I always train Mercedes equally in reason and faith so she can become a Gremory and she’s honestly a really underrated damage dealer so I have her attack enemies fairly regularly and if she does take damage her personal becomes god tier for me.
@@xuanathan gambit avoidance is calculated by your charm against the enemy's. I don't think confidence boost gambit avoidance cuz I had ferdinand at 110ish avo and sometimes he still get hit by gambits from enemies with unusually high charm
@@misscelesta charm only allows you to reduce gambit hit by I believe 20, so even if you have a massive charm advantage, the enemy can still pull 30 hit rate with gambits
“Rarely are you being crit...” Me: *Vietnam flashbacks to the million times a grappler critted me on maddening* Fun story, my Ferdinand got crit by a 40 percent hit 1 percent crit meteor mage and i had to soft reset :)
Strawberry Cake it really is in the final map ingrid got hit by a 30% 1 percent crit from an enemy war master with a tomahawk in my blue lions final map maddening
Ferdie is being slept on. That Skill stacks with breakers and Alert stance (+). That seems late, but it's mid game to end game viable. His strengths is SS and flying to give him dodge tanking capability while being used to kill bosses with warp since everything is Smash / SS killable.
The only issue with it is that he loses it entirely if he gains hp on level up. Still during the mid to end where levels aren't after every 2 or 3 kills it can allow you to dodge tank basically everything
Some notes on placemnet disagrements Bernie: should be S tier, 5 estra damge basically for free is insane, adds up especially on maddening and stacks really well with her role as chip damage or vengence attacker. Dorethea: shokd be rarely useful, it's passive and free and can hit multiple allies, especially in the game of inches that is early maddening it can really come in handy. Certainly more so then Ashe Ashe: just bad, this one is so situational and nearly useless in a game where you have a convoy. Slyvain, Hilda and Leonie: should be usually useful: like Felix and Catherine these skills stop being super amazing after the early game, they are slightly better long term, but after chapter 5 they've kind of outgrown the need for these skills. Seteth: should be rarely useful: he joins halfway through the game, well after the point where these small damge modifiers are going to matter Jeritza: shold be S tier, Three Houses is a very player phase heavy game so Hit +20 is great for free, the lack of it during enemy phase is a non issue really
The problem with Bernie is that she's so squishy that it's hard to get that initial bit of damage on her. Especially since she has a crest which doesn't allow her to take damage from Failnaught or other relics.
@@The_Evening_Sun I've just been putting an guard adjutant on her,(gets her to 1HP for max Vengence damage) but even without that, I can still get her to low HP.
@@The_Evening_Sun guard adjutants work wonders, if you have a blessing gambit that's a maxed out vengeance if you can lure an enemy over, not to mention Bernie getting an hp level which activates Persecution Complex because she is no longer at full hp (unlike Ferdinand von Aegir and Dimitri who lose their bonuses for having an hp level). Plus, if you have any of the hp up stat boosters, you can give them to Bernie and use one to increase her maximum hp and since she's now missing hp, +5 damage. I did this with Rinkah in Fates who has a similar personal.
Lol at assuming she'll survive a round of combat in the early game on maddening. Plus, her strength growth is weak so what should have been a solid skill ends up being a crutch for her when her damage inevitably falls off.
@@brainwasher9876 quite the opposite actually, there are several tools to get her to lose hp, I've already listed a few. Death blow is easy to get, so for just missing a single hit point, Bernadetta is doing 11 damage without factoring in the might of her bow or her strength stat. If you factor in her base strength, even without death blow she's matching Edelgard and Byleth in the damage department. Persecution Complex also makes for a wickedly powerful Vengeance, instantly killing most bosses in a single shot if it connects, she doesn't even need to be on 1hp, a paladin Bernadetta with death blow and only missing 5hp will be doing 23 damage before even factoring in weapon might or her strength. I recommend Mekkah's waifu on Bernie, as he shows just how hard she can hit. Personally, Bernadetta is one of my favorite units to use, vengeance is very fun and that's not even the only thing she can do. She's one of the few people that can actually pull off holy knight with pass and rescue for warping shenanigans because she can just walk behind enemy lines and rescue a strong unit to her. I'd even go so far as to say she's the best archer in the game, even beating Claude
I think Hapi deserves to be up one. Being able to always destroy a full monster tile with one attack is really useful in this game. There are enough chapters and paralogues in this game with monsters in them that it comes into play a lot. She's either breaking a tile in one turn to allow you to bash the monster with your other units, or she does sick damage to them if there is no tile anymore. It requires zero set up or weird situational activation stuff, she's just always good against monsters, and removing a tile in one turn is very nice for playing efficiently it basically frees up an entire unit's turn who would be wasted trying to weaken the tile in the first place.
Ferdinand is easily a S makes him an amazing unit and it's not hard to keep his HP up when you have stuff like Renewal, Healing Focus, Physics and Regen equipment. Dorothea's is actually very strong early on when you lack heals as she can fire off magic from behind a front liner in a narrow space and heal the frontliner or just fully heal the team before you aggro a boss staying out their movement. Seeing as you will more often rather use a spell with Hanneman then rally someone i'd say it's more of a rarely useful. Ashe's is usually useful saves a bit off money early game which is important and late game it free's up inventory space for his team cause you'd want a variety of weapons to choose from in maddening it's better he's get put on chest duty as an Assassin or Flyer then having to hinder your team's combat abilities with carrying keys or using Byleth's convoy.
the Issue with Ashe is that late game he's only really viable as a sniper since he will almost never double and Sniper does that for him while also giving him more dmg with bowfaire so he doesn't have the mobility to use his skill that well if you want him doing good damage.
The problem with full HP personals is that if your max HP increases mid-battle (due to level up) then you have to heal like 1 HP just to get their abilities back.
I feel like live to serve on Mercedes is a bit more viable than you’re giving it credit for. It basically allows her to sponge a single hit for free and then heal completely the next turn, because she’s almost always going to heal more than her own max HP. Has some really useful applications especially if you give her a guard adjutant, you could use it to bait in a scary enemy without sacrificing health on your more important combat units. I also find Ashe’s lockpick pretty damn useful, because I don’t like wasting inventory space on keys. But that’s more of a personal thing. I’d also shift around the order of S tier a bit but I don’t think you were keeping that tier as much in order. Pretty great tier list all things considered!
I think Mercedes is where she should be. Outside of maybe using her as bait for a mage, I don't think I'd ever use her for that purpose. In Maddening, there are just too many enemies that will kill her if she ever gets in range.
Jon Smith yeah I definitely see her as an undervalued res tank, I’ve never seen her take more than like 10 from a magic attack. But again I think that guard adjutants can help her quite a lot, I always try to throw them on squishier mages so I can play a bit more recklessly with them. Definitely not the most viable but I think it’s fun to get those units more in the thick of things
Yeah I think Ashe deserves his placing in the video. It is not a great skill by any means, but having specific units carrying keys can be annoying at times. Ashe skill is at least convienient, while goody basket is just...why...And keys cost 300G, that’s...well, 3 smithing stones
Well, I'm currently playing through the blue lions route with mercedes using a guard adjutant and it is completely underrated imo. She is able to survive at least one hit from nearly all sources, so she can always use the guard adjutant and since there are often many enemies attacking your party at once, she can heal herself and another ally on the next turn. It works really really well.
How could you put Sylvain's in S tier but not Bernadetta's? It gives more damage and is easier to activate. There's no reason for it to be a tier below Sylvain's.
Actually, even though it does more damage than sylvains, you have to take into account that hes not only dealing more but is taking less damage. In addition, her skill is dependent on you waiting for her to take damage(which from my playthrough, rarely happened when she started leveling up) whereas sylvain can keep these buffs anytime; you can have him set near female allies on the battlefield right from the get go. So more often than not sylvains skill, and the others that are similar to his, will always be in effect. I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't I'm sorry😂.
Bernadetta's personal is not reliably procd, particularly on maddening where she gets ORKOd by a majority of enemies in the game for the first few chapters.
I'm on a maddening GD playthrough right now and my Bernadetta has been able to survive at least one hit, I did recruit her chapter 6 so she had some autoleveling, and I agree that Bernadetta on BE is worse than Sylvain, but I don't think that should be a reason for her placement to be a whole tier below. But even then there are still so many easy ways to proc the skill that it's still useful on BE. Demon weapons can activate the easiest, can be done on weakened enemy, archer, or stunned monster. Guard adjutant or a blessing gambit can protect from a ORKO. Even putting her in a bulkier class like paladin or equipping a shield can help her survive combat. It's so easy to proc that you almost always have free damage, so I still stand by what I said.
@@brainwasher9876 Bro just use guard adjutants then use vengence. Paladin bernadetta is pretty based, can one shot every enemy, including death knight.
I think Sylvain's personal is more reliable in the mid-game when other female units start getting mounts, like Pegasus Hilda/Ingrid or Cavalier Leonie, but Bernadetta's is great even early-game just because of how easy it is to get hurt, especially on Maddening. Getting an HP level will proc it. Eating a Fruit of Life or a Seraph Robe will proc it. And there are various ways to let her tank reliably on Enemy Phase that Tom already listed.
I think Flayn's can go up a slot. On Maddening, baiting clusters of enemies to attack on enemies' phase by putting one unit at the edge of one enemy's range and then swarming them is one of the easiest, rinse and repeat strategies. Setting up Flayn just out of range behind the unit your using as bait is something you can do multiple times on a tough map without much difficulty. Fun tier list BTW.
Balthus’s skill is VERY situational. HOWEVER, hear me out. The intermediate cavalier class does not take long to master, and its requirements are incredibly easy to meet, even though he has banes in riding and lances. Giving Balthus desperation on top of his personal skill and then reclassing him back to a class with gauntlets, or eventually grappler/warmaster, means he’ll be getting a flat boost to his damage. Get him the certifications, even just set him as an adjutant to auto-level his class, and boom. Is it optimal? NO! Is it worth it? NO! Is it possible? YES! Is it a fun reward? YES!
Fun fact: If you get his HP EXACTLY to 50%, you then have a unit that can pull off a: *KoG-Wrath-Vantage-Desperation-QR* viable both for player and enemy phase. Is it overkill? Yes. Is it worth it? Probably not. Is it hilarious? Absolutely.
Fun fact. Edelgard and Byleth have the highest damage output out of any character in the game.......but did you know that Bernadetta can surpass even their damage output? Vengeance.
Felix's skill exists to help those, like me, who kinda forget to train him in a specific rank. Like authority. Oh, and my first playthrough? Mercedes and Annette were in the front lines
It’s actually very viable to not bother. You can use that time to train his weapon ranks so he gets S ranks when most people are getting B ranks. Really useful for sniper Felix.
@@Neogears1312 also another reason why it’s good to take advantage of lone wolf is due to felix’s boon in authority which means he isn’t great with battalions so why even bother. Plus mid-late game it serves as a nice last resort if your battalion runs out
@@tahamohammad8842 because plenty of mid game (and onwards) battalions give at least identical damage boosts to felixes skill, along with all the other benefits of a battalion. Felixes skill is great early game and is nice as a bonus if he looses his battalion, but it's not worth sacrificing all the benefits of a battalion outside of early game. And there are plenty of C rank battalions (and some lower) that give at least 4 extra damage, you don't have to train felixes authority that much.
How is Sylvain's better than Ferdinand? By mid game the plus 2 isn't that useful anymore, while Ferdinand's allows him to more or less negate all enemy breaker skills, which is huge on maddening. Ignoring the 1.2 experience Dimitri gets, Ferdinand's is way better.
I think dorothea's skill is useful early game, it's saves you heals since healers will have low magic uses and you can heal 4 people at once if you place her right. It's nothing major but helps on early game maddening
I think a lot of fire emblem players underestimate the luck stat. Rally luck is good because there are several situations where the enemy has 2% crit on you and a couple extra points in luck would prevent that chance entirely. Everyone always complains about how their healer died to a random 2% crit which ruined their entire strategy so they had to restart. Now imagine if you could just remove that chance entirely at will. Rally luck is definitely slept on. Granted, those situations where the enemy lands a hit and gets a crit and kills your unit are pretty rare. But the next time some random silver sword mercenary kills your low luck cav or mage because he landed a 1% crit, just imagine that situation being impossible. You will appreciate the luck stat a lot more once you realize how much it really effects your stress levels while playing fire emblem. It's definitely not a bad skill imo. You can still move with him before you rally (i'm not sure if he gets any other rallies, but if he does then that is just more stats). Rally luck may be the worst rally, but that doesn't mean it is bad. I think it should be moved up a tier into rarely useful. Because it is rarely useful, but when it is useful, it is REALLY useful.
In 3H, Divine Pulse makes it kind of irrelevant since you can typically RNG scum to avoid the crit, but at least it still has the potential to help a unit avoid magic attacks or proc Miracle in a desperate situation.
@@wesnohathas1993 Divine pulse makes a lot of mechanics irrelevant, but you also don't have infinite divine pulse uses. And if you really really need to avoid a low crit chance from the enemy, then I think rally luck can still be useful. Even if it just saves you going back a turn or two. If you're going against multiple enemies that have crit on you then that's another scenario that saves you some time and resets. I still don't think it should be put in rarely useful
Petra's personal is straight garbage. Even if you're using it against monsters, their luck is so awful that you can just use a regular killer weapon and get crits pretty easily. I'd put it just above Raphael. That bad. Dorothea's personal is actually quite good in early game and definitely better than linhardt and probably Marianne. Free healing is nice. Also not sure why constance is so low. It's just free stat increases with no strings attached. How could it be worse than, say felix or Catherine's, who only gain stats when they don't have battalions? Finally, yuri's personal activates when he attacks at 1 range. It's pretty useful when he's a sword unit but I can understand if ppl want to run him as a Mage or something 2 range, it's not great.
Constance's ability is situational because her defense and resistance are already horrendous, so unless you're indoors, the ability will do next to nothing for her, as even with the defense buffs she struggles to take hits.
@@p0oka261 That's still the minority of maps. Like 80-90% of the maps are outdoors with the sun shining. So 80-90% of the time her personal is effectively doing nothing.
I feal like the only ones worth S tier are Byleth, the Lord's, Bernadetta but what I think the best one is Mercedes as you never have to worry about healing your healer and works really well in the last few maps maps of blue lions that have tons of ballista and other long range weapons.
You’re easily the most underrated fire emblem youtuber, you should have hundred of thousands of subs! I always learn so much watching your videos, keep up the great work!
I feel like you're underrating king of grappling, especially when you're not required to heal and he has easy access to the one brawling combat art that heals half of your health if you're in danger (which is not even necessary really) plus 6 damage per hit is great for someone who definitely wants to grapple
I think Hubert belongs in bad. His charm is so low that offensive gambits aren’t ever going to be reliable on him without heavy investment. Dedue belongs in S, it’s super impactful in the early game, and Dedue falls off hard as a unit after the time skip anyway. But if you decide to use him, it can help him survive his life as a perpetually under leveled unit. Constance belongs in S, it’s a flat bonus you don’t have to think about ;) Ferdie and Ingrid should both go up a tier for the same reason
Felix's ability that is basically non-existent as soon as you use Battallions: "Rarely Useful.". Dorothea's ability, which procs for free and can restore 10% hp to 4 units at a time with no effort or actions lost: "Just Bad".
Dorothea's ability gives her the AWESOME ability, to heal 3-4 hp to her allies that's nothing. The most usefull it can do is give ferdinand 100% hp back after a HP up Lvl up so he doesn't lose his personnal. In the early game of maddening, your units get one rounded most of the time and the ones that doesn't, you already are healing them. Or at worst you didn't pay attention and your bernadetta loses her personnal ability and now deals no damage Felix has a 35% growth in Charm, which is pretty meh, AND a bane in Authority, so anyway he does poorly with battalions. Give him iron Gauntlet (which anyway you want him to use as it also synergise with his major Fraldarius crest) and you have +10 dmg on any attack, or even +20 dmg when he quadruples(which i agree, on maddening happens rarely but Felix is pretty fast Sure later in the game, especially in part 2, battalions give higher boost that his personnal and a gambit is more usefull, but in the early game it's always good
The non Lord s tier should be in this order Bernie Lysithea Ignatz Mercedes (magic tank) Lorenz Gilbert Personally don't think adj opposite genders are S nor rally
Completely agree. Gender and rally abilities shouldn't be S tier. Gender specific ones require a specific arrangement of units to be useful and imo unit placement should be done defensively in preparation for enemy phase rather than for player phase. Gender abilities work best when you know who is going to enter battle and on enemy phase you don't have as much control over that. Rallies have their use but then you're also not attacking or healing with that unit in a turn so it's more of a trade off than something that's always useful. I consider them all rarely useful.
I've said it before, huge fan of Petra's skill when fighting monsters or end-game bosses. Constance getting the +3 to an attack stat is really solid for maps like BL final and a lot of early game maps. But a lot of maps are outside so it drops off. The +3 RES does synergize well with transmute though so her being able to tank a magic attack better means all her stats go up, not bad
@@twigz3214 I've seen Constance take a magic shot on Maddening. Most mages can, actually, even on Maddening. Enemy mages tend to not double because their tomes are heavy (especially dark mages) and several of your own mages will probably have enough res to take at least one hit. The exception being Lysithea who is so frail on Maddening that actually everything will most certainly kill her in a single shot, including opposing mages.
So I agree about 95%, I feel like Dorothea should move up just because I’m Maddening a lot of times a bunch of units have taken damage and it’s nice that you just have to be near her to heal all of them. Sure it’s not a lot, but it’s something and it can help mounted units that can Canto back to near her, especially if she danced them. Then Mercedes I would also move up, because if you’re like me who has gotten screwed over by the Maddening enemy placement and she barely survives but so do your other units, her using Fortify to heal literally everyone, including herself, is super helpful. Other than those two things we basically agree on everything
I'd say Dorothea's is at least better than Linhardts, and maybe even better than Marianne's mainly because of her long range, specially with Valkirie, it gives her enough mobility to put another unit besides her to heal them, and you can also heal up to 4 people Agree on Cyril's, because he's the only that can have it, and always has it, it's bassically solving solving a problem it created itself, when he could just have the growths that he would have with the skill, but also having another skill
Marianne's passive is really useful for Pegasus Knight Marianne (which sounds stupid, but she hit KOes everybody with frozen lance). As most times fliers band together, it gives an already strong avoidance tank an easy way to self-heal.
Enjoyed the video! Honestly don't know what game designers were thinking when they created such bad skills as Manuela's, Raphael's and company... By the way, I like comboing Vantage+Wrath on Balthus plus Brawling Prowess, Brawl Avoid +20 and Brawl Crit +10. Even though he must be below 50% health to be full potential, I think these abilities added to his personal skill are good to easy-crit and dodge if needed. Anyways I found him still useful even when these abilities are not activated; at least in my Hard/Classic games.
I think that Bernie and Ferdinand's skills should be S tier given that it's not that complicated to control their HP, and they are great buffs. Ferdinand's personal gives him hit whereas Dimitri's doesn't, and that is probably worth mentioning given that you compared the two. You're also overvaluing the positional skills. It's not always convenient to have units next to one another especially as units get more movement options, and enemies are not always accommodating. You have Ignatz' personal a tier above Jeritza's, and I don't think that this is entierly fair. It is worse to be sure, but it has to be compared to other skills too. It's still generally more useful than +2 defense, rally magic, or a positional skill for example. I have mixed feelings on Dorothea's personal. If I'm using units that want to be at low health I would rather not have it since it doesn't do a whole lot and saves me the hassle of worrying about unit positioning. On the other hand that could just be because I'm lazy, and it does nothing but help otherwise. It can give HP to units that would want healing; Linhardt and Marianne shouldn't be getting attacked in the first place.
Dorothea and Linhardt's skills are good early game when you don't have as much money for healing potions, and when traversing wider maps. Ex, I've been taking my Linhardt through the maze part of the Flayn/Death Knight chapter, so when he's walking through there, he can heal as he walks through the zones between enemies without me wasting a cast from my healer (meme run, don't yell at me) or worry about having a vulnary on hand for him. Same with Dorothea, except it helps other units rather than herself, and it's actually a little more versatile. Late game, they tend to lose their usefulness, and they'll always be situational, but I don't think they should be f tier. I think they work better in rarely useful, personally.
Love the fact that he leaves the dog noises in the background, feels like we're justing hanging out talking about FE compared to most youtubers who can have no aspect of their personal life interfere with their videos whatsoever. I like my Fire Emblem buddy
I like how they made Cyril have horrendous growths without the skill so that he would just be normal. Why give him that skill if his stats are gonna be ass anyway?
I've actually used dorotheas passive area heal a lot in the early and early mid game. Not even consciously, but just noticing that she healed 4 people at 75% hp around her again. Its not great but not completely useless like the others in her tier in my opinion.
I know this has been said tons of times already but repetition can’t hurt. You’re HARD sleeping on Ferdies, it allows for some of the absolute best dodge tanking in the entire game. Even on maddening it’s incredibly effective, especially if stacked with battalions, sword avoid from dancer, alert stance, breaker skills, there’s so much you can do to make him completely unhittable.
Hard underrating of Manuela. The death knight is always hitting 15-20% crits on me. Just divine pulse and put her next to the unit that should've lived and it usually works. Feels less less cheeky than trying to remember the rn rolls and cheesing them too
I’d move Balthus’s personal up to Usually Useful. The extra durability for earlygame maddening is REALLY useful. Having a, like, 16 Def unit right away is a godsend.
I mostly agree but...: Dorothea's to Rarely - it's clutch earlygame when every heal counts, and later on it's a small heal with only positioning requirements. Can also be used to top off Ferdinand if his personal gets offd by an HP level up, for example. Constance to S - ...it's literally better than both Lorenz' and Gilbert's personals. Sure whether you get defensive or offensive bonus depends on map, but the fact stands that it's better than both, and those are S. Manuela to Rarely - occasionally useful vs enemies with Killer weps. Jeritza to S - how many times did to benefit from Ignatz' personal on EP?
i have used dorothea's skill in the first two maps. Didn't want to use linhardt (No slacking on my class) so i didn't have anyone who could heal and her passive alone did the job. That's the extent of the usefulness of this skill... the first two maps of a fresh save x) which is still better than felix imho.
How is not a single person complaining about Petra’s personal being just rarely useful, give her cursed Ashia sword from the pallardo map and easy 100% crit against every monster that is below half health and with those 100+ hp health bars on maddening there is opportunities enough for that.
Surprised you ranked Ashe as highly as you did. He's my boy and I love him to pieces but his personal skill is just a waste, and I'm saying this as someone who likes to throw him on a wyvern and send him around to chests. Three Houses just isn't designed to justify a lockpick skill. He should've gotten an avoid buff or something like that. Honestly, between his lackluster personal skill and terrible stats and growths, my guy really got shafted.
Dorothea is much better than she gets credit for in the context of early maddening; when your heals are limited and you need every point of health you can get and you're short on gold, then healing up to four allies for free is a great utility. At least deserves to be rarely useful as opposed to just bad.
Wait isn't happi like S or usually useful? I get that there are not always monsters but helps a lot in breaking barriers and stuning monsters, even more considering her range. I get that Dorothea is not great but it helped me a lot in early maddening.
King of Grappling is actually amazing in my opinion. Use Balthus as a front line unit, he takes some damage and then transforms into an unkillable murder machine under 50%. Means you can use stuff like war master as a tank class. Also can potentially stack with things like wrath and defiant skills. You really feel defensive buffs when you raise your def enough so that you take basically no damage. Balthus is tanky enough to reach those thresholds with his personal.
Now that I think about it, Balthus' personal skill probably makes him the best candidate for the Hero class besides Bernadetta if it wasn't gender locked. It's still astonishing that no character in the game has it as their canon class.
I think Lone Wolf is actually pretty helpful as Jeralt’s Mercenaries is the only really good battalion that you get for a while, so I’d rather take advantage of it on a character who needs it more than Felix. I’d rather have two helpful boosts to power on different characters than Felix getting better avoid in the early game. It’s like Staunch Shield where it falls off later in the game but is incredibly helpful in the early game especially on Maddening. It’s obviously not the best personal, but I think it’s on the same level as Staunch Shield.
Staunch shield lasts a bit longer before falling off and realistically the minute you can equip battalions to everyone you should equip one to Felix to try and raise his awful authority stat just a bit more for later in the game.
The thing I like about Petra's persona skill, is that you are increasing the crit chance on a character that already has high skill, meaning that it is very likely you will be landing a crit on an enemy that is low on health, and sometimes that crit can be the difference between the enemy unit getting defeated, or barely surviving.
I would switch Ashe and Dorethea. there is no point in having someone to be able to pick locks when you can get as many keys as you want for cheap. while with Dorethea it's just free HP that can hit multiple people at once.
Flayn's is not so bad because it only requires her to be adjacent to the front line, not on it. It's going to be very useful for chokepoints. Even on open fields, you usually want to be positioning your frontliners right on the edge of enemy danger zone, so Flayn can stand right behind them and still be safe. Plus there is an additional layer of synergy if you equip her with a Retribution battalion. Dedue's is easy S tier for me because not only does it make BL have a far easier early game on Maddening than other routes, but also easier to set up kills so you can control who gets the exp, which is really hard to do in other routes. Also it's one of the best synergies between a personal skill and the actual character who has it. Probably my favorite personal skill in the entire game. Dorothea's is also pretty nice. Thanks to her having long range spells in both Reason and Faith, you have a lot of freedom with where you place her, so it's easy for 2-3 allies to stand next to her each turn, and that adds up to a lot of passive healing. Especially better with all the units that will have Canto because they can go attack an enemy and Canto back to Dorothea and heal up. It's also very useful for micro managing your units' HP for whatever reason (abilities like Vantage, as well as personal skills like Bernadetta, Balthus, Ferdinand's). Merdedes's can be quite useful as well, since she can actually be used to take tank some magic hits with her high Res and draw out enemy mages. It's not "usually useful" but it's more than "rarely useful" if you play around it.
My problem with Sylvain and leonie skills is that I run them as hit and run wyverns or paladins. 50% of the time I don’t have them fighting in close proximity to other units so I’m not getting much out of their skills
I would move flayn to usually useful because I personally like her as a dancer; And if you pair her with a Levin sword (+) and the sword avoid +20 skill she can usually be around other units in the front line and be safe from being hit.
I think Ferdie's Confidence is really useful. Stacking avoidance skills on him isn't really too hard because he doesn't have any weaknesses so he has good class mobility. And keeping him topped up isn't too hard. And he's not super fragile so he can stand to take a hit if it does happen. I made mine a dancer for that sword avoid +20, got level 5 sword prowess for another +20, classesd him to Wyvern Lord for another +10 avoid, and am trying to get Alert Stance + (which to be fair I prolly won't get till very late game). Ah, and I stacked him with Ashes and Dust for +15 avoid. The only issue is that he wants to attack with lances because of SS but his avoid stacks best with swords so I'm always kinda switching up what he uses lol. And I believe his budding talent gives Seal Defense so I mostly just use him is a dodge tank/chip damage guy who occasionally kills with SS. So Wyvern Lord Ferdie using Swords is: 15 (Personal)+20 (Sword Avoid)+20 (Sword Prowess 5)+10 (Wyvern Lord)+ 15 (Ashes and Dust) +30 (Alert Stance +) = 110 Using Lances: 15 (Personal) + 15 (Lance Prowess 5) + 10 (Wyvern Lord) + 15 (Ashes and Dust) 30 (Alert Stance +) = 85 Dimitri could potentially be an even better avoid tank because of his personal +20 avoid post time skip but its a harder build to make and prolly involves a lot of ng+. Its hard to get him into Wyvern Lord for the free +10 avoid because he doesn't like axes and he doesn't want to be trained for a good many chapters cause he's being an edgelord (sorry edelgard, he's the real emo kid jamming to Black Parade). Making him a dancer for the +20 sword avoid can work, but he wants to use Lances in his personal class because of Lancefare and his relic (assuming that will be picked over Wyvern Lord bc its hard to get him there. His personal class has good growths so its prolly preferred over something else). And because of his lack of training its also harder to get him to Alert Stance +. So either you can grind out Wyvern somehow and make him a sword user (same as Ferdie's build) or make him use swords in his personal class and ignore Lancefare while passively training flying (which to be fair isn't a huge deal because +5 attack < ability to dodge everything and dish out damage with That Strength Stat). If he's not flying you can give him Brigid Hunters Battalion for +20 avoid. So if your grind out Wyvern Despite his bane in Axes and make him use swords: 20 (Personal)+20 (Sword Avoid)+20 (Sword Prowess 5)+10 (Wyvern Lord)+ 15 (Ashes and Dust) +30 (Alert Stance +) = 115 If Great Lord using Swords: 20 (Personal)+20 (Sword Avoid)+20 (Sword Prowess 5)+ 20 (Brigid Hunters or Gautier) +30 (Alert Stance +) = 110 And if Great Lord using Lances: 20 (personal) 15 (Lance Prowess 5) 20 (Brigid Hunters or Gautier) + 30 Alter Stance + = 85 Ah and also his Budding Seals Movement which is nice but he's more likely to just Kill Them All so its a waste of a slot. But overall its a lot harder to get Dimitri to work with an avoid build compared to Ferdie because of how hard it is to invest in him and at the end of the day his base ideal build only gives 5 more avoid than Ferdinand. Though Dimitri hits a lot harder than Ferdinand so he becomes more of a one man army when his avoid gets stacked. Ah and since Battalion Vantage and Wrath are good skills its worth it to leave space for him in Dimi's skill slots so its also harder to spam avoid skills. So yeah, Ferdinand isn't that hard to build into an avoid monster and his personal facilitates it so I found it to be very useful lol. It does take some investment though, but its not thaaat hard
I think this is a really good list, only changes I would do is to rate some skills in relation to Pre/Post Timeskip/other benchmarks. Dedue, Catherine, and Felix come to mind. For example, Dedue's is a godsend pre-timeskip, especially on Maddening, but Post, as you said, it falls off. In my opinion, these should be two separate rankings, but it's your tier list though, so if you don't want to, completely fine. Catherine's lets her act like a mini-Jagen Pre-Timeskip (thanks Mekkah's Waifu series), but isn't as useful once you have more battalions to go around, and is barely noticeable post-timeskip. Same idea for Felix, it helps when you only own one or two battalions, but is quickly made obsolete by those good battalions.
Balthus' personal feels like Dedue's but better in early maddening. It kinda sucks that he has to be below half, but once he is he takes like 1-5 damage with the +6 defense and one rounds stuff like crazy with +6 str. Feels really amazing for the first few chapters. Definitely falls off later, but the str is always nice and it pairs well with healing focus.
Mercedes is easily a good sponge to take hits due to live to serve.. especially early game maddening.she has high starting speed compared to her classmates, especially equipping heal. She can take hits and not get doubled in Ch 4 and others.
One thing about this is that certain personal skills are much more useful in the early game. Arguably the early game is the most challenging--on hard and normal, in the late game your units can ORKO everyone anyway. So Dorothea's personal seems useless in the late game, yes, but in the early game maddening when you have one healer and everyone's on critically low health, her personal is a godsend. The same goes for Felix. In the late game sure you can put a battalion with +6 might or something on him which totally invalidates his personal, but in the early game maddening when on average your units are doing like 4 damage per hit and you have two battalions in total, +5 might's a bfd. Then there's differences for maddening vs hard vs normal. Petra's personal is pretty useless on normal and 90% of hard because all the enemies die in one turn anyway, but in maddening all your units are doing tiny amounts of damage, so the extra damage she deals is proportionally much bigger. I would personally rank Mercedes' skill much lower. Unlike Dorothea, it's not useful in early maddening because Mercy gets ORKOd so often that having her tank is often suicidal; in the late game, you want a lot of damaged units so that your healers can grind faith and level exp, so her personal healing herself actually HURTS you. Mercy's res is so high that magical units often don't even scratch her, while physical units totally body her. She's just not a reliable tank. Finally I'd rank Jeritza's worse, because hit rate is most important in the early game. He'll have such a high hit rate by the time you finally recruit him that his personal skill is redundant.
I kinda get your argument about Cyril's skill, but holy hell, +20% buff to ALL stats for each an every level up is beyond godly. That is like the god of all god abilities. With it, he has some of the best growths of any character in the entire game, has boons in every single weapon type aside for Swords, boons in both riding and flying, etc. He is basically the ultimate blank slate and can be made into literally ANYTHING effectively that isn't magic related, and by end game will be an absolute monster. It's truly your loss if you underestimate him. For anyone who enjoys the customization & growth aspects of this game, he should be going into your party the instant you recruit him. He's basically the ultimate of those weak but get strong types in the FE series. Can't remember the name, but there's a name for it. He's like the Nino of physical combatants only far better even.
This comment is real late, but to fix Cyril’s personal you could make it a 5-10% chance to double a stat gain (from +1 to +2 growth) like Delthia being able to gain +2 attack gain on level in Echoes. Think it could be a good way to show the idea that he’s bad but scales exponentially upward still.
Jeritza’s ability is REALLY good. Yeah, it’s a slightly worse version of Ignatz’s skill on paper, but in practice, it’s essentially the same thing. Ignatz is not someone you want to become a frontline enemy phase unit, so it’s not as if having that extra hit rate on enemy phase will be incredibly useful. Yeah, having a flat buff would’ve been ideally better for an enemy phase tank like Jeritza, but he’s already such a top-tier unit that it doesn’t make that much of a difference. He gets Counterattack as a class mastery skill, so even though he won’t get that buff on enemy phase, he’s still able to do way more than anyone else just by the fact that he can bait and delete enemy archers. The hit buff from Murderous Intent also works on gambits, so when you take into account the unit this skill is on, Jeritza will easily delete enemies in the player phase. Also, I would put Alois’s skill as Rarely Useful instead of Just Bad. It gives +8 Lck, which gives you +8 Crit Avo and +4 Crit. On certain maps, you will face war masters and bosses with high crit rates, so being able to essentially negate all critical hits with +8 Crit Avo can be really useful. Yeah, it’s not the most useful skill overall, but in those several moments when you need it, it’s REALLY useful.
I don't have a problem with the skill itself. It's really nice when I forget to bring keys into a map or struggle to make room for them in my inventory, but it does bother me that it overlaps with the same ability present in classes Ashe would be likely to use.
@@wesnohathas1993 His best class is a Sniper, it lets him double faster, squisher units and ohko them. he can naturally double some tankier units but doesn't do enough to oneshot them so sniper let's him pick up oneshots he would never normally be able to.
I disagree, I think it fits fairly high up. Let’s take up inventory space, and you can always fill that with weapons and accessories and healing items. Even more so on NG+, where you often want to equip crest items, sometimes multiple. Now sadly Ashe simply isn’t that great, so I’ll tend to use my trickster class to open chests.
A little debug: Though ignatz has watchful eyes which also affects gambit hit rate, his charm and charm growth is very low. This would not be a problem if runing a ng+ to spare some teaparty for him or some teaparty plus good battalion, but he, in a large part of the game, will struggle to connect a gambit, despite personal skill.
I definitely have a few hard disagrees here. Granted I have not played on Maddening (or intend to soon tbh) so I get things are different but still. Ferdinand's is definitely S Tier because hit and avoid are always good things to have and since he's a frontliner you'll want him topped off anyway. Bernie's is also amazing because it's not too hard to get her below full, can get an HP level up, use a stat booster, stand on damaging terrain, etc, and it works very well with Vengeance. Dorothea is mediocre rather than bad because it can be free heal early on where you have low uses on heals and if you don't care about turn count you can spend a few turns to heal up to 4 units. Felix is definitely more useful early on where you don't have many batallions or are low level and most batallions that give him over 5 damage are usually gonna need investment on his bad Authority, and with his good Dex and Spd stuff like Hit and Avoid are less of an issue on him. Also Gauntlet potential. The gendered stuff (Sylvain/Leonie and Hilda/Seteth) are definitely not S rank, they require specific unit placement and which while good early on fall off later and it's not that good if those specific characters aren't together. Seteth suffers from it harder since he always joins late. I'd say A for everyone except Seteth who goes B. Mercedes' skill isn't so great as a healer but if used as an offensive Mage can do great. She has great Res so she can magic tank a bunch and then heal up whatever she lost for free, definite A. Annette and Hanneman's rallies are again not S-tier, they good, but not that much. Annetta can do great if stacked with others so A but Hanneman doesn't get that much so it's more mediocre, B. Lorenz/Gilbert not really S because for Lorenz sure 2 free damage is good early but past that less so, so A, and for Gilbert 2 Def aren't really gonna matter by the time he joins, he's likely to take little damage or get destroyed, and it DEFINITELY doesn't help Res, down to B. Flayn is good if the enemy only has 1 range by blocking her off and make tanks tankier. She's a healer without Physic so she'll need to be closer than most healers anyway. I kinda agree with Shamir and Cyril where the abilities are great but they're wasted because of their owners, but Shamir can potentially be good if reclassed so high B instead, Cyril is more like the game telling you he can be great if trained and still he's a bit of a letdown because his natural growths are bad. Yuri's ability triggers at melee range aka most of the time probably and he's possibly the best dodge tank in the game if trained well so he's A. Balthus' ability can work wonders with Vantage/Wrath combos, 6 Str in a Gauntlet unit can be deadly and you can put Healing Focus if he needs it, definitely S. Constance is a free boost depending on map and the game forgets how dark and cloudy maps count same as indoors so there are more maps than you'd think, low A. Hapi's is actually really good because most monsters have low Res and there's a pretty good chunk of them so she can destroy them easily and you can always use a Gambit to force the monster to go for someone else so the drawback rarely matters, S Tier. Whew, that's a lot, but you did say to let know people's thoughts in the comments, so I gave mine. Personally I think there were too many in S tier that belonged more in A, you definitely can't put those next to the stuff from the lords and be like "Yup, equally as good".
I'd have to confirm, but I think Yuri is for adjacent enemies. I mean, his "default" class is trickster, which is primarily melee with some spells. Plus, when you're using a weapon, a rng of 1 is adjacent, so it'd be the most consistent way of describing it.
the only one I would disagree with is hapi's monstrous appeal being rather useful since she has 1-3 range effectiveness on monsters with allows her to break barriers in a safe distance that other units can only do with the cadecues staff or thyrsus. And you were incorrect, if a monster has been gambitted by another unit, they will focus on the gambitter, not hapi. Either higher in rarely useful or in the bottom of usually useful imo as it depends on how many monsters you are encountering anyways
15:07 Goody basket isn't a good skill, but in my verdant wind's run, it actually saved raphael's life in a few occasions. What really sucks about this skill is that you just can't plan an strategy out of it.
I think a cool skill for cyril would have been something like, if he gains a level, and the rng rolls on a stat, and he doesn't gain a point, it rolls a second time. Basically 2 chances for a stat to level up instead of 1. That or maybe have it to where there's a 10% chance he gets +2 on a stat instead of +1
Ferdinand's personal is top tier since he can stack more avoid than any other character with the right set up which is amazing plus the extra hit is always helpful.
Iced Coffee I think technically Petra could stack the most avoid due to the 30+ buff from Defiant Avoid, which is female exclusive, plus having the highest female speed stat. But other than that you’re right, Ferdie’s is absolutely S tier. Especially since it’s not only avoid but +15 hit as well. It also affects gambits. On Maddening the extra hit and avoid is a God send. Defenitely one of the best personal skills in the game
I think that Catherine's ability is actually not as bad as all that, especially before you get a bunch of really useful battalions. Her skill is effectively +5 Def AND +5 Res, which in early game can be valuable and free up a good battalion for someone else. It's still not the best ability by any means, but I've had her battalion get dropped mid-battle and all the enemies ignored her because they could no longer deal any damage lol.
I would have a tier in between Usually Useful and Rarely Useful, something like Situationally Useful where they’re good on specific maps, with specific builds, only in the early game, etc. Skills like Dedue’s and Ashe’s belong there imo. Also I think Dorothea was ranked too low, patching up damage is almost never bad and it can keep units like Dimitri and Ferdinand at 100% HP without using an action and spell slot to heal.
Balthus's ability is definitely situational, but put him in the Hero class for Vantage and then equip Wrath as well and he is better at dealing damage on enemy phase than probably anyone else.
Dorothea's ability is not bad imo. It's really useful in the beginning of a maddening run when heals are very limited in use. It can also help with chip damage from flaming tiles and from enemy poison strike damage. Just have your team mates surround Dorothea if they are walking past flames, and you don't have to waste heals on them.
You got the wrong idea about Yuri, it’s melee range, so usually you’re getting a +3 damage buff, which is really good
Yuri's ability has horrible wording.
That's the way I interpreted it
"Mercedes' live to serve is rarely useful, because how often is she going to get hit"
Tell that to my war cleric Mercedes
Flash to the last Blue Lions Map
[Spoilers]
Where Edelgard can cover 90% of the map twice in one turn and seems to target Mercedes the most.
I always train Mercedes equally in reason and faith so she can become a Gremory and she’s honestly a really underrated damage dealer so I have her attack enemies fairly regularly and if she does take damage her personal becomes god tier for me.
The personal would be better suited on a usually tanky healer, like holy knight Marianne (best healer btw) who has higher defensive stats
In maddening it is a little useful, but not very because any physical attacker besides an armor Knight will most likely kill her in one hit.
@@Rexis102 or Annette
Ferdie's passive boosts his gambit hit too, that's a HUGE deal in early maddening
Does it also raise his avoid against gambits?
@@xuanathan gambit avoidance is calculated by your charm against the enemy's. I don't think confidence boost gambit avoidance cuz I had ferdinand at 110ish avo and sometimes he still get hit by gambits from enemies with unusually high charm
If you want more safety against enemy's gambit, have successful tea parties with him as many as possible and dump your charm stat boosters on him
@@misscelesta charm only allows you to reduce gambit hit by I believe 20, so even if you have a massive charm advantage, the enemy can still pull 30 hit rate with gambits
Manuela needs a personal skill called Forever Alone where she gets +3 damage every time a male unit moves away from her.
That just sent Manuela to the infirmary
😂
And it can stack, but she cries harder every time it procs
"Mercedes rarely ever takes damage. When is she ever in the front lines?" *nervous sweats*
Mercedes: professor, my aura knuckles are broken, can you send them for repairs...professor, why are you sweating when watching a video?
Mercedes fortress knight
She is a res tank for sure!
In my defense, she's usually pretty good in the front and mid line lmao
Warlock mercie carried me through all the timeskip blue lions. Nobody else has done as good as she has.
“Rarely are you being crit...”
Me: *Vietnam flashbacks to the million times a grappler critted me on maddening*
Fun story, my Ferdinand got crit by a 40 percent hit 1 percent crit meteor mage and i had to soft reset :)
The blue lions final map maddening in a nutshell
Rich Pichu yup, that’s the one :/ real winner that one
Lorr 0 f
1% is too big of a risk
Strawberry Cake it really is in the final map ingrid got hit by a 30% 1 percent crit from an enemy war master with a tomahawk in my blue lions final map maddening
Ferdie is being slept on. That Skill stacks with breakers and Alert stance (+). That seems late, but it's mid game to end game viable. His strengths is SS and flying to give him dodge tanking capability while being used to kill bosses with warp since everything is Smash / SS killable.
The only issue with it is that he loses it entirely if he gains hp on level up. Still during the mid to end where levels aren't after every 2 or 3 kills it can allow you to dodge tank basically everything
hhheeeccckkk526 you can use him to bait 1-2 range enemies with ease. I needed to on my maddening playthrough.
Some notes on placemnet disagrements
Bernie: should be S tier, 5 estra damge basically for free is insane, adds up especially on maddening and stacks really well with her role as chip damage or vengence attacker.
Dorethea: shokd be rarely useful, it's passive and free and can hit multiple allies, especially in the game of inches that is early maddening it can really come in handy. Certainly more so then Ashe
Ashe: just bad, this one is so situational and nearly useless in a game where you have a convoy.
Slyvain, Hilda and Leonie: should be usually useful: like Felix and Catherine these skills stop being super amazing after the early game, they are slightly better long term, but after chapter 5 they've kind of outgrown the need for these skills.
Seteth: should be rarely useful: he joins halfway through the game, well after the point where these small damge modifiers are going to matter
Jeritza: shold be S tier, Three Houses is a very player phase heavy game so Hit +20 is great for free, the lack of it during enemy phase is a non issue really
The problem with Bernie is that she's so squishy that it's hard to get that initial bit of damage on her. Especially since she has a crest which doesn't allow her to take damage from Failnaught or other relics.
@@The_Evening_Sun I've just been putting an guard adjutant on her,(gets her to 1HP for max Vengence damage) but even without that, I can still get her to low HP.
@@The_Evening_Sun guard adjutants work wonders, if you have a blessing gambit that's a maxed out vengeance if you can lure an enemy over, not to mention Bernie getting an hp level which activates Persecution Complex because she is no longer at full hp (unlike Ferdinand von Aegir and Dimitri who lose their bonuses for having an hp level). Plus, if you have any of the hp up stat boosters, you can give them to Bernie and use one to increase her maximum hp and since she's now missing hp, +5 damage. I did this with Rinkah in Fates who has a similar personal.
Lol at assuming she'll survive a round of combat in the early game on maddening. Plus, her strength growth is weak so what should have been a solid skill ends up being a crutch for her when her damage inevitably falls off.
@@brainwasher9876 quite the opposite actually, there are several tools to get her to lose hp, I've already listed a few. Death blow is easy to get, so for just missing a single hit point, Bernadetta is doing 11 damage without factoring in the might of her bow or her strength stat. If you factor in her base strength, even without death blow she's matching Edelgard and Byleth in the damage department. Persecution Complex also makes for a wickedly powerful Vengeance, instantly killing most bosses in a single shot if it connects, she doesn't even need to be on 1hp, a paladin Bernadetta with death blow and only missing 5hp will be doing 23 damage before even factoring in weapon might or her strength. I recommend Mekkah's waifu on Bernie, as he shows just how hard she can hit.
Personally, Bernadetta is one of my favorite units to use, vengeance is very fun and that's not even the only thing she can do. She's one of the few people that can actually pull off holy knight with pass and rescue for warping shenanigans because she can just walk behind enemy lines and rescue a strong unit to her. I'd even go so far as to say she's the best archer in the game, even beating Claude
I think Hapi deserves to be up one. Being able to always destroy a full monster tile with one attack is really useful in this game. There are enough chapters and paralogues in this game with monsters in them that it comes into play a lot. She's either breaking a tile in one turn to allow you to bash the monster with your other units, or she does sick damage to them if there is no tile anymore. It requires zero set up or weird situational activation stuff, she's just always good against monsters, and removing a tile in one turn is very nice for playing efficiently it basically frees up an entire unit's turn who would be wasted trying to weaken the tile in the first place.
Ferdinand is easily a S makes him an amazing unit and it's not hard to keep his HP up when you have stuff like Renewal, Healing Focus, Physics and Regen equipment. Dorothea's is actually very strong early on when you lack heals as she can fire off magic from behind a front liner in a narrow space and heal the frontliner or just fully heal the team before you aggro a boss staying out their movement. Seeing as you will more often rather use a spell with Hanneman then rally someone i'd say it's more of a rarely useful. Ashe's is usually useful saves a bit off money early game which is important and late game it free's up inventory space for his team cause you'd want a variety of weapons to choose from in maddening it's better he's get put on chest duty as an Assassin or Flyer then having to hinder your team's combat abilities with carrying keys or using Byleth's convoy.
the Issue with Ashe is that late game he's only really viable as a sniper since he will almost never double and Sniper does that for him while also giving him more dmg with bowfaire so he doesn't have the mobility to use his skill that well if you want him doing good damage.
The problem with full HP personals is that if your max HP increases mid-battle (due to level up) then you have to heal like 1 HP just to get their abilities back.
I feel like live to serve on Mercedes is a bit more viable than you’re giving it credit for. It basically allows her to sponge a single hit for free and then heal completely the next turn, because she’s almost always going to heal more than her own max HP. Has some really useful applications especially if you give her a guard adjutant, you could use it to bait in a scary enemy without sacrificing health on your more important combat units. I also find Ashe’s lockpick pretty damn useful, because I don’t like wasting inventory space on keys. But that’s more of a personal thing. I’d also shift around the order of S tier a bit but I don’t think you were keeping that tier as much in order. Pretty great tier list all things considered!
I think Mercedes is where she should be. Outside of maybe using her as bait for a mage, I don't think I'd ever use her for that purpose. In Maddening, there are just too many enemies that will kill her if she ever gets in range.
Jon Smith yeah I definitely see her as an undervalued res tank, I’ve never seen her take more than like 10 from a magic attack. But again I think that guard adjutants can help her quite a lot, I always try to throw them on squishier mages so I can play a bit more recklessly with them. Definitely not the most viable but I think it’s fun to get those units more in the thick of things
Yeah I think Ashe deserves his placing in the video. It is not a great skill by any means, but having specific units carrying keys can be annoying at times. Ashe skill is at least convienient, while goody basket is just...why...And keys cost 300G, that’s...well, 3 smithing stones
@@lsrrr3857 and you can sell extra keys you pick up too
Well, I'm currently playing through the blue lions route with mercedes using a guard adjutant and it is completely underrated imo. She is able to survive at least one hit from nearly all sources, so she can always use the guard adjutant and since there are often many enemies attacking your party at once, she can heal herself and another ally on the next turn. It works really really well.
How could you put Sylvain's in S tier but not Bernadetta's? It gives more damage and is easier to activate. There's no reason for it to be a tier below Sylvain's.
Actually, even though it does more damage than sylvains, you have to take into account that hes not only dealing more but is taking less damage. In addition, her skill is dependent on you waiting for her to take damage(which from my playthrough, rarely happened when she started leveling up) whereas sylvain can keep these buffs anytime; you can have him set near female allies on the battlefield right from the get go. So more often than not sylvains skill, and the others that are similar to his, will always be in effect. I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't I'm sorry😂.
Bernadetta's personal is not reliably procd, particularly on maddening where she gets ORKOd by a majority of enemies in the game for the first few chapters.
I'm on a maddening GD playthrough right now and my Bernadetta has been able to survive at least one hit, I did recruit her chapter 6 so she had some autoleveling, and I agree that Bernadetta on BE is worse than Sylvain, but I don't think that should be a reason for her placement to be a whole tier below. But even then there are still so many easy ways to proc the skill that it's still useful on BE. Demon weapons can activate the easiest, can be done on weakened enemy, archer, or stunned monster. Guard adjutant or a blessing gambit can protect from a ORKO. Even putting her in a bulkier class like paladin or equipping a shield can help her survive combat. It's so easy to proc that you almost always have free damage, so I still stand by what I said.
@@brainwasher9876 Bro just use guard adjutants then use vengence. Paladin bernadetta is pretty based, can one shot every enemy, including death knight.
I think Sylvain's personal is more reliable in the mid-game when other female units start getting mounts, like Pegasus Hilda/Ingrid or Cavalier Leonie, but Bernadetta's is great even early-game just because of how easy it is to get hurt, especially on Maddening. Getting an HP level will proc it. Eating a Fruit of Life or a Seraph Robe will proc it. And there are various ways to let her tank reliably on Enemy Phase that Tom already listed.
I think Flayn's can go up a slot. On Maddening, baiting clusters of enemies to attack on enemies' phase by putting one unit at the edge of one enemy's range and then swarming them is one of the easiest, rinse and repeat strategies. Setting up Flayn just out of range behind the unit your using as bait is something you can do multiple times on a tough map without much difficulty.
Fun tier list BTW.
Hapi’s personal skill plus Serios Shield is AMAZING for the Silver Snow Final Boss
Damn never thought of that. I always just thought of it as “I can stun a monster for a turn and automatically break a shield”
Wow never think about this, thanks! Will help a lot in maddening SS.
Since most monsters in that map do Magic damage, Hapi will take single digit or 0 damage from those monsters
Wait, does the Shield of Seiros do anything special against monster attacks?
Conor B.
Yeah it halves monster damage
Balthus’s skill is VERY situational. HOWEVER, hear me out. The intermediate cavalier class does not take long to master, and its requirements are incredibly easy to meet, even though he has banes in riding and lances. Giving Balthus desperation on top of his personal skill and then reclassing him back to a class with gauntlets, or eventually grappler/warmaster, means he’ll be getting a flat boost to his damage. Get him the certifications, even just set him as an adjutant to auto-level his class, and boom. Is it optimal? NO! Is it worth it? NO! Is it possible? YES! Is it a fun reward? YES!
Why does your pfp have such a tiny head
Fun fact:
If you get his HP EXACTLY to 50%, you then have a unit that can pull off a:
*KoG-Wrath-Vantage-Desperation-QR*
viable both for player and enemy phase.
Is it overkill? Yes. Is it worth it? Probably not. Is it hilarious? Absolutely.
Bernie S tier for sure. Her personal + vengance makes it so her dmg becomes insane
Probably is one of the biggest damage dealers in the game
chrispo easily the best boss killer and damage dealer in maddening.
Fun fact.
Edelgard and Byleth have the highest damage output out of any character in the game.......but did you know that Bernadetta can surpass even their damage output? Vengeance.
Felix's skill exists to help those, like me, who kinda forget to train him in a specific rank. Like authority.
Oh, and my first playthrough? Mercedes and Annette were in the front lines
It’s actually very viable to not bother. You can use that time to train his weapon ranks so he gets S ranks when most people are getting B ranks. Really useful for sniper Felix.
@@Neogears1312 also another reason why it’s good to take advantage of lone wolf is due to felix’s boon in authority which means he isn’t great with battalions so why even bother. Plus mid-late game it serves as a nice last resort if your battalion runs out
I did my first run (BL) without ever equipping a Battalion on Felix.
And he was still one rounding.
@Fanjanhong * Agreed. It seems in character for his battalion to withdraw and then he rushes in with brute strength but without sufficient defenses…
@@tahamohammad8842 because plenty of mid game (and onwards) battalions give at least identical damage boosts to felixes skill, along with all the other benefits of a battalion. Felixes skill is great early game and is nice as a bonus if he looses his battalion, but it's not worth sacrificing all the benefits of a battalion outside of early game. And there are plenty of C rank battalions (and some lower) that give at least 4 extra damage, you don't have to train felixes authority that much.
How is Sylvain's better than Ferdinand? By mid game the plus 2 isn't that useful anymore, while Ferdinand's allows him to more or less negate all enemy breaker skills, which is huge on maddening. Ignoring the 1.2 experience Dimitri gets, Ferdinand's is way better.
"Seteths the hot knight on campus, ah I'm gunna stop talking"
Just admit it. You're gay for Seteth. It's okay :3
Tbh I am too. When I get TH he's gonna be my Fem protagonist's husband every playthrough.
Keith M he’s a good lookin dude, what more is there to be said?
Keith M you might have a hard time sticking to that claim when you play Verdant Wind
Just beat three houses for the first time. It's great to see content is still being created for this game.
Yeah, the FE community still talks about a lot of the games, it's pretty nice
Congrats
Which house/path?
Already know my boy Ashe is dead last like why tf he has a skill that can’t even be used on all maps
I mean I at least like it better than Raphael's luck percent proc for 10% of healing.
Or Cyril's inexistent personal skill.
I think dorothea's skill is useful early game, it's saves you heals since healers will have low magic uses and you can heal 4 people at once if you place her right. It's nothing major but helps on early game maddening
I think a lot of fire emblem players underestimate the luck stat. Rally luck is good because there are several situations where the enemy has 2% crit on you and a couple extra points in luck would prevent that chance entirely.
Everyone always complains about how their healer died to a random 2% crit which ruined their entire strategy so they had to restart. Now imagine if you could just remove that chance entirely at will.
Rally luck is definitely slept on. Granted, those situations where the enemy lands a hit and gets a crit and kills your unit are pretty rare. But the next time some random silver sword mercenary kills your low luck cav or mage because he landed a 1% crit, just imagine that situation being impossible. You will appreciate the luck stat a lot more once you realize how much it really effects your stress levels while playing fire emblem.
It's definitely not a bad skill imo. You can still move with him before you rally (i'm not sure if he gets any other rallies, but if he does then that is just more stats). Rally luck may be the worst rally, but that doesn't mean it is bad. I think it should be moved up a tier into rarely useful. Because it is rarely useful, but when it is useful, it is REALLY useful.
In 3H, Divine Pulse makes it kind of irrelevant since you can typically RNG scum to avoid the crit, but at least it still has the potential to help a unit avoid magic attacks or proc Miracle in a desperate situation.
@@wesnohathas1993 Divine pulse makes a lot of mechanics irrelevant, but you also don't have infinite divine pulse uses. And if you really really need to avoid a low crit chance from the enemy, then I think rally luck can still be useful. Even if it just saves you going back a turn or two.
If you're going against multiple enemies that have crit on you then that's another scenario that saves you some time and resets.
I still don't think it should be put in rarely useful
1 space away means adjacent. Yuri's is definitely good, especially since he gets a crazy high speed stat allowing him to avoid a lot of hits.
Petra's personal is straight garbage. Even if you're using it against monsters, their luck is so awful that you can just use a regular killer weapon and get crits pretty easily. I'd put it just above Raphael. That bad.
Dorothea's personal is actually quite good in early game and definitely better than linhardt and probably Marianne. Free healing is nice.
Also not sure why constance is so low. It's just free stat increases with no strings attached. How could it be worse than, say felix or Catherine's, who only gain stats when they don't have battalions?
Finally, yuri's personal activates when he attacks at 1 range. It's pretty useful when he's a sword unit but I can understand if ppl want to run him as a Mage or something 2 range, it's not great.
Constance's ability is situational because her defense and resistance are already horrendous, so unless you're indoors, the ability will do next to nothing for her, as even with the defense buffs she struggles to take hits.
@@arbitrarynumbers18 its really late to comment but its not indoors its actually on maps with no sun. So any cloudy map gives her +3 magic
@@p0oka261 That's still the minority of maps. Like 80-90% of the maps are outdoors with the sun shining. So 80-90% of the time her personal is effectively doing nothing.
Mercedes is a complete Res tank for me in maddening so she sometimes takes damage when I use her to bait in enemy mages.
YESSS I'VE BEEN ASKING much appreciated
I feal like the only ones worth S tier are Byleth, the Lord's, Bernadetta but what I think the best one is Mercedes as you never have to worry about healing your healer and works really well in the last few maps maps of blue lions that have tons of ballista and other long range weapons.
If this game worked like Echoes yes it would work wonders. But if your healer is damaged your doing something wrong. It's pretty worthless tbh
You’re easily the most underrated fire emblem youtuber, you should have hundred of thousands of subs! I always learn so much watching your videos, keep up the great work!
I feel like you're underrating king of grappling, especially when you're not required to heal and he has easy access to the one brawling combat art that heals half of your health if you're in danger (which is not even necessary really) plus 6 damage per hit is great for someone who definitely wants to grapple
The safer/"wiser" option for the most part would be to use healing focus since Balthus is on the front lines will get bombarded during enemy phase.
On top of that... Major Chevalier.
He's basically guaranteed to heal AND he gets to attack an enemy in the process.
Everybody else: *gives solid opinions about the contents of the video*
Me: *ooh Chrono Cross music xD*
Pretty sure it's chrono trigger, but i only played like 1 hour of chrono cross xD
@@marvalice3455 5:29 Chrono Cross’ Dream of the Shore starts there :)
@@AcaciaDragoon ah!
Out here with that Chrono Cross OST I see. Good list and music!
I think Hubert belongs in bad. His charm is so low that offensive gambits aren’t ever going to be reliable on him without heavy investment.
Dedue belongs in S, it’s super impactful in the early game, and Dedue falls off hard as a unit after the time skip anyway. But if you decide to use him, it can help him survive his life as a perpetually under leveled unit.
Constance belongs in S, it’s a flat bonus you don’t have to think about ;)
Ferdie and Ingrid should both go up a tier for the same reason
Felix's ability that is basically non-existent as soon as you use Battallions: "Rarely Useful.".
Dorothea's ability, which procs for free and can restore 10% hp to 4 units at a time with no effort or actions lost: "Just Bad".
Dorothea's ability gives her the AWESOME ability, to heal 3-4 hp to her allies
that's nothing. The most usefull it can do is give ferdinand 100% hp back after a HP up Lvl up so he doesn't lose his personnal. In the early game of maddening, your units get one rounded most of the time and the ones that doesn't, you already are healing them.
Or at worst you didn't pay attention and your bernadetta loses her personnal ability and now deals no damage
Felix has a 35% growth in Charm, which is pretty meh, AND a bane in Authority, so anyway he does poorly with battalions.
Give him iron Gauntlet (which anyway you want him to use as it also synergise with his major Fraldarius crest) and you have +10 dmg on any attack, or even +20 dmg when he quadruples(which i agree, on maddening happens rarely but Felix is pretty fast
Sure later in the game, especially in part 2, battalions give higher boost that his personnal and a gambit is more usefull, but in the early game it's always good
The non Lord s tier should be in this order
Bernie
Lysithea
Ignatz
Mercedes (magic tank)
Lorenz
Gilbert
Personally don't think adj opposite genders are S nor rally
Completely agree. Gender and rally abilities shouldn't be S tier. Gender specific ones require a specific arrangement of units to be useful and imo unit placement should be done defensively in preparation for enemy phase rather than for player phase. Gender abilities work best when you know who is going to enter battle and on enemy phase you don't have as much control over that. Rallies have their use but then you're also not attacking or healing with that unit in a turn so it's more of a trade off than something that's always useful. I consider them all rarely useful.
I've said it before, huge fan of Petra's skill when fighting monsters or end-game bosses.
Constance getting the +3 to an attack stat is really solid for maps like BL final and a lot of early game maps. But a lot of maps are outside so it drops off. The +3 RES does synergize well with transmute though so her being able to tank a magic attack better means all her stats go up, not bad
she's usually to frail to take another hit after she takes the magic hit in the first place though, she's made of paper.
How often are you fighting monsters and endgame bosses? Rarely. Hence, rarely useful.
@@twigz3214 I've seen Constance take a magic shot on Maddening. Most mages can, actually, even on Maddening. Enemy mages tend to not double because their tomes are heavy (especially dark mages) and several of your own mages will probably have enough res to take at least one hit. The exception being Lysithea who is so frail on Maddening that actually everything will most certainly kill her in a single shot, including opposing mages.
Circadian Beat is not strictly indoors/outdoors. It works outside as long as it is cloudy. I noticed it is active way more than you might think.
So I agree about 95%, I feel like Dorothea should move up just because I’m Maddening a lot of times a bunch of units have taken damage and it’s nice that you just have to be near her to heal all of them. Sure it’s not a lot, but it’s something and it can help mounted units that can Canto back to near her, especially if she danced them. Then Mercedes I would also move up, because if you’re like me who has gotten screwed over by the Maddening enemy placement and she barely survives but so do your other units, her using Fortify to heal literally everyone, including herself, is super helpful. Other than those two things we basically agree on everything
I'd say Dorothea's is at least better than Linhardts, and maybe even better than Marianne's mainly because of her long range, specially with Valkirie, it gives her enough mobility to put another unit besides her to heal them, and you can also heal up to 4 people
Agree on Cyril's, because he's the only that can have it, and always has it, it's bassically solving solving a problem it created itself, when he could just have the growths that he would have with the skill, but also having another skill
Yuri's skill works against adjacent enemies. And it is actually pretty good.
Marianne's passive is really useful for Pegasus Knight Marianne (which sounds stupid, but she hit KOes everybody with frozen lance). As most times fliers band together, it gives an already strong avoidance tank an easy way to self-heal.
Enjoyed the video! Honestly don't know what game designers were thinking when they created such bad skills as Manuela's, Raphael's and company...
By the way, I like comboing Vantage+Wrath on Balthus plus Brawling Prowess, Brawl Avoid +20 and Brawl Crit +10. Even though he must be below 50% health to be full potential, I think these abilities added to his personal skill are good to easy-crit and dodge if needed. Anyways I found him still useful even when these abilities are not activated; at least in my Hard/Classic games.
I think that Bernie and Ferdinand's skills should be S tier given that it's not that complicated to control their HP, and they are great buffs. Ferdinand's personal gives him hit whereas Dimitri's doesn't, and that is probably worth mentioning given that you compared the two. You're also overvaluing the positional skills. It's not always convenient to have units next to one another especially as units get more movement options, and enemies are not always accommodating.
You have Ignatz' personal a tier above Jeritza's, and I don't think that this is entierly fair. It is worse to be sure, but it has to be compared to other skills too. It's still generally more useful than +2 defense, rally magic, or a positional skill for example.
I have mixed feelings on Dorothea's personal. If I'm using units that want to be at low health I would rather not have it since it doesn't do a whole lot and saves me the hassle of worrying about unit positioning. On the other hand that could just be because I'm lazy, and it does nothing but help otherwise. It can give HP to units that would want healing; Linhardt and Marianne shouldn't be getting attacked in the first place.
He talks about Ignatz personal skill affects gambit while Jeritza and Ferdinand's also affects gambit too.
@@naiRISE766 I'm not sure exactly what your point is.
Dorothea and Linhardt's skills are good early game when you don't have as much money for healing potions, and when traversing wider maps. Ex, I've been taking my Linhardt through the maze part of the Flayn/Death Knight chapter, so when he's walking through there, he can heal as he walks through the zones between enemies without me wasting a cast from my healer (meme run, don't yell at me) or worry about having a vulnary on hand for him. Same with Dorothea, except it helps other units rather than herself, and it's actually a little more versatile. Late game, they tend to lose their usefulness, and they'll always be situational, but I don't think they should be f tier. I think they work better in rarely useful, personally.
Love the fact that he leaves the dog noises in the background, feels like we're justing hanging out talking about FE compared to most youtubers who can have no aspect of their personal life interfere with their videos whatsoever. I like my Fire Emblem buddy
Cyril personal skill is really bad design. But it is a op skill if you consider it in a vacuum
I like how they made Cyril have horrendous growths without the skill so that he would just be normal. Why give him that skill if his stats are gonna be ass anyway?
I've actually used dorotheas passive area heal a lot in the early and early mid game. Not even consciously, but just noticing that she healed 4 people at 75% hp around her again. Its not great but not completely useless like the others in her tier in my opinion.
"Manuela's personal skill is bad" Chaz wants to know your location.
I know this has been said tons of times already but repetition can’t hurt. You’re HARD sleeping on Ferdies, it allows for some of the absolute best dodge tanking in the entire game. Even on maddening it’s incredibly effective, especially if stacked with battalions, sword avoid from dancer, alert stance, breaker skills, there’s so much you can do to make him completely unhittable.
I really enjoy your content man keep it up
Hard underrating of Manuela. The death knight is always hitting 15-20% crits on me. Just divine pulse and put her next to the unit that should've lived and it usually works. Feels less less cheeky than trying to remember the rn rolls and cheesing them too
I’d move Balthus’s personal up to Usually Useful. The extra durability for earlygame maddening is REALLY useful. Having a, like, 16 Def unit right away is a godsend.
I mostly agree but...:
Dorothea's to Rarely - it's clutch earlygame when every heal counts, and later on it's a small heal with only positioning requirements. Can also be used to top off Ferdinand if his personal gets offd by an HP level up, for example.
Constance to S - ...it's literally better than both Lorenz' and Gilbert's personals. Sure whether you get defensive or offensive bonus depends on map, but the fact stands that it's better than both, and those are S.
Manuela to Rarely - occasionally useful vs enemies with Killer weps.
Jeritza to S - how many times did to benefit from Ignatz' personal on EP?
i have used dorothea's skill in the first two maps. Didn't want to use linhardt (No slacking on my class) so i didn't have anyone who could heal and her passive alone did the job. That's the extent of the usefulness of this skill... the first two maps of a fresh save x) which is still better than felix imho.
How is not a single person complaining about Petra’s personal being just rarely useful, give her cursed Ashia sword from the pallardo map and easy 100% crit against every monster that is below half health and with those 100+ hp health bars on maddening there is opportunities enough for that.
Surprised you ranked Ashe as highly as you did. He's my boy and I love him to pieces but his personal skill is just a waste, and I'm saying this as someone who likes to throw him on a wyvern and send him around to chests. Three Houses just isn't designed to justify a lockpick skill. He should've gotten an avoid buff or something like that. Honestly, between his lackluster personal skill and terrible stats and growths, my guy really got shafted.
Hapi’s personal saved me in SS maddening endgame w her high res.
Dorothea is much better than she gets credit for in the context of early maddening; when your heals are limited and you need every point of health you can get and you're short on gold, then healing up to four allies for free is a great utility. At least deserves to be rarely useful as opposed to just bad.
hey manuela’s personal skill actually saved me from crucial crits many times.
it’s an underrated skill especially for a frontline dodge tank like her.
Seems like that the Golden Deer House has better personal abilities it seems like. I can agree with this
Raphael has downvoted you
I actually love Ashe skill, it's really nice not having to use an inventory slot for keys 😅
Also throw em on a wyvern, flying thief
I like ashes ability but I do got to say it is rarely useful
Wait isn't happi like S or usually useful? I get that there are not always monsters but helps a lot in breaking barriers and stuning monsters, even more considering her range. I get that Dorothea is not great but it helped me a lot in early maddening.
Balthus’ skill can be really useful if paired with alert stance+, vantage, and wrath but that’s about it
Couldn't they give Raphael the skill of recovering more HP, if he uses an healing Item or Petra +3 attack, when she attacks from Trees or bushes?
heck they could've recycled the one villager's personal from fates and have it be on specific terrain and it'd be way better
King of Grappling is actually amazing in my opinion. Use Balthus as a front line unit, he takes some damage and then transforms into an unkillable murder machine under 50%. Means you can use stuff like war master as a tank class. Also can potentially stack with things like wrath and defiant skills. You really feel defensive buffs when you raise your def enough so that you take basically no damage. Balthus is tanky enough to reach those thresholds with his personal.
Now that I think about it, Balthus' personal skill probably makes him the best candidate for the Hero class besides Bernadetta if it wasn't gender locked.
It's still astonishing that no character in the game has it as their canon class.
I think Lone Wolf is actually pretty helpful as Jeralt’s Mercenaries is the only really good battalion that you get for a while, so I’d rather take advantage of it on a character who needs it more than Felix. I’d rather have two helpful boosts to power on different characters than Felix getting better avoid in the early game. It’s like Staunch Shield where it falls off later in the game but is incredibly helpful in the early game especially on Maddening.
It’s obviously not the best personal, but I think it’s on the same level as Staunch Shield.
Staunch shield lasts a bit longer before falling off and realistically the minute you can equip battalions to everyone you should equip one to Felix to try and raise his awful authority stat just a bit more for later in the game.
The thing I like about Petra's persona skill, is that you are increasing the crit chance on a character that already has high skill, meaning that it is very likely you will be landing a crit on an enemy that is low on health, and sometimes that crit can be the difference between the enemy unit getting defeated, or barely surviving.
I would switch Ashe and Dorethea. there is no point in having someone to be able to pick locks when you can get as many keys as you want for cheap. while with Dorethea it's just free HP that can hit multiple people at once.
I want to like this video twice because it’s well made and milo:)
I think your wrong about Mercedes personal skill, as a very reckless FE player, Live to Serve is a livesaver
I really enjoyed the Chrono Cross soundtrack in the background.
Trigger
Flayn's is not so bad because it only requires her to be adjacent to the front line, not on it. It's going to be very useful for chokepoints. Even on open fields, you usually want to be positioning your frontliners right on the edge of enemy danger zone, so Flayn can stand right behind them and still be safe. Plus there is an additional layer of synergy if you equip her with a Retribution battalion.
Dedue's is easy S tier for me because not only does it make BL have a far easier early game on Maddening than other routes, but also easier to set up kills so you can control who gets the exp, which is really hard to do in other routes. Also it's one of the best synergies between a personal skill and the actual character who has it. Probably my favorite personal skill in the entire game.
Dorothea's is also pretty nice. Thanks to her having long range spells in both Reason and Faith, you have a lot of freedom with where you place her, so it's easy for 2-3 allies to stand next to her each turn, and that adds up to a lot of passive healing. Especially better with all the units that will have Canto because they can go attack an enemy and Canto back to Dorothea and heal up. It's also very useful for micro managing your units' HP for whatever reason (abilities like Vantage, as well as personal skills like Bernadetta, Balthus, Ferdinand's).
Merdedes's can be quite useful as well, since she can actually be used to take tank some magic hits with her high Res and draw out enemy mages. It's not "usually useful" but it's more than "rarely useful" if you play around it.
My problem with Sylvain and leonie skills is that I run them as hit and run wyverns or paladins. 50% of the time I don’t have them fighting in close proximity to other units so I’m not getting much out of their skills
I would move flayn to usually useful because I personally like her as a dancer; And if you pair her with a Levin sword (+) and the sword avoid +20 skill she can usually be around other units in the front line and be safe from being hit.
I think Ferdie's Confidence is really useful. Stacking avoidance skills on him isn't really too hard because he doesn't have any weaknesses so he has good class mobility. And keeping him topped up isn't too hard. And he's not super fragile so he can stand to take a hit if it does happen. I made mine a dancer for that sword avoid +20, got level 5 sword prowess for another +20, classesd him to Wyvern Lord for another +10 avoid, and am trying to get Alert Stance + (which to be fair I prolly won't get till very late game). Ah, and I stacked him with Ashes and Dust for +15 avoid. The only issue is that he wants to attack with lances because of SS but his avoid stacks best with swords so I'm always kinda switching up what he uses lol. And I believe his budding talent gives Seal Defense so I mostly just use him is a dodge tank/chip damage guy who occasionally kills with SS.
So Wyvern Lord Ferdie using Swords is: 15 (Personal)+20 (Sword Avoid)+20 (Sword Prowess 5)+10 (Wyvern Lord)+ 15 (Ashes and Dust) +30 (Alert Stance +) = 110
Using Lances: 15 (Personal) + 15 (Lance Prowess 5) + 10 (Wyvern Lord) + 15 (Ashes and Dust) 30 (Alert Stance +) = 85
Dimitri could potentially be an even better avoid tank because of his personal +20 avoid post time skip but its a harder build to make and prolly involves a lot of ng+. Its hard to get him into Wyvern Lord for the free +10 avoid because he doesn't like axes and he doesn't want to be trained for a good many chapters cause he's being an edgelord (sorry edelgard, he's the real emo kid jamming to Black Parade). Making him a dancer for the +20 sword avoid can work, but he wants to use Lances in his personal class because of Lancefare and his relic (assuming that will be picked over Wyvern Lord bc its hard to get him there. His personal class has good growths so its prolly preferred over something else). And because of his lack of training its also harder to get him to Alert Stance +. So either you can grind out Wyvern somehow and make him a sword user (same as Ferdie's build) or make him use swords in his personal class and ignore Lancefare while passively training flying (which to be fair isn't a huge deal because +5 attack < ability to dodge everything and dish out damage with That Strength Stat). If he's not flying you can give him Brigid Hunters Battalion for +20 avoid.
So if your grind out Wyvern Despite his bane in Axes and make him use swords: 20 (Personal)+20 (Sword Avoid)+20 (Sword Prowess 5)+10 (Wyvern Lord)+ 15 (Ashes and Dust) +30 (Alert Stance +) = 115
If Great Lord using Swords: 20 (Personal)+20 (Sword Avoid)+20 (Sword Prowess 5)+ 20 (Brigid Hunters or Gautier) +30 (Alert Stance +) = 110
And if Great Lord using Lances: 20 (personal) 15 (Lance Prowess 5) 20 (Brigid Hunters or Gautier) + 30 Alter Stance + = 85
Ah and also his Budding Seals Movement which is nice but he's more likely to just Kill Them All so its a waste of a slot. But overall its a lot harder to get Dimitri to work with an avoid build compared to Ferdie because of how hard it is to invest in him and at the end of the day his base ideal build only gives 5 more avoid than Ferdinand. Though Dimitri hits a lot harder than Ferdinand so he becomes more of a one man army when his avoid gets stacked. Ah and since Battalion Vantage and Wrath are good skills its worth it to leave space for him in Dimi's skill slots so its also harder to spam avoid skills. So yeah, Ferdinand isn't that hard to build into an avoid monster and his personal facilitates it so I found it to be very useful lol. It does take some investment though, but its not thaaat hard
I think this is a really good list, only changes I would do is to rate some skills in relation to Pre/Post Timeskip/other benchmarks. Dedue, Catherine, and Felix come to mind.
For example, Dedue's is a godsend pre-timeskip, especially on Maddening, but Post, as you said, it falls off. In my opinion, these should be two separate rankings, but it's your tier list though, so if you don't want to, completely fine. Catherine's lets her act like a mini-Jagen Pre-Timeskip (thanks Mekkah's Waifu series), but isn't as useful once you have more battalions to go around, and is barely noticeable post-timeskip. Same idea for Felix, it helps when you only own one or two battalions, but is quickly made obsolete by those good battalions.
Balthus' personal feels like Dedue's but better in early maddening. It kinda sucks that he has to be below half, but once he is he takes like 1-5 damage with the +6 defense and one rounds stuff like crazy with +6 str. Feels really amazing for the first few chapters. Definitely falls off later, but the str is always nice and it pairs well with healing focus.
Mercedes is easily a good sponge to take hits due to live to serve.. especially early game maddening.she has high starting speed compared to her classmates, especially equipping heal. She can take hits and not get doubled in Ch 4 and others.
Awesome chrono cross music in the background
Edit: and trigger
One thing about this is that certain personal skills are much more useful in the early game. Arguably the early game is the most challenging--on hard and normal, in the late game your units can ORKO everyone anyway.
So Dorothea's personal seems useless in the late game, yes, but in the early game maddening when you have one healer and everyone's on critically low health, her personal is a godsend. The same goes for Felix. In the late game sure you can put a battalion with +6 might or something on him which totally invalidates his personal, but in the early game maddening when on average your units are doing like 4 damage per hit and you have two battalions in total, +5 might's a bfd.
Then there's differences for maddening vs hard vs normal. Petra's personal is pretty useless on normal and 90% of hard because all the enemies die in one turn anyway, but in maddening all your units are doing tiny amounts of damage, so the extra damage she deals is proportionally much bigger.
I would personally rank Mercedes' skill much lower. Unlike Dorothea, it's not useful in early maddening because Mercy gets ORKOd so often that having her tank is often suicidal; in the late game, you want a lot of damaged units so that your healers can grind faith and level exp, so her personal healing herself actually HURTS you. Mercy's res is so high that magical units often don't even scratch her, while physical units totally body her. She's just not a reliable tank.
Finally I'd rank Jeritza's worse, because hit rate is most important in the early game. He'll have such a high hit rate by the time you finally recruit him that his personal skill is redundant.
Bernardetta and Constance are upper S tier but everyone already noted that
I kinda get your argument about Cyril's skill, but holy hell, +20% buff to ALL stats for each an every level up is beyond godly. That is like the god of all god abilities. With it, he has some of the best growths of any character in the entire game, has boons in every single weapon type aside for Swords, boons in both riding and flying, etc.
He is basically the ultimate blank slate and can be made into literally ANYTHING effectively that isn't magic related, and by end game will be an absolute monster. It's truly your loss if you underestimate him. For anyone who enjoys the customization & growth aspects of this game, he should be going into your party the instant you recruit him.
He's basically the ultimate of those weak but get strong types in the FE series. Can't remember the name, but there's a name for it. He's like the Nino of physical combatants only far better even.
This comment is real late, but to fix Cyril’s personal you could make it a 5-10% chance to double a stat gain (from +1 to +2 growth) like Delthia being able to gain +2 attack gain on level in Echoes. Think it could be a good way to show the idea that he’s bad but scales exponentially upward still.
I honestly have no complaints about this list. Pretty much agree with all.
Commenting for UA-cam algorithm 😊
Jeritza’s ability is REALLY good. Yeah, it’s a slightly worse version of Ignatz’s skill on paper, but in practice, it’s essentially the same thing.
Ignatz is not someone you want to become a frontline enemy phase unit, so it’s not as if having that extra hit rate on enemy phase will be incredibly useful. Yeah, having a flat buff would’ve been ideally better for an enemy phase tank like Jeritza, but he’s already such a top-tier unit that it doesn’t make that much of a difference. He gets Counterattack as a class mastery skill, so even though he won’t get that buff on enemy phase, he’s still able to do way more than anyone else just by the fact that he can bait and delete enemy archers.
The hit buff from Murderous Intent also works on gambits, so when you take into account the unit this skill is on, Jeritza will easily delete enemies in the player phase.
Also, I would put Alois’s skill as Rarely Useful instead of Just Bad. It gives +8 Lck, which gives you +8 Crit Avo and +4 Crit. On certain maps, you will face war masters and bosses with high crit rates, so being able to essentially negate all critical hits with +8 Crit Avo can be really useful.
Yeah, it’s not the most useful skill overall, but in those several moments when you need it, it’s REALLY useful.
Ashe almost warrants his own tier at the bottom in my opinion. They literally let you buy keys in this game lmao
I don't have a problem with the skill itself. It's really nice when I forget to bring keys into a map or struggle to make room for them in my inventory, but it does bother me that it overlaps with the same ability present in classes Ashe would be likely to use.
@@wesnohathas1993 His best class is a Sniper, it lets him double faster, squisher units and ohko them. he can naturally double some tankier units but doesn't do enough to oneshot them so sniper let's him pick up oneshots he would never normally be able to.
I disagree, I think it fits fairly high up. Let’s take up inventory space, and you can always fill that with weapons and accessories and healing items.
Even more so on NG+, where you often want to equip crest items, sometimes multiple.
Now sadly Ashe simply isn’t that great, so I’ll tend to use my trickster class to open chests.
A little debug: Though ignatz has watchful eyes which also affects gambit hit rate, his charm and charm growth is very low. This would not be a problem if runing a ng+ to spare some teaparty for him or some teaparty plus good battalion, but he, in a large part of the game, will struggle to connect a gambit, despite personal skill.
I definitely have a few hard disagrees here. Granted I have not played on Maddening (or intend to soon tbh) so I get things are different but still.
Ferdinand's is definitely S Tier because hit and avoid are always good things to have and since he's a frontliner you'll want him topped off anyway.
Bernie's is also amazing because it's not too hard to get her below full, can get an HP level up, use a stat booster, stand on damaging terrain, etc, and it works very well with Vengeance.
Dorothea is mediocre rather than bad because it can be free heal early on where you have low uses on heals and if you don't care about turn count you can spend a few turns to heal up to 4 units.
Felix is definitely more useful early on where you don't have many batallions or are low level and most batallions that give him over 5 damage are usually gonna need investment on his bad Authority, and with his good Dex and Spd stuff like Hit and Avoid are less of an issue on him. Also Gauntlet potential.
The gendered stuff (Sylvain/Leonie and Hilda/Seteth) are definitely not S rank, they require specific unit placement and which while good early on fall off later and it's not that good if those specific characters aren't together. Seteth suffers from it harder since he always joins late. I'd say A for everyone except Seteth who goes B.
Mercedes' skill isn't so great as a healer but if used as an offensive Mage can do great. She has great Res so she can magic tank a bunch and then heal up whatever she lost for free, definite A.
Annette and Hanneman's rallies are again not S-tier, they good, but not that much. Annetta can do great if stacked with others so A but Hanneman doesn't get that much so it's more mediocre, B.
Lorenz/Gilbert not really S because for Lorenz sure 2 free damage is good early but past that less so, so A, and for Gilbert 2 Def aren't really gonna matter by the time he joins, he's likely to take little damage or get destroyed, and it DEFINITELY doesn't help Res, down to B.
Flayn is good if the enemy only has 1 range by blocking her off and make tanks tankier. She's a healer without Physic so she'll need to be closer than most healers anyway.
I kinda agree with Shamir and Cyril where the abilities are great but they're wasted because of their owners, but Shamir can potentially be good if reclassed so high B instead, Cyril is more like the game telling you he can be great if trained and still he's a bit of a letdown because his natural growths are bad.
Yuri's ability triggers at melee range aka most of the time probably and he's possibly the best dodge tank in the game if trained well so he's A.
Balthus' ability can work wonders with Vantage/Wrath combos, 6 Str in a Gauntlet unit can be deadly and you can put Healing Focus if he needs it, definitely S.
Constance is a free boost depending on map and the game forgets how dark and cloudy maps count same as indoors so there are more maps than you'd think, low A.
Hapi's is actually really good because most monsters have low Res and there's a pretty good chunk of them so she can destroy them easily and you can always use a Gambit to force the monster to go for someone else so the drawback rarely matters, S Tier.
Whew, that's a lot, but you did say to let know people's thoughts in the comments, so I gave mine. Personally I think there were too many in S tier that belonged more in A, you definitely can't put those next to the stuff from the lords and be like "Yup, equally as good".
Mercedes ability minor benefit, I just needed to position her in fire to get in range to heal someone, the fire damage was easy to heal later on.
I'd have to confirm, but I think Yuri is for adjacent enemies. I mean, his "default" class is trickster, which is primarily melee with some spells. Plus, when you're using a weapon, a rng of 1 is adjacent, so it'd be the most consistent way of describing it.
the only one I would disagree with is hapi's monstrous appeal being rather useful since she has 1-3 range effectiveness on monsters with allows her to break barriers in a safe distance that other units can only do with the cadecues staff or thyrsus. And you were incorrect, if a monster has been gambitted by another unit, they will focus on the gambitter, not hapi. Either higher in rarely useful or in the bottom of usually useful imo as it depends on how many monsters you are encountering anyways
15:07 Goody basket isn't a good skill, but in my verdant wind's run, it actually saved raphael's life in a few occasions. What really sucks about this skill is that you just can't plan an strategy out of it.
I think a cool skill for cyril would have been something like, if he gains a level, and the rng rolls on a stat, and he doesn't gain a point, it rolls a second time. Basically 2 chances for a stat to level up instead of 1. That or maybe have it to where there's a 10% chance he gets +2 on a stat instead of +1
My skill is basically me obnoxiously yelling:
🌊YOU ARE THE OCEANS GREY WAAAAAAVES🌊
But I like that song
Ferdinand's personal is top tier since he can stack more avoid than any other character with the right set up which is amazing plus the extra hit is always helpful.
Iced Coffee I think technically Petra could stack the most avoid due to the 30+ buff from Defiant Avoid, which is female exclusive, plus having the highest female speed stat. But other than that you’re right, Ferdie’s is absolutely S tier. Especially since it’s not only avoid but +15 hit as well. It also affects gambits. On Maddening the extra hit and avoid is a God send. Defenitely one of the best personal skills in the game
I think that Catherine's ability is actually not as bad as all that, especially before you get a bunch of really useful battalions. Her skill is effectively +5 Def AND +5 Res, which in early game can be valuable and free up a good battalion for someone else. It's still not the best ability by any means, but I've had her battalion get dropped mid-battle and all the enemies ignored her because they could no longer deal any damage lol.
Saying you dont like something isnt a good reason to put Yuri in Rarely Useful
I would have a tier in between Usually Useful and Rarely Useful, something like Situationally Useful where they’re good on specific maps, with specific builds, only in the early game, etc. Skills like Dedue’s and Ashe’s belong there imo. Also I think Dorothea was ranked too low, patching up damage is almost never bad and it can keep units like Dimitri and Ferdinand at 100% HP without using an action and spell slot to heal.
Balthus's ability is definitely situational, but put him in the Hero class for Vantage and then equip Wrath as well and he is better at dealing damage on enemy phase than probably anyone else.
Dorothea's ability is not bad imo. It's really useful in the beginning of a maddening run when heals are very limited in use. It can also help with chip damage from flaming tiles and from enemy poison strike damage. Just have your team mates surround Dorothea if they are walking past flames, and you don't have to waste heals on them.