I like the idea for this new series a lot more than the original tier list series you made. Making different tier lists for each route is more nuanced and realistic since you're putting the issue of recruitment in clear focus.
Dedue in particular is extremely underrated as a unit. He is missing in a few chapters but his strong opening game with high defenses and simple/useful ability help. Late game all he needs is quick reposte, probably the most broken skill out there. It shuts down enemy doubles on him regardless of AS differences, his super high HP and defense stat keeps him above 50% threshold at all times , and he always gets a double with his crazy high attack stat. Sometimes in maddening you just need that guy who can bait and chip back and Dedue fills that niche best. Lastly, I believe its very possible IS will give us an endgame armor master class as one of the DLC class updates which would make this man even more fun to play.
While I actually agree that Dedue is fantastic in your first few chapters, where enemies are abundant and way stronger than even Byleth, his speed becomes more and more of an issue as the game progresses. Even ignoring the period where he's AWOL, quick reposte, supposedly his main saving grace, isn't going to come until the very end of the game. Assuming you're not grinding, you're going to have it for, like, 4 chapters. By that point your units will also be able to one round most enemies with combat arts and gambits anyway, so you're saving time by striding up and going on the offensive during player phase anyway. This isn't even mentioning how bad enemy phase is in general in Three Houses, what with all the 3+ range attacks out there. And as far as an armored master class goes, that would actually be Dedue's WORST option. War Master crit fishing is is most reliable source of damage, and quick reposte is his only saving grace for his pathetic speed. Especially considering that the "Niche" of a tank isn't even relevant by the time master classes come around
@@huntercarvey670 Those are all valid points. Perhaps we differ in our playstyles. With the right battalions equipped (some give as much as +10), Def+2 skill, add a shield, add in his ability, the occasional rally def and high def, Dedue by chapter 10 can reach the 35-40 defense and most enemies can't dent him, other then mages (ouch) or poison strike archers. Three houses is the easiest game to stack stats and all of the little extras really add up fast. He is always my #1 choice for baiting enemies because enemies that even hit 5x2(rarely) and get traded for equal damage is fantastic. All a tank really needs to do is lure out 1 unit, chip for damage, rinse, and repeat for the most part and he does a great job. Dedue should also have knuckles/ a bow early on in addition to an axe because with enemies getting steel swords in earlier chapters, their attack speeds really dip for some time, helping the bigboy grow. I used Dedue for lots of baiting and made sure he kept up in level with his glass cannon friends. Battalions and aggressive skills like the blow skills certainly make player phase tempting, but having a tank in harder modes is and has always been super viable. Eg. Radiant dawn had Haar and the key to lunatic+ awakening was to start with +def Robin. If they add a master class, (not great knight) I'd like to personally wait and see what they release before judgement. There is no endgame armor infantry and its possible we could see fun skills come back like sacred stones great shield or fun classes like the Spartan class.
@@huntercarvey670 honestly you dont even need to grind hard to get the skill at all. You still recieve class exp even if you dont equip a weapon and are involved in a battle so just dropping dedue in 1 map against enemies that can barely touch him and just spam turns to unlock any class skill. Plus you can use an adjundant on him to also farm their class skill at the same time. Not to mention he doesnt even really need a healer because of healing focus which you can easily get using the same technique.
@@leviponce7730 At 1:42 you can see that this tier list is in the context of an efficient playthrough, where you don't really stop to let a million generics wail on your tank for class exp. Also, even if this was something to consider, it wouldn't really be a bonus to Dedue more than it would be a bonus to anybody else, as literally any unit could just be an adjutant to a tanky unit like Raphael or even an evasion build of Ferdinand. I wouldn't even call healing focus a Dedue specific bonus, as it can be learned by, once again, ANY unit who puts time in with gauntlets.
@@huntercarvey670 I must disagree. On Maddening (No NG+), he is the best tank that can never be killed by any physical attack. And I don't even put QR on him since killing is not what he does. That's for Felix and his buddies. Dedue just need to stand at a strategic point to bait out all physical attackers. And he will always survive.
I'll defend Gilbert a bit here. While I don't thing he is amazing or anything, he is relatively decent at the role he is supposed to fill: Being a Dedue replacement for the tank role. While his speed will go nowhere, he has good defense and HP. Combine that with his good access to Lancebreaker, he can actually counter the enemy peg. knight classline very well, which is VERY useful, since that classline in specific is terrifying to fight against. Take chapter 14 for example: That map just showers you with peg. and falco knights. So much so in fact that you team might struggle to keep up. Enter Gilbert. His HP, defense and potentially Lancebreaker allows him to at least take on 2 of these bastards in a single turn. Unless you have built another supertank during you playthrough, he is the only one that can actually take a beating from these guys. This is pretty important. As I said, while it doesn't make him amazing or anything, at least that should get him out of D tier.
I love Felix but he is in no universe a better unit than Dimitri. He's top tier for sure, but not Dimitri. His dex and defense are significantly lower making him far less reliable. Felix can kill anything, but he has to hit and dodge neither are a guarantee in early levels in harder modes. His edge in speed in no way makes up for Dimitri's far superior defense and dex, especially since Dimitri is fairly speedy himself. Felix's bane in authority is also far more problematic than Dimitri's in axes because battalions are incredibly useful, and Dimitri can easily slide into Bow Knight or just leave him as a Great Lord which is an excellent class.
I would only recruit Caspar at least on BL because you can unlock the optional battle where you get the rafail gem which is nice. But other than that, I would just use him as either a guard adjutant or bench adjutant. Up to you really
Cyril’s seriously underrated. He joins at C in both axe and bow. He only needs 120 points in bow to get C+ bow for pointblank, which only takes two weeks of training. Then he can already outdamage most characters. Then with his C axe he can easily get into brigand for death blow very quickly. Deathblow + pointblank would make him one of the best damage dealers in early game. For late game, he can very easily get onto the wyvern route because he has proficiencies in all lance, axe and flying. And with his great speed and top-class dex and lck, he can obliterate everything from crits with pointblank + killer bow+. (Edit:) his base str is 7, which is only 1 or 2 points below most physical characters. But pointblank volley gives 3 Mt and guaranteed double, which would more than enough make up for the low str. There’s no reason to complain about his low str base when he gets such a broken combat art early on. With steel bow + pointblank volley, he can easily outdamage most characters in early game even without death blow’s 12 extra damage.
As I already explained, his early game is very solid. He joins with C axe and C bow, with only 120 points in bow needed for pointblank volley. He basically gets pointblank volley in two weeks’ training. He’ll already be a solid damage dealer with that. Then after mastering brigand (axe C already covered), he’ll become one of the best damage dealers in early game. He basically has no problem getting through the early game.
@@zzabcd815 Dude, that's ignoring the most important thing in the early game: stats. His stats are awful and his growths aren't even exceptional. Outdamage other units? In what world? His strength is terrible. Crits don't mean much when they're for 0 damage and almost anyone can get death blow, so that's not a point in his favor.
He’s the only character that can double everything from the early game. Death blow only makes it even better. He is a few points low on base stats, but that isn’t the end of the world when he gets such easy access to pointblank volley and death blow.
@@zzabcd815 He's a lot of points low and it is the end of the world on Maddening. Also, where are you getting this idea that he's doubling people? Are you using Maddening as your frame of reference?
Cyril should be higher. With his personal he's essentially the male version of Leonie/Petra/Ingrid. Guaranteed recruit. Will reach both the wyvern and bow knight class with minimal effort. Gets a very early point-blank volley for guaranteed doubling early game. You'll just want to recruit him asap.
His main problem is bad bases and that his personal isn't very good. They gave him aptitude but then made his base growths really shitty to make up for it. Its like they only gave him aptitude because they had to have that villager character who has that skill, which is kinda just dumb if they're gonna butcher his bases to make up for it. Otherwise i do agree he's a pretty solid unit to have around, flyer with PBV is pretty insane and he's 100 to 0 many enemy fliers without risk thanks to it. Sadly my Cyril died at the end of chapter 12 and i had no more DP, so i wasn't gonna reset just for him.
Bernadetta gets encloser at A bows, which can permanently lock down almost any unit outside of counter-attack range. If anything, she can work on bows as a goal for the entire game and get it. I don't think she's particularly great on azure moon, or even in general outside encloser, but it's just such a good combat art, and nobody has that utility outside Claude. It can definitely be a lifesaver on overwhelming maps, or if you want to feed experience (even briefly without really wasting turns) to another unit by keeping something locked down.
I feel like every archer in this game has some sort of niche they fill. For Bernadetta it's, like you said, Encloser. But the other archers get a niche of their own that is useful in their own right. Ignatz has buff/debuff utility very early on. He gets rally speed at D rank authority, which is really early. But on top of that, he gets Break Shot, which combined with his budding talent skill (Seal Strength) and personal (Hit +20%), makes him useful, especially in earlygame. Ashe has a boon in axes. That allows him to reach the Brigand/Wyvern classline easier, which fixes most of Ashes damage issues. That means that Ashe can do at least decent damage and has the flexibility of flying on top of that. Value it how you see fit, but every archer has some sort of niche.
That is true, but Bernadetta has far less competition in niche, since there's multiple dedicated rally units, other wyvern candidates besides Ashe, but only one other house-specific encloser on another route. Ignatz is a lot better on deer than azure moon as well.
@@MoonyRanalie That is a good point. But I'll just point out some things: First, my argument with Ignatz is that he provides both buffs AND debuffs relatively early on. While there are dedicated rally bots, Ignatz brings in that way something new to the table. And most characters are usually better on their original class, even Bernadetta. It just comes down to how much you value Encloser itself relative to the time it takes to obtain it. While I think that Encloser is good, you need to consider the time it takes to get to A rank in bows. The other archers can utilise their niches much earlier than Bernadetta can.
Training Bernadetta in bows only through goals, with maybe the occasional meal time or gift for teaching motivation means she'll have encloser by the time there's a bunch of monsters (bulky, hard-hitting targets), like the red canyon paralogue. The time it takes to learn sucks, but I value it because of a lack of competition and how being able to lock an enemy down scales well with maddening enemy stats. Using both her and Claude on verdant wind is really helping in clutch scenarios.
Catherine can be recruited as early as Ch 4 (though she can't be used in the mission for the month until Ch 5) in BL and GD. If you get her to B+ support, you only need to be level 6. She is phenomenal on Maddening. She comes in with monster strength and speed, Swordfaire, a Brave Relic, and massive growths because she's in an Advanced class right off the bat (60 strength and 75% speed). On Maddening Ch 6, she was able to not only tank the Death Knight's attacks, she could *double* him. All this without grinding. I'd argue for Maddening she's an S-Tier unit.
Part of me feels like in spite of how objectively amazing the Flying classes are statistically and tactically against terrain restrictions, forcing it on Byleth (especially Male) is somewhat overrated. Especially considering that the only unit in the game who requires Flying for recruitment is Ingrid who is already part of your default lineup in Blue Lions, as a recruitment benefit it doesn't really help you in this route. Not every unit in your lineup needs to, or should be a flying unit given there's no magic based flying classes in this game. With that in perspective I think there needs to be more discussion about the value of Byleth in say Riding classes which are still very strong, and most notably opens up an option like Holy Knight. Focusing on Riding also has the side benefit of easier recruitment of both Petra and Marianne, the former being a top tier combat unit and the latter being a reasonably solid healer with access to Physic.
Annette isn't the best combat unit and Wyvern lord helps her with what she is good at which is rallying. Having 8 move and being able to bypass terrain and fly over obstacles is much better than having her stay a gremory where she has 5 move and is slowed by terrain
Her offense is actually totally fine as a Wyvern too as she can use Bolt Axe+, Crusher and a Steel Axe+ with Lightning Axe to kill things if need be. Its not hard to forge more Bolt Axes if you get the right resources either.
I’m sorry, but during the fight against Miklan, Gilbert would NOT STOP PUTTING HIMSELF IN THE INNER WALK ARCHERS’ PATHS! I don’t care how good he is as a unit, I tried to be nice and keep him alive in that level but his AI is an absolute bastard.
i think that dimitri is better, since at early game he's tankeir, does more dmg, felix gets doubled, and like you said dimitri gains more exp, handeling maddening more easly. as for my personal experience, my dimitri is outperforming felix.
Felix is generally faster and stronger than Dimitri early game. At base, he has 20 attack and 6 as with an iron sword compared to Dimitri's 18 attack and 3 with an iron lance. Felix also has a much better crest ability, having a 40% chance to increase damage by 5 on any non-combat art attack compared to Dimitri's 10% chance to ohko an enemy unit but only when using combat arts and doubles the weapon uses, which is already very high on tempest lance compared to the low durability of lances. On top of that, Felix can get to D in bows very easily and learn curved shot to deal safe chip damage which is amazing in the early game. The only things Dimitri has on Felix is his personal weapon, better authority ranking, higher defense, and faster levels.
@@evansmith2832 thanks for the arguments, but like i said, dimitri just outperformed felix, i tried getting felix op, perhaps my playstyle was better for dimitri than felix. still, i just described my personal experience
@@PockitGames Here's a great way to show how powerful Felix is as a unit. Give him gauntlets, he only needs 15 strength to out perform the 3 weight of Iron gauntlets and if he doubles he has pretty solid chances to proc his crest multiple times to make up for lower base damage than what swords provide. Felix makes amaizng use of gauntlets and is arguable the best War Master due to his high strength, speed and crest. You can even just use training gauntlets if his strength is high enough and rely on his base strength and crest, but i would only suggest doing that if he has less than 15 strength.
@@chadachi3970 Felix is very strong, but he only outperforms Dimitri early-early midgame. Dimitris and Felix offensive growth are very similar and both have very good bases. Felix pros are: has his crest, which is quite reliable and the 5 dmg boost. The cons are: he is way more squishy than dimitri (with or without his shield), he has a bane in authority. His bane in authority honestly tips the scale for me. Authority is very important. Not only is he bad at it, if you make use of his personal he will lag behind even further. As early as C rank, the stat boosts you get from battalions will outweigh the plain 5 dmg only to snowball further. I would argue that even some E/D rank battalions and their utility outweigh the plain 5 dmg. After timeskip there is no competition at all anymore. Dimitri becomes a way more reliable unit allround. Having a slight edge like the first 4-6 chapters, falling off afterwards and being strictly worse post timeskip doesnt justify a higher ranking.
@@manuelmuller4267 I don't find his authority rank much of a problem, i usually have Felix focus on a single weapon type and have his goals set to that and Authority. He actually doesn't level it too slowly compared to anyone who's neutral to it and only really lags behind anyone who has a boon in it. I agree battalions are really good, but personally i don't think you need to worry about them early-early mid game. Once he reaches C rank authority is when the Battalions really outweigh his personal, specifically any that give +5 Strength. However i think that his early is too reliant on his personal to not make use of it, that extra damage is clutch especially with fist weapons. Also i just wanna point out, i never said he was better than Dimitri, was just giving a suggestion on how he can be better early on if you use him with fist weapons. I'm aware timeskip Dimitri is probably the second or third best unit in the game.
One thing to note, you can get to B+ and C+ support with someone. It just doesn’t show it unless you go into a menu, such as the share a meal menu, and press x on someone. This also lowers the requirements for recruitment so it’s something to consider.
Cyril is really good on maddening, he can bypass speed super early and has easy access to hit+20 and he has access to wyvern Lord with point blank volley Which is honestly pretty great
Everyone said he’s bad because of low base stats. But his weapons proficiencies are the best in the game. He gets pointblank basically two weeks after getting recruited because of initial bow rank. He catches up with everyone else’s stats before level 20. He easily gets death blow to give his pointblank extra 12 damage. Hit+20 is also one of the most underrated abilities in maddening, which is very easy to obtain by Cyril.
Mercedes is the best healer in the game imo and she comes free with BL, and her magic growth is among the highest in the game. She heals for so much, and her physic reaches so far. At least A+ for me just because her healing is so good
Dimitri is the best unit in AM and arguably in the game, way above felix: He has the best growths in the game, his bataillon is broken, he has atrocity and paraselene and one of the best non flier classes... His attack and dexterity are so ridiculous you can just give him vantage and gradivus, warp him in final battle’s last room and he soloes everything and deal some 550 to edelgard... Also I think male byleth is way better than female, the only difference being gender exclusive classes and sylvain’s availability; we’re talking about AM here so sylvain isn’t an issue and while F!byleth only gets one useful skill being darting blow, m!byleth gets quick riposte, access to hero class and can use dark seals...
Agreed, somewhat. I think Dimitri is slightly worse than Felix, until Dimitri gets an A rank in authority. That's when he will learn Battalion Vantage. But he also got Battalion Wrath earlier in the authority levels. In other words, he has a really strong skill combo that requires little setup. Slap a Killer Lance+ and a Retribution gambit on that guy, and then he will counter most things, will attack first and kill the enemy with his about 90% crit.
@@MetalGearRaxis This is an AM tier list. I won't argue if they are actually better or not, but that doesn't even matter since you can't use them here. And no, F!Byleth is not better than Dimitri. While Byleth is pretty strong, the thing that hinders both variants is building weapon ranks, which wouldn't be an issue if classes weren't locked behind them. Not only doesn't Dimitri have that issue, but as I said above, he obtains one of the strongest skill combos in the entire game, and it isn't even hard to reach, since you want to level his authority anyway.
@@thatonepersonnoonecaresabo3163 battalion wrath/vantage is kind of gimmicky and hard to maintain in the face of seige devices, monsters, and gambits late game.
Some S tier candidates: Ingrid, early game utility with accurate gambits thanks to her personal skill. She can control packs of enemies with poison tactics or assault troop with 100% accuracy while most of your team has around 50% accuracy with gambits at the time. Lysithea, Blue Lions needs an additional mage, and she's the best. Lorenz, for the staff.
I wouldn't downplay the choice for Dancer. You want to get extra skills on your Dancer and the proficiencies of your pick counts. You're gonna have Swd Avd +10, Special Dance, and Swd Pfc 1-5. That leaves 2 slots to fill and one of those should go to Movement +1. That means you want someone at least neutral in Swords and Riding.
Also consider that Dancers retain access to their spell lists, so you're going to want someone with a good array of supporting spells rather than someone who might as well be in a physical class. And also Charm is valuable to the class, so you want somebody who has that as one of their best stats. Finally consider the opportunity cost of making a Dancer: while Dancer has always been undeniably one of Fire Emblem's best classes through its sheer utility alone, you don't want somebody in there who might be better off being the Dancee. For those three reasons alone I was going to insist on the point that Flayn is one of Three Houses' best Dancers, but you brought up something I hadn't considered before: how important an ability like Movement +1 is to a Dancer's primary function! As fate would have it, Flayn actually has a bane in Riding. So I guess it's back to the drawing board for the best Azure Moon Dancer choice . . .
4:20 I still stand by my point, I think Caspar is one of the best characters (gameplay wise). With such minimal effort he always become the best of my team. I understand the support issue, but I really don't think Caspar being bad in your opinion is not a good enough reason to make him basically second worst. (I make him a war master at the end and he basically becomes a crit machine that quads)
he is just bad, every single other war master does his job but better. Some are tankier and make more use out of quick ripost like Raphiel, Balthus, and Duedue and others like Felix are faster and do a lot of damage throughout the whole game. Caspar will be a lackluster unit until war master and afterward, he's the worst one you could have.
If you ask me Marianne is too low. While she has a riding requirement you can just raise supports by having her join you during missions as a healing adjutant (which is always nice to have). Marianne’s Frozen Lance and Aura make her a healer designed to one-shot which is a really good niche, and that combined with her mobility as a Holy Knight is really useful.
Wow I’m so glad more people are talking analytically about FE again. Besides Mekkah, there’s very few people talking about it. Awesome list, I’ve still only done one playthrough, and that was before maddening came out. So I’m definitely not an authority on three houses, but this looks good to me
Great video but I just don't see Mercedes as anything other than S tier. With BL being heavily melee focused, you're going to have damaged units all the time, and her healing output is by far the best.
I know what you mean. On other routes, I have to pull back some of my mages to go on healing duty. I dont think he is looking at this from their niche roles though. But yeah, Mercedes is the best at filling a much needed role.
I actually agree with this a lot more than your other ranking simply because the context you framed it in helped out a lot. Good job. I do think that Cyril should be ranked way higher though because of his stellar combat performance throughout the entire game. Between point-blank volley + death blow early / mid game and his Petra-tier speed growths, he's A if not A+ for me. The only other unit I'd move up would be Ignatz for his insane utility. Between easy access to rally speed + dex and break shot + seal strength, he's at least B+ if not A tier for me.
Based off of personal experience, my Caspar was one of my best units, he was getting strength and speed almost every level up, and was cranking out the damage without taking any heavy hits every turn. I get Caspar isn’t so lucky with others, but my personal maddening classic new game Caspar experience was hugely good. Too bad I benched him on other routes, simply because I wanted to use other characters.
Caspar certainly isn't a bad unit. Look at his personal skill. You can park him next to a flying monster with atrociously high evasion in Maddening, and everybody will gain a +10% chance to hit it. He basically ties with Sylvain both in base stats and in growths. Sylvain has two points higher speed and 10% better Defense growth, Caspar has two points higher luck and 10% higher dexterity and luck growths. Meaning Caspar will in the long run be comparable to Sylvain in most aspects, but a little bit more likely to hit the opponent and also more likely to crit. Sylvain is a great unit. He's a little more defensive, but I'd say his personal skill is worse than Caspar's, and those extra two points of speed don't matter that much in the long run.
Second comment incoming: I also absolutely agree with the utility against fliers, especially peg. and falco knights. Those enemies are ridiculously scary to fight, as they are really evasive and will most likely one-round most of yoir units. So more hit is appreciated, which can also stack with linked attacks and supports. This is also the reason I actually don't think Gilbert deserves to be as low as he is: In chapter 14, there are so many falco knights, your units struggle to keep up with defeating these monsters before the situation ecalates. This is where Gilbert comes in: His speed is awful, but that doesn't matter in that scenario, since everyone gets doubled by them anyway. His value is that he can tank at least 2 falco knights in a turn and do pretty good damage against them, considering he either already has or is close to getting (I don't quite remember which) Lancebreaker. This makes Gilbert quite crucial, since your go to supertank (Dedue) isn't avaiable at that time.
Theres other problems with Caspar such as his defense which you mentioned, as well as his charm and authority, but let talk about those two points of speed. Lets say for some reason you have them both at the start of the game. An early game enemy has an AS of 4 that means Sylvain can double. Caspar cannot that means Sylvain might be able to get the kill and at worst is a better chipper allowing a weaker unit to get the kill. Plus cause he doubles his personal ability, that was only plus 2 damage turned to plus 4 damage. Now lets say the Enemy has AS of 3, Caspar still can't double. Now who are you more likely to feed exp to a unit that is doing overall better now and will continue to be good or a unit that given enough time might be as good as the unit your using rn. Every time you feed exp to Caspar your stunting another units growth. So your right in the long haul they might be similar but personally I would just rather use the good unit now. *Now I didn't take weapon weight into account but if you do it gets worse for Caspar.
Sylvain has 2 points higher base speed and a 5% higher speed growth. Maddening mode is entirely about speed/str/mag, and to a lesser extent, dex. Luck is virtually irrelevant on a character like Caspar. Speed is way more important than luck, as luck will only affect .5% of crit chance, and crit avoid which is pretty useless with divine pulse. I'd rather have a character with 20 spd and 0 luck in maddening than one with 16 spd and 20 luck. On top of that, as was stated in the video, his recruitment requirements absolutely suck, and are the main reason he's at the bottom. Non ng+ maddening Caspar is only a decent unit in Crimson Flower where you have access to him immediately, and can put him in a class that pads his speed. In Normal/Hard, it really doesn't matter.
I think the placement of Ferdinand should be reconsidered. Yeah, Byleth doesn't want to go into Armor Knight, but getting to C armor for Weight -3 is not a bad investment on Maddening. Raphael is...regrettably bad on Maddening since he just can't catch up to the speed curve so him being in C makes more sense, but Ferdinand still puts in the work for the ranks in armor needed to get him.
Ferdinand has obvious disadvantages being you have to get to D+ or C armour depending on your support rank. But just the fact that he gets Swift Strikes and can easily fulfill a role as a wyvern should put him up higher in the list. On the topic of armour rank Byleth can become an armour knight just to get the base 12 defence if they have been growing poorly. This still doesn't exactly make training armour the best use of activity points even after taking Weight -3 into account, but it's still worth keeping in mind if Byleth gets Def screwed. With Seteth I have mixed feelings about. Without a doubt he has great combat potential with a decent rally on the side, but he has his fair share of problems. His availability isn't fantastic, joining only in ch12 then returning ch14. His base speed of 18 can lead to him quite easily being doubled. With his bulk this rarely leads to him being one rounded but still can deal a lot of damage that can be hard to manage. As a final note with all the units with Swift Strikes it gives them two chances to proc their respective crests. While not game changing for these units but it can be real powerful considering the increased enemy bulk. It can help Sylvain kill or Ferdinand/Seteth avoid counters while chipping units. Love the work you do FED keep up the good work. Edit: I think one thing everyone has forgotten is that you lose Lorenz at the start of part 2, only recruiting him back at the end of ch 16. while this doesn't really effect you if you just recruit him for Thyrsus it does lower his combat potential.
Yeah definitely agree that the Seteth is only really 'good to go' in Hard. The lack of easy access to Death or Darting Blow combined with low base speed means his Maddening combat is not great.
You can't fix somebody's speed by putting them in a class with higher speed. They are still going to be slow as shit, so they might as well have zero. Fire Emblem is a game of extremes and if your speed isn't really good you might as well not have any, especially in maddening mode.
Yeah, like, Gilbert's speed is 2. That's not fixable without an absurd amount of stat boosters that would be better served on someone else. And that's not what he's there for. His combat is decent enough as a Great Knight. He doesn't double, he gets doubled, but he takes little to no damage from physical units that do double him. Sure, he's not the best for efficient play, but he's honestly not the worst with a little investment. That's just one example. Trying to fix a slow unit's speed isn't really worth it. Dedue for instance doesn't really need to be fast. He's untouchable by physical units, will sometimes survive one round against a magic unit, has good enemy phase and not even horrible player phase. Just use Axes, Gauntlets, and Bows on him and he has everything he'll ever need to be a good combat unit. Speed is great, but it isn't everything if you have ways to make up for it. Dedue just has a harder time getting in to mounted classes though, but if you can get him there he'll serve you well. And honestly, with enemies like Swordmasters in Part 2 that are so fast that you'll never be able to get a unit to not be doubled by them, units like Dedue and Gilbert can be nice. Reliably doubling everyone in Part 2 is next to impossible on a normal playthrough.
Yeah, especially when the natural growth for the particular stat is below 30% then you better just focus on their better stats than trying to fix something that is beyond repair.
@@Xane875 My Gilbert got Def screwed, so he was never usable, but yeah. Even middling speed is hot garbage in maddening, so anyone with solid defense to make up for it is very useful.
I guess I'll start from the top down. Go ahead and put Lysithea in S. Faith is absolutely not going to be a problem for Byleth to get into early game, as they will be attending choir practice frequently to boost their Professor Level anyway. This allows them relatively easy access into Monk and subsequently Priest in comparison to Pegasus Knight (especially for male Byleth!), which also grants them a useful early-game +10 Charm Growth to facilitate recruiting characters like Hilda and Dorothea (and also do better with Battalions I guess). You make a compelling argument for putting Leonie ahead of Petra: she's still the second-fastest unit in the game, and she's a lot easier to recruit. Following this logic, however, *why is Ingrid not ahead of Leonie?* She's tied for third-fastest with Manuela, and you get her immediately upon choosing the Blue Lions, and you've already outlined how easy it is to patch her Strength when getting her that early, *and* this is all completely ignoring her Relic which gives her a Combat Art that says "Strength? Pfft, who needs that?" And she has one of the best Charm stats in the game (behind the house leaders, Seteth, Flayn, and eventually Hilda and Manuela, but that's still top 8), which synergizes well with her personal skill. Honestly, if Dimitri and I guess Felix didn't exist, you could make a compelling case for her carrying a Blue Lion's playthrough as their main bruiser/juggernaut. That much deserves Lysithea's former placement at the bare minimum. Sylvain should be dropped to the bottom of A. As pointed out elsewhere in another comment, his personal skill does not boost your female units, but gives a more selfish boost when *next to* a female unit. (Really, does a skill named "Philanderer" sound all that generous to you?) He's a solid unit, so B+ might be a bit too harsh, but unless you genuinely think he outperforms Catherine as a bruiser (which, according to the first Community Tier List video, you don't, and according to the subsequent videos, nobody does), I don't think his contributions outweigh literally anybody else in A. Annette should be raised to bottom of A+. In addition to her other qualities you outlined in this video, in Azure Moon specifically you gain access to the her Relic and therefore her unique Combat Art which, and I cannot stress this enough, has *20* Mt. And also inflicts Def-5, just on the off-chance that isn't enough to kill on its own. I don't think it's enough to surpass the other characters in A+ (apart from Sylvain, as outlined in the above paragraph), but it's certainly enough for her to be in their league. I'd move Dedue up to below Flayn in B+ just for aesthetic reasons, just so B doesn't have two more units than B+. While we're on the subject of B and B+, however . . . I am perpetually offended that you continue to insist ranking Lorenz above Caspar. Caspar's personal skill means he supports your team, especially on a difficulty like Maddening, merely by EXISTING, and despite his Support rank lock, recruiting him is actually surprisingly simple due to Byleth's proficiency in Gauntlets; just put them in punchy-mode early game and you're good. I would dare argue that Lorenz's Reason requirement makes him just as hard to recruit as Raphael and his Heavy Armor requirement, and basically all he contributes to the team upon recruitment is the ability to get a dumb Staff. Lorenz to between Alois and Raphael, Caspar to the new bottom of B+ (below Dedue). In fact, while we're at it, I'd also put Lindhardt in Dedue's old placement at the top of B, just because I think you understated how much investing in Reason hurt's Byleth's own character progression, even though otherwise Lindhardt really is a good unit. Summary of proposed changes: Lysithea A+ -> S Sylvain A+ -> A Ingrid and Annette A -> A+ Lindhardt B+ -> B Dedue B -> B+ Lorenz B -> C Caspar C- > B+
I can agree with this summary except for Dedue and Caspar. Caspar's personal isn't worth being stuck with Caspar as a unit. And Dedue very quickly becomes a liability on the team. He's better riding Dimitri in the Baby Bjorn as an Adjutant after a certain point. Sylvain is good for existing on Blue Lions because of his linked attacks that give +Mt to him and to Ingrid and Felix. Plus he has Lance of Ruin. So yeah, not as low as B+, but he can't spam LoR all day and he's not doubling much until Swift Strikes. So I think there's a good argument for dropping him to A. And while we're on Sylvain, I agree with you on Ingrid. We rank Leonie and Petra so high but you also just *start* with Ingrid. People talk about her getting Strength screwed, but on average she grows only 1 less point every 20 levels than those two. She gives and receives +Mt from Sylvain and Felix, she has better early game Charm and her personal helps with Gambits. Plus having her from the start means you are in control of how Strength screwed she really is. You are able to patch her up and give her Death Blow by going Brigand.
I heavily disagree with Caspar going to B+. The man is absolut garbage. His 6 base-speed is atrouciously bad. Even unequipped he gets doubled by almost everything. You would think that his growths compensate, but no. With 45 in str 45 in spd and 30 in def his growth are average at best. On average you would have to give him 5-7 lvls only to ctach up to your faster units speed at lvl.1. Compared to Petra, even 9 lvls. Yes a lvl. 10 Caspar is on average as fast as a lvl.1 Petra , which is as ridiculous as it sounds. Yes his personal skill is useful, but mostly on paper. Everytime you put Caspar anywhere near the frontlines early-game the man is dead meat. Neither his speed nor his defense hold up. So you can use his skill only, if you heavily favour his position and give him one of the few safe spots. But lets say you babysit him through early and mid-game and than what? People often say he is a good warmaster, but that is actually untrue. Warmaster is just a good class in general, which is why you think he performs well. Every single male physical unit with decent bases, which is like 90% of all male physical units make a better warmaster. You have to favor and babysit him through almost half of the game, only to be rewarded with a warmaster, who will still perform worse than most of your other units would in that class. But wait you can get some utility with his skills and gambits you say? Well actually no, you cant. The man doesnt get any useful rallys. To top it off the man has a bane in authority. That ensures that you cant give him a good battalion without heavily favouring him, making him even worse than he already is. Caspar is a really really bad unit. One of the worst units in the game. Not quite THE worst but most definetly in the top 5 dishonorable mentions. Even if you play the BE-route he barely makes it to C-Tier. Caspar basically combines all the bad attributes into 1 character. 1) Very bad bases, which cant be compensated by his at best average growths. 2) No utility. 3) No access to good battalions without favouritism. 4) Very weak early game 5) Weak mid game 6) Somewhat passable late game is his only quality and the only reason he sits in the C-Tier To top it off in the BL/GD-routes you have to intentionally waste your time on getting the punching-rank, instead of leveling lance/axe or sword makes Caspar the poop of the poop. You are basically making your Byleth worse. Getting abilities like death blow and darting blow a bit later due to using gauntlets actually makes quite a difference. In any route other than BE he should be a D-Tier. FED is still much too soft on him putting him as high as C-Tier. You basically use Caspar if you want to give yourself a bigger challenge or if you really like him, but certainly not for his unit-viability. Now a little bit about Lorenz. Let me say this straight. I agree that combat-wise Lorenz is also really bad. As a unit in a vacuum he is probably around C-Tier. But: 1) Lorenz, especially as a mage, has significantly better early game than Caspar. (Which still wont get him out of C-Tier) 2) His recruitment actually wont slow down your Byleth and cripple important weapon ranks. (Which still wont get him out of C-Tier) 2) The "dumb staff" you speak of is arguably the best utility item in the whole game and will improve your gameplay significantly. Thyrsus alone brings more to the table than Caspar and to be fair Lorenz ever will, even combined. It is well worth to recruit Lorenz for his staff alone, possibly benching him immediately after. Depending on how highly you value Thyrsus Lorenz could jump the ranks quite significantly. So B-Tier feels allright to me. As a side note Lorenz paralogue can be done in 1 turn on maddening.
@@manuelmuller4267 I'm not sure what I'm more flabbergasted by, the fact that you wrote an entire essay lambasting Caspar, or that two people upvoted it already. Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I did not point out the inconsistencies with reality here: First of all, who really even cares about Caspar's bane in Authority? Like, sure, it sucks a bit that he gets into higher-ranked Battalions slower than other characters, but you're still going to give him a Battalion anyway. It's not like he is actively punished for using them in the early game and you have to dance around finding him a suitable one for the late game, as is the case with Felix. Literally the whole reason I make my case for Caspar is for the utility his personal skill provides. You cannot merely gloss over that and say he provides "no utility." ??? How is leveling Byleth's Gauntlets making them a worse character??? Like, they're already proficient in it, so it's not like it even takes them any time to get to C-rank in the first place. They don't need to use their activity points on learning gauntleting, as opposed to all the activity points they would need to spend to even at all get into Reason. Like, honestly, how would you even *get* female Byleth into Peg Knight before C-ranking Gauntlets naturally? Remember, you're spending all of your early game activity points on activities that increase professor level, so that you can get more activity points. This one is more of a nitpick than anything but why would you make Caspar a War Master when you can make him into a perfectly good Wyvern Lord? Granted, this doesn't really change your point any at all apart from doing a find-and-replace, but there are some pre-conceptions about which characters go into which classes that the community has which I will never understand. Take Dedue, for instance: why on Earth would you ever make him (or anyone for that matter?) into a Fortress Knight? HE'S the Blue Lions character who most naturally fits into the role of War Master! But I digress. Anyway, bottom line, I never said that Caspar would get anywhere as a bruiser; goodness no, there are precious few units who should even cut it in that role to begin with! What I *am* saying is that his value as a front-line support unit has been routinely and criminally underrated, particularly considering that variety of utility can be found effectively nowhere else in the game. (Yes, Dark Bishop mastery technically gives Heartseeker, but you're not putting Hubert on the front lines, now are you?) IMO, that puts him at least at a high B; I would honestly only move him to B+ simply so that B doesn't seem lopsided in unit count compared to B+. It is promising to see that at least most of my post is uncontroversial, but hoo boy did what I say about Caspar rub some people the wrong way . . .
This video puts WAY too much emphasis on recruitment requirements for the students (the ease of obtaining the faculty is a definite perk though). Outside of Ferdinand and Caspar, all the students are pretty much equal since the most efficient way to recruit them is to stuff them with gifts and flowers to B Support. Even with the RNG, you're almost always going to get the student you want to randomly join your class faster than it takes to grind your Byleth even for skills that you can passively earn like Authority or your choice of weapon to where you need it to be.
I don't think loading up students with gifts is quite as cut and dry as you're implying, but yeah it's honestly a fairly easy way to recruit. By the logic of recruiting with gifts though, we actually should rank Bernadetta higher because it's really easy to stockpile Pitcher Plants, and nobody else competes for those as a favorite gift.
@@A2ZOMG Isn't it that cut and dry though? Between all the gifts and lost items just lying around the Monastery, conversation perks, advise box, birthdays, flowers, and cheap gifts once you finish the merchant quest, it's ridiculously easy to get the handful of characters you'll really want up to B Support. Even in New Game+ where I had plenty of activity points to mess around with, the only students I recruited by meeting their requirements were Dorothea and Ignatz since ranking up in Authority is pretty easy and not a waste of time. They ended up being among the last students I recruited to my house.
@@shawn1603 True. I left that off because there's significant opportunity costs and you're probably going to want to use the activity point to top off the students in your house's motivation.
@@JonSmith-hk1bq the point is in any given regular playthrough, character recruitment is in fact a limited resource/opportunity cost especially when weighed against reserving items and professor actions for student instruction. Characters who require less of any of those resources naturally should score higher based on availability. Which goes back to my argument that Bernadetta for example doesn't compete with anyone for Pitcher Plants (a common Greenhouse drop) as a favorite gift, and thus should be ranked higher by availability logic, since it makes her much easier to B support than most other units.
I think Cyril should be either high B tier or low B+ tier. Yes, he has bad bases. Yes, he gets worse and worse the longer you wait to recruit him. But he is by far the easiest to recruit, not to mention Byleth generally hits level 10 pretty quickly purely because of how good they are. Generally by the time you recruit him your units deployed will most likely still be 9/10 so you're not putting him in over other units. PBV may be his crutch but it's a damn fine one that gives him a great early game niche and makes it easy for him to gain XP for future success. And his growths can be compared to Petra's where he's either tied or higher than hers. Finally, his skill set sets him up incredibly well to go brigand > wyvern rider > wyvern lord. While I do think his bases aren't good and that if you're recruiting him any later than maybe chapter 7 he's garbage, by playing smartly and recruiting him early before chapter 5 he has the potential to be a monster of unit. I think the fact that his performance is so heavily tied to when you recruit him holds him back from the real high tiers but bottom of B tier seems kinda harsh, especially when you compare him to the archer trio further up the tier.
other than caspar and ferdinand I dont think recruitment requirements should be considered at all, it doesnt hurt byleth to get a B with those that can by giving them all the gifts and lost items.
Yeah I agree they're being overrated. I know tier lists generally don't like 'unreliable' stuff, but if you get a B support they're going to join your class unless it's month 11 or something. Just might hurt their availability if it takes a month or two.
Recruitment requirements are still somewhat important given Gift items aren't totally unlimited. Having easier access to more than one option to recruit a unit is still important for overall efficiency. With that being said, I would actually argue that Bernadetta should possibly be ranked higher since she's one of the easier units to get to B support as long as you have a lot of Pitcher Plants.
@@A2ZOMG You still have tea parties, meals, cooking, mission assistance and choir that all raise support rank. Tea Parties in particular you get 1 free one per character, sure you have wait until birthdays, but they still increase support by a ton.
In regards to the armor rank needing units (Ferdinand, Raphael, etc.) one benefit of Byleth getting armor rank is weight -3, still not that good to train, but that is something to consider
@@louiesatterwhite3885 Well, it has it's uses, since the weight of weapons can get pretty high and how AS actually gets calculated. How much weight is reduced is determined by the str value divided by 5. In other words, quite a lot of weapons (especially axes) will weigh you down quite a bit, even in lategame. Weight -3 basically gives an effective +15 str towards AS calculation. No matter how you slice it... that is not a small amount.
Gillbert is better than Caspar and Ferdinand imo. Caspar and Ferdie's requirements are pretty absurd considering fists and heavy armor are generally ranks that you don't want on Byleth, even if you do manage to recruit them, probably sacrifising some good sword rank that you could've got on Byleth in the process, they would only join pretty far in pre-timeskip, their stats would be only alright and their weapon ranks would be lower in comparison to your other units. Gillbert joins on the first post-timeskip chapter, which shouldn't be too far from the chapter you've recruited Caspar/Ferdie (unless you use grappler/fortress knight Byleth) with good ranks, useful bulk and a good rally, all for FREE. Gillbert might not be able to keep up with the rest of the army for the lategame chapters, but he is worth using for some part of the game, unlike Caspar and Ferdie which aren't worth the trouble of recruiting in my honest opinion.
I would add that Gilbert also gets immediate access to brave lance and brave axe, it's not much but it does allow him to double if needed, so he could kill off some weaker enemies (like archers or snipers), with lance breaker he can kill off some Cavaliers and pegasus knights (probably not killing any Palladians or falcon knights) again not great but he can contribute I'd argue better than Raphael.
Caspar is necessary for the Rafail gem which is pretty good but only pretty good. I'd agrue that might give him B tier or at least top of C tier. Oh and you don't have to deal with his crappy bases but get his good growths.
You never have to actually have him see any combat whatsoever in order to get the gem, so that doesent affect his ranking at all. If anything it would actually lower his ranking as you are forced to put in the resources to recruit him if you want to get the gem, when you could have spent them on something else instead.
its true, riding is a PAIN for byleth to learn. But marriane is one of the better units imo. The question is really this; is it worth training your riding for her, who is a healer like mercedes? The answer is... maybe? Marrianes got a lot going for her so you won't regret getting her if you work for it. But should you? Versatility: this girl can be a good holy knight, dark knight, gremory, bishop, and more innate ability: Late game when most of your units will be flying or on horses, her ability heals her if she's next to them. Relic: She get's a damn good relic blutgang. its a magic sword this allows her to be a non magic based unit if you want to go that way, like a cavelier and falcon knight. The requirement to get is... to have just her and beat hers story mission. Not bad. combat arts: i think she's one of 2 people who get soul blade AND frozen lance. (and she does it WAY better than ingrid). And her relic's CA beast fang is good vs cavalry units. Edmond troops: Her personal battalion is IMO top 10 at least, and suits her very well. +40 hit, and boosts might AND magic. AND OBVIOUSLY.... she heals She can do a lot for your team, even if mercedes is alive and well. but... geez riding sucks to learn, especially since byleth usually won't be riding.
I would put manuela a bit lower, you can't recruit her until after the battle of the eagle and lion, and the only thing she has is warp and you can't make her learn black magic until the third week you teach her reason if you are lucky and would still struggle to teach her more
3:04 I guess putting Gilbert backwards into the brigand line and going down through Wyvern lord could help his speed somewhat, but by the time that he joins at level 26 with 2 speed that's going to be hard to pull off. Perfectly understandable putting him at the bottom.
Honestly Caspar should join Gilbert in D-Tier. He is the poop of the poop. His recruitment requirement definetly tips the scale from C -> D this time. For a more elaborate explanation anyone should read my reply to TazTheYellow, before replying here. Side note. You have a very plesant voice FED keep it up^^
My Felix in my first playtbriugh was a monster with how amazing he was. Him with sword and eeaosn is definitely the best and make in Mortal savant. He and Dimitri and Sylvian ended up being like 10 levels higher than anyone else
Hilda disappoints you because of her combat? What? You crazy bro. Her strength, dex, and speed are all great for me. It’s just kinda tough to get her authority up but definitely doable.
I think the only changes I would make would be to nudge Lysithea up to S, and to bump Mercedes up to the bottom of A+. I just have such a hard time imagining a world in which I don't abuse the sheer numbers these ladies can put up. To make a case for Mercie, I think Fortify is NUTS especially in a game mode where your units are going to be taking round after round of heavy chip. Fortify stuffs multiple turns of healing action economy into one turn, and playing around that opens up a new level of aggression you can push with less versatile infantry units, like GL!Dimitri or WM!Felix. I guess by this logic I could try to nudge Flayn up a tier as well, though her lack of Physic hurts on the turns where the mass heal isn't necessary. But Rescue is a nice consolation prize. Maybe the Flayn/Mercedes Faith core is worth more experimentation. Hard to say, as I didn't use Flayn much in my last playthrough.
Best list so far. Few minor gripes. Ingrid should be higher in A. While her strength is a little suspect, ingrid is the only damage dealer with high enough res to tank magic early on, which is important on maps like ch 5 and 6. Shamir should be somewhere in A. Her personal ability and being able to go pegasus almost instantly patches her speed issues, and having silver bow heavy draw on a flier early on is being undervalued.
I agree that armor knight is a bad class to stay in but heavy armor is a great proficiency to train. Neither Defense 12 nor weight -3 require actually re-classing to armor knight. I can see the argument for specifically Byleth not wanting it as much as someone like Petra or Ingrid though.
I had Raphael doing 80 damage an attack on maddening with minimal investment, he’s p insane as a vantage build and he benefits a lot from defiant strength. All you really need to make him shine is swords and axes, use the same build tactics for dedue and you’re good to go with two powerhouses who hardly take damage.
I found Caspar got a passing grade for my no-NG Maddening runs because his combart arts enabled a lot of oneshot hit-and-run attacks. His accuracy was easy enough to patch up with batallions or a ring. That said, he is totally not worth the effort of C rank gauntlets to unlock, lol.
Haha. All jokes aside I really like her early silence/physic in blue lion playthroughs. It makes the potato res stats of most of the BL units irrelevant and disabling an enemy unit is sometimes as valuable as killing it.
Dedue is quite tanky in part 1 for me. I’ve used him as a Vengeance bot and he hasn’t disappoint. Of course like you said, he disappears for a few chapters in part 2. He does get 4 levels when he comes back so there’s that. But yea, he’ll be better off as a adjutant if you have no further plans for him.
A few comments about this. Dedue unlike other units has the chance of never showing back up and actually being dead if you choose to not do his paralogue. Since his paralogue offers no real rewards, the only reward is your Dedue doesn't die, you might want to do other paralogues that have better rewards. Like Ashe's for boots, or Relic paralogues. There is a certain point where if you recruit every character you might barely have enough time to do every paralogue to get every reward, but imho the relics/boots are worth more than getting a subpar early/mid game unit in the late game. Cyril is being slept on way too hard. You're only looking at the base numbers which rarely matter at all in this game. Even Mekkeh has stated that bases in this game pale in comparison to other FE games because this game is so focused on growths > bases. Cyril from the time you recruit him can go straight into Brigand, patching his strength up to 50% and having 60% in both Dex and Speed. He starts with C bows which means he only needs 2 tutoring sessions and 2 weeks of Goals set to only Bows, which means he'll have Point Blank Volley before the chapter battle. This bandages his bad bases by giving guaranteed doubles, 10 hit and +3 might. He also has a very easy time transitioning into a Wyvern class as he has proficiency in Lance/Axe and Flying, making his utility even better now that he can do Point Blank Volley then Canto away. Cyril is only bad in Silver Snow as you cannot get him until Chapter 12 making his growths pretty sub par. You put way too much emphasis on recruitment requirements. You generally want to wait a little bit to recruit some characters due to the auto scaling the game does on maddening, so you really only have to worry about Ferdinand's requirement later on as you can have both Alois and Gilbert teach you heavy armor once a week until its D+, which should only take around 3-5 weeks depending on your luck. This can easily be solved by doing the training once a month at the start of each month, or when you're not in need of Auxiliary/Paralogue battles. It really isn't that hard if you plan it out properly. Caspar's is even easier as Byleth has a proficiency in Fists, making it pretty quick to level if you just slap on some training gauntlets and go into the brigand class, which you want to do for Death Blow anyways. Adding on to the recruiting, the rest of the characters you just need to reach B rank. There are so many ways to increase support level and lots of them give large amounts of it if you plan ahead and give the right gifts to the right people. First off, every character has a gift that they like, some have several that they like. Give them those gifts, and lost items for large support rank gains. Tea Parties are another way to gain a lot of support rank as long as you know what you're doing in them and there isn't really an excuse to not know what answers to pick since Serenes Forrest exists. Honestly the recruitment requirements shouldn't be held so high as they're so easy to work around, maybe not completely disregard them but don't hold them so high. I figure crests really aren't factored into this, but Linhardt's crest is incredibly nice to have and is much better than Mercedes' crest. Not to mention that later in the game he can also help out a lot against Pegasus knights/Wyverns with Excalibur as if he was a magic archer. Only a few units can get Excalibur as well. Dorothea having Meteor is pretty great as it means she can "assist" from pretty far away on the map unlike most units who need to be adjacent or 2 -3 range away. Hilda doesn't give +2 Atk and Def, she only gives +3 Atk. This really helps a ton in the early game, but since this is AM probably wont be as useful. Nothing else to say there. Catehrine is just one of the better units in the game with one of the best relics in the game. She's great if you recruit her early, she's great if you recruit her later, she's just amazing. If you recruit early then you can get her into flying and lances for Pegasus -> Falco Knight which is pretty amazing with her relic. Sylvain doesn't buff female units, he buffs himself. He's solid, maybe too solid sometimes. Petra segment. You never have to "just hope" since you can save before a week and if the unit doesn't auto recruit then you just close the game and reload until they do. Its the only feature you can soft reset, though if you don't like doing this or count this as "grindy/non-efficient" then I understand. Leonie good The rest are good.
i find it a bit of a Irk that Caspar is so hard to get for azure moon initially, considering you NEED his supports along Mercedes to get the "resolution" scene for her with the dread knight.
I will say it again dancer Ferdinand with sword is OP at full hp he cannot be hit. He can pretty much solo maddening by himself. But I understand it's a pain to recruit him
my first play through i did fortress knight byleth and had 60 def and res and took 0s from the final boss asw well as magic and had S+ in every weapon class i think its pretty good ^^
I would say reason on byleth is probably the worst skill to get, unless you're going for lifetaker late game. Since Levin Sword+ exists, byleth will almost never want to use black magic, even if you got 1-3 range. Byleth is the convoy, so spells are particularly useless for him. Nosferatu with white magic avo+20 is pretty useful, though.
the list is built on blitzing the boss with warp skipping and WLs which isn't wrong in terms of short term efficiency, but if you play a balanced style here are some thoughts. I actually think the list is pretty spot on even then (but too much emphasis on endgame) - you can't train Dimitri early part 2 so I'd say its more practical to invest in riding early (budding talent) and get +4 dex and +1 mov than to invest in flying and axes which you need A's in. If you give him give him the Death Knight weapon from the Mercedes paralogue and +10 crit from S Lances, he can easily get to massive crit values with his naturally high dex stat esp if you stay in the Lord line - you automatically have Ashe and you might as well already have Catherine, which gives you free access to a permanent +1 mov item in the paralogue. I don't think this should reflect in the tier list, but giving that to Dedue or another infantry provides significant benefits in the early game - Sylvain, Ingrid, Felix all have +3 might when adjacent through supports. Also, Sylvain gets +2 might/def being next to a female character. This makes Sylvain's swift strikes and additional +18 overall (it hits twice and +1 already) before enemy action (plus another +10 if you pick a class with lancefaire). His crest also boost arts. - you can move Dedue to max range, wait for +4 def, then you use special dance for +4 Dex/Speed/Luck, then move again to attack, or bait enemies by waiting for another +4 def. Not something that should reflect in the tier list, but it does come up. His biggest draw is that there are a lot of choke points in part 2 maps but he still falls off hard. - give Ashe the Killer Bow+ and spam crits with double attacks or Hunter's Volley midgame (highest natural dex stat and 55% growth, great speed also). This is probably the only way he shines honestly, but 60+ crit is easy to achieve due to massive dex bonuses in the sniper line and consistently kills if he's doubling or using hunters volley (+10 crit, hits twice). Ignatz does the same better but... you have to use Ashe early. +4 Dex from C Riding ain't bad either.
ps Caspar sucks but having him gets you to the Scythe of Sariel and the Rafael Gem, which are some of the best items in the game. You can recruit him and then just make him a guard adjutant after fulfilling his purpose. Also, if you're not gonna bother playing the paralogues, especially Mercedes' on Azure Moon, I have no idea what you are doing playing this game
I think that Leonie should be moved up too S tier. She is pretty much a free recruit as Byleth will want to go peg knight or wyvern which both require lances to get and Byleth will easily hit the strength requirement. Also on top of her amazing growths the enemy cavalier growths make them much higher. Just by auto leveling she will have a 60% strength 60% speed and 55% defense which is pretty much all the stats she needs to be good.
eh Idk, man. I feel like Byleth doesn't have a clear path. Byleth makes a great dodge tank white magic unit which he wouldn't be able to utilize as a physical class.
I feel like not a lot of people realize if you get people to C support and get a D+ in their required proficiency then people will join your class, you dont NEED a C rank proficiency, also with Cyril, he still has the highest growth total, and he literally has equal or better growths compared to Petra (this is after adding aptitude obvi), with an unbelievably easy path to wyvern, and I'd also argue his lower base stats arent as relevant because the base stats of the intermediate classes are usually a good starting point, and the growths those classes add are how units really start consistently getting good levels anyway
I’d move Hilda down just due to how difficult recruiting her is if you aren’t using NG+. I’d move Marianne up just due to how useful Physic is, it’s a literal lifesaver.
Not to take away anything from Felix since he is one of the best physical units in the game. But Dimitri should be alone in S tier. Best growths in the game. Even in maddening mode similar to Edelgard he can take hits and I'd assume he still will be a monster in any class you choose. Although I believe Great Lord is his best class. Since you can just focus on his lance and authority skills and make him stupidly strong. Felix's weakness in Authority is a big negative especially considering in maddening since gambits are so crucial in this mode. With that being said I do believe Felix's best class is actually War Master. Yes Wyvern Lord is, in general, is the best class in the game, but given Felix's crest and how often it activates and his high speed, he will be quading and killing very frequently. You can recruit characters like Petra, Hilda to be flyers plus Ingrid and Sylvain should be a Falcon Knight and Wyvern Lord respectively. I do believe Ingrid should be up a tier. Sure she does have a strength issue in the early game, but that does get fixed post time skip. And IMO she is actually comes close to Dimitri due to her becoming an amazing evasion tank with high resistance. Getting A in Flying is a must have for Ingrid. Honestly, she is a life savior on Azure Moon's final map. Not to mention her relic is super strong and her Personal skill makes hitting with gambits easier on maddening when gambit accuracy becomes an issue. To me, she should be right in front of Sylvain, but both should be higher then Leonie since Leonie can't get B support till chapter 10 I believe. And if you are using Male Byleth you have no reason to train lances. Mainly since the only class, they would need to train lances for is Cavalier/Paldian which are horrible class choices for Byleth. Beyond that, the only thing I would change is put Ashe lower. Sure you get him right away but Bernie has all the tools Ashe has but has a better personal skill and has a great crest skill with low activation. Although recruiting her might not seem ideal. Ignatz personal skill is so helpful in maddening and recruiting him is easy since Byleth will be increasing Authority without much faculty training. Honestly, Cyril might make a better Bow Knight then Ashe. Better growths with aptitude and has proficiencies in lances, bows and riding so training him is easier. Plus you get Cyril fairly early.
I agree with most of the list. I would probably swap Hilda and Ingrid since they are similar in function, but Hilda has a much easier time getting to the same end. She naturally grows axe rank when not recruited, which is needed for wyvern, and has a somewhat similar growth spread. She loses 10 from spd and puts it on str, as well as moving 10 mag to HP. Ingrid has stellar RES but neither are particularly good with DEF. With B support her recruit is D axe and 12 charm, so it shouldn't be held against her too much since I assume people get B support with anyone they intend to recruit, and her requirement is super easy. Plus they both have hero relics available pre-timeskip, so even in that aspect they are fairly even. Ingrid may be one of the best mage killers in the game, but that is all she is able to effectively kill. Hilda can murder anything and everything you want her to.
I think Quick Riposte is so good that it puts male Byleth above female, but your sacrificing flying probably, but I wonder how much of a problem that really is on Byleth. You got the +2 Boots to give someone, and the only two guys I’d consider handing it to over him is Felix and Dimitri
@@erikbell1723 No, you need Ingrid to get Luin, something to note for non-AM runs. You can do the paralogue with just Dorothea recruited, but you don't get any special rewards.
I disagree with the idea that you have to use a ton of your activity points in order to recruit some of these other characters. You can easily make up for the XP you lose with knowledge gem, and you should have A+ professor level by week one of chapter nine anyway. I think you are overvaluing the relative cost to byleth for some of the more out of the way recruits, especially considering the relative strength of said units in comparison to their contemporaries. Even spending meal time on units can be circumvented with gifts. Sure if you go for ALL the units you compromise byleths strengths, but going for one or two out of the way units? at most thats 8 activity points over the course of the entire run. essentially chump change. Lysithia goes to S, below dimitri, Ferdinand goes to B tier, between dedue and ashe, and Marianne goes between dorothea and manuela. Catherine moves up to A+, below petra. Thunderbrand is still easily one of the strongest weapons in the game, and Catherine as a unit is absolutley nuts. Note she is one of the only units capable of safely murdering the death knight by chapter six. Everything else i more or less agree with.
I wouldn't even say you compromise Byleth's strengths because getting B support is very easy to do thanks to gifts, meals, TEA PARTIES (THIS IS A BIG ONE), lost items, choir, stat boosting cooking and mission assistance. Seriously there are so many ways to raise support rank that recruitment is sooooo easy to do. The worst is Ferdie because that's the only thing you have to compromise something bad for.
In terms of Sylvain comparison, he starts with 1 less HP and 2 less SPD, and Sylvain has better SPD and DEF growths. He starts slower than sylvain, and assuming average stat gains will remain slower than sylvain. I don't think Caspar is as bad as people say he is, but his base stats are really awful so he requires much more work to reach the same ends, which can be rather detrimental on Maddening without NG+.
@@baylorlaw2001 definitely very useful, but it takes quite a bit of training to get her there unless you more or less solely focus on bows, when ideally you are also going to want to focus on training quite a few other things as well (axes to get death blow from brigand, flying or riding so she can be in a class that will allow her to take the most advantage of vengeance, etc) so it will likely be a while before she can use that, whereas vengeance can be easily obtained as early as chapter 3 or 4 (or 5 on blue lions and golden deer), without significantly cutting into your ability to train other things that much. Plus, in most cases vengeance will be more useful as a way of deleting enemies instead of just allowing you to ignore them for a turn. This isn't to take away from how good encloser is, especially against monsters where even a 1hp vengeance with death blow and lancefaire is rarely enough to one shot, and its definitely something you should always get for her, but its less significant to her than vengeance is in most situations.
Not at all, Wyvern is just the best class in the game so people spam jerk it. You can use Byleth as any other sword class and they'll perform very well. Swordmaster, Hero and Assassin are all very easy to get on Byleth, a lot easier to get than Wyvern which will require flying training to D for Fem and C for Male, and on top of that you'll have to focus on using weapons other than personal sword. Obviously Enlightened One is also a very solid class.
@@chadachi3970 Agreed. Although I would say Enlightened One is the only magic class Byleth should become since Enlightened One has better growths and skills then Mortal Savant. And making female Byleth a Gremory is a waster since she doesn't have too many spells that you want double of. Plus their magic growth isn't the best. But anyway Byleth can be SwordMaster, Enlightened One, Assasin, Falcon Knight, Wyvern Lord, or War Master and do extremely well. I'd argue that you should make your Byleth a different class depending on the route since obviously the initial students you start with and keep if you choose Black Eagles will obviously be different.
@@tripleaamin3634 Yeah that's not a bad idea. Though I would always say to not go into flying classes unless you want to heavily hinder your early game for a better late game specifically for Byleth. On NG+ that's different because ez pz renown shop or max activity points, however on NG you're missing out on meals which really help certain units reach weapon rank benchmarks at certain points in the game. Like Lysithea in time for the first Death Knight encounter. I did this on my GD NG run and I needed every bit of activity points I could get for Lysithea's Reason rank for her to get some free EXP that only she can reasonably get at that point. I would always say that its better to work on Bows than it is to work on Flying, assassin provides amazing growths for Byleth and D+ to C bows is fairly easy to get. I say D+ because you could always just risk the 60-70% passing chance and never touch bows again.
watching this Im convinced this dude never bothered with the monastery because he focuses so much on recruitment though skills instead of just getting them to B support.
Caspar and Ferdinand can't reach B support with Byleth because they are locked until part 2. They HAVE to be recruited through skills. There is no other way.
I like the idea for this new series a lot more than the original tier list series you made. Making different tier lists for each route is more nuanced and realistic since you're putting the issue of recruitment in clear focus.
shamir will be the first one to get hunters volley. bypassing speed.
Although Cyril can get point blank volley first. Although it's extremely dangerous to use until you are mounted.
Dorothea gets meteor, not bolting
I think in the general list he said Hanneman got Bolting as well. ...Maybe it's impossible for him to recognize Meteor as a spell that exists? ;P
Dedue in particular is extremely underrated as a unit. He is missing in a few chapters but his strong opening game with high defenses and simple/useful ability help. Late game all he needs is quick reposte, probably the most broken skill out there. It shuts down enemy doubles on him regardless of AS differences, his super high HP and defense stat keeps him above 50% threshold at all times , and he always gets a double with his crazy high attack stat. Sometimes in maddening you just need that guy who can bait and chip back and Dedue fills that niche best. Lastly, I believe its very possible IS will give us an endgame armor master class as one of the DLC class updates which would make this man even more fun to play.
While I actually agree that Dedue is fantastic in your first few chapters, where enemies are abundant and way stronger than even Byleth, his speed becomes more and more of an issue as the game progresses. Even ignoring the period where he's AWOL, quick reposte, supposedly his main saving grace, isn't going to come until the very end of the game. Assuming you're not grinding, you're going to have it for, like, 4 chapters. By that point your units will also be able to one round most enemies with combat arts and gambits anyway, so you're saving time by striding up and going on the offensive during player phase anyway. This isn't even mentioning how bad enemy phase is in general in Three Houses, what with all the 3+ range attacks out there. And as far as an armored master class goes, that would actually be Dedue's WORST option. War Master crit fishing is is most reliable source of damage, and quick reposte is his only saving grace for his pathetic speed. Especially considering that the "Niche" of a tank isn't even relevant by the time master classes come around
@@huntercarvey670 Those are all valid points. Perhaps we differ in our playstyles. With the right battalions equipped (some give as much as +10), Def+2 skill, add a shield, add in his ability, the occasional rally def and high def, Dedue by chapter 10 can reach the 35-40 defense and most enemies can't dent him, other then mages (ouch) or poison strike archers. Three houses is the easiest game to stack stats and all of the little extras really add up fast. He is always my #1 choice for baiting enemies because enemies that even hit 5x2(rarely) and get traded for equal damage is fantastic. All a tank really needs to do is lure out 1 unit, chip for damage, rinse, and repeat for the most part and he does a great job. Dedue should also have knuckles/ a bow early on in addition to an axe because with enemies getting steel swords in earlier chapters, their attack speeds really dip for some time, helping the bigboy grow. I used Dedue for lots of baiting and made sure he kept up in level with his glass cannon friends. Battalions and aggressive skills like the blow skills certainly make player phase tempting, but having a tank in harder modes is and has always been super viable. Eg. Radiant dawn had Haar and the key to lunatic+ awakening was to start with +def Robin. If they add a master class, (not great knight) I'd like to personally wait and see what they release before judgement. There is no endgame armor infantry and its possible we could see fun skills come back like sacred stones great shield or fun classes like the Spartan class.
@@huntercarvey670 honestly you dont even need to grind hard to get the skill at all. You still recieve class exp even if you dont equip a weapon and are involved in a battle so just dropping dedue in 1 map against enemies that can barely touch him and just spam turns to unlock any class skill. Plus you can use an adjundant on him to also farm their class skill at the same time. Not to mention he doesnt even really need a healer because of healing focus which you can easily get using the same technique.
@@leviponce7730 At 1:42 you can see that this tier list is in the context of an efficient playthrough, where you don't really stop to let a million generics wail on your tank for class exp. Also, even if this was something to consider, it wouldn't really be a bonus to Dedue more than it would be a bonus to anybody else, as literally any unit could just be an adjutant to a tanky unit like Raphael or even an evasion build of Ferdinand. I wouldn't even call healing focus a Dedue specific bonus, as it can be learned by, once again, ANY unit who puts time in with gauntlets.
@@huntercarvey670 I must disagree. On Maddening (No NG+), he is the best tank that can never be killed by any physical attack. And I don't even put QR on him since killing is not what he does. That's for Felix and his buddies. Dedue just need to stand at a strategic point to bait out all physical attackers. And he will always survive.
Today I decided to bring Catherine into the blue lions. Then I gave Felix thunderbrand.... did I break the game?
I'll defend Gilbert a bit here.
While I don't thing he is amazing or anything, he is relatively decent at the role he is supposed to fill: Being a Dedue replacement for the tank role.
While his speed will go nowhere, he has good defense and HP.
Combine that with his good access to Lancebreaker, he can actually counter the enemy peg. knight classline very well, which is VERY useful, since that classline in specific is terrifying to fight against.
Take chapter 14 for example:
That map just showers you with peg. and falco knights. So much so in fact that you team might struggle to keep up. Enter Gilbert. His HP, defense and potentially Lancebreaker allows him to at least take on 2 of these bastards in a single turn. Unless you have built another supertank during you playthrough, he is the only one that can actually take a beating from these guys. This is pretty important.
As I said, while it doesn't make him amazing or anything, at least that should get him out of D tier.
Petition to change “Not playable” to “Literally unplayable.”
I love Felix but he is in no universe a better unit than Dimitri. He's top tier for sure, but not Dimitri. His dex and defense are significantly lower making him far less reliable. Felix can kill anything, but he has to hit and dodge neither are a guarantee in early levels in harder modes. His edge in speed in no way makes up for Dimitri's far superior defense and dex, especially since Dimitri is fairly speedy himself. Felix's bane in authority is also far more problematic than Dimitri's in axes because battalions are incredibly useful, and Dimitri can easily slide into Bow Knight or just leave him as a Great Lord which is an excellent class.
28:55 he does more damage when a female is near. The females do not get buffed.
Recruiting Caspar is actually easier than recruiting Ferdinand. Brawling is something Byleth has proficiency in as opposed to Heavy Armor.
Yeah but Caspar is an awful unit. Ferdinand is actually solid as a unit.
Caspar is not too bad on other routes since you get past dealing with his awful bases based on how long you wait to recruit.
I would only recruit Caspar at least on BL because you can unlock the optional battle where you get the rafail gem which is nice. But other than that, I would just use him as either a guard adjutant or bench adjutant. Up to you really
My boi Caspar is OP after level 15 or so
Jason Brown how so? What build did you use?
Cyril’s seriously underrated.
He joins at C in both axe and bow. He only needs 120 points in bow to get C+ bow for pointblank, which only takes two weeks of training. Then he can already outdamage most characters. Then with his C axe he can easily get into brigand for death blow very quickly. Deathblow + pointblank would make him one of the best damage dealers in early game.
For late game, he can very easily get onto the wyvern route because he has proficiencies in all lance, axe and flying. And with his great speed and top-class dex and lck, he can obliterate everything from crits with pointblank + killer bow+.
(Edit:) his base str is 7, which is only 1 or 2 points below most physical characters. But pointblank volley gives 3 Mt and guaranteed double, which would more than enough make up for the low str. There’s no reason to complain about his low str base when he gets such a broken combat art early on. With steel bow + pointblank volley, he can easily outdamage most characters in early game even without death blow’s 12 extra damage.
You're focusing on a hypothetical late-game and not paying attention to how hard it is to get there.
As I already explained, his early game is very solid. He joins with C axe and C bow, with only 120 points in bow needed for pointblank volley. He basically gets pointblank volley in two weeks’ training. He’ll already be a solid damage dealer with that. Then after mastering brigand (axe C already covered), he’ll become one of the best damage dealers in early game. He basically has no problem getting through the early game.
@@zzabcd815 Dude, that's ignoring the most important thing in the early game: stats. His stats are awful and his growths aren't even exceptional. Outdamage other units? In what world? His strength is terrible. Crits don't mean much when they're for 0 damage and almost anyone can get death blow, so that's not a point in his favor.
He’s the only character that can double everything from the early game. Death blow only makes it even better. He is a few points low on base stats, but that isn’t the end of the world when he gets such easy access to pointblank volley and death blow.
@@zzabcd815 He's a lot of points low and it is the end of the world on Maddening. Also, where are you getting this idea that he's doubling people? Are you using Maddening as your frame of reference?
I pretty much agree with this list.
I think BL has the best units overall imo. All of them have some big selling point about them
Cyril should be higher. With his personal he's essentially the male version of Leonie/Petra/Ingrid. Guaranteed recruit. Will reach both the wyvern and bow knight class with minimal effort. Gets a very early point-blank volley for guaranteed doubling early game. You'll just want to recruit him asap.
His main problem is bad bases and that his personal isn't very good. They gave him aptitude but then made his base growths really shitty to make up for it. Its like they only gave him aptitude because they had to have that villager character who has that skill, which is kinda just dumb if they're gonna butcher his bases to make up for it.
Otherwise i do agree he's a pretty solid unit to have around, flyer with PBV is pretty insane and he's 100 to 0 many enemy fliers without risk thanks to it.
Sadly my Cyril died at the end of chapter 12 and i had no more DP, so i wasn't gonna reset just for him.
Bernadetta gets encloser at A bows, which can permanently lock down almost any unit outside of counter-attack range. If anything, she can work on bows as a goal for the entire game and get it. I don't think she's particularly great on azure moon, or even in general outside encloser, but it's just such a good combat art, and nobody has that utility outside Claude. It can definitely be a lifesaver on overwhelming maps, or if you want to feed experience (even briefly without really wasting turns) to another unit by keeping something locked down.
I feel like every archer in this game has some sort of niche they fill. For Bernadetta it's, like you said, Encloser. But the other archers get a niche of their own that is useful in their own right.
Ignatz has buff/debuff utility very early on. He gets rally speed at D rank authority, which is really early. But on top of that, he gets Break Shot, which combined with his budding talent skill (Seal Strength) and personal (Hit +20%), makes him useful, especially in earlygame.
Ashe has a boon in axes. That allows him to reach the Brigand/Wyvern classline easier, which fixes most of Ashes damage issues. That means that Ashe can do at least decent damage and has the flexibility of flying on top of that.
Value it how you see fit, but every archer has some sort of niche.
That is true, but Bernadetta has far less competition in niche, since there's multiple dedicated rally units, other wyvern candidates besides Ashe, but only one other house-specific encloser on another route. Ignatz is a lot better on deer than azure moon as well.
@@MoonyRanalie That is a good point.
But I'll just point out some things:
First, my argument with Ignatz is that he provides both buffs AND debuffs relatively early on. While there are dedicated rally bots, Ignatz brings in that way something new to the table. And most characters are usually better on their original class, even Bernadetta.
It just comes down to how much you value Encloser itself relative to the time it takes to obtain it.
While I think that Encloser is good, you need to consider the time it takes to get to A rank in bows. The other archers can utilise their niches much earlier than Bernadetta can.
Training Bernadetta in bows only through goals, with maybe the occasional meal time or gift for teaching motivation means she'll have encloser by the time there's a bunch of monsters (bulky, hard-hitting targets), like the red canyon paralogue. The time it takes to learn sucks, but I value it because of a lack of competition and how being able to lock an enemy down scales well with maddening enemy stats. Using both her and Claude on verdant wind is really helping in clutch scenarios.
@@MoonyRanalie That is understandable.
Catherine can be recruited as early as Ch 4 (though she can't be used in the mission for the month until Ch 5) in BL and GD. If you get her to B+ support, you only need to be level 6. She is phenomenal on Maddening. She comes in with monster strength and speed, Swordfaire, a Brave Relic, and massive growths because she's in an Advanced class right off the bat (60 strength and 75% speed). On Maddening Ch 6, she was able to not only tank the Death Knight's attacks, she could *double* him. All this without grinding. I'd argue for Maddening she's an S-Tier unit.
Short version: everyone goes Wyvern Lord if have the chance.
Have a full team of wyverns
Is there enough flying battalions available for that though?
Lysithea should not be Wyvern Lord, right?
@@Nubbletech Dark flyer is close enough
Enlightened one is really good for chapter’s 12 and 13. Having extra heals for those early turns makes a big difference.
I think he oversells how necessary wyvern rider/lord is... makes me barf thinking of making annette a wyvern lord as if that's at all optimal for her
Part of me feels like in spite of how objectively amazing the Flying classes are statistically and tactically against terrain restrictions, forcing it on Byleth (especially Male) is somewhat overrated. Especially considering that the only unit in the game who requires Flying for recruitment is Ingrid who is already part of your default lineup in Blue Lions, as a recruitment benefit it doesn't really help you in this route.
Not every unit in your lineup needs to, or should be a flying unit given there's no magic based flying classes in this game. With that in perspective I think there needs to be more discussion about the value of Byleth in say Riding classes which are still very strong, and most notably opens up an option like Holy Knight. Focusing on Riding also has the side benefit of easier recruitment of both Petra and Marianne, the former being a top tier combat unit and the latter being a reasonably solid healer with access to Physic.
Annette isn't the best combat unit and Wyvern lord helps her with what she is good at which is rallying. Having 8 move and being able to bypass terrain and fly over obstacles is much better than having her stay a gremory where she has 5 move and is slowed by terrain
Her offense is actually totally fine as a Wyvern too as she can use Bolt Axe+, Crusher and a Steel Axe+ with Lightning Axe to kill things if need be. Its not hard to forge more Bolt Axes if you get the right resources either.
"Gilbert's only redeeming quality is his sturdiness."
I’m sorry, but during the fight against Miklan, Gilbert would NOT STOP PUTTING HIMSELF IN THE INNER WALK ARCHERS’ PATHS! I don’t care how good he is as a unit, I tried to be nice and keep him alive in that level but his AI is an absolute bastard.
i think that dimitri is better, since at early game he's tankeir, does more dmg, felix gets doubled, and like you said dimitri gains more exp, handeling maddening more easly.
as for my personal experience, my dimitri is outperforming felix.
Felix is generally faster and stronger than Dimitri early game. At base, he has 20 attack and 6 as with an iron sword compared to Dimitri's 18 attack and 3 with an iron lance. Felix also has a much better crest ability, having a 40% chance to increase damage by 5 on any non-combat art attack compared to Dimitri's 10% chance to ohko an enemy unit but only when using combat arts and doubles the weapon uses, which is already very high on tempest lance compared to the low durability of lances. On top of that, Felix can get to D in bows very easily and learn curved shot to deal safe chip damage which is amazing in the early game. The only things Dimitri has on Felix is his personal weapon, better authority ranking, higher defense, and faster levels.
@@evansmith2832 thanks for the arguments, but like i said, dimitri just outperformed felix, i tried getting felix op, perhaps my playstyle was better for dimitri than felix. still, i just described my personal experience
@@PockitGames Here's a great way to show how powerful Felix is as a unit. Give him gauntlets, he only needs 15 strength to out perform the 3 weight of Iron gauntlets and if he doubles he has pretty solid chances to proc his crest multiple times to make up for lower base damage than what swords provide. Felix makes amaizng use of gauntlets and is arguable the best War Master due to his high strength, speed and crest. You can even just use training gauntlets if his strength is high enough and rely on his base strength and crest, but i would only suggest doing that if he has less than 15 strength.
@@chadachi3970 Felix is very strong, but he only outperforms Dimitri early-early midgame. Dimitris and Felix offensive growth are very similar and both have very good bases. Felix pros are: has his crest, which is quite reliable and the 5 dmg boost. The cons are: he is way more squishy than dimitri (with or without his shield), he has a bane in authority. His bane in authority honestly tips the scale for me. Authority is very important. Not only is he bad at it, if you make use of his personal he will lag behind even further. As early as C rank, the stat boosts you get from battalions will outweigh the plain 5 dmg only to snowball further. I would argue that even some E/D rank battalions and their utility outweigh the plain 5 dmg. After timeskip there is no competition at all anymore. Dimitri becomes a way more reliable unit allround. Having a slight edge like the first 4-6 chapters, falling off afterwards and being strictly worse post timeskip doesnt justify a higher ranking.
@@manuelmuller4267 I don't find his authority rank much of a problem, i usually have Felix focus on a single weapon type and have his goals set to that and Authority. He actually doesn't level it too slowly compared to anyone who's neutral to it and only really lags behind anyone who has a boon in it. I agree battalions are really good, but personally i don't think you need to worry about them early-early mid game. Once he reaches C rank authority is when the Battalions really outweigh his personal, specifically any that give +5 Strength. However i think that his early is too reliant on his personal to not make use of it, that extra damage is clutch especially with fist weapons.
Also i just wanna point out, i never said he was better than Dimitri, was just giving a suggestion on how he can be better early on if you use him with fist weapons. I'm aware timeskip Dimitri is probably the second or third best unit in the game.
One thing to note, you can get to B+ and C+ support with someone. It just doesn’t show it unless you go into a menu, such as the share a meal menu, and press x on someone. This also lowers the requirements for recruitment so it’s something to consider.
Cyril is really good on maddening, he can bypass speed super early and has easy access to hit+20 and he has access to wyvern Lord with point blank volley Which is honestly pretty great
@@usernameusername6600 I mean that's quite a generalization, my friends and I all like Cyril even before ghasts video
@@usernameusername6600 sorry cyril you're awesome fighter. but you're not a big titted pink haired grill so to the eternal flames with you.
Everyone said he’s bad because of low base stats. But his weapons proficiencies are the best in the game. He gets pointblank basically two weeks after getting recruited because of initial bow rank. He catches up with everyone else’s stats before level 20. He easily gets death blow to give his pointblank extra 12 damage. Hit+20 is also one of the most underrated abilities in maddening, which is very easy to obtain by Cyril.
Mercedes is the best healer in the game imo and she comes free with BL, and her magic growth is among the highest in the game. She heals for so much, and her physic reaches so far. At least A+ for me just because her healing is so good
Dimitri is the best unit in AM and arguably in the game, way above felix:
He has the best growths in the game, his bataillon is broken, he has atrocity and paraselene and one of the best non flier classes...
His attack and dexterity are so ridiculous you can just give him vantage and gradivus, warp him in final battle’s last room and he soloes everything and deal some 550 to edelgard...
Also I think male byleth is way better than female, the only difference being gender exclusive classes and sylvain’s availability; we’re talking about AM here so sylvain isn’t an issue and while F!byleth only gets one useful skill being darting blow, m!byleth gets quick riposte, access to hero class and can use dark seals...
Agreed, somewhat. I think Dimitri is slightly worse than Felix, until Dimitri gets an A rank in authority.
That's when he will learn Battalion Vantage. But he also got Battalion Wrath earlier in the authority levels. In other words, he has a really strong skill combo that requires little setup. Slap a Killer Lance+ and a Retribution gambit on that guy, and then he will counter most things, will attack first and kill the enemy with his about 90% crit.
Edelgard and Claude are better units than Dimitri. Personally I think Female Byleth is too.
Also Hero and the dark mage classes are shit and quick riposte is late game stuff
@@MetalGearRaxis This is an AM tier list. I won't argue if they are actually better or not, but that doesn't even matter since you can't use them here.
And no, F!Byleth is not better than Dimitri. While Byleth is pretty strong, the thing that hinders both variants is building weapon ranks, which wouldn't be an issue if classes weren't locked behind them. Not only doesn't Dimitri have that issue, but as I said above, he obtains one of the strongest skill combos in the entire game, and it isn't even hard to reach, since you want to level his authority anyway.
@@thatonepersonnoonecaresabo3163 battalion wrath/vantage is kind of gimmicky and hard to maintain in the face of seige devices, monsters, and gambits late game.
Some S tier candidates:
Ingrid, early game utility with accurate gambits thanks to her personal skill. She can control packs of enemies with poison tactics or assault troop with 100% accuracy while most of your team has around 50% accuracy with gambits at the time.
Lysithea, Blue Lions needs an additional mage, and she's the best.
Lorenz, for the staff.
Lorenz does not have exclusive access to the staff, nor is he it's best user. He's a definite recruitment, but there's no need to actually use him.
This might be a long one but I've been studying all goddamn day so I'm gonna take my time with this, hopefully you don't mind
Wyvern Felix should have a tier of his own
I wouldn't downplay the choice for Dancer. You want to get extra skills on your Dancer and the proficiencies of your pick counts. You're gonna have Swd Avd +10, Special Dance, and Swd Pfc 1-5. That leaves 2 slots to fill and one of those should go to Movement +1. That means you want someone at least neutral in Swords and Riding.
Also consider that Dancers retain access to their spell lists, so you're going to want someone with a good array of supporting spells rather than someone who might as well be in a physical class. And also Charm is valuable to the class, so you want somebody who has that as one of their best stats. Finally consider the opportunity cost of making a Dancer: while Dancer has always been undeniably one of Fire Emblem's best classes through its sheer utility alone, you don't want somebody in there who might be better off being the Dancee.
For those three reasons alone I was going to insist on the point that Flayn is one of Three Houses' best Dancers, but you brought up something I hadn't considered before: how important an ability like Movement +1 is to a Dancer's primary function! As fate would have it, Flayn actually has a bane in Riding. So I guess it's back to the drawing board for the best Azure Moon Dancer choice . . .
4:20 I still stand by my point, I think Caspar is one of the best characters (gameplay wise). With such minimal effort he always become the best of my team. I understand the support issue, but I really don't think Caspar being bad in your opinion is not a good enough reason to make him basically second worst. (I make him a war master at the end and he basically becomes a crit machine that quads)
he is just bad, every single other war master does his job but better. Some are tankier and make more use out of quick ripost like Raphiel, Balthus, and Duedue and others like Felix are faster and do a lot of damage throughout the whole game. Caspar will be a lackluster unit until war master and afterward, he's the worst one you could have.
If you ask me Marianne is too low. While she has a riding requirement you can just raise supports by having her join you during missions as a healing adjutant (which is always nice to have). Marianne’s Frozen Lance and Aura make her a healer designed to one-shot which is a really good niche, and that combined with her mobility as a Holy Knight is really useful.
Wow I’m so glad more people are talking analytically about FE again. Besides Mekkah, there’s very few people talking about it.
Awesome list, I’ve still only done one playthrough, and that was before maddening came out. So I’m definitely not an authority on three houses, but this looks good to me
Great video but I just don't see Mercedes as anything other than S tier. With BL being heavily melee focused, you're going to have damaged units all the time, and her healing output is by far the best.
I know what you mean. On other routes, I have to pull back some of my mages to go on healing duty. I dont think he is looking at this from their niche roles though. But yeah, Mercedes is the best at filling a much needed role.
I don't know if I'd put her in s, but she's definitely at least an A+ in my book. Other than dancers she easily has the best utility in the game.
I actually agree with this a lot more than your other ranking simply because the context you framed it in helped out a lot. Good job. I do think that Cyril should be ranked way higher though because of his stellar combat performance throughout the entire game. Between point-blank volley + death blow early / mid game and his Petra-tier speed growths, he's A if not A+ for me. The only other unit I'd move up would be Ignatz for his insane utility. Between easy access to rally speed + dex and break shot + seal strength, he's at least B+ if not A tier for me.
Based off of personal experience, my Caspar was one of my best units, he was getting strength and speed almost every level up, and was cranking out the damage without taking any heavy hits every turn. I get Caspar isn’t so lucky with others, but my personal maddening classic new game Caspar experience was hugely good. Too bad I benched him on other routes, simply because I wanted to use other characters.
You got hildas personal skill wrong, she gives plus three attack to adjacent male allies
He mixed up hers and sylvain
@@florkyman5422 Sounded more like he mixed up her buff with the one Leonie receive sfrom an adjacent male unit.
Caspar certainly isn't a bad unit. Look at his personal skill. You can park him next to a flying monster with atrociously high evasion in Maddening, and everybody will gain a +10% chance to hit it.
He basically ties with Sylvain both in base stats and in growths. Sylvain has two points higher speed and 10% better Defense growth, Caspar has two points higher luck and 10% higher dexterity and luck growths. Meaning Caspar will in the long run be comparable to Sylvain in most aspects, but a little bit more likely to hit the opponent and also more likely to crit. Sylvain is a great unit. He's a little more defensive, but I'd say his personal skill is worse than Caspar's, and those extra two points of speed don't matter that much in the long run.
Second comment incoming:
I also absolutely agree with the utility against fliers, especially peg. and falco knights. Those enemies are ridiculously scary to fight, as they are really evasive and will most likely one-round most of yoir units. So more hit is appreciated, which can also stack with linked attacks and supports.
This is also the reason I actually don't think Gilbert deserves to be as low as he is:
In chapter 14, there are so many falco knights, your units struggle to keep up with defeating these monsters before the situation ecalates. This is where Gilbert comes in:
His speed is awful, but that doesn't matter in that scenario, since everyone gets doubled by them anyway. His value is that he can tank at least 2 falco knights in a turn and do pretty good damage against them, considering he either already has or is close to getting (I don't quite remember which) Lancebreaker.
This makes Gilbert quite crucial, since your go to supertank (Dedue) isn't avaiable at that time.
Theres other problems with Caspar such as his defense which you mentioned, as well as his charm and authority, but let talk about those two points of speed. Lets say for some reason you have them both at the start of the game. An early game enemy has an AS of 4 that means Sylvain can double. Caspar cannot that means Sylvain might be able to get the kill and at worst is a better chipper allowing a weaker unit to get the kill. Plus cause he doubles his personal ability, that was only plus 2 damage turned to plus 4 damage. Now lets say the Enemy has AS of 3, Caspar still can't double. Now who are you more likely to feed exp to a unit that is doing overall better now and will continue to be good or a unit that given enough time might be as good as the unit your using rn. Every time you feed exp to Caspar your stunting another units growth. So your right in the long haul they might be similar but personally I would just rather use the good unit now.
*Now I didn't take weapon weight into account but if you do it gets worse for Caspar.
Sylvain has 2 points higher base speed and a 5% higher speed growth. Maddening mode is entirely about speed/str/mag, and to a lesser extent, dex. Luck is virtually irrelevant on a character like Caspar. Speed is way more important than luck, as luck will only affect .5% of crit chance, and crit avoid which is pretty useless with divine pulse.
I'd rather have a character with 20 spd and 0 luck in maddening than one with 16 spd and 20 luck. On top of that, as was stated in the video, his recruitment requirements absolutely suck, and are the main reason he's at the bottom. Non ng+ maddening Caspar is only a decent unit in Crimson Flower where you have access to him immediately, and can put him in a class that pads his speed. In Normal/Hard, it really doesn't matter.
I think the placement of Ferdinand should be reconsidered. Yeah, Byleth doesn't want to go into Armor Knight, but getting to C armor for Weight -3 is not a bad investment on Maddening. Raphael is...regrettably bad on Maddening since he just can't catch up to the speed curve so him being in C makes more sense, but Ferdinand still puts in the work for the ranks in armor needed to get him.
Also there B support Right?
u can't get B with Ferdinand and weight -3 falls off super hard once you get to part two and get above 25 str which is around lvl 20 on average.
@@kijih6298 Oh
right he get b post skip or something
Also, Armor D for an early defense boost at level 10 is practically free stats. Higher defense in the early game makes a huge difference.
Ferdinand has obvious disadvantages being you have to get to D+ or C armour depending on your support rank. But just the fact that he gets Swift Strikes and can easily fulfill a role as a wyvern should put him up higher in the list.
On the topic of armour rank Byleth can become an armour knight just to get the base 12 defence if they have been growing poorly. This still doesn't exactly make training armour the best use of activity points even after taking Weight -3 into account, but it's still worth keeping in mind if Byleth gets Def screwed.
With Seteth I have mixed feelings about. Without a doubt he has great combat potential with a decent rally on the side, but he has his fair share of problems. His availability isn't fantastic, joining only in ch12 then returning ch14. His base speed of 18 can lead to him quite easily being doubled. With his bulk this rarely leads to him being one rounded but still can deal a lot of damage that can be hard to manage.
As a final note with all the units with Swift Strikes it gives them two chances to proc their respective crests. While not game changing for these units but it can be real powerful considering the increased enemy bulk. It can help Sylvain kill or Ferdinand/Seteth avoid counters while chipping units.
Love the work you do FED keep up the good work.
Edit: I think one thing everyone has forgotten is that you lose Lorenz at the start of part 2, only recruiting him back at the end of ch 16. while this doesn't really effect you if you just recruit him for Thyrsus it does lower his combat potential.
Yeah definitely agree that the Seteth is only really 'good to go' in Hard. The lack of easy access to Death or Darting Blow combined with low base speed means his Maddening combat is not great.
You can't fix somebody's speed by putting them in a class with higher speed. They are still going to be slow as shit, so they might as well have zero. Fire Emblem is a game of extremes and if your speed isn't really good you might as well not have any, especially in maddening mode.
Yeah, like, Gilbert's speed is 2. That's not fixable without an absurd amount of stat boosters that would be better served on someone else. And that's not what he's there for. His combat is decent enough as a Great Knight. He doesn't double, he gets doubled, but he takes little to no damage from physical units that do double him. Sure, he's not the best for efficient play, but he's honestly not the worst with a little investment. That's just one example. Trying to fix a slow unit's speed isn't really worth it.
Dedue for instance doesn't really need to be fast. He's untouchable by physical units, will sometimes survive one round against a magic unit, has good enemy phase and not even horrible player phase. Just use Axes, Gauntlets, and Bows on him and he has everything he'll ever need to be a good combat unit. Speed is great, but it isn't everything if you have ways to make up for it. Dedue just has a harder time getting in to mounted classes though, but if you can get him there he'll serve you well. And honestly, with enemies like Swordmasters in Part 2 that are so fast that you'll never be able to get a unit to not be doubled by them, units like Dedue and Gilbert can be nice. Reliably doubling everyone in Part 2 is next to impossible on a normal playthrough.
Yeah, especially when the natural growth for the particular stat is below 30% then you better just focus on their better stats than trying to fix something that is beyond repair.
@@Xane875 My Gilbert got Def screwed, so he was never usable, but yeah. Even middling speed is hot garbage in maddening, so anyone with solid defense to make up for it is very useful.
I guess I'll start from the top down.
Go ahead and put Lysithea in S. Faith is absolutely not going to be a problem for Byleth to get into early game, as they will be attending choir practice frequently to boost their Professor Level anyway. This allows them relatively easy access into Monk and subsequently Priest in comparison to Pegasus Knight (especially for male Byleth!), which also grants them a useful early-game +10 Charm Growth to facilitate recruiting characters like Hilda and Dorothea (and also do better with Battalions I guess).
You make a compelling argument for putting Leonie ahead of Petra: she's still the second-fastest unit in the game, and she's a lot easier to recruit. Following this logic, however, *why is Ingrid not ahead of Leonie?* She's tied for third-fastest with Manuela, and you get her immediately upon choosing the Blue Lions, and you've already outlined how easy it is to patch her Strength when getting her that early, *and* this is all completely ignoring her Relic which gives her a Combat Art that says "Strength? Pfft, who needs that?" And she has one of the best Charm stats in the game (behind the house leaders, Seteth, Flayn, and eventually Hilda and Manuela, but that's still top 8), which synergizes well with her personal skill. Honestly, if Dimitri and I guess Felix didn't exist, you could make a compelling case for her carrying a Blue Lion's playthrough as their main bruiser/juggernaut. That much deserves Lysithea's former placement at the bare minimum.
Sylvain should be dropped to the bottom of A. As pointed out elsewhere in another comment, his personal skill does not boost your female units, but gives a more selfish boost when *next to* a female unit. (Really, does a skill named "Philanderer" sound all that generous to you?) He's a solid unit, so B+ might be a bit too harsh, but unless you genuinely think he outperforms Catherine as a bruiser (which, according to the first Community Tier List video, you don't, and according to the subsequent videos, nobody does), I don't think his contributions outweigh literally anybody else in A.
Annette should be raised to bottom of A+. In addition to her other qualities you outlined in this video, in Azure Moon specifically you gain access to the her Relic and therefore her unique Combat Art which, and I cannot stress this enough, has *20* Mt. And also inflicts Def-5, just on the off-chance that isn't enough to kill on its own. I don't think it's enough to surpass the other characters in A+ (apart from Sylvain, as outlined in the above paragraph), but it's certainly enough for her to be in their league.
I'd move Dedue up to below Flayn in B+ just for aesthetic reasons, just so B doesn't have two more units than B+. While we're on the subject of B and B+, however . . .
I am perpetually offended that you continue to insist ranking Lorenz above Caspar. Caspar's personal skill means he supports your team, especially on a difficulty like Maddening, merely by EXISTING, and despite his Support rank lock, recruiting him is actually surprisingly simple due to Byleth's proficiency in Gauntlets; just put them in punchy-mode early game and you're good. I would dare argue that Lorenz's Reason requirement makes him just as hard to recruit as Raphael and his Heavy Armor requirement, and basically all he contributes to the team upon recruitment is the ability to get a dumb Staff. Lorenz to between Alois and Raphael, Caspar to the new bottom of B+ (below Dedue).
In fact, while we're at it, I'd also put Lindhardt in Dedue's old placement at the top of B, just because I think you understated how much investing in Reason hurt's Byleth's own character progression, even though otherwise Lindhardt really is a good unit.
Summary of proposed changes:
Lysithea A+ -> S
Sylvain A+ -> A
Ingrid and Annette A -> A+
Lindhardt B+ -> B
Dedue B -> B+
Lorenz B -> C
Caspar C- > B+
I can agree with this summary except for Dedue and Caspar. Caspar's personal isn't worth being stuck with Caspar as a unit. And Dedue very quickly becomes a liability on the team. He's better riding Dimitri in the Baby Bjorn as an Adjutant after a certain point.
Sylvain is good for existing on Blue Lions because of his linked attacks that give +Mt to him and to Ingrid and Felix. Plus he has Lance of Ruin. So yeah, not as low as B+, but he can't spam LoR all day and he's not doubling much until Swift Strikes. So I think there's a good argument for dropping him to A.
And while we're on Sylvain, I agree with you on Ingrid. We rank Leonie and Petra so high but you also just *start* with Ingrid. People talk about her getting Strength screwed, but on average she grows only 1 less point every 20 levels than those two. She gives and receives +Mt from Sylvain and Felix, she has better early game Charm and her personal helps with Gambits. Plus having her from the start means you are in control of how Strength screwed she really is. You are able to patch her up and give her Death Blow by going Brigand.
I heavily disagree with Caspar going to B+. The man is absolut garbage. His 6 base-speed is atrouciously bad. Even unequipped he gets doubled by almost everything. You would think that his growths compensate, but no. With 45 in str 45 in spd and 30 in def his growth are average at best.
On average you would have to give him 5-7 lvls only to ctach up to your faster units speed at lvl.1. Compared to Petra, even 9 lvls. Yes a lvl. 10 Caspar is on average as fast as a lvl.1 Petra , which is as ridiculous as it sounds.
Yes his personal skill is useful, but mostly on paper. Everytime you put Caspar anywhere near the frontlines early-game the man is dead meat. Neither his speed nor his defense hold up. So you can use his skill only, if you heavily favour his position and give him one of the few safe spots.
But lets say you babysit him through early and mid-game and than what? People often say he is a good warmaster, but that is actually untrue. Warmaster is just a good class in general, which is why you think he performs well. Every single male physical unit with decent bases, which is like 90% of all male physical units make a better warmaster.
You have to favor and babysit him through almost half of the game, only to be rewarded with a warmaster, who will still perform worse than most of your other units would in that class.
But wait you can get some utility with his skills and gambits you say? Well actually no, you cant. The man doesnt get any useful rallys. To top it off the man has a bane in authority. That ensures that you cant give him a good battalion without heavily favouring him, making him even worse than he already is.
Caspar is a really really bad unit. One of the worst units in the game. Not quite THE worst but most definetly in the top 5 dishonorable mentions.
Even if you play the BE-route he barely makes it to C-Tier.
Caspar basically combines all the bad attributes into 1 character.
1) Very bad bases, which cant be compensated by his at best average growths.
2) No utility.
3) No access to good battalions without favouritism.
4) Very weak early game
5) Weak mid game
6) Somewhat passable late game is his only quality and the only reason he sits in the C-Tier
To top it off in the BL/GD-routes you have to intentionally waste your time on getting the punching-rank, instead of leveling lance/axe or sword makes Caspar the poop of the poop. You are basically making your Byleth worse.
Getting abilities like death blow and darting blow a bit later due to using gauntlets actually makes quite a difference.
In any route other than BE he should be a D-Tier. FED is still much too soft on him putting him as high as C-Tier.
You basically use Caspar if you want to give yourself a bigger challenge or if you really like him, but certainly not for his unit-viability.
Now a little bit about Lorenz. Let me say this straight. I agree that combat-wise Lorenz is also really bad. As a unit in a vacuum he is probably around C-Tier. But:
1) Lorenz, especially as a mage, has significantly better early game than Caspar. (Which still wont get him out of C-Tier)
2) His recruitment actually wont slow down your Byleth and cripple important weapon ranks. (Which still wont get him out of C-Tier)
2) The "dumb staff" you speak of is arguably the best utility item in the whole game and will improve your gameplay significantly. Thyrsus alone brings more to the table than Caspar and to be fair Lorenz ever will, even combined. It is well worth to recruit Lorenz for his staff alone, possibly benching him immediately after.
Depending on how highly you value Thyrsus Lorenz could jump the ranks quite significantly. So B-Tier feels allright to me. As a side note Lorenz paralogue can be done in 1 turn on maddening.
@@manuelmuller4267 I'm not sure what I'm more flabbergasted by, the fact that you wrote an entire essay lambasting Caspar, or that two people upvoted it already. Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I did not point out the inconsistencies with reality here:
First of all, who really even cares about Caspar's bane in Authority? Like, sure, it sucks a bit that he gets into higher-ranked Battalions slower than other characters, but you're still going to give him a Battalion anyway. It's not like he is actively punished for using them in the early game and you have to dance around finding him a suitable one for the late game, as is the case with Felix.
Literally the whole reason I make my case for Caspar is for the utility his personal skill provides. You cannot merely gloss over that and say he provides "no utility."
??? How is leveling Byleth's Gauntlets making them a worse character??? Like, they're already proficient in it, so it's not like it even takes them any time to get to C-rank in the first place. They don't need to use their activity points on learning gauntleting, as opposed to all the activity points they would need to spend to even at all get into Reason. Like, honestly, how would you even *get* female Byleth into Peg Knight before C-ranking Gauntlets naturally? Remember, you're spending all of your early game activity points on activities that increase professor level, so that you can get more activity points.
This one is more of a nitpick than anything but why would you make Caspar a War Master when you can make him into a perfectly good Wyvern Lord? Granted, this doesn't really change your point any at all apart from doing a find-and-replace, but there are some pre-conceptions about which characters go into which classes that the community has which I will never understand. Take Dedue, for instance: why on Earth would you ever make him (or anyone for that matter?) into a Fortress Knight? HE'S the Blue Lions character who most naturally fits into the role of War Master! But I digress.
Anyway, bottom line, I never said that Caspar would get anywhere as a bruiser; goodness no, there are precious few units who should even cut it in that role to begin with! What I *am* saying is that his value as a front-line support unit has been routinely and criminally underrated, particularly considering that variety of utility can be found effectively nowhere else in the game. (Yes, Dark Bishop mastery technically gives Heartseeker, but you're not putting Hubert on the front lines, now are you?) IMO, that puts him at least at a high B; I would honestly only move him to B+ simply so that B doesn't seem lopsided in unit count compared to B+.
It is promising to see that at least most of my post is uncontroversial, but hoo boy did what I say about Caspar rub some people the wrong way . . .
This video puts WAY too much emphasis on recruitment requirements for the students (the ease of obtaining the faculty is a definite perk though). Outside of Ferdinand and Caspar, all the students are pretty much equal since the most efficient way to recruit them is to stuff them with gifts and flowers to B Support. Even with the RNG, you're almost always going to get the student you want to randomly join your class faster than it takes to grind your Byleth even for skills that you can passively earn like Authority or your choice of weapon to where you need it to be.
I don't think loading up students with gifts is quite as cut and dry as you're implying, but yeah it's honestly a fairly easy way to recruit.
By the logic of recruiting with gifts though, we actually should rank Bernadetta higher because it's really easy to stockpile Pitcher Plants, and nobody else competes for those as a favorite gift.
@@A2ZOMG Isn't it that cut and dry though? Between all the gifts and lost items just lying around the Monastery, conversation perks, advise box, birthdays, flowers, and cheap gifts once you finish the merchant quest, it's ridiculously easy to get the handful of characters you'll really want up to B Support.
Even in New Game+ where I had plenty of activity points to mess around with, the only students I recruited by meeting their requirements were Dorothea and Ignatz since ranking up in Authority is pretty easy and not a waste of time. They ended up being among the last students I recruited to my house.
You can also gain support points by having meals with students that still need them and meals raise professor levels while faculty training doesn't.
@@shawn1603 True. I left that off because there's significant opportunity costs and you're probably going to want to use the activity point to top off the students in your house's motivation.
@@JonSmith-hk1bq the point is in any given regular playthrough, character recruitment is in fact a limited resource/opportunity cost especially when weighed against reserving items and professor actions for student instruction.
Characters who require less of any of those resources naturally should score higher based on availability. Which goes back to my argument that Bernadetta for example doesn't compete with anyone for Pitcher Plants (a common Greenhouse drop) as a favorite gift, and thus should be ranked higher by availability logic, since it makes her much easier to B support than most other units.
I think Cyril should be either high B tier or low B+ tier. Yes, he has bad bases. Yes, he gets worse and worse the longer you wait to recruit him. But he is by far the easiest to recruit, not to mention Byleth generally hits level 10 pretty quickly purely because of how good they are. Generally by the time you recruit him your units deployed will most likely still be 9/10 so you're not putting him in over other units. PBV may be his crutch but it's a damn fine one that gives him a great early game niche and makes it easy for him to gain XP for future success. And his growths can be compared to Petra's where he's either tied or higher than hers. Finally, his skill set sets him up incredibly well to go brigand > wyvern rider > wyvern lord. While I do think his bases aren't good and that if you're recruiting him any later than maybe chapter 7 he's garbage, by playing smartly and recruiting him early before chapter 5 he has the potential to be a monster of unit. I think the fact that his performance is so heavily tied to when you recruit him holds him back from the real high tiers but bottom of B tier seems kinda harsh, especially when you compare him to the archer trio further up the tier.
other than caspar and ferdinand I dont think recruitment requirements should be considered at all, it doesnt hurt byleth to get a B with those that can by giving them all the gifts and lost items.
Yeah I agree they're being overrated. I know tier lists generally don't like 'unreliable' stuff, but if you get a B support they're going to join your class unless it's month 11 or something. Just might hurt their availability if it takes a month or two.
Recruitment requirements are still somewhat important given Gift items aren't totally unlimited. Having easier access to more than one option to recruit a unit is still important for overall efficiency.
With that being said, I would actually argue that Bernadetta should possibly be ranked higher since she's one of the easier units to get to B support as long as you have a lot of Pitcher Plants.
@@A2ZOMG You still have tea parties, meals, cooking, mission assistance and choir that all raise support rank. Tea Parties in particular you get 1 free one per character, sure you have wait until birthdays, but they still increase support by a ton.
In regards to the armor rank needing units (Ferdinand, Raphael, etc.) one benefit of Byleth getting armor rank is weight -3, still not that good to train, but that is something to consider
With Byleths amazing strength and speed Weight -3 will end up not having much effect.
@@louiesatterwhite3885 Well, it has it's uses, since the weight of weapons can get pretty high and how AS actually gets calculated.
How much weight is reduced is determined by the str value divided by 5. In other words, quite a lot of weapons (especially axes) will weigh you down quite a bit, even in lategame.
Weight -3 basically gives an effective +15 str towards AS calculation. No matter how you slice it... that is not a small amount.
The theoretical max of weight -3 is 3 speed. You're usually better off with speed +2 which is way quicker to get and is a guarantee.
Nathan Harris
Why not both?
Gillbert is better than Caspar and Ferdinand imo. Caspar and Ferdie's requirements are pretty absurd considering fists and heavy armor are generally ranks that you don't want on Byleth, even if you do manage to recruit them, probably sacrifising some good sword rank that you could've got on Byleth in the process, they would only join pretty far in pre-timeskip, their stats would be only alright and their weapon ranks would be lower in comparison to your other units.
Gillbert joins on the first post-timeskip chapter, which shouldn't be too far from the chapter you've recruited Caspar/Ferdie (unless you use grappler/fortress knight Byleth) with good ranks, useful bulk and a good rally, all for FREE.
Gillbert might not be able to keep up with the rest of the army for the lategame chapters, but he is worth using for some part of the game, unlike Caspar and Ferdie which aren't worth the trouble of recruiting in my honest opinion.
I would add that Gilbert also gets immediate access to brave lance and brave axe, it's not much but it does allow him to double if needed, so he could kill off some weaker enemies (like archers or snipers), with lance breaker he can kill off some Cavaliers and pegasus knights (probably not killing any Palladians or falcon knights) again not great but he can contribute I'd argue better than Raphael.
brawler/war master dedue can one shot anyone on the field and avoid any attack aside from magic. A tier.
Caspar is necessary for the Rafail gem which is pretty good but only pretty good. I'd agrue that might give him B tier or at least top of C tier. Oh and you don't have to deal with his crappy bases but get his good growths.
You never have to actually have him see any combat whatsoever in order to get the gem, so that doesent affect his ranking at all. If anything it would actually lower his ranking as you are forced to put in the resources to recruit him if you want to get the gem, when you could have spent them on something else instead.
its true, riding is a PAIN for byleth to learn. But marriane is one of the better units imo. The question is really this; is it worth training your riding for her, who is a healer like mercedes? The answer is... maybe? Marrianes got a lot going for her so you won't regret getting her if you work for it. But should you?
Versatility: this girl can be a good holy knight, dark knight, gremory, bishop, and more
innate ability: Late game when most of your units will be flying or on horses, her ability heals her if she's next to them.
Relic: She get's a damn good relic blutgang. its a magic sword this allows her to be a non magic based unit if you want to go that way, like a cavelier and falcon knight. The requirement to get is... to have just her and beat hers story mission. Not bad.
combat arts: i think she's one of 2 people who get soul blade AND frozen lance. (and she does it WAY better than ingrid). And her relic's CA beast fang is good vs cavalry units.
Edmond troops: Her personal battalion is IMO top 10 at least, and suits her very well. +40 hit, and boosts might AND magic.
AND OBVIOUSLY.... she heals
She can do a lot for your team, even if mercedes is alive and well. but... geez riding sucks to learn, especially since byleth usually won't be riding.
I would put manuela a bit lower, you can't recruit her until after the battle of the eagle and lion, and the only thing she has is warp and you can't make her learn black magic until the third week you teach her reason if you are lucky and would still struggle to teach her more
I love lysithea, but i think she needs bumped down a tier or two for pure survivability in maddening
3:04 I guess putting Gilbert backwards into the brigand line and going down through Wyvern lord could help his speed somewhat, but by the time that he joins at level 26 with 2 speed that's going to be hard to pull off. Perfectly understandable putting him at the bottom.
Thanks FED now I can build my 15 character.
Byleth , Dimitri , Dedue , Felix , Ashe , Sylvain , Mercedes , Annette , Ingrid , Caspar , Lysithea , Seteth , Flayn , Gilbert , Catherine.
Honestly Caspar should join Gilbert in D-Tier. He is the poop of the poop. His recruitment requirement definetly tips the scale from C -> D this time. For a more elaborate explanation anyone should read my reply to TazTheYellow, before replying here. Side note. You have a very plesant voice FED keep it up^^
My Felix in my first playtbriugh was a monster with how amazing he was. Him with sword and eeaosn is definitely the best and make in Mortal savant. He and Dimitri and Sylvian ended up being like 10 levels higher than anyone else
Hilda disappoints you because of her combat? What? You crazy bro. Her strength, dex, and speed are all great for me. It’s just kinda tough to get her authority up but definitely doable.
I think the only changes I would make would be to nudge Lysithea up to S, and to bump Mercedes up to the bottom of A+. I just have such a hard time imagining a world in which I don't abuse the sheer numbers these ladies can put up. To make a case for Mercie, I think Fortify is NUTS especially in a game mode where your units are going to be taking round after round of heavy chip. Fortify stuffs multiple turns of healing action economy into one turn, and playing around that opens up a new level of aggression you can push with less versatile infantry units, like GL!Dimitri or WM!Felix.
I guess by this logic I could try to nudge Flayn up a tier as well, though her lack of Physic hurts on the turns where the mass heal isn't necessary. But Rescue is a nice consolation prize. Maybe the Flayn/Mercedes Faith core is worth more experimentation. Hard to say, as I didn't use Flayn much in my last playthrough.
Best list so far. Few minor gripes.
Ingrid should be higher in A. While her strength is a little suspect, ingrid is the only damage dealer with high enough res to tank magic early on, which is important on maps like ch 5 and 6.
Shamir should be somewhere in A. Her personal ability and being able to go pegasus almost instantly patches her speed issues, and having silver bow heavy draw on a flier early on is being undervalued.
I think you are discounting Dimitris nutty dex growth which allows him to get 100 crit so he never misses
I agree that armor knight is a bad class to stay in but heavy armor is a great proficiency to train. Neither Defense 12 nor weight -3 require actually re-classing to armor knight. I can see the argument for specifically Byleth not wanting it as much as someone like Petra or Ingrid though.
I had Raphael doing 80 damage an attack on maddening with minimal investment, he’s p insane as a vantage build and he benefits a lot from defiant strength. All you really need to make him shine is swords and axes, use the same build tactics for dedue and you’re good to go with two powerhouses who hardly take damage.
Love your videos by the way☺️
I found Caspar got a passing grade for my no-NG Maddening runs because his combart arts enabled a lot of oneshot hit-and-run attacks. His accuracy was easy enough to patch up with batallions or a ring. That said, he is totally not worth the effort of C rank gauntlets to unlock, lol.
Another reason to go female Byleth is to allow her to trigger Sylvain's innate ability throughout the game
Putting Ferdinand and Caspar in the same rank is blasphemy
Seems solid. Only thing I would change is putting Marianne in S tier. Just because.
no
Y E S
Haha. All jokes aside I really like her early silence/physic in blue lion playthroughs. It makes the potato res stats of most of the BL units irrelevant and disabling an enemy unit is sometimes as valuable as killing it.
Dedue is quite tanky in part 1 for me. I’ve used him as a Vengeance bot and he hasn’t disappoint. Of course like you said, he disappears for a few chapters in part 2. He does get 4 levels when he comes back so there’s that. But yea, he’ll be better off as a adjutant if you have no further plans for him.
A few comments about this.
Dedue unlike other units has the chance of never showing back up and actually being dead if you choose to not do his paralogue. Since his paralogue offers no real rewards, the only reward is your Dedue doesn't die, you might want to do other paralogues that have better rewards. Like Ashe's for boots, or Relic paralogues. There is a certain point where if you recruit every character you might barely have enough time to do every paralogue to get every reward, but imho the relics/boots are worth more than getting a subpar early/mid game unit in the late game.
Cyril is being slept on way too hard. You're only looking at the base numbers which rarely matter at all in this game. Even Mekkeh has stated that bases in this game pale in comparison to other FE games because this game is so focused on growths > bases. Cyril from the time you recruit him can go straight into Brigand, patching his strength up to 50% and having 60% in both Dex and Speed. He starts with C bows which means he only needs 2 tutoring sessions and 2 weeks of Goals set to only Bows, which means he'll have Point Blank Volley before the chapter battle. This bandages his bad bases by giving guaranteed doubles, 10 hit and +3 might. He also has a very easy time transitioning into a Wyvern class as he has proficiency in Lance/Axe and Flying, making his utility even better now that he can do Point Blank Volley then Canto away. Cyril is only bad in Silver Snow as you cannot get him until Chapter 12 making his growths pretty sub par.
You put way too much emphasis on recruitment requirements. You generally want to wait a little bit to recruit some characters due to the auto scaling the game does on maddening, so you really only have to worry about Ferdinand's requirement later on as you can have both Alois and Gilbert teach you heavy armor once a week until its D+, which should only take around 3-5 weeks depending on your luck. This can easily be solved by doing the training once a month at the start of each month, or when you're not in need of Auxiliary/Paralogue battles. It really isn't that hard if you plan it out properly. Caspar's is even easier as Byleth has a proficiency in Fists, making it pretty quick to level if you just slap on some training gauntlets and go into the brigand class, which you want to do for Death Blow anyways.
Adding on to the recruiting, the rest of the characters you just need to reach B rank. There are so many ways to increase support level and lots of them give large amounts of it if you plan ahead and give the right gifts to the right people. First off, every character has a gift that they like, some have several that they like. Give them those gifts, and lost items for large support rank gains. Tea Parties are another way to gain a lot of support rank as long as you know what you're doing in them and there isn't really an excuse to not know what answers to pick since Serenes Forrest exists.
Honestly the recruitment requirements shouldn't be held so high as they're so easy to work around, maybe not completely disregard them but don't hold them so high.
I figure crests really aren't factored into this, but Linhardt's crest is incredibly nice to have and is much better than Mercedes' crest. Not to mention that later in the game he can also help out a lot against Pegasus knights/Wyverns with Excalibur as if he was a magic archer. Only a few units can get Excalibur as well.
Dorothea having Meteor is pretty great as it means she can "assist" from pretty far away on the map unlike most units who need to be adjacent or 2 -3 range away.
Hilda doesn't give +2 Atk and Def, she only gives +3 Atk. This really helps a ton in the early game, but since this is AM probably wont be as useful. Nothing else to say there.
Catehrine is just one of the better units in the game with one of the best relics in the game. She's great if you recruit her early, she's great if you recruit her later, she's just amazing. If you recruit early then you can get her into flying and lances for Pegasus -> Falco Knight which is pretty amazing with her relic.
Sylvain doesn't buff female units, he buffs himself. He's solid, maybe too solid sometimes.
Petra segment. You never have to "just hope" since you can save before a week and if the unit doesn't auto recruit then you just close the game and reload until they do. Its the only feature you can soft reset, though if you don't like doing this or count this as "grindy/non-efficient" then I understand.
Leonie good
The rest are good.
Ok but if I don’t do Dedue’s paralogue then I feel bad ):
i find it a bit of a Irk that Caspar is so hard to get for azure moon initially, considering you NEED his supports along Mercedes to get the "resolution" scene for her with the dread knight.
I will say it again dancer Ferdinand with sword is OP at full hp he cannot be hit. He can pretty much solo maddening by himself. But I understand it's a pain to recruit him
The S-tier looks right to me. Not too sure about the stuff below, it’s a lot to remember.
my first play through i did fortress knight byleth and had 60 def and res and took 0s from the final boss asw well as magic and had S+ in every weapon class i think its pretty good ^^
I would say reason on byleth is probably the worst skill to get, unless you're going for lifetaker late game. Since Levin Sword+ exists, byleth will almost never want to use black magic, even if you got 1-3 range. Byleth is the convoy, so spells are particularly useless for him. Nosferatu with white magic avo+20 is pretty useful, though.
the list is built on blitzing the boss with warp skipping and WLs which isn't wrong in terms of short term efficiency, but if you play a balanced style here are some thoughts. I actually think the list is pretty spot on even then (but too much emphasis on endgame)
- you can't train Dimitri early part 2 so I'd say its more practical to invest in riding early (budding talent) and get +4 dex and +1 mov than to invest in flying and axes which you need A's in. If you give him give him the Death Knight weapon from the Mercedes paralogue and +10 crit from S Lances, he can easily get to massive crit values with his naturally high dex stat esp if you stay in the Lord line
- you automatically have Ashe and you might as well already have Catherine, which gives you free access to a permanent +1 mov item in the paralogue. I don't think this should reflect in the tier list, but giving that to Dedue or another infantry provides significant benefits in the early game
- Sylvain, Ingrid, Felix all have +3 might when adjacent through supports. Also, Sylvain gets +2 might/def being next to a female character. This makes Sylvain's swift strikes and additional +18 overall (it hits twice and +1 already) before enemy action (plus another +10 if you pick a class with lancefaire). His crest also boost arts.
- you can move Dedue to max range, wait for +4 def, then you use special dance for +4 Dex/Speed/Luck, then move again to attack, or bait enemies by waiting for another +4 def. Not something that should reflect in the tier list, but it does come up. His biggest draw is that there are a lot of choke points in part 2 maps but he still falls off hard.
- give Ashe the Killer Bow+ and spam crits with double attacks or Hunter's Volley midgame (highest natural dex stat and 55% growth, great speed also). This is probably the only way he shines honestly, but 60+ crit is easy to achieve due to massive dex bonuses in the sniper line and consistently kills if he's doubling or using hunters volley (+10 crit, hits twice). Ignatz does the same better but... you have to use Ashe early. +4 Dex from C Riding ain't bad either.
ps Caspar sucks but having him gets you to the Scythe of Sariel and the Rafael Gem, which are some of the best items in the game. You can recruit him and then just make him a guard adjutant after fulfilling his purpose. Also, if you're not gonna bother playing the paralogues, especially Mercedes' on Azure Moon, I have no idea what you are doing playing this game
you can't double-stack dedue's passive.
Good list I agree with most points
I think that Leonie should be moved up too S tier. She is pretty much a free recruit as Byleth will want to go peg knight or wyvern which both require lances to get and Byleth will easily hit the strength requirement. Also on top of her amazing growths the enemy cavalier growths make them much higher. Just by auto leveling she will have a 60% strength 60% speed and 55% defense which is pretty much all the stats she needs to be good.
eh Idk, man. I feel like Byleth doesn't have a clear path. Byleth makes a great dodge tank white magic unit which he wouldn't be able to utilize as a physical class.
Caspar crit build is something worthy. I got him crit-ing 100% as war master.
getting lysithea wasnt too hard for me since byleth has a budding talent in faith. About 7 chapters in lysithea came knocking on my door
I feel like not a lot of people realize if you get people to C support and get a D+ in their required proficiency then people will join your class, you dont NEED a C rank proficiency, also with Cyril, he still has the highest growth total, and he literally has equal or better growths compared to Petra (this is after adding aptitude obvi), with an unbelievably easy path to wyvern, and I'd also argue his lower base stats arent as relevant because the base stats of the intermediate classes are usually a good starting point, and the growths those classes add are how units really start consistently getting good levels anyway
Or just get a b support (except caspar and ferdie) and you'll bypass the requirements.
I get Ashe just because of his personal skill. I don't buy any keys because that money can be used somewhere else.
I’d move Hilda down just due to how difficult recruiting her is if you aren’t using NG+. I’d move Marianne up just due to how useful Physic is, it’s a literal lifesaver.
Not to take away anything from Felix since he is one of the best physical units in the game. But Dimitri should be alone in S tier. Best growths in the game. Even in maddening mode similar to Edelgard he can take hits and I'd assume he still will be a monster in any class you choose. Although I believe Great Lord is his best class. Since you can just focus on his lance and authority skills and make him stupidly strong. Felix's weakness in Authority is a big negative especially considering in maddening since gambits are so crucial in this mode. With that being said I do believe Felix's best class is actually War Master. Yes Wyvern Lord is, in general, is the best class in the game, but given Felix's crest and how often it activates and his high speed, he will be quading and killing very frequently. You can recruit characters like Petra, Hilda to be flyers plus Ingrid and Sylvain should be a Falcon Knight and Wyvern Lord respectively.
I do believe Ingrid should be up a tier. Sure she does have a strength issue in the early game, but that does get fixed post time skip. And IMO she is actually comes close to Dimitri due to her becoming an amazing evasion tank with high resistance. Getting A in Flying is a must have for Ingrid. Honestly, she is a life savior on Azure Moon's final map. Not to mention her relic is super strong and her Personal skill makes hitting with gambits easier on maddening when gambit accuracy becomes an issue. To me, she should be right in front of Sylvain, but both should be higher then Leonie since Leonie can't get B support till chapter 10 I believe. And if you are using Male Byleth you have no reason to train lances. Mainly since the only class, they would need to train lances for is Cavalier/Paldian which are horrible class choices for Byleth.
Beyond that, the only thing I would change is put Ashe lower. Sure you get him right away but Bernie has all the tools Ashe has but has a better personal skill and has a great crest skill with low activation. Although recruiting her might not seem ideal. Ignatz personal skill is so helpful in maddening and recruiting him is easy since Byleth will be increasing Authority without much faculty training. Honestly, Cyril might make a better Bow Knight then Ashe. Better growths with aptitude and has proficiencies in lances, bows and riding so training him is easier. Plus you get Cyril fairly early.
lorenz is my best unit. I trained him under paladin and im in chapter 16 with a 70 hp mage with agneas arrow. He also gives lysithea thyrsus
Ashe one big thing above bernedetta and Ignatz and that's an easy path to wyvern.
I agree with most of the list. I would probably swap Hilda and Ingrid since they are similar in function, but Hilda has a much easier time getting to the same end. She naturally grows axe rank when not recruited, which is needed for wyvern, and has a somewhat similar growth spread. She loses 10 from spd and puts it on str, as well as moving 10 mag to HP. Ingrid has stellar RES but neither are particularly good with DEF. With B support her recruit is D axe and 12 charm, so it shouldn't be held against her too much since I assume people get B support with anyone they intend to recruit, and her requirement is super easy. Plus they both have hero relics available pre-timeskip, so even in that aspect they are fairly even. Ingrid may be one of the best mage killers in the game, but that is all she is able to effectively kill. Hilda can murder anything and everything you want her to.
I think Quick Riposte is so good that it puts male Byleth above female, but your sacrificing flying probably, but I wonder how much of a problem that really is on Byleth.
You got the +2 Boots to give someone, and the only two guys I’d consider handing it to over him is Felix and Dimitri
Also a minor thought...
But do you actually need to recruit Dorothea for the Luin Paralogue?
@@erikbell1723 No, you need Ingrid to get Luin, something to note for non-AM runs. You can do the paralogue with just Dorothea recruited, but you don't get any special rewards.
I disagree with the idea that you have to use a ton of your activity points in order to recruit some of these other characters. You can easily make up for the XP you lose with knowledge gem, and you should have A+ professor level by week one of chapter nine anyway. I think you are overvaluing the relative cost to byleth for some of the more out of the way recruits, especially considering the relative strength of said units in comparison to their contemporaries. Even spending meal time on units can be circumvented with gifts.
Sure if you go for ALL the units you compromise byleths strengths, but going for one or two out of the way units? at most thats 8 activity points over the course of the entire run. essentially chump change. Lysithia goes to S, below dimitri, Ferdinand goes to B tier, between dedue and ashe, and Marianne goes between dorothea and manuela.
Catherine moves up to A+, below petra. Thunderbrand is still easily one of the strongest weapons in the game, and Catherine as a unit is absolutley nuts. Note she is one of the only units capable of safely murdering the death knight by chapter six.
Everything else i more or less agree with.
I wouldn't even say you compromise Byleth's strengths because getting B support is very easy to do thanks to gifts, meals, TEA PARTIES (THIS IS A BIG ONE), lost items, choir, stat boosting cooking and mission assistance.
Seriously there are so many ways to raise support rank that recruitment is sooooo easy to do. The worst is Ferdie because that's the only thing you have to compromise something bad for.
Shamir speed doesn't matter. Hunters Volley is all you need.
CASPAR IS SLEPT ON, 45% STR, SPD, and DEX go quite a ways. He's like a better Sylvain with no crest
everytime I use him he always gets speed screwed
In terms of Sylvain comparison, he starts with 1 less HP and 2 less SPD, and Sylvain has better SPD and DEF growths. He starts slower than sylvain, and assuming average stat gains will remain slower than sylvain.
I don't think Caspar is as bad as people say he is, but his base stats are really awful so he requires much more work to reach the same ends, which can be rather detrimental on Maddening without NG+.
For bernadetta, you forgot she gets vengeance at c+ lance. That alone makes her way better than you have her credit for.
a human being from the earth she also gets encloser which is shared only by Claude
@@baylorlaw2001 definitely very useful, but it takes quite a bit of training to get her there unless you more or less solely focus on bows, when ideally you are also going to want to focus on training quite a few other things as well (axes to get death blow from brigand, flying or riding so she can be in a class that will allow her to take the most advantage of vengeance, etc) so it will likely be a while before she can use that, whereas vengeance can be easily obtained as early as chapter 3 or 4 (or 5 on blue lions and golden deer), without significantly cutting into your ability to train other things that much.
Plus, in most cases vengeance will be more useful as a way of deleting enemies instead of just allowing you to ignore them for a turn.
This isn't to take away from how good encloser is, especially against monsters where even a 1hp vengeance with death blow and lancefaire is rarely enough to one shot, and its definitely something you should always get for her, but its less significant to her than vengeance is in most situations.
Are we getting a Golden Deer one? I know this is late lol
I haven't done Maddening / no NG+, is it that necessary to make Byleth a Wyvern Lord + nothing else?
Not at all, Wyvern is just the best class in the game so people spam jerk it. You can use Byleth as any other sword class and they'll perform very well. Swordmaster, Hero and Assassin are all very easy to get on Byleth, a lot easier to get than Wyvern which will require flying training to D for Fem and C for Male, and on top of that you'll have to focus on using weapons other than personal sword.
Obviously Enlightened One is also a very solid class.
@@chadachi3970 Agreed. Although I would say Enlightened One is the only magic class Byleth should become since Enlightened One has better growths and skills then Mortal Savant. And making female Byleth a Gremory is a waster since she doesn't have too many spells that you want double of. Plus their magic growth isn't the best. But anyway Byleth can be SwordMaster, Enlightened One, Assasin, Falcon Knight, Wyvern Lord, or War Master and do extremely well.
I'd argue that you should make your Byleth a different class depending on the route since obviously the initial students you start with and keep if you choose Black Eagles will obviously be different.
@@tripleaamin3634 Yeah that's not a bad idea. Though I would always say to not go into flying classes unless you want to heavily hinder your early game for a better late game specifically for Byleth. On NG+ that's different because ez pz renown shop or max activity points, however on NG you're missing out on meals which really help certain units reach weapon rank benchmarks at certain points in the game. Like Lysithea in time for the first Death Knight encounter. I did this on my GD NG run and I needed every bit of activity points I could get for Lysithea's Reason rank for her to get some free EXP that only she can reasonably get at that point.
I would always say that its better to work on Bows than it is to work on Flying, assassin provides amazing growths for Byleth and D+ to C bows is fairly easy to get. I say D+ because you could always just risk the 60-70% passing chance and never touch bows again.
watching this Im convinced this dude never bothered with the monastery because he focuses so much on recruitment though skills instead of just getting them to B support.
Caspar and Ferdinand can't reach B support with Byleth because they are locked until part 2. They HAVE to be recruited through skills. There is no other way.
@@Paulkotsu those are literally the only two though, and it's not that hard to get byleth to the correct armour and axe rank.
This guy acts like recruiting a character is gonna effect your run even slightly...
I swear my Felix got 1 stat level up per level... he became a liability which made me very sad because i know he should be good
Bruh students get at least 2 stats per level, always
I can't agree with Felix and Dimitri over Female Byleth but that's just me.
With heavy armor isn't it good to have with weight down?
I thought it was just me thinking Casper really isn’t all that strong.
31:04
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Wyvernlord felix with mastery in brawling.