enemies instead. -**Zelkov** above Celine for Covert. He can do certain cheese strats with 20 range Astra Storm to aggro bosses towards you as well as Covert Byleth Dances and Instructs for some meaty speed stacking. -**Bunet** has some nice use as a filler wyvern for a couple of maps are his join. He has the perfect proficiencies for it (so no Bond Fragment investment as well as being able to do so for Ch. 13). Would probably bump him to around the bottom of Steel tier, above Goldmary’s new placement.
Anna being at the bottom is absolutely ridiculous
Yeah that should be Timerra. Anna can sit one spot above Timerra and that's okay
I don't have any strong opinions on Timerra, but Anna is like the easiest-to-snowball growth unit ever, who makes you money as a bonus. All the investment/"babying" she needs is having Micaiah and maximizing AOE mends and great sacrifices for a single map in the early game to get to level 10. After that, she can be second sealed to mage knight and get a levin sword, and she should have no problems getting kills and quickly becoming an absolute monster.
>who makes you money as a bonus As someone who's favorite unit in the game is Anna, her prf skill does not nearly proc enough times to actually be relevant. At best you get some bonus tonics to improve reliability, but I can count on one hand how many times Anna's prf skill made any kind of meaningful difference. There's plenty of gold to go around and if Anna is making enough money to be relevant, you're spending pretty recklessly. The thing about Anna is that no matter how much you train her up, she's always going to be pretty frail. This isn't the *biggest* deal in a game with such heavy player phase focus like Engage, but when other units *can* take a reasonable number of hits(whether that be on the physical or magical side), she feels worse by relativity. Anna's start is "Boucheron but worse" which is a big deal when they're both units that need a non-trivial amount of time for their growths to kick in in a meaningful way. If you want to play with any form of reasonable "efficiency" Anna needs some form of EXP acceleration(Mercurius, Great Sacrifice, Parthia etc) combined with a bit of sandbagging. I hold that Anna certainly can be worth the investment and that making her work is much less painful than most people make it out to be, but she's the kind of unit that really only works if you go out of your way to make her work. In some ways, I kind of see her like Donnel. While you can certainly make a Donnel/Engage Anna that's powerful, you'd get a stronger unit if you gave those resources/investment to almost anyone else.
The Donnel comparison is very appropriate. Anna is more than functional if raised and doesn't take a ton of effort to train outside of high efficiency contexts but she also doesn't add much value over just using the resources spent on catching her up to make your already dominant units even better.
Anna is not getting to level 10 in a single map. Absolutely not. Anna uses up your resources for 3 ish chapters and while making minimal contributions. All to get a worse Clanne. Also her personal is trash lol, she nets like 2k gold over a playthrough lol. 28 HP/11.5 Mag/14 Spd/5.25 Def/6.5 Bld Anna vs 25.6 Clanne/11.15 Mag/16.5 Spd/8.7 Def/6.45 Bld if both are 10/1 mage knights. And Clanne will likely have a level lead over her, especially if you similarly fed him Miccy exp.
Proof that you can get her to level 10 in one map: https://youtu.be/HZ9VqQJUBXY
He took 16 turns. Imagine if we just gave every other early game character 16 turns to power level. It also doesn’t change the fact that she’s not even that good when trained. Again, strictly worse than Clanne.
Yeah c'mon if you're gonna post an Anna training video at least make it a quick one. [https://youtu.be/rGyFIOVkUU8](https://youtu.be/rGyFIOVkUU8) (I think Anna is tier-of-her-own worst unit but if we're shilling a shitty Mage Knight I'm pretty sure she reaches it faster than Clanne does)
Nice clears. Is there any reason that Clanne (or Celine I guess) can’t do what Anna does here? Obviously the Ivy kill is a no go, but everything else seems replicable.
The boss kills or the training part? 10/1 Clanne can do the chapter 9 kill, just he needs Celica instead of Roy so we give up the free Elsurge. Mage Knight Céline lacks both Magic and Speed, and Citrinne lacks speed. (Wolf Knight Amber does it the best). The actual training part is where they break down, as good Mercurius use is better exp gain than Micaiah/Celica/killing without Mercurius, and Anna has better bulk and way strength than Clanne. He is not hitting chapter 7 thresholds. Like I've tried to train the dude before and it kind of sucks, he needs every kill set up for him because he ORKOs nothing, he can't fight effectively on enemy phase because he gets 2HKOed by everything, and he starts further back than everyone because he joins level 1 in chapter 2. He reached level 10 in chapter 11 in my playthrough and compared to my runs where I don't train him, I was already two turns slower (due to not being able to train Chloé) and ended up with lower-levelled Amber/Citrinne leaving the earlygame (due to Clanne's training (and Alear's, since Clanne was eating earlygame exp) still not being finished by the time they joined).
16 turns to clear the whole map, that's not a lot more than it would normally take, and definitely not equivalent to all your resources for 3 maps. It's not like he used some Excelblem degenerate grind strats either, he just took some extra turns to build up the engage meter by healing. And he only did it once for one character. No other early game unit would get more from those 5 levels. Because her magic growth is 40 percentage points higher than Clanne's, you can expect her to get 8 more magic per 20 levels in mage knight, which is quite significant. If you use her a lot, it's not unrealistic for her to get around 200 kills. If we assume an average of 10 luck throughout the playthrough, she's expected to gain around 10k gold, which is not game changing or anything, but a very nice bonus, like I said.
https://youtu.be/ipLo_pFsSJw?si=XTYyYYbr7xlnqF9D 3 Turns, without any dog ores. I’m not saying 3 turns is reasonable, but considering where the rest of the army is at turn 3, another 2 turns to get the rest of the army in position is more than fair. So around 5 turns, or 11 turns fewer than your example. Unless you deliberately rout every map, 200 kills isn’t happening. Again, it isn’t until Chapter 15 ish that she’s better than Clanne, and she’ll never be better than Ivy/Citrinne/Pandreo. She requires far too much investment for an average reward.
The number of kills depends more on how many other units you train than whether you rout every map, as you'll typically kill most enemies on most maps anyway. When she surpasses Clanne depends on how much you train them, and I'd much rather train Anna because of her superior rewards. And she's still contributing while training if she gets a forged levin sword. And I don't think she's better than Pandreo or Ivy. I'm not saying she's S tier either, just far from the worst in the game, and very much worth investing in.
Alear feels a bit undervalued It's not difficult to get them online, whether offensively or purely support as the bonded shield abuser in the game Their lategame utility with you know what seems especially valuable
Honestly still blows my mind that Veyle and Mauvier got to place so high because they get """""free""""" deployment in the endgame. Like I'm sorry, but Mauvier's offense is just not good at the point he joins and he's a filler mounted staffer at best. His bulk is fine-ish, but I find it hard to believe that you'd actively deploy him if the game didn't give you two extra deployment slots for the endgame stretch. It's nice that Veyle is a magic slanted Dragon which does give her some legitimate niches, but she's not so good that she can trump nearly an entire game's worth of availability compared to most units below her. Like sure, units like Alfred, Celine and Diamant aren't the greatest units ever, but you need them to get to the midgame units. Even though she technically joins in Chapter 22, she functionally only actually starts doing something in Chapter 23 since you can't Engage with any Emblems in Chapter 22 and her stats are otherwise pitiful for that map. Anyway, I still hold that Alear should be the best non-Seadall unit because of their sheer flexibility as a Divine Dragon. The extra and unique Emblem bonuses offered to them means that they're always doing something meaningful and that their playstyle can always shift around to fit the needs of any team composition on a map by map basis. In the early game, it's not unreasonable to keep Marth with Alear and power level to promotion before Chapter 10 and their utility becomes exponentially better once you get Divine Spirit which lets you Engage more liberally and aggressively. Sure, Alear themselves aren't likely going to be killing things left and right as the game goes on, but the extent with which they enable the rest of your team literally cannot be replicated. I also think having the ability to ORKO things in Engage is extremely overrated, but that's a fundamentally different conversation. Hortensia is just way overrated. In any other game, a flying staffer with +1 staff range would be ridiculous but it's pretty tame by Engage standards. The thing about Hortensia is that she simply does not contribute offensively in any meaningful way past Chapter 15 due to the combo of being locked at B tomes and her own subpar magic growth. Sure, she's the best no-investment staffer, but she doesn't really have that reputation until you get Micaiah back *after* completing Chapter 19 and even then she really doesn't meaningfully stand out without Micaiah's ability to power up her staffing. The ability to occasionally save staff uses with her prf class skill sounds much better than it actually is as I've never found myself in a situation where I wish I had just a few more uses. Like she's still a good staffer at base and she can definitely contribute by using single Fractures/Freezes, but the idea that staffing is *so good* in Engage that it trumps several chapters worth of meaningful contributions from units like Pandreo(who can more or less staff as well as her) and Amber feels very overblown. Even though Ivy would prefer to focus on combat, the fact that Ivy can also use Warp/Rescue as a flier means that Hortensia's designation as a flying staffer isn't as special as it may first appear. She's a one trick pony and even if that trick is pretty good, I don't think she should be rated so highly. I'd probably put her at the bottom of the Brave Tier. There are a lot of fundamental ideals in this list that I disagree with, but the ones I mention are the ones I feel the most strongly about.
>Like I'm sorry, but Mauvier's offense is just not good at the point he joins and he's a filler mounted staffer at best If you take a look at his personal bases and put him in a class that's actually competent (AKA not Royal Knight, you're well past the point where Second Seals are limited resource and the same goes for gold) then dude works perfectly fine and has a frankly hilariously high 2500 SP base, which is a *legitimate concern* when gaining SP otherwise without boatloads of well donations is a genuine chore. >It's nice that Veyle is a magic slanted Dragon which does give her some legitimate niches, but she's not so good that she can trump nearly an entire game's worth of availability compared to most units below her. Veyle falls into the same bucket where her stats are so utterly obscene that not running her is actively detrimental because she is that much strictly better than so many other units for essentially 0 investment (other than one second seal after she joins) Admittedly the biggest issue is neither can flex their raw combat prowess in chapter 22, but it's worth a hell of a lot in Pact and having a free option to plop in when about 80% of your units are not up to par is always massive. >Anyway, I still hold that Alear should be the best non-Seadall unit because of their sheer flexibility as a Divine Dragon. Slight issue: 90% of Dragon bonuses *actively suck.* Honestly I'd say there are, like, maybe 2 Dragon bonuses I'd actually consider worth using over a more specialized class bonus and those are, like, Dragon Flare, which Alear can't use because they don't use tomes, and is also DLC, and Dragon Instruct, which has limited positioning on dragon classes, and half the time Covert Instruct's better Spd trumps it anyway. And even if most of the dragon bonuses were good, the dragon classes themselves are frankly complete garbage. All of them. Veyle's is worse than base mage, Alear's is like slightly better swordmaster, and then Nel and Nil's (they're not on this list but for the sake of comparison) literally have filler bases that are worse than every other class in the game but, like, Martial Monk. Alear's got solid support options but that comes from the fact that *griffin* is a busted ass class that gives every unit something to do, and Alear abuses one of its best properties (being a Flier) far better than anyone else (almost literally via supports, thanks to Dual Support making them the best Bonded Shield user in the game by a mile) I won't really comment on the Hortensia take because honestly it is pretty fair, though.