Canas: "Hippity Hoppity, the Guiding Ring is my property." Priscilla: "I have to wait until the second Guiding Ring to promote." Pent: "I don't even JOIN until near the end of the game!" Lucius: "You guys are getting promoted?"
If you're not playing on 0% growths, then Oswin's survivability basically never falls off, he doesn't get doubled by anything that actually does damage and can still double sometimes because FE7 moment (if you're really lucky he can one-round the iconic FE7 midgame wyverns who suck ass compared to FE6 but still don't have the decency to die to anyone else before Hawkeye joins besides Killer Axe Marcus sometimes): I really like sending him down the center corridor in Kinship's Bond with a Pure Water and wiping 20+ enemies a turn, it helps that he one-shots the mages with a Hand Axe and so won't run out of inventory down there FYI I'm pretty sure Wil actually lives both javelins if you can rescue drop him into range of them, making him a true rival to the 3-13 archer I am the world's biggest Heath hater, nobody hates, loathes, and despises Heath more than me, if Heath has 1 million haters then I am one of them, if Heath has 1 hater then I am him, yes I still train, promote, and field him every map after he joins If you've ever wanted to see the most cursed Cog of Destiny play of your life, give Farina the Talisman and a Pure Water and then fly her over to the valks alone: they all go to attack her because they have 0 staff hit and do single digit damage if any; she'll only be 2/3-rounding them with trash accuracy with a Javelin, but that's just a certified Oswin moment, and I've never struggled on Cog of Destiny again since discovering that play (also Farina good: "just dump all the statboosters on her lol" but like unironically, she gets proportionally more value out of the Angelic Robe and Body Ring than anyone else, arguably Afa's Drops too but Heath does get a lot of levels axereaving all those pirates on the bottom left) This is my monthly "Louise with Pent support doesn't get crit by Luna" post: this would be meme utility if FE7 Luna wasn't the single most awful weapon ever put into enemy hands, and I always field her in Cog of Destiny over Heath solely to make the Druids less of a pain
I think this list really exemplifies why this game is so hard to come back to for me. Most of the really good units come in the latter half of the game and a lot of the early game units vary wildly with how good they feel to use. Playing Lyn mode would help a lot with making the early units more fun to use in the later modes, but Lyn mode is such a slog after having played it so many times. I still have a lot of love for this game, even if it's aged like milk. I just wanna hang out with my beloved son Erk again.
Adding some thoughts as I watch (sorry if it's too long): • funny thing with Hector's move is I gave him Boots pre-promotion for that sweet 7 mov, but then when he promoted it fell back to 5. I seethed because he was like 20 str / 20 def / 14 spd and I made him put in work • grinding Matthew is important only if you take 19xx because the thieves have 20 spd on HHM and he needs to tie with them to steal back a Dragonshield • Still mad they didn't just make Eliwood a lance infantry that promotes to a 8 mov cav like Ephraim -- would have fixed a lot of issues, especially with javelin use for ep. I still use him in my runs and he does a lot of work on promotion • I'll also mention that Eliwood and Lyn stonks would go up if axe armors / great knights existed in FE7, that and the inclusion of more axe foes in general; FFO (Linus) and Crazed Beast at least make an attempt even if it's just pirate spam • always so weird that Silver is A and Brave is B (haha B is for Brave) when Brave weapons are rarer, stronger and grant 4x attacks • Rath appreciates being able to use Brave Bow at base and benefits a lot from grabbing some levels before promotion for the extra str / spd rolls; he also has a crapton of hp for some reason? • It's always a joy to grind Heath to 18-20ish by taking Genesis (I'm insane and accept all sidequests), all those juicy prepromote druids and sages that can't fight back (until Kishuna leaves); also, he's a really good recipient of afa's drops if you wait a chapter more • Hawkeye is such a meaty daddy, all he needs is a speedwing and he doesn't care about spd matchups imo; I'm glad you mentioned his niche in Cog of Destiny, and if you couple this with the absurd avo Berserkers get from mountain tiles he (and Dart if you so choose) trivialize a lot of maps by just standing there • Back when I was working on my FE7 romhack, I removed the lord exp requirement for FFO and made a forking path of two villages in Living Legend that took you to either Lloyd or Linus which just felt so much better (no self-plugs intended, the project ended in failure anyway) • Farina is definitely an afa's drop baby, and even without she always felt more like a wyvern to me. I think if you haven't trained any fliers or if one of them fell off she's a good last second project which greatly helps for maps like Battle Before Dawn and Life and Death • If so inclined you can feed Nino xp by having her passively kill the Vaida wyvern reinforcements in Cog, their stats are that abysmal • Unpromoted green unit Wallace in HHM FFO is the funniest shit you'll ever see
@@DaniDoyle I havent had a chance to watch it but you are telling me that after the Buy Our Units Co-op, Teagan willingly used dart *again*??? Should I call for help? Is everything okay?
Everytime I see a FE7 tier list it just reminds me of the fact that InSys clearly developed around the idea that people would be consistently be playing Lyn mode and as a result almost all of those units just get absolutely kneecapped otherwise. But then they forgot to actually make Lyn mode even remotely fun for anyone who has ever played an FE game in their life before.
I don’t think Dani likes units that require a small amount of investment, which is just preference. Yes Lucius is harder to train when he joins than Canas, but he has the most reliable growths of your magic user options and is highly likely to become the best staff user in your army with his crazy magic stat. Seriously the man can usually physic heal enemies on the opposite side of the map in the late game. Light magic isn’t even that bad. You get easy access to Purge & Aura earlier and more reliably than Bolting & Fimbulvtr
God Im so glad you talked about Lyn Mode. I know most people dont talk about it because they dont play it, but I play it every single time and a lot of the units end up really good with that extra training time
Genuine question: Why do people who make tier lists for FE7 only talk about Hector Hard Mode? On the one hand, I understand that HHM is the most difficult version of the game and therefore the mode where the differences in unit performance are both most visible and most significant. At the same time though, in order to unlock HHM in the first place you need to have already beaten the game twice. If you're playing your third run of FE7, do you really need a tier list to tell you that Marcus, Pent, and Hawkeye are really good and that you should use them? I've always approached tier lists from the context of "someone who's playing the game for the first time, and wants advice on which units are worth investing in and which are safe to bench". In that context, I would expect an FE7 tier list to focus on Lyn Normal > Eliwood Normal since that's the only option available to a new player (or to at least devote time to covering it, similar to how FE8 lists discuss the differences between Eirika and Ephraim routes), but hardly anyone ever does. My concern here is that first time players may look at HHM tier lists and misapply those rankings down in LN-ENM where they aren't accurate. As an example, sure Eliwood isn't great in HHM, but in ENM he's a perfectly serviceable unit provided he gets some decent level ups. If a new player looks for FE7 unit tier lists and gets a bunch of HHM lists (which is probably all they're going to find) they might come to believe Eliwood is a worse unit than he actually is in the context of their playthrough, and ignore what would otherwise be a totally viable unit for them. Maybe I'm just fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose and audience of tier lists, but it feels like there's a mismatch between which players the tier lists are being made for and which players would actually benefit most from tier lists.
I don't think tier lists are meant to be "guides" either for new or experienced players, because theres some ways where it kinda can't reflect "advice" (for example, Dorcas and Bartre suck but you don't really have any other options early on, so being like "don't use D tier units" doesn't really work). Tier lists are more of an " interesting discussion topic " than actual advice...its kinda like the hypotheical " is superman or batman better " playground question, applied to fire emblem. As for why I use HHM (and usually use the highest difficulty) as stated in the video there's two main reasons. The first is I play on HHM, so I'm most familiar with it, and I'm going to rank based on the experience I know. Second is on lower difficulties, units blend together. In ENM, enemies are so weak everyone can one round most of them, making the tier list basically irrelevant: if everyone is special, no one is . Id rather rank units when they feel distinct from each other than when they are samey.
@@DaniDoyle Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question. It sounds like I had been approaching the idea of tier lists from the wrong perspective. I think I got tripped up by some of the verbiage surrounding the discussion, came to a flawed understanding of the concept, and then got confused and frustrated when those incorrect expectations weren't met. I appreciate your explanation, and I apologize if my initial comment came off as hostile or dismissive.
@@gilbat1Plus this is just a tiny reason, but an ENM tier list doesn't tier the entire cast. While Karla is so bad it really doesn't matter, if someone wanted to know about Farina and there were no Hector mode tier lists, they're screwed.
You don't have to apologize for asking a genuine question. There's nothing wrong with wanting an answer to something and it didn't come of as dismissive at all
I think that there are reasons to rise Erk up, as grinding Lucius have some problems, Erk has earlier availability on both modes, getting 6 extra chapters on total, which is way more than enough to get the 2 level gap (probably 3 or 4), and is also timed less awkwardly, because 3 of those extra chapters are on Hector mode, where now that you don't need to invest on Lowen because of second Marcus in Sain, there is way less competition for the xp, while most of the chapters that Lucius are in, he is competing with raising both Sain and Florina, as he needs to be raised on Lyn Mode, because if you don't, he will just be straight up behind Canas. While you get to use Erk for 10 chapters before you get to 17x (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17), Lucius has only 4 chapters (7, 8, 9, 10), Erk has more than double the time that Lucius has to grow, and the quality of those extra chapters are better than the ones Lucius has, as there are less competition or interesting units to grow and while the lower staff rank is a big disadvantage, so is a slightly smaller florina and sain, and a level 10-11ish Erk versus a level 7 Lucius, which is increased by Fire being straight up better than Lightning (1 less weight and 1 less might), so the base stats from Lucius are a bit smaller in practice, which gets worse as tomes improve
I kind of wish that Lowen, being the weird third-wheel to the Christmas Cav dynamic (let's call him the Hanukkah Cav), would've set a precedent for an obligatory third cavalier whose stat package revolves more around bulk. Oh well, at least we have the Makalov archetype.
I mean Kyle in FE8 has the same CON and similar spread albeit typically stronger. Noah in FE6 does it too. I call them the 10 CON Cavs, they're often better than their 9 CON counterparts with the same investment.
So fun fact that may shock you. I’ve never actually played Wallace’s version of “Four Fanged Offense”. Not once. The times I was playing FE7 I just assumed you were supposed to use the lords as much as possible. I usually cleared that level threshold easy. It’s also a LOT easier to hit that level cap if you play Lyn mode since she can level up a ton then and start her rejoin chapter at like level 10+. That also makes her a bit easier to use after since she may live more than 1 hit and will 1 round non tanky enemies. But that was also me being a noob using the lords and not touching Marcus after I got Kent and Sain back. Personally between the other two, Hector isn’t too hard to level up since early game Wolf Beil is at or near a ORKO to any Knight or Cav (not weilding a sword). It also helps that I played mostly normal mode which is better for XP gains. On a related note with your tier list. You have to field Dartz to recruit Geitz in his map. Meaning if Dartz is dead you can’t recruit Geitz. And if Dartz isn’t being used he’s basically a walking “talk to me” unit that can maybe chip someone. That may go into punishment territory.
I appreciate that at the beginning you established that this is specifically talking about HHM. Lots of folks don’t do that when they’re talking about FE7, and it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out why people were describing a radically different experience than what I had playing and loving Eliwood/Hector Normal modes in high school.
As a person who finally got through any difficulty of Hector mode, it does sadden me you dislike 7 so much. But I am very interested in your tier list though.
Best assessment of Matthew I’ve heard. He’s as (if not more) essential to a smooth early game as Marcus is. I also agree that Lowen is the best Cav and that Kent & Sain are very overrated.
I gotta agree with the Sain take. If you grind him in Lynn mode, you can reliably get a 15/1 Paladin that has stats on par with Marcus PLUS 2 strength and 7 HP from the stat boosters. Plus, given that he also has 40% speed, he is likely to quickly cap strength and eventually cap speed. A Lynn mode sain is probably the best unit in the game. People wanna talk about giving the boosters to Florina, and sure, she gets good, but better a second, basically Seth level Paladin in chapter 14 blows HHM wide open. WITH ALL THAT SAID - people overvalue Sain in just HHM. It takes so much to get him leveled up, and even as a 10/1 paladin he’s just pretty okay. Kent is just bad with that 40 strength growth and only 5% higher speed. Idk what the hell they were thinking when they built Kent :(
I’m actually fine with Kent being bad filler. Between the lack of deployment slots, his iffy combat, and having 3 other horses…he’s just a case of “Too much of a good thing is a bad thing”, and it’s fairly unique to FE7 and FE8.
Before fully watching and knowing you're making bassically 2 lists for whether you do Lin mode or not, I'm going to guess that most if bot all Lin mode units are going to move several spots whithin their tiers if they're in the middle to low end or just straight up move a tier if they're on the higher end (and some units who aren't in Lin mode might be slightly lower due to having more competition)
One chapter isn't available if Lyn mode isn't played. I think it's called a Glimpse in time (haven't played this chapter in 15 or so years) Nils had to reach level 7 in Lyn mode, and kishuna needed to be killed in 19x.
20:05 Pretty sure that's supposed to be Dragon Shield, whoever typed it just made a typo. The F key and the D key are right next to each other after all.
I think Isadora’s bad HP and defense make her a poor excuse for a mounted unit. She’s Lyn with a horse. It’s a shame I wanted to like her. Of course I missed recruiting Harken and got the dude I never use instead.
I'm shocked so many people dislike 7, it's one of the golden games of my past, not just with fire emblem (which I'm honestly pretty inexperienced with) but just in general My perspective on the game is heavily colored by building teams for link arena competition in high school though lol like the goal was to get as many character as high as possible as early as possible, hand out S ranks to distribute the final chapter weapons, figure out what 5 characters can make a valid support chain, etc, deciding who gets the uber spear, how you'll fight the uber spear and so on Paladins, fliers always faired really poorly at this and Warrior and General were broadly considered among the best classes, I was shocked to learn that the inverse of what we played was how the internet at large thought of the game lol I've only played Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, and uh Ike's game (can never remember if its POR or RD, I think it's POR?)so my experience is pretty limited, but youtubes been serving me a lot of Fire Emblem stuff and it's making me want to replay Sacred Stones especially and maybe try some of the other newer ones, I did try FE4 with the fan translation back in the day not long after SS came out and I beat it, thinking I'd get more into the series but it felt insane to me cause I had no idea GBA emblem had the adjusted RNG results so 4 felt extremely lethal lol with nobody dodging anything, GBA emblem literally broke my perception of odds and chance for so many years
Is Wil objectively a bad unit? Yes. Have I used him before and he somehow ended up capping his Strength and being surprisingly useful? Also yes. Man those runs were a weird time. On one of them Raven was hitting like a wet noodle and Wil was murdering things almost too quickly, somehow.
Cool list, although I am surprised Lowen wasn't near the top in A considering how great he is early game and love having basically Marcus with lower stats for Pirate Ship since you can secure the boat easier by blocking both chokepoints and then can rush Matthew to the boss and then end the chapter earlier then if you didn't use Lowen and had to rely solely on Marcus. Will also say Rath is soooo good for Genesis, always field him there in combination with Fila's Might since it's the one chapter Bow units are really good and Brave Bow moment allows his to one round and kill enemies through walls, and then by the end you get him to like level 14 and can promote if you wanna to have a decent unit. It's a slap in the face that his Bow rank is C in Lyn Mode meaning he can't use it at base when he comes back if you do Lyn Mode, makes him like a bottom tier unit...
2:29:22 If we're only looking at Lin mode that's true, but Erk also has 4 more chapter to grow in HHM if you used him in LM, which I think is enough for him to at least move up to B tier, at worst I would say top of C tier
Teir list is good except hector and lyn. People knock lyn for durability but never factor in the fact that her avoid is insane. Hec is basically the strongest unit in the game and easy to invest in especially in eliwood mode.
The ranking's based on Hector Hard Mode, but I honestly agree with what you think of Lyn, at least with some caveats. Her bulk is awful, so if she doesn't have advantageous terrain to sit on to get enemy hitrates real low, she's going to have a rough time. The Mani Katti *does* help her offensively, as does the Body Ring from Lyn Mode, but she's mostly going to be fighting squishies unless she gets lucky with Strength growths. I love her, but she's definitely flawed.
I just finished my first Ironman after 2 fails (BBD rng and went too hard for the earth seal and got got by llyod). Marcus got 0 spd. A bunch of poor play and a slaughter on cog and sands of time berserk. I have a newfound appreciation for bosswin. I ended up with only hector / bosswin / nils on VoD. Getting Renault and 85 turns later beat VoD and somehow beat the final chapter with so much Luna Athos. I just did this earlier so I'm Def ranting lol but bosswin is S in my eyes now
Growth Unit Problems is exactly right. In addition to low exp gain, promotion gains are nerfed in this game (+1 mag +0 spd for sage, shoutout erk), and HHM has hardly any statboosters, no rallies/meals/tonics/pair-up either. growth rates were also lower back then. i've had a trained Florina make it to BBD with 7 def (not super unlikely!) and there's no tools to augment stats. makes me long for the "stats aren't real" games. a friend's first hard mode playthru of an FE was FE7. she struggled with a few chapters, and my solution to all her problems in the midgame was untrained marcus and priscilla. at base they were better than all the units she ever trained. (to be fair, one of the units she trained was matthew. assassin promo gains: +1 str, +0 spd, +0 mov, +0 con. more like Smell Contract)
I was not expecting Lyn mode to have such an effect on the tier list, but it made sense after you explained it. My only critique is that I would put Lyn over Eliwood with Lyn mode taken into account
Lyn still doesn't join earlier than eliwoood, which is the only thing separating them. Eliwood is worse long term than lyn, whether or not you do lyn mode, but neither are worth long term investment, so eliwood wins for 4 chapters of free chip
Also for hard mode farnina is a must, you need resistance since its almost all magic enemies, and shes one of the few units wolho can frontline while doing setious damage to magic enemies, she got me through hector hard mode
Japanese balance patch with 3x weapon effectiveness (and stronger bosses) really does improve the game. Lords all get buffed since their personal weapons are better. Archers still suck, but Louise makes for better filler than in international. Still pretty similar balance overall, but you do have to be a bit more careful with using flyers at least
I think something which may require a pin or a note in the description is reminder the bonus stats enemy units you recruit get is semi-random. I have been listening mostly on and off when I can at work, not watching video, so maybe I missed that being noted. But it can be important for stats, especially for long term recruited enemies. Not like it super matters, but it can. For instance I believe Geitz is either 18-20, or 19-20 strength. So he might not even lead Hawkeye in damage. Or, maybe I just missed you stating how you’re using it as Harken mentioned it 100%. May well be a me missing it issue.
Almost a perfect list. Only 2 I really disagree with are Lucius & Dart. Lucius is pretty easy to catch up to Canas on Pirate ship by killing all the shamans. His magic stat gets crazy making him an amazing physic/status staff user once he promotes and gets to B rank, which is easy with buyable barriers. Canas is better at combat, but you have to spam heal & mend staffs for the entire mid game to get his rank up when you’d much rather have him fighting. Dart is one of the best enemy phase units in the game. Slightly less bulky than Hawkeye with much better offense. Put him on a mountain with a hand axe and he has the strength and speed to destroy everything. Only unit that can reliably kill Vaida/visit the killer weapon shop on Unfulfilled Heart. Very easy to train on the next few maps after his join & he destroys everything when he promotes. Berserker promotion is one of the best in the game and is totally worth the ocean seal cost.
I wonder if Getiz's stock rises a little if you play Lyn mode just because raising the lords to 50 combined levels isn't *quite* as much of a heavy lift if you have 10 levels of Lyn mode to get Lyn some free levels. . . . then again, it would take a LOT to raise him over Oswin, so... maybe not. Kent can pretty much replace Swain, though, so, on the off chance Swain gets level screwed, Kent might deserve a higher spot in Lyn mode tiers. Then again . . . how often is swain getting level-up screwed and Kent isn't?
I also think of note that wasn't said for either thieves is the vision range. Matthew for 13x and dragons gate. I'd rather have legault for living legends/4FO(who gets 50 lord lvls)/BBd
I really like your overall explanations and I agree with the majority of your placements id say. Makes me happy to see Isadora ranked highly too. I do however have some notable disagreements with a few of your placements Canas- Now im not going to argue that Canas isn't the best of the three unpromoted mages because I do believe this to be the case (at least if you put aside Lyn mode), however I think Erk and lucius being that low and Canas 2 or 3 tiers above the rest of them is wild. Even if you put aside Erk and Lucius for a moment, Canas is not entitled to the guiding ring you get at chapter 18 as he still has to compete with Priscilla over it (Potentially even Serra if you choose to use her long term). Having a promoted Priscilla is incredibly useful and likely by the time you get to chapter 18, she'll be at least close to promotion as its pretty easy to staff spam for exp. You dont get another till dragons gate also and Id much rather have a promoted Priscilla over a promoted Canas for those chapters, which can actually be up to 3 chapters away from 18 if you do both gaiden chapters. So if we assume Priscilla makes better use of the guiding ring (which I do believe she does), Canas is stuck unpromoted and with similar combat performance as the other 2 for up to 3 chapters. However because of how rare people get to play 19xx, we'll assume 2 chapters. While that isn't too many chapters, keep in mind you penalized Lucius for being at a lower level compared to Canas and joining around the same time just before you get your first guiding ring. Its not very difficult to get Lucius or Erk to 10 either by the time you get the second guiding ring from dragons gate. Erk and lucius do have their advantages over Canas however to the point where Id say Canas's advantages over them while notable doesn't really make him that significantly better, especially if you take into account that he isn't entitled to the guiding ring (Which id argue he really isn't). Erk's advantage of joining earlier and having more chapters to contribute are important and substantial. Even if Erk isn't onerounding he's dealing solid damage to many enemies even with his mediocre 5 base, as enemy res is pretty bad and as a result he's still dealing better damage than most of your other units at that point in the game. His access to perpetual 1-2 range alone puts him a step above most of your other scrubs. So Erk does actually have a niche and he's a pretty good unit to use long term as well. Maybe not as good as Canas long term, but as you pointed out the gap between them combat wise really isn't all that substantial. As for Lucius, his main selling point is that he gets C rank staves for free after promotion which is pretty insane. A trained Lucius is also really good on Cog of destiny and Genesis which are two notably really difficult maps that are notorious for status staves including silence. Lucius's insane res makes that difficult for enemy units to silence him however so he can consistently restore units without much worry unless you get hella unlucky. Hector- Hector is pretty similar to Oswin in that they're both really tanky units that are most useful in the early game where most of your other units are more on the squishier side. Oswin's tankiness really isn't that much better than Hectors by the time Hector has a few levels under his belt from chapter 11, well okay it technically is noticeably better but honestly Oswins bulk is just overkill mostly and Hectors bulk is all you need for that portion of the game. Of course Oswin does have the advantage of promoting much earlier than hector but the earliest he can promote is in chapter 17 with the knights crest, which he has to compete for with Lowen and Lowen makes much better use of it than Oswin, as Lowen gets to promote to a Paladin, one of the best promoted classes in the game. By the time you get your second knights crest, Oswin has already outlived his usefulness and his promotion to general really wont improve him much at all since Generals are trash as far as promotions go. Its a waste of a knights crest. Hector also has the advantage of being a 5 move unit with his own personal weapon with effectiveness against cavs and armored units. While weapon effectiveness in this game is a joke with only doubling weapon might, We're talking about a 10 might weapon here, with weapon triangle advantage against the majority of enemy units that its effective against. it will one shot the cavs in chapter 14 for example, which is very notable and makes Hector one of the best units in that chapter by far and much more useful than Oswin who's usefulness was already similar Hectors in the earlier chapters. This already in of itself in my eyes see Hector as the better unit as he performs the job Oswin does about as well but with the added bonus of having more utility than him and not having to deal with pitiful 4 movement. Hectors combat is also just better than Oswins in general (pun unintended) as he can actually double things that isn't just an armored knight or soldier. So yeah I think Hector is just a better unit than Oswin and the "advanatges" Oswin has over Hector just arent substantial or important enough to actually matter, at least to me. Dart- Dart is honestly a pretty underrated unit in this game imo and I think its really unfair to penalize him for the ocean seal as while it is a lot of money you could sell it for, other promotional items also cost a good amount of money so by this logic unpromoted units should be penalized to some degree for this. Now you might argue there is only one ocean seal and that is true but what difference would that make exactly if there was two of them? Even if there was two ocean seals, the logic would be the same regardless, Dart is costing you 25,000 gold. Thats why I dont really like the criteria of ranking units that factors in "X unit costs me X amount of gold to use." Cause every unit to some degree is costing you resources including gold to invest in them. I think if gold was more stingy than this would be one thing but in a game like Fe7 where money is plentiful, the player can afford to lose out on the ocean seal if they really wanted to. Dart has honestly some of the best combat potential in the entire game when trained. His bases for his join time while not outstanding are serviceable enough and he's pretty easy to train on his joining chapter provided you give him an iron axe without having to slow down your army, as he can just deal with the spawning pegasus knights in the right corner of the map and get a couple levels out of him. A promoted and trained dart will very much surprass Hawekeye in combat performance. So there is merit to train and use him. He's not some secret top tier unit of course as he still needs to be invested in to be useful, but overall he's decent. Pent- Pents combat is objectively better than Hawkeye's, at least if we're looking at raw damage output. The only thing Hawkeye actually does better in combat is his bulk but Pent makes up for this by having much better avoid so he can dodge tank more consistently. You could make the argument that Hawkeye's bulk is more reliable but bear in mind Pent also gets a free A support with Lousie which further helps his avoid and makes Pent almost impossible to hit. You have to field a mediocre ass unit but just that buff alone is worth it imo. Pent not only hits on resistance which means on average he will hit harder, but he also doubles more reliably and consistently. You're correct though that Hawkeye's speed is mostly fine do to how slow fe7 enemies are, but having more speed to double more units is noteworthy and something pent does have over Hawkeye. Also Pent doesn't really join all that much later than Hawkeye. At most its a four chapter difference which isn't a huge deal. It's notable sure, but not as substantial as you seem to be implying in your video. Four chapters is me being generous as well since one of those is a gaiden chapter. Even if I granted you Hawkeye's combat was somehow better than pent's , Pent staff utility combined with his combat puts him, at least for me, a step above Hawkeye. I think even Geitz is a better unit than Hawkeye if you put aside that you have to train your lords to use him but im aware thats an unpopular opinion lmao. I think the only reason People think Hawkeye is better than Geitz though is just cause his chapter is a pain to unlock. Anyways I think hawkeye is a really good prepromote but definitely not top of A tier for me.
I think this tier list is kinda wack. Dart performs better than both Dorcas and Bartre, even if u dont promote him. I find Bartre to be the most unusable combat unit in the game. Geitz in B tier is wild too. He's the best bow user and maybe 2nd best axe user. Solid everything except res which you can patch up. I guess training all the lords brings it down for you that much.
I understand the “comparison to peers” criterion as an important consideration for tiering the units. However, there’s something to be said about if a unit that one is being compared to dies. For example, Jaffar might not have better combat than Raven assuming that you choose to raise Raven, but I don’t think it would be too unreasonable to take into account that Raven might have died by the time you get to Jaffar’s join chapter. So how much does that comparison matter? Obviously a little bit-and even more so as compared to units that join much closer to his join time such as Harken, but it’s a little nuance that might matter. (Availability still clears, though.)
I am glad you talked about Lyn mode since I do think it does greatly change where a lot of units end up. I disagree with some placements, Lucius is around Erk if not higher, Lyn and Eliwood are both better than everyone in F tier is not some D tier imo, Isadora is D tier and the worst pre-promote outside of Wallace due to her terrible AS with poor con and poor defenses. I still think you did very well to justify your reasoning. I still love this game and put it as one of my favorites in the series even without my nostalgia googles on. It just flows well with the cast when I play and I tend to be able to make most things work. FE6 feels rougher in bad ways and FE8 is solid but I think lacks in variety for some of it. Good Video.
A lot of people have said it already, but this list really demonstrates how unfun FE7 feels to play. Either you play Hector mode, and every unpromoted unit is saddled with some inherent flaw that makes them feel kinda shitty, or you play through Lyn mode, which is a boring mode. You really can’t win with this game. Anyways, good list. I’m not familiar enough with FE7 to have many criticisms, but most of your logic made sense. I do disagree with penalizing Karel so hard, his contributions as a D tier unit should not be dropped because of a choice beyond his control, but that’s more a side effect of how you evaluate Arran-Samson types. I think Hector being so far below Oswin is a bit silly, given how similar their stats are and how much you praise Oswin’s combat. Really opened my eyes on how insane Matthew is, and how shit Erk and Lucius kinda are.
Honestly I find Elwood normal pretty fun if you ban pre promotes. Dorcas is actually pretty good in it and running similarly awful characters is hilarious!
This video was pretty jarring because, despite easily playing 1000+ hours of Fire Emblem on my own, I never previously realized the extent to which "you don't have to use bad characters" because "the game will give you better characters" that "you don't have to waste your time on"
I have to double check (by replaying the ch after my current HHM run) but one hail mary fun fact for Wil as a diehard wil fan is he actually doubles and one rounds one of the pegasus knights that start near Lyn & co. He's doing his part!!
I only got three disagreements I feel strongly enough about to comment on. I would always put Lyn ahead of Eliwood. Fragile? Absolutely. That much more fragile than Eliwood that her speed doesn't make up for it? Totally disagree. Eliwood has trouble reliably dodging brigands with iron axes. I don't think Eliwood gains enough in his promotion to overtake promoted Lyn. I think Hector should be in B tier. His movement is unquestionably an issue but his forced deployment alongside his good bulk, good gains, and ability to 1-2 range means by the time you're fighting on maps with multiple fronts Hector can usually be a good tip of the spear. He's not quite good as Oswin at anything Oswinndoes but if you substitute Hector into places you'd put Oswin you free up another deployment slot. Not to mention that Hector is easily the best axe user early on outside of Marcus and maybe Sain/Kent if you did Lyn mode. I'd also put Farina in the B tier. If you invest in her with Afa's Drops and maybe an Angelic Robe she's easily one of the best units in the game. And yes I know how "if you invest in them with power up items they become better" sounds but I think Farina is a unit which uniquely benefits so immensely in that invest to a degree the other units in C tier and below don't. Now obviously there's an opportunity cost involved which is why I'd put her into B tier - that investment is the flaw. I really do think that investment does lift her up that high. She's always had surprising bulk. It's not so great that you won't need to pop a vulnerary now and again but as you repeat over and over it's an enemy phase game so that doesn't hinder her really.
Man i love Florina she gets the 20 20 privilege in every run, shes definitely my favorite fe character by far EDIT: I JUST GOT TO THE END AND MY GIRL GETS S TREATMENT WITH LYN MODE???? I'm so happy
Every time I play through FE7 my Lyn alw2ays ends up maxing her attack out ( a couple times even getting more DEF then hector) so I always thought she was this super cracked unit until relatively recently where I learned that that's very much Not The Case. Great list (though I do think Lyn should at least go above eliwood because at least she's good at one thing while eliwood really only has a horse)
I very much appreciate someone making a tier list that doesn't simply ignore Lyn Mode. I've always been of the mind that if I'm playing the highest difficulty, I should also take advantage of my resources as much as possible (who isn't, really?) so the fact that Lyn Mode is usually ignored in discussing units has always been strange to me. Though that isn't to say I don't get *why* it is, it is a piss baby easy mode, but still. Also makes the first two hours of this video pretty funny because I'm like "Can't wait to see (good Lyn Mode character) jump up three tiers at the end"
TBH the reason I usually ignore lyn mode isn't because its easy, but because its BORING (to me). like, Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance are also very easy, but they are at least fun, Lyn mode is just...a four hour delay before you get to the "real" game. TBH I think its weird the characters don't auto-level more for skipping lyn mode, since its supposed to be a tutorial anyway so its not like they expect you to play it every time, BUT they seemingly balanced the cast around it exisiting...its so painful.
@@DaniDoyle True! I guess it’s just because I find FE7 as a whole to be boring, lol. I don’t think I’d have ever beaten it if it hadn’t been my first game. It *is* really weird that the bases are so weak for when you don’t play Lyn Mode- maybe the devs didn’t want to bother accounting for it, so they just made them match? But then you see Rath and Wallace, and then it makes even less sense. Truly, FE7 is the game of all time.
So, how scenarios in the game is Hawkeye actually a better combat unit in a place where there isn’t an important location to have pent at also? Because in terms of any individual matchups, outside of hope and pray for a OHKO crit on valks pent’s weapons will almost always deal equal/higher damage with equal/higher hit then a hand axe on Hawkeye. Both will almost always be enough, just Hawkeye will have slightly more edge cases. (In any sort of playthrough as you tiering uses I cannot see Hawkeye qualifying as better at combat in a meaningful way for your team. Equal, sure. and I could see tiering either Pent or Hawkeye right above the other. Pent has all the staffs, but Hawkeye is more available & does have movement type advantages on a few maps).
As is you wanted discussion on tier list, I’ve provided my opinions below. Note that I’ve only commented with disagreements, as I saying I agree is redundant. For the most part, if I don’t mention it, I agree or the disagreement is so minor its pedantic, though I might point out some near tidbits. Firstly, Hector is strictly better than Oswin, here’s why: 1: 5 move, he can get to places faster than Oswin including more combat 2: He does more damage, especially with Wolf Beil. 3: Wolf Beil let’s him wood chipper armor knights and cavaliers better than Oswin. It’s especially nice on the Erik map with the sea of cavaliers. 4: You don’t need to use him when he falls off so promoting late doesn’t matter. 5: Does Oswin surviving two more rounds of combat matter if Hector still survives 5? 6: Hector doesn’t take up a deployment slot. 7: Oswin also falls off due to is low move and his combat not being as necessary when Units like Raven, Canas and Heath start rolling in. Lowen is also better than Oswin because: 1: Horse: 7 move and efficient rescue dropping. 2: While Lowen has worse combat than Oswin, he’ll see more combat faster than Oswin can still kill with some chip from other units. 3: Promoting Lowen over Oswin gets another 8 move ferry bot, which you won’t have except Marcus who should spend every waking moment killing thing and pushing the enemy back. You’ll have another 8 move unit that can do rescue support if needed. Unfortunately, he can no longer ferry Hector if he’s promoted. 4: Lowen has more long term prospects because the later the game gets, the less needed combat is on a unit because stronger and stronger keep rolling in. Being potentially one of a few 8 move ferry bots is more important. While I agree that the tomes where Florina will save time or make things easier with her flying is limited, I don’t bad combat is what holds her back. Even with bad combat, if rescue flying is useful, then the unit has already justified its deployment. For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure Wallace can survive one Lloyd combat even getting doubled at base. I also won’t contest whether Hawkeye or Pent is better because Hawkeye is really good, but consider that Pent has more effective damage since enemies tend to have higher defense than res, not that it matters in most cases since both of then blender 90% of the enemies they face anyways. Also, Jaffar is one of the better options to kill the Valkyries in Victory or Death because of his speed. With love, of course!
Regarding hector vs oswin, I think you are massively overrating hector's combat. his base HP holds his durability back so far, that it is rare for him to survive 4 rounds of combat, led alone 5. While wolf beil is quite nice, its only got 30 durability and some of that will be used in chapters 11 and 12, since he just has that and a hand axe (which he cant hit the broadside of a barn with). Without it, his combat is strictly worse than oswin, in terms of damage, accuracy, and bulk. While it is true that oswins move and high con holds him hack long term, its not by as much as it would in other games. FE7 has very few time based side objectives, and the ones it does have aren't the sort of thing oswin is likely to be doing anyway (the most prominent ones are thieves in ch17 and ch 20, and villages in ch21). As far as lowen is concerned, I'm still quite high on him (best cav), and think there's a solid case for giving him the first crest, but i think oswin has an equally solid case (the combat he gains is quite a lot). Lowen can do more utility stuff as a paladin, but you have the pegs and isadora for rescue dropping when needed, and its not like a 7 move lowen CANT participate in rescue chains as a cav if you need him to, though given the low deployment slots you have, I question how many rescue droppers you're even deploying before the second knight crest becomes available. Regardless, im glad you enjoyed the video, and we can both agree that Karla is S++
@@DaniDoyle Thanks for the reply First off, Karla is way better in FE6. In all seriousness, Hector won't at base by the time Oswin hits the field. He'll be at least level 2 if not 3. At level 3, Hector has 20 HP, 8 Str, 5 Skl, 6 Spd and 9 Def. Definitely worse than Oswin for sure, my objection isn't that Hector's combat is better than Oswin's, just that his combat is good enough to replace Oswin. With 30 uses, Wolf Beil with careful usage with Hand Axes can last you until Ch17, in which he'll probably be level 8 if not higher you train him, giving him 25 HP 11 Str 7 Skl 7 Spd and 11 Def, which is still worse than base Oswin in combat but not so bad it's worth a deployment slot and slowing down your game. Unfortunately for Oswin, due to his high level and his move hindering how much combat he can reach. I'll assume around level 12 if you train him, which nets him 31 HP 14 Str 10 Skl 6 Spd and 15 Def, which is still far superior to Hector's combat by the time Wolf Beil goes, but due to the low quality of enemies in the early game, Hector should do just fine at this point. If Hector gets to level 11 (highball), then he has then he has 28 HP 13 Str 8~9 Skl, 8~9 Spd and 13 Def. Plus Hector is free to deploy every map. With Lowen, a few things, a unpromoted Lowen can ferry Hector, which the pegs can't do, also when you promote Lowen, his combat is much better than the pegs as well, though I do think the pegs can do little things with their flying. I think there are a quite a few time sensitive objectives, such as reinforcements in Ch13, which is whatever, but can kill Matthew or Serra if you're careful, plus killing them on the on the fort is annoying, though if you don't want to get Guy or the mine, it doesn't matter. Ch13x, where both Hector and Oswin choke up the enemies while Marcus reaches the village, so forget that two, but Ch14, has Erk, Priscilla and villages you need to get quickly before pirates take them. Plus getting Hector to the cavs and soldiers, lets him delete them and gain a lot of EXP. Ch15 has two chest a thief will go for, Ch16 villages with the red gem and heavy spear plus getting to lyn and friends without the wil sacrifice, like the Wil sacrifice is a funny strat but if you're not using Kent or Sain anyways, there's no cost to moving them away from the enemy until your units reach them. Ch17 chests, which includes the coveted Hero's Crest and Knight's Crest, reaching Lucius and Raven. and the NPC soldiers who you need survive to get 17x and Canas. The map moves a lot faster if you ferry Hector. Getting Fiora in Ch19 and completing it in 15 turn so you can get the Silver Card in Ch19x, the chests, reinforcements and getting Legualt and Member Card in Ch20, I could go on, but think while not all these conditions require a tight beeline to objectives, there are a lot of time sensitive objectives that cavs and other high move units help with. Cheers if you read all that!
I'm never gonna be able to call him anything other than "Smelliwood" again, *fuck* Also, I've never had Sain turn out better than Kent. He's always ended up bafflingly worse, to the point where I always thought Kent was just a better unit. RNG is funny.
I'm suprised that Marcus is the "sole" S tier unit. I cant tell if my experience is an outlier, but having played the campaign several times, he sinks fast. By the back 1/2 of the game, he just lacked survivability andthe speed to kill on enemy turns. He always became very squishy and fragile. Ive had to be ch him by 20, 21 on each and every playthru. He's the best early game, but he nevwr had the staying power for me that Seth did in FE8.
@@666Kaca yeah was gonna say FE7 enemies have such laughably low speed on average that Marcus basically retains most of his utility up until the final chapter. It also helps him that his weapon lvls are godlike and he has relatively high Con.
I admit i don't understand the reasonning with legault, you say he is a better combat unit than matthew AND is better at stealing yet he is worse than matthew ?
Enemies in this game are so slow that almost everyone except maybe Dorcas can double, so Lyn's speed advantage means nothing. She's too slow to even double the CoD valks without the ch24 heaven seal. She's awful.
I really do dislike that it feels like most potential niches or units in gba games feels stifled by "Why not run Cavs?" These games need more overpowered prf weapons for random infantry units or just fun random skills
shame about the mage situation, as a fan of mages but yeah even by my methodology (ie gauging almost entirely by who's competing for the same deploy slot(s) which you are definitely considering but for me i really prefer having the primary consideration be the overall team being constructed) there's just no inherent reason to choose to use erk or lucius over canas, and even if you want to field two mages in fe7 for whatever reason pent is gonna swap right over the lesser of the two mages you're using fe7 definitely soured me on pegasus knights entirely and that took me a long time to kick that thought lmao (for some reason even playing lyn mode florina just never turns out for me for some reason lol)
Bro im half hour in this video an already have several points. I will be posting in parts. So first: Hector just give him the 2 speed wings and he is a beast. Thats 4+ speed. About Mathew yes very need it but Jake (New Mystery) and even colm (Sacred stones )could kill and defend more than him. So Mathews would be better in Solid but flawd. Oswin could be A or B and I agree with were you place serra. So this is part 1 :p
Where are you getting those two speedwings? The first available speedway is in chapter 18 and the second one is in chapter 25. Hector has fallen off long before it's even possible to give him two speed wings, and the speed rings do not help him hit any doubling thresholds
You know there are a lot of hot takes, ideas I found disagreeable, but it was all worth it to hear. Someone finally say that hawkeye is underrated. Most people say hawkeye is okay I guess. Just a B unit I say Hawkeye is just Aethos if he hit the gym instead of the library. The game is basically over the moment hawkeye is on the scene Sometimes I don't even use hawkeye because he just feels unfair to the game
Something to note at the end, there is a step-by-step LHM guide on serenes that works consistently and ensures good units, Lyn Florina Sain and Kent get some really nasty levelups, Sain ends with 20 str iirc and florina with 11-13 str.
There is actually RNG manipulation... If you're following a guide to ensure specific level ups that is RNG manipulation. Otherwise, those level ups are not guaranteed.
Guy solid but flawed, Erk promoted its really good. Said and Kent both nearly flawless. Florina Solid but flawed. Just give her 2 con and that is 4 con plus the 1 with promoting that is 5 extra con placing her in 9. Also give her the 7+hp and you get a Super sayayin.
Tbh after playing Hector Hard mode, I agree this game doesn't hold up well. The units you get access to are just not fun to use, and the deployment slots are too few. Combine that with some truly shitty maps (like Battle before Dawn) and I have a hard time justifying playing FE7 over literally any other game in the franchise. Its a shame having to say that about the game that introduced me to the franchise, but we need to be able to view these things without thick rose-tinted glasses clouding our judgement.
I can understand the mentality behind putting Lucius in F but I don't see the logic in including a tier for redundant units if you're going to put units in F purely for redundancy. Like yeah in a run where you choose to use Canas, Lucius is garbage, but if you just didn't feel like using Canas for whatever reason, maybe you think his monacle looks silly, Lucius is not performing at the level of an F tier unit.
The tier descriptions are just there to indicate what a tier means, anyone below C tier is also outclassed by the people above them. Lucius is outclassed by a unit in the outclassed tier (erk), being outclassed by people who are themselves outclassed is a damning fate.
Dart's HP is pretty good but he doesn't have Hawkeye's absurd defense and resistance to back it up. Plus Dart joins a lot weaker and promotes with the Ocean Seal, so you're effectively paying a premium to promote him.
Honestly never understood the "Marcus is the best unit" debate. Like hes really good dont get me wrong but like... He seriously falls off. I dont even play Hector Hard Mode and he still ends up falling below where he needs to be in the mid-late game whenever I use him, so to me he's only the best unit in the early game when everyone else is still being babied for EXP
I think hector is a d tier unit, barring being able to kill a few cavs early game he’s such dead weight especially after promotion when he still has 5 mov and barely anyone can carry him, unironically my least favorite lord to deal with aside from fe9 Ike because at least the other fe7 lords aren’t forced deployed every map. I disagree with Marcus not being alone in s, no unit matches his value of steamrolling the whole game I think guy is above raven, if not it’s definitely not a full tier difference, they’re both swordlocked and while raven probably promotes and guy obviously doesn’t, guy’s early game combat is more appreciated than raven’s is when he joins and is more important than raven’s promotion which doesn’t give him str, a hero with like 12 str after 5 levels of being swordlocked is not as good as guy being your 3rd best combat unit in the early game imo. If oswin is that high for his early game then guy is also in b tier
I absolutely agree about Marcus, thats why hes the only "standard" unit in s, ninian as a dancer is.. very weird to rate. I honestly think anywhere within S and A tier is valid. As for guy, while his early combat is very appreciated, I think this combat is still arguably worse than lowen's, and is definitely worse than Oswins and Marcus's. 3rd/4th best combat for a short time isn't worthy of B tier in my eyes. I do think he's often underrated though.
I also really dislike this game lol, the deployment slots restriction takes away a lot of the fun, and the other modes are way too easy (I still enjoy them more, though)
Putting Pent below Priscilla is such a power move I kind of love it. Ive also started a run of FE7 so Im glad to have this list Also Idc how bad they are im dragging Bartre and Dorcas with me to endgame, theyre my dads 😂
Half of this list is "This unit seems pretty okay on paper, but unfortunately FE7 sucks and that means they're garbage." (not a criticism of the tier list at all)
TBH thats one of the reasons fe7 is interesting to tier, is how units who would otherwise be good are uniquely hurt by it. Unfortunately, its still not fun to play
Did a draft of fe7 once. Literally everyone cussed when my brother at the top of the picks opened up with "matthew"
That was me drafting in fe8 with friends and grabbing Amelia for wings with my first pick 😂
Canas: "Hippity Hoppity, the Guiding Ring is my property."
Priscilla: "I have to wait until the second Guiding Ring to promote."
Pent: "I don't even JOIN until near the end of the game!"
Lucius: "You guys are getting promoted?"
Meanwhile erk is crying in a corner
hey, i gave the first one to lucius lol
Hector unfortunately does not actually receive +1 movement upon promotion lol
Yeah he's even worse 🥲
@@DaniDoyle moreover he is considered armor even before promoting
@@fabiodilernia4582This is inaccurate. Hector gains armored when he promotes, not before.
He does not take effective damage from hammers, armoraslyers, or heavy spears until promotion
If you're not playing on 0% growths, then Oswin's survivability basically never falls off, he doesn't get doubled by anything that actually does damage and can still double sometimes because FE7 moment (if you're really lucky he can one-round the iconic FE7 midgame wyverns who suck ass compared to FE6 but still don't have the decency to die to anyone else before Hawkeye joins besides Killer Axe Marcus sometimes): I really like sending him down the center corridor in Kinship's Bond with a Pure Water and wiping 20+ enemies a turn, it helps that he one-shots the mages with a Hand Axe and so won't run out of inventory down there
FYI I'm pretty sure Wil actually lives both javelins if you can rescue drop him into range of them, making him a true rival to the 3-13 archer
I am the world's biggest Heath hater, nobody hates, loathes, and despises Heath more than me, if Heath has 1 million haters then I am one of them, if Heath has 1 hater then I am him, yes I still train, promote, and field him every map after he joins
If you've ever wanted to see the most cursed Cog of Destiny play of your life, give Farina the Talisman and a Pure Water and then fly her over to the valks alone: they all go to attack her because they have 0 staff hit and do single digit damage if any; she'll only be 2/3-rounding them with trash accuracy with a Javelin, but that's just a certified Oswin moment, and I've never struggled on Cog of Destiny again since discovering that play (also Farina good: "just dump all the statboosters on her lol" but like unironically, she gets proportionally more value out of the Angelic Robe and Body Ring than anyone else, arguably Afa's Drops too but Heath does get a lot of levels axereaving all those pirates on the bottom left)
This is my monthly "Louise with Pent support doesn't get crit by Luna" post: this would be meme utility if FE7 Luna wasn't the single most awful weapon ever put into enemy hands, and I always field her in Cog of Destiny over Heath solely to make the Druids less of a pain
I think this list really exemplifies why this game is so hard to come back to for me. Most of the really good units come in the latter half of the game and a lot of the early game units vary wildly with how good they feel to use. Playing Lyn mode would help a lot with making the early units more fun to use in the later modes, but Lyn mode is such a slog after having played it so many times. I still have a lot of love for this game, even if it's aged like milk. I just wanna hang out with my beloved son Erk again.
Its so weird how the cast seems to be balanced around replaying the 4 hour tutorial every time you start a new file. FE& decisions were weird.
You have fallen for the classic trap! How can Marcus be good, when my Nino has better stats than him in the final map? Checkmate liberals.
Adding some thoughts as I watch (sorry if it's too long):
• funny thing with Hector's move is I gave him Boots pre-promotion for that sweet 7 mov, but then when he promoted it fell back to 5. I seethed because he was like 20 str / 20 def / 14 spd and I made him put in work
• grinding Matthew is important only if you take 19xx because the thieves have 20 spd on HHM and he needs to tie with them to steal back a Dragonshield
• Still mad they didn't just make Eliwood a lance infantry that promotes to a 8 mov cav like Ephraim -- would have fixed a lot of issues, especially with javelin use for ep. I still use him in my runs and he does a lot of work on promotion
• I'll also mention that Eliwood and Lyn stonks would go up if axe armors / great knights existed in FE7, that and the inclusion of more axe foes in general; FFO (Linus) and Crazed Beast at least make an attempt even if it's just pirate spam
• always so weird that Silver is A and Brave is B (haha B is for Brave) when Brave weapons are rarer, stronger and grant 4x attacks
• Rath appreciates being able to use Brave Bow at base and benefits a lot from grabbing some levels before promotion for the extra str / spd rolls; he also has a crapton of hp for some reason?
• It's always a joy to grind Heath to 18-20ish by taking Genesis (I'm insane and accept all sidequests), all those juicy prepromote druids and sages that can't fight back (until Kishuna leaves); also, he's a really good recipient of afa's drops if you wait a chapter more
• Hawkeye is such a meaty daddy, all he needs is a speedwing and he doesn't care about spd matchups imo; I'm glad you mentioned his niche in Cog of Destiny, and if you couple this with the absurd avo Berserkers get from mountain tiles he (and Dart if you so choose) trivialize a lot of maps by just standing there
• Back when I was working on my FE7 romhack, I removed the lord exp requirement for FFO and made a forking path of two villages in Living Legend that took you to either Lloyd or Linus which just felt so much better (no self-plugs intended, the project ended in failure anyway)
• Farina is definitely an afa's drop baby, and even without she always felt more like a wyvern to me. I think if you haven't trained any fliers or if one of them fell off she's a good last second project which greatly helps for maps like Battle Before Dawn and Life and Death
• If so inclined you can feed Nino xp by having her passively kill the Vaida wyvern reinforcements in Cog, their stats are that abysmal
• Unpromoted green unit Wallace in HHM FFO is the funniest shit you'll ever see
Playing lyn mode after starting the series with fe6 was agony
Nobody CODDLED our boy Roy!!!
But how else are the devs going to teach you that swords beat axes?? The people need to know these things!!
40% speed growth???
Why isn't Dart in S tier? He was busted in my playthrough.
This list is outdated, failed to include dart kent and babymode
8 skill, 8 speed, promoting hurts funds rank
This is actually a joke reference to a playthrough called "drink my reds" on his channel, we both think dart is bad
@@DaniDoyle I havent had a chance to watch it but you are telling me that after the Buy Our Units Co-op, Teagan willingly used dart *again*??? Should I call for help? Is everything okay?
@@JonoabboFE plz help
the thumbnail tier list is the correct one.
Lyn
Wow, I didn’t expect Wallace to be S tier but you made a very persuasive argument!
hey
Everytime I see a FE7 tier list it just reminds me of the fact that InSys clearly developed around the idea that people would be consistently be playing Lyn mode and as a result almost all of those units just get absolutely kneecapped otherwise. But then they forgot to actually make Lyn mode even remotely fun for anyone who has ever played an FE game in their life before.
28:33 the deadpan delivery of this had me rolling
" I guess he can buy estrogen and transition into a pegasus knight." Bro you say the most hilarious shit XD
Putting Lucius on the same tier as Nino and Karla is cruel
Harsh but fair (check the lyn mode revisions, his stocks go up)
I don’t think Dani likes units that require a small amount of investment, which is just preference. Yes Lucius is harder to train when he joins than Canas, but he has the most reliable growths of your magic user options and is highly likely to become the best staff user in your army with his crazy magic stat. Seriously the man can usually physic heal enemies on the opposite side of the map in the late game. Light magic isn’t even that bad. You get easy access to Purge & Aura earlier and more reliably than Bolting & Fimbulvtr
God Im so glad you talked about Lyn Mode. I know most people dont talk about it because they dont play it, but I play it every single time and a lot of the units end up really good with that extra training time
I am sat. This video is gonna hurt my feelings because i have so many scrungles in this game (shout out my fellow Rebecca enjoyers)
I also love Rebecca... In Code of The Burger King
Genuine question: Why do people who make tier lists for FE7 only talk about Hector Hard Mode? On the one hand, I understand that HHM is the most difficult version of the game and therefore the mode where the differences in unit performance are both most visible and most significant. At the same time though, in order to unlock HHM in the first place you need to have already beaten the game twice. If you're playing your third run of FE7, do you really need a tier list to tell you that Marcus, Pent, and Hawkeye are really good and that you should use them?
I've always approached tier lists from the context of "someone who's playing the game for the first time, and wants advice on which units are worth investing in and which are safe to bench". In that context, I would expect an FE7 tier list to focus on Lyn Normal > Eliwood Normal since that's the only option available to a new player (or to at least devote time to covering it, similar to how FE8 lists discuss the differences between Eirika and Ephraim routes), but hardly anyone ever does.
My concern here is that first time players may look at HHM tier lists and misapply those rankings down in LN-ENM where they aren't accurate. As an example, sure Eliwood isn't great in HHM, but in ENM he's a perfectly serviceable unit provided he gets some decent level ups. If a new player looks for FE7 unit tier lists and gets a bunch of HHM lists (which is probably all they're going to find) they might come to believe Eliwood is a worse unit than he actually is in the context of their playthrough, and ignore what would otherwise be a totally viable unit for them.
Maybe I'm just fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose and audience of tier lists, but it feels like there's a mismatch between which players the tier lists are being made for and which players would actually benefit most from tier lists.
I don't think tier lists are meant to be "guides" either for new or experienced players, because theres some ways where it kinda can't reflect "advice" (for example, Dorcas and Bartre suck but you don't really have any other options early on, so being like "don't use D tier units" doesn't really work). Tier lists are more of an " interesting discussion topic " than actual advice...its kinda like the hypotheical " is superman or batman better " playground question, applied to fire emblem. As for why I use HHM (and usually use the highest difficulty) as stated in the video there's two main reasons. The first is I play on HHM, so I'm most familiar with it, and I'm going to rank based on the experience I know. Second is on lower difficulties, units blend together. In ENM, enemies are so weak everyone can one round most of them, making the tier list basically irrelevant: if everyone is special, no one is . Id rather rank units when they feel distinct from each other than when they are samey.
@@DaniDoyle Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question. It sounds like I had been approaching the idea of tier lists from the wrong perspective. I think I got tripped up by some of the verbiage surrounding the discussion, came to a flawed understanding of the concept, and then got confused and frustrated when those incorrect expectations weren't met. I appreciate your explanation, and I apologize if my initial comment came off as hostile or dismissive.
@@gilbat1Plus this is just a tiny reason, but an ENM tier list doesn't tier the entire cast. While Karla is so bad it really doesn't matter, if someone wanted to know about Farina and there were no Hector mode tier lists, they're screwed.
You don't have to apologize for asking a genuine question. There's nothing wrong with wanting an answer to something and it didn't come of as dismissive at all
Putting Nino ahead of Karel is incredibly silly because Nino is inherently silly
Hearing this is somebody’s least fave FE is so wild to me
Dani doesn't understand PEAK gaming with berzerkers
I think that there are reasons to rise Erk up, as grinding Lucius have some problems, Erk has earlier availability on both modes, getting 6 extra chapters on total, which is way more than enough to get the 2 level gap (probably 3 or 4), and is also timed less awkwardly, because 3 of those extra chapters are on Hector mode, where now that you don't need to invest on Lowen because of second Marcus in Sain, there is way less competition for the xp, while most of the chapters that Lucius are in, he is competing with raising both Sain and Florina, as he needs to be raised on Lyn Mode, because if you don't, he will just be straight up behind Canas. While you get to use Erk for 10 chapters before you get to 17x (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17), Lucius has only 4 chapters (7, 8, 9, 10), Erk has more than double the time that Lucius has to grow, and the quality of those extra chapters are better than the ones Lucius has, as there are less competition or interesting units to grow and while the lower staff rank is a big disadvantage, so is a slightly smaller florina and sain, and a level 10-11ish Erk versus a level 7 Lucius, which is increased by Fire being straight up better than Lightning (1 less weight and 1 less might), so the base stats from Lucius are a bit smaller in practice, which gets worse as tomes improve
I kind of wish that Lowen, being the weird third-wheel to the Christmas Cav dynamic (let's call him the Hanukkah Cav), would've set a precedent for an obligatory third cavalier whose stat package revolves more around bulk. Oh well, at least we have the Makalov archetype.
I mean Kyle in FE8 has the same CON and similar spread albeit typically stronger. Noah in FE6 does it too. I call them the 10 CON Cavs, they're often better than their 9 CON counterparts with the same investment.
So fun fact that may shock you. I’ve never actually played Wallace’s version of “Four Fanged Offense”. Not once. The times I was playing FE7 I just assumed you were supposed to use the lords as much as possible. I usually cleared that level threshold easy. It’s also a LOT easier to hit that level cap if you play Lyn mode since she can level up a ton then and start her rejoin chapter at like level 10+. That also makes her a bit easier to use after since she may live more than 1 hit and will 1 round non tanky enemies. But that was also me being a noob using the lords and not touching Marcus after I got Kent and Sain back. Personally between the other two, Hector isn’t too hard to level up since early game Wolf Beil is at or near a ORKO to any Knight or Cav (not weilding a sword). It also helps that I played mostly normal mode which is better for XP gains.
On a related note with your tier list. You have to field Dartz to recruit Geitz in his map. Meaning if Dartz is dead you can’t recruit Geitz. And if Dartz isn’t being used he’s basically a walking “talk to me” unit that can maybe chip someone. That may go into punishment territory.
I appreciate that at the beginning you established that this is specifically talking about HHM. Lots of folks don’t do that when they’re talking about FE7, and it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out why people were describing a radically different experience than what I had playing and loving Eliwood/Hector Normal modes in high school.
As a person who finally got through any difficulty of Hector mode, it does sadden me you dislike 7 so much. But I am very interested in your tier list though.
I can't wait for the FE6 tier list where we talk about how Bors is the best unit for 2 hours!
Best assessment of Matthew I’ve heard. He’s as (if not more) essential to a smooth early game as Marcus is. I also agree that Lowen is the best Cav and that Kent & Sain are very overrated.
I gotta agree with the Sain take. If you grind him in Lynn mode, you can reliably get a 15/1 Paladin that has stats on par with Marcus PLUS 2 strength and 7 HP from the stat boosters. Plus, given that he also has 40% speed, he is likely to quickly cap strength and eventually cap speed. A Lynn mode sain is probably the best unit in the game. People wanna talk about giving the boosters to Florina, and sure, she gets good, but better a second, basically Seth level Paladin in chapter 14 blows HHM wide open.
WITH ALL THAT SAID - people overvalue Sain in just HHM. It takes so much to get him leveled up, and even as a 10/1 paladin he’s just pretty okay. Kent is just bad with that 40 strength growth and only 5% higher speed. Idk what the hell they were thinking when they built Kent :(
Thank you! The Christmas Cavs in this game are just so... Eh... Mostly due to the low experience gain.
I’m actually fine with Kent being bad filler. Between the lack of deployment slots, his iffy combat, and having 3 other horses…he’s just a case of “Too much of a good thing is a bad thing”, and it’s fairly unique to FE7 and FE8.
Before fully watching and knowing you're making bassically 2 lists for whether you do Lin mode or not, I'm going to guess that most if bot all Lin mode units are going to move several spots whithin their tiers if they're in the middle to low end or just straight up move a tier if they're on the higher end (and some units who aren't in Lin mode might be slightly lower due to having more competition)
One chapter isn't available if Lyn mode isn't played. I think it's called a Glimpse in time (haven't played this chapter in 15 or so years) Nils had to reach level 7 in Lyn mode, and kishuna needed to be killed in 19x.
20:05 Pretty sure that's supposed to be Dragon Shield, whoever typed it just made a typo. The F key and the D key are right next to each other after all.
“Unfortunately I have been spending a lot of time thinking about Fire Emblem 7 recently”
Well that’s one way to earn a like from me lol.
I think Isadora’s bad HP and defense make her a poor excuse for a mounted unit. She’s Lyn with a horse. It’s a shame I wanted to like her. Of course I missed recruiting Harken and got the dude I never use instead.
I'm shocked so many people dislike 7, it's one of the golden games of my past, not just with fire emblem (which I'm honestly pretty inexperienced with) but just in general
My perspective on the game is heavily colored by building teams for link arena competition in high school though lol like the goal was to get as many character as high as possible as early as possible, hand out S ranks to distribute the final chapter weapons, figure out what 5 characters can make a valid support chain, etc, deciding who gets the uber spear, how you'll fight the uber spear and so on
Paladins, fliers always faired really poorly at this and Warrior and General were broadly considered among the best classes, I was shocked to learn that the inverse of what we played was how the internet at large thought of the game lol
I've only played Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, and uh Ike's game (can never remember if its POR or RD, I think it's POR?)so my experience is pretty limited, but youtubes been serving me a lot of Fire Emblem stuff and it's making me want to replay Sacred Stones especially and maybe try some of the other newer ones, I did try FE4 with the fan translation back in the day not long after SS came out and I beat it, thinking I'd get more into the series but it felt insane to me cause I had no idea GBA emblem had the adjusted RNG results so 4 felt extremely lethal lol with nobody dodging anything, GBA emblem literally broke my perception of odds and chance for so many years
Is Wil objectively a bad unit? Yes. Have I used him before and he somehow ended up capping his Strength and being surprisingly useful? Also yes.
Man those runs were a weird time. On one of them Raven was hitting like a wet noodle and Wil was murdering things almost too quickly, somehow.
Eliwood also doesn't take a counter from archers and enemy healers
No one does though
Archers and nomads technically take counters tho
Dani has made a good video for once thank you for putting the GOAT in A tier with Crash music
Cool list, although I am surprised Lowen wasn't near the top in A considering how great he is early game and love having basically Marcus with lower stats for Pirate Ship since you can secure the boat easier by blocking both chokepoints and then can rush Matthew to the boss and then end the chapter earlier then if you didn't use Lowen and had to rely solely on Marcus.
Will also say Rath is soooo good for Genesis, always field him there in combination with Fila's Might since it's the one chapter Bow units are really good and Brave Bow moment allows his to one round and kill enemies through walls, and then by the end you get him to like level 14 and can promote if you wanna to have a decent unit. It's a slap in the face that his Bow rank is C in Lyn Mode meaning he can't use it at base when he comes back if you do Lyn Mode, makes him like a bottom tier unit...
2:29:22 If we're only looking at Lin mode that's true, but Erk also has 4 more chapter to grow in HHM if you used him in LM, which I think is enough for him to at least move up to B tier, at worst I would say top of C tier
Teir list is good except hector and lyn. People knock lyn for durability but never factor in the fact that her avoid is insane. Hec is basically the strongest unit in the game and easy to invest in especially in eliwood mode.
The ranking's based on Hector Hard Mode, but I honestly agree with what you think of Lyn, at least with some caveats. Her bulk is awful, so if she doesn't have advantageous terrain to sit on to get enemy hitrates real low, she's going to have a rough time. The Mani Katti *does* help her offensively, as does the Body Ring from Lyn Mode, but she's mostly going to be fighting squishies unless she gets lucky with Strength growths.
I love her, but she's definitely flawed.
1:14 the wording here feels extremely similar to how imported cheese explains his tier list criteria /pos
This video feels very cheesy
I just finished my first Ironman after 2 fails (BBD rng and went too hard for the earth seal and got got by llyod). Marcus got 0 spd. A bunch of poor play and a slaughter on cog and sands of time berserk. I have a newfound appreciation for bosswin. I ended up with only hector / bosswin / nils on VoD. Getting Renault and 85 turns later beat VoD and somehow beat the final chapter with so much Luna Athos. I just did this earlier so I'm Def ranting lol but bosswin is S in my eyes now
Growth Unit Problems is exactly right. In addition to low exp gain, promotion gains are nerfed in this game (+1 mag +0 spd for sage, shoutout erk), and HHM has hardly any statboosters, no rallies/meals/tonics/pair-up either. growth rates were also lower back then. i've had a trained Florina make it to BBD with 7 def (not super unlikely!) and there's no tools to augment stats. makes me long for the "stats aren't real" games.
a friend's first hard mode playthru of an FE was FE7. she struggled with a few chapters, and my solution to all her problems in the midgame was untrained marcus and priscilla. at base they were better than all the units she ever trained.
(to be fair, one of the units she trained was matthew. assassin promo gains: +1 str, +0 spd, +0 mov, +0 con. more like Smell Contract)
I love your content! I finished this for the first time a couple weeks ago so I appreciate this video
I was not expecting Lyn mode to have such an effect on the tier list, but it made sense after you explained it.
My only critique is that I would put Lyn over Eliwood with Lyn mode taken into account
Lyn still doesn't join earlier than eliwoood, which is the only thing separating them. Eliwood is worse long term than lyn, whether or not you do lyn mode, but neither are worth long term investment, so eliwood wins for 4 chapters of free chip
Also for hard mode farnina is a must, you need resistance since its almost all magic enemies, and shes one of the few units wolho can frontline while doing setious damage to magic enemies, she got me through hector hard mode
Pure Water is also an option and you'd easily have the funds to buy a lot of those if you don't pay Farina.
It’s okay. I’ll always be an Elibe enjoyer
People who don't like Elibe always seem to play Lyn mode lol
Japanese balance patch with 3x weapon effectiveness (and stronger bosses) really does improve the game. Lords all get buffed since their personal weapons are better. Archers still suck, but Louise makes for better filler than in international. Still pretty similar balance overall, but you do have to be a bit more careful with using flyers at least
Hawkeye getting the credit he deserves!
I think something which may require a pin or a note in the description is reminder the bonus stats enemy units you recruit get is semi-random.
I have been listening mostly on and off when I can at work, not watching video, so maybe I missed that being noted. But it can be important for stats, especially for long term recruited enemies.
Not like it super matters, but it can. For instance I believe Geitz is either 18-20, or 19-20 strength. So he might not even lead Hawkeye in damage.
Or, maybe I just missed you stating how you’re using it as Harken mentioned it 100%. May well be a me missing it issue.
Oh boy. This is going to be a banger
I like you analize of Eliwood, Have not see it that way but its true, good job.
Almost a perfect list. Only 2 I really disagree with are Lucius & Dart. Lucius is pretty easy to catch up to Canas on Pirate ship by killing all the shamans. His magic stat gets crazy making him an amazing physic/status staff user once he promotes and gets to B rank, which is easy with buyable barriers. Canas is better at combat, but you have to spam heal & mend staffs for the entire mid game to get his rank up when you’d much rather have him fighting. Dart is one of the best enemy phase units in the game. Slightly less bulky than Hawkeye with much better offense. Put him on a mountain with a hand axe and he has the strength and speed to destroy everything. Only unit that can reliably kill Vaida/visit the killer weapon shop on Unfulfilled Heart. Very easy to train on the next few maps after his join & he destroys everything when he promotes. Berserker promotion is one of the best in the game and is totally worth the ocean seal cost.
I wonder if Getiz's stock rises a little if you play Lyn mode just because raising the lords to 50 combined levels isn't *quite* as much of a heavy lift if you have 10 levels of Lyn mode to get Lyn some free levels. . . . then again, it would take a LOT to raise him over Oswin, so... maybe not.
Kent can pretty much replace Swain, though, so, on the off chance Swain gets level screwed, Kent might deserve a higher spot in Lyn mode tiers. Then again . . . how often is swain getting level-up screwed and Kent isn't?
This tier list was very well done and explained!
I also think of note that wasn't said for either thieves is the vision range. Matthew for 13x and dragons gate. I'd rather have legault for living legends/4FO(who gets 50 lord lvls)/BBd
I really like your overall explanations and I agree with the majority of your placements id say. Makes me happy to see Isadora ranked highly too. I do however have some notable disagreements with a few of your placements
Canas- Now im not going to argue that Canas isn't the best of the three unpromoted mages because I do believe this to be the case (at least if you put aside Lyn mode), however I think Erk and lucius being that low and Canas 2 or 3 tiers above the rest of them is wild. Even if you put aside Erk and Lucius for a moment, Canas is not entitled to the guiding ring you get at chapter 18 as he still has to compete with Priscilla over it (Potentially even Serra if you choose to use her long term). Having a promoted Priscilla is incredibly useful and likely by the time you get to chapter 18, she'll be at least close to promotion as its pretty easy to staff spam for exp. You dont get another till dragons gate also and Id much rather have a promoted Priscilla over a promoted Canas for those chapters, which can actually be up to 3 chapters away from 18 if you do both gaiden chapters. So if we assume Priscilla makes better use of the guiding ring (which I do believe she does), Canas is stuck unpromoted and with similar combat performance as the other 2 for up to 3 chapters. However because of how rare people get to play 19xx, we'll assume 2 chapters. While that isn't too many chapters, keep in mind you penalized Lucius for being at a lower level compared to Canas and joining around the same time just before you get your first guiding ring. Its not very difficult to get Lucius or Erk to 10 either by the time you get the second guiding ring from dragons gate.
Erk and lucius do have their advantages over Canas however to the point where Id say Canas's advantages over them while notable doesn't really make him that significantly better, especially if you take into account that he isn't entitled to the guiding ring (Which id argue he really isn't). Erk's advantage of joining earlier and having more chapters to contribute are important and substantial. Even if Erk isn't onerounding he's dealing solid damage to many enemies even with his mediocre 5 base, as enemy res is pretty bad and as a result he's still dealing better damage than most of your other units at that point in the game. His access to perpetual 1-2 range alone puts him a step above most of your other scrubs. So Erk does actually have a niche and he's a pretty good unit to use long term as well. Maybe not as good as Canas long term, but as you pointed out the gap between them combat wise really isn't all that substantial. As for Lucius, his main selling point is that he gets C rank staves for free after promotion which is pretty insane. A trained Lucius is also really good on Cog of destiny and Genesis which are two notably really difficult maps that are notorious for status staves including silence. Lucius's insane res makes that difficult for enemy units to silence him however so he can consistently restore units without much worry unless you get hella unlucky.
Hector- Hector is pretty similar to Oswin in that they're both really tanky units that are most useful in the early game where most of your other units are more on the squishier side. Oswin's tankiness really isn't that much better than Hectors by the time Hector has a few levels under his belt from chapter 11, well okay it technically is noticeably better but honestly Oswins bulk is just overkill mostly and Hectors bulk is all you need for that portion of the game. Of course Oswin does have the advantage of promoting much earlier than hector but the earliest he can promote is in chapter 17 with the knights crest, which he has to compete for with Lowen and Lowen makes much better use of it than Oswin, as Lowen gets to promote to a Paladin, one of the best promoted classes in the game. By the time you get your second knights crest, Oswin has already outlived his usefulness and his promotion to general really wont improve him much at all since Generals are trash as far as promotions go. Its a waste of a knights crest. Hector also has the advantage of being a 5 move unit with his own personal weapon with effectiveness against cavs and armored units. While weapon effectiveness in this game is a joke with only doubling weapon might, We're talking about a 10 might weapon here, with weapon triangle advantage against the majority of enemy units that its effective against. it will one shot the cavs in chapter 14 for example, which is very notable and makes Hector one of the best units in that chapter by far and much more useful than Oswin who's usefulness was already similar Hectors in the earlier chapters. This already in of itself in my eyes see Hector as the better unit as he performs the job Oswin does about as well but with the added bonus of having more utility than him and not having to deal with pitiful 4 movement. Hectors combat is also just better than Oswins in general (pun unintended) as he can actually double things that isn't just an armored knight or soldier. So yeah I think Hector is just a better unit than Oswin and the "advanatges" Oswin has over Hector just arent substantial or important enough to actually matter, at least to me.
Dart- Dart is honestly a pretty underrated unit in this game imo and I think its really unfair to penalize him for the ocean seal as while it is a lot of money you could sell it for, other promotional items also cost a good amount of money so by this logic unpromoted units should be penalized to some degree for this. Now you might argue there is only one ocean seal and that is true but what difference would that make exactly if there was two of them? Even if there was two ocean seals, the logic would be the same regardless, Dart is costing you 25,000 gold. Thats why I dont really like the criteria of ranking units that factors in "X unit costs me X amount of gold to use." Cause every unit to some degree is costing you resources including gold to invest in them. I think if gold was more stingy than this would be one thing but in a game like Fe7 where money is plentiful, the player can afford to lose out on the ocean seal if they really wanted to. Dart has honestly some of the best combat potential in the entire game when trained. His bases for his join time while not outstanding are serviceable enough and he's pretty easy to train on his joining chapter provided you give him an iron axe without having to slow down your army, as he can just deal with the spawning pegasus knights in the right corner of the map and get a couple levels out of him. A promoted and trained dart will very much surprass Hawekeye in combat performance. So there is merit to train and use him. He's not some secret top tier unit of course as he still needs to be invested in to be useful, but overall he's decent.
Pent- Pents combat is objectively better than Hawkeye's, at least if we're looking at raw damage output. The only thing Hawkeye actually does better in combat is his bulk but Pent makes up for this by having much better avoid so he can dodge tank more consistently. You could make the argument that Hawkeye's bulk is more reliable but bear in mind Pent also gets a free A support with Lousie which further helps his avoid and makes Pent almost impossible to hit. You have to field a mediocre ass unit but just that buff alone is worth it imo. Pent not only hits on resistance which means on average he will hit harder, but he also doubles more reliably and consistently. You're correct though that Hawkeye's speed is mostly fine do to how slow fe7 enemies are, but having more speed to double more units is noteworthy and something pent does have over Hawkeye. Also Pent doesn't really join all that much later than Hawkeye. At most its a four chapter difference which isn't a huge deal. It's notable sure, but not as substantial as you seem to be implying in your video. Four chapters is me being generous as well since one of those is a gaiden chapter. Even if I granted you Hawkeye's combat was somehow better than pent's , Pent staff utility combined with his combat puts him, at least for me, a step above Hawkeye. I think even Geitz is a better unit than Hawkeye if you put aside that you have to train your lords to use him but im aware thats an unpopular opinion lmao. I think the only reason People think Hawkeye is better than Geitz though is just cause his chapter is a pain to unlock. Anyways I think hawkeye is a really good prepromote but definitely not top of A tier for me.
😢i love ur content bruh but FE7 is one of my fave games of all time. I know its on the easier side but i genuinely love the writing in it.
I think this tier list is kinda wack. Dart performs better than both Dorcas and Bartre, even if u dont promote him. I find Bartre to be the most unusable combat unit in the game. Geitz in B tier is wild too. He's the best bow user and maybe 2nd best axe user. Solid everything except res which you can patch up. I guess training all the lords brings it down for you that much.
I understand the “comparison to peers” criterion as an important consideration for tiering the units. However, there’s something to be said about if a unit that one is being compared to dies. For example, Jaffar might not have better combat than Raven assuming that you choose to raise Raven, but I don’t think it would be too unreasonable to take into account that Raven might have died by the time you get to Jaffar’s join chapter. So how much does that comparison matter? Obviously a little bit-and even more so as compared to units that join much closer to his join time such as Harken, but it’s a little nuance that might matter.
(Availability still clears, though.)
In my criteria, I explain that this is not for an iron man scenario and thus I do not give credit for being a "replacement" for someone who died
I am glad you talked about Lyn mode since I do think it does greatly change where a lot of units end up.
I disagree with some placements, Lucius is around Erk if not higher, Lyn and Eliwood are both better than everyone in F tier is not some D tier imo, Isadora is D tier and the worst pre-promote outside of Wallace due to her terrible AS with poor con and poor defenses. I still think you did very well to justify your reasoning.
I still love this game and put it as one of my favorites in the series even without my nostalgia googles on. It just flows well with the cast when I play and I tend to be able to make most things work. FE6 feels rougher in bad ways and FE8 is solid but I think lacks in variety for some of it.
Good Video.
A lot of people have said it already, but this list really demonstrates how unfun FE7 feels to play. Either you play Hector mode, and every unpromoted unit is saddled with some inherent flaw that makes them feel kinda shitty, or you play through Lyn mode, which is a boring mode. You really can’t win with this game.
Anyways, good list. I’m not familiar enough with FE7 to have many criticisms, but most of your logic made sense. I do disagree with penalizing Karel so hard, his contributions as a D tier unit should not be dropped because of a choice beyond his control, but that’s more a side effect of how you evaluate Arran-Samson types. I think Hector being so far below Oswin is a bit silly, given how similar their stats are and how much you praise Oswin’s combat.
Really opened my eyes on how insane Matthew is, and how shit Erk and Lucius kinda are.
Honestly I find Elwood normal pretty fun if you ban pre promotes. Dorcas is actually pretty good in it and running similarly awful characters is hilarious!
This video was pretty jarring because, despite easily playing 1000+ hours of Fire Emblem on my own, I never previously realized the extent to which "you don't have to use bad characters" because "the game will give you better characters" that "you don't have to waste your time on"
I have to double check (by replaying the ch after my current HHM run) but one hail mary fun fact for Wil as a diehard wil fan is he actually doubles and one rounds one of the pegasus knights that start near Lyn & co. He's doing his part!!
I know he does not one round the Pegasus nights and I'm fairly certain he doesn't double them
Yeah i replayed the ch this morning and he cant I definitely misremembered
I only got three disagreements I feel strongly enough about to comment on.
I would always put Lyn ahead of Eliwood. Fragile? Absolutely. That much more fragile than Eliwood that her speed doesn't make up for it? Totally disagree. Eliwood has trouble reliably dodging brigands with iron axes. I don't think Eliwood gains enough in his promotion to overtake promoted Lyn.
I think Hector should be in B tier. His movement is unquestionably an issue but his forced deployment alongside his good bulk, good gains, and ability to 1-2 range means by the time you're fighting on maps with multiple fronts Hector can usually be a good tip of the spear. He's not quite good as Oswin at anything Oswinndoes but if you substitute Hector into places you'd put Oswin you free up another deployment slot. Not to mention that Hector is easily the best axe user early on outside of Marcus and maybe Sain/Kent if you did Lyn mode.
I'd also put Farina in the B tier. If you invest in her with Afa's Drops and maybe an Angelic Robe she's easily one of the best units in the game. And yes I know how "if you invest in them with power up items they become better" sounds but I think Farina is a unit which uniquely benefits so immensely in that invest to a degree the other units in C tier and below don't. Now obviously there's an opportunity cost involved which is why I'd put her into B tier - that investment is the flaw. I really do think that investment does lift her up that high. She's always had surprising bulk. It's not so great that you won't need to pop a vulnerary now and again but as you repeat over and over it's an enemy phase game so that doesn't hinder her really.
Man i love Florina she gets the 20 20 privilege in every run, shes definitely my favorite fe character by far
EDIT: I JUST GOT TO THE END AND MY GIRL GETS S TREATMENT WITH LYN MODE???? I'm so happy
Marth is the best Thief he can open chests
Every time I play through FE7 my Lyn alw2ays ends up maxing her attack out ( a couple times even getting more DEF then hector) so I always thought she was this super cracked unit until relatively recently where I learned that that's very much Not The Case. Great list (though I do think Lyn should at least go above eliwood because at least she's good at one thing while eliwood really only has a horse)
Florina ABOVE Ninian?! She's good but she's not above Ninian levels of good.
I very much appreciate someone making a tier list that doesn't simply ignore Lyn Mode. I've always been of the mind that if I'm playing the highest difficulty, I should also take advantage of my resources as much as possible (who isn't, really?) so the fact that Lyn Mode is usually ignored in discussing units has always been strange to me. Though that isn't to say I don't get *why* it is, it is a piss baby easy mode, but still. Also makes the first two hours of this video pretty funny because I'm like "Can't wait to see (good Lyn Mode character) jump up three tiers at the end"
TBH the reason I usually ignore lyn mode isn't because its easy, but because its BORING (to me). like, Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance are also very easy, but they are at least fun, Lyn mode is just...a four hour delay before you get to the "real" game. TBH I think its weird the characters don't auto-level more for skipping lyn mode, since its supposed to be a tutorial anyway so its not like they expect you to play it every time, BUT they seemingly balanced the cast around it exisiting...its so painful.
@@DaniDoyle True! I guess it’s just because I find FE7 as a whole to be boring, lol. I don’t think I’d have ever beaten it if it hadn’t been my first game. It *is* really weird that the bases are so weak for when you don’t play Lyn Mode- maybe the devs didn’t want to bother accounting for it, so they just made them match? But then you see Rath and Wallace, and then it makes even less sense. Truly, FE7 is the game of all time.
So, how scenarios in the game is Hawkeye actually a better combat unit in a place where there isn’t an important location to have pent at also?
Because in terms of any individual matchups, outside of hope and pray for a OHKO crit on valks pent’s weapons will almost always deal equal/higher damage with equal/higher hit then a hand axe on Hawkeye. Both will almost always be enough, just Hawkeye will have slightly more edge cases.
(In any sort of playthrough as you tiering uses I cannot see Hawkeye qualifying as better at combat in a meaningful way for your team. Equal, sure. and I could see tiering either Pent or Hawkeye right above the other. Pent has all the staffs, but Hawkeye is more available & does have movement type advantages on a few maps).
As is you wanted discussion on tier list, I’ve provided my opinions below. Note that I’ve only commented with disagreements, as I saying I agree is redundant. For the most part, if I don’t mention it, I agree or the disagreement is so minor its pedantic, though I might point out some near tidbits.
Firstly, Hector is strictly better than Oswin, here’s why:
1: 5 move, he can get to places faster than Oswin including more combat
2: He does more damage, especially with Wolf Beil.
3: Wolf Beil let’s him wood chipper armor knights and cavaliers better than Oswin. It’s especially nice on the Erik map with the sea of cavaliers.
4: You don’t need to use him when he falls off so promoting late doesn’t matter.
5: Does Oswin surviving two more rounds of combat matter if Hector still survives 5?
6: Hector doesn’t take up a deployment slot.
7: Oswin also falls off due to is low move and his combat not being as necessary when Units like Raven, Canas and Heath start rolling in.
Lowen is also better than Oswin because:
1: Horse: 7 move and efficient rescue dropping.
2: While Lowen has worse combat than Oswin, he’ll see more combat faster than Oswin can still kill with some chip from other units.
3: Promoting Lowen over Oswin gets another 8 move ferry bot, which you won’t have except Marcus who should spend every waking moment killing thing and pushing the enemy back. You’ll have another 8 move unit that can do rescue support if needed. Unfortunately, he can no longer ferry Hector if he’s promoted.
4: Lowen has more long term prospects because the later the game gets, the less needed combat is on a unit because stronger and stronger keep rolling in. Being potentially one of a few 8 move ferry bots is more important.
While I agree that the tomes where Florina will save time or make things easier with her flying is limited, I don’t bad combat is what holds her back. Even with bad combat, if rescue flying is useful, then the unit has already justified its deployment.
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure Wallace can survive one Lloyd combat even getting doubled at base.
I also won’t contest whether Hawkeye or Pent is better because Hawkeye is really good, but consider that Pent has more effective damage since enemies tend to have higher defense than res, not that it matters in most cases since both of then blender 90% of the enemies they face anyways.
Also, Jaffar is one of the better options to kill the Valkyries in Victory or Death because of his speed.
With love, of course!
Regarding hector vs oswin, I think you are massively overrating hector's combat. his base HP holds his durability back so far, that it is rare for him to survive 4 rounds of combat, led alone 5. While wolf beil is quite nice, its only got 30 durability and some of that will be used in chapters 11 and 12, since he just has that and a hand axe (which he cant hit the broadside of a barn with). Without it, his combat is strictly worse than oswin, in terms of damage, accuracy, and bulk. While it is true that oswins move and high con holds him hack long term, its not by as much as it would in other games. FE7 has very few time based side objectives, and the ones it does have aren't the sort of thing oswin is likely to be doing anyway (the most prominent ones are thieves in ch17 and ch 20, and villages in ch21). As far as lowen is concerned, I'm still quite high on him (best cav), and think there's a solid case for giving him the first crest, but i think oswin has an equally solid case (the combat he gains is quite a lot). Lowen can do more utility stuff as a paladin, but you have the pegs and isadora for rescue dropping when needed, and its not like a 7 move lowen CANT participate in rescue chains as a cav if you need him to, though given the low deployment slots you have, I question how many rescue droppers you're even deploying before the second knight crest becomes available.
Regardless, im glad you enjoyed the video, and we can both agree that Karla is S++
@@DaniDoyle Thanks for the reply
First off, Karla is way better in FE6.
In all seriousness, Hector won't at base by the time Oswin hits the field. He'll be at least level 2 if not 3. At level 3, Hector has 20 HP, 8 Str, 5 Skl, 6 Spd and 9 Def. Definitely worse than Oswin for sure, my objection isn't that Hector's combat is better than Oswin's, just that his combat is good enough to replace Oswin. With 30 uses, Wolf Beil with careful usage with Hand Axes can last you until Ch17, in which he'll probably be level 8 if not higher you train him, giving him 25 HP 11 Str 7 Skl 7 Spd and 11 Def, which is still worse than base Oswin in combat but not so bad it's worth a deployment slot and slowing down your game. Unfortunately for Oswin, due to his high level and his move hindering how much combat he can reach. I'll assume around level 12 if you train him, which nets him 31 HP 14 Str 10 Skl 6 Spd and 15 Def, which is still far superior to Hector's combat by the time Wolf Beil goes, but due to the low quality of enemies in the early game, Hector should do just fine at this point. If Hector gets to level 11 (highball), then he has then he has 28 HP 13 Str 8~9 Skl, 8~9 Spd and 13 Def. Plus Hector is free to deploy every map.
With Lowen, a few things, a unpromoted Lowen can ferry Hector, which the pegs can't do, also when you promote Lowen, his combat is much better than the pegs as well, though I do think the pegs can do little things with their flying.
I think there are a quite a few time sensitive objectives, such as reinforcements in Ch13, which is whatever, but can kill Matthew or Serra if you're careful, plus killing them on the on the fort is annoying, though if you don't want to get Guy or the mine, it doesn't matter. Ch13x, where both Hector and Oswin choke up the enemies while Marcus reaches the village, so forget that two, but Ch14, has Erk, Priscilla and villages you need to get quickly before pirates take them. Plus getting Hector to the cavs and soldiers, lets him delete them and gain a lot of EXP. Ch15 has two chest a thief will go for, Ch16 villages with the red gem and heavy spear plus getting to lyn and friends without the wil sacrifice, like the Wil sacrifice is a funny strat but if you're not using Kent or Sain anyways, there's no cost to moving them away from the enemy until your units reach them. Ch17 chests, which includes the coveted Hero's Crest and Knight's Crest, reaching Lucius and Raven. and the NPC soldiers who you need survive to get 17x and Canas. The map moves a lot faster if you ferry Hector. Getting Fiora in Ch19 and completing it in 15 turn so you can get the Silver Card in Ch19x, the chests, reinforcements and getting Legualt and Member Card in Ch20, I could go on, but think while not all these conditions require a tight beeline to objectives, there are a lot of time sensitive objectives that cavs and other high move units help with.
Cheers if you read all that!
I'm never gonna be able to call him anything other than "Smelliwood" again, *fuck*
Also, I've never had Sain turn out better than Kent. He's always ended up bafflingly worse, to the point where I always thought Kent was just a better unit. RNG is funny.
If Hawkeye didn't have tattoos, he would be SS Tier.
I'm suprised that Marcus is the "sole" S tier unit. I cant tell if my experience is an outlier, but having played the campaign several times, he sinks fast.
By the back 1/2 of the game, he just lacked survivability andthe speed to kill on enemy turns. He always became very squishy and fragile.
Ive had to be ch him by 20, 21 on each and every playthru.
He's the best early game, but he nevwr had the staying power for me that Seth did in FE8.
Marcus only needs a speedwing in order to solo the entire game on hector hard mode
Although i would put florina at S as well
@@666Kaca yeah was gonna say FE7 enemies have such laughably low speed on average that Marcus basically retains most of his utility up until the final chapter. It also helps him that his weapon lvls are godlike and he has relatively high Con.
I admit i don't understand the reasonning with legault, you say he is a better combat unit than matthew AND is better at stealing yet he is worse than matthew ?
The stuff Mathew steals is more valuable (promotion items and silvers vs a few gems)
Wait, is it normal to rescue your lord character?
Also, do people not Hard mode Lyn first just to take Wallace's Knight's Crest?
The Lyn mode changes (including stealing wallace's knight crest) come at the end of the tier list. Sain stonks go UP UP UP
Lyn is fast so she doubles every enemy.....and then what.
Enemies in this game are so slow that almost everyone except maybe Dorcas can double, so Lyn's speed advantage means nothing. She's too slow to even double the CoD valks without the ch24 heaven seal. She's awful.
I hear that AoM music, great stuff!
I really do dislike that it feels like most potential niches or units in gba games feels stifled by "Why not run Cavs?" These games need more overpowered prf weapons for random infantry units or just fun random skills
My happiness soared when you put Florina in S tier lol
Yeah sure the average HHM-only player would disqualify this
but come on
shame about the mage situation, as a fan of mages but yeah even by my methodology (ie gauging almost entirely by who's competing for the same deploy slot(s) which you are definitely considering but for me i really prefer having the primary consideration be the overall team being constructed) there's just no inherent reason to choose to use erk or lucius over canas, and even if you want to field two mages in fe7 for whatever reason pent is gonna swap right over the lesser of the two mages you're using
fe7 definitely soured me on pegasus knights entirely and that took me a long time to kick that thought lmao (for some reason even playing lyn mode florina just never turns out for me for some reason lol)
Bro im half hour in this video an already have several points. I will be posting in parts. So first: Hector just give him the 2 speed wings and he is a beast. Thats 4+ speed. About Mathew yes very need it but Jake (New Mystery) and even colm (Sacred stones )could kill and defend more than him. So Mathews would be better in Solid but flawd. Oswin could be A or B and I agree with were you place serra. So this is part 1 :p
Where are you getting those two speedwings? The first available speedway is in chapter 18 and the second one is in chapter 25. Hector has fallen off long before it's even possible to give him two speed wings, and the speed rings do not help him hit any doubling thresholds
You know there are a lot of hot takes, ideas I found disagreeable, but it was all worth it to hear. Someone finally say that hawkeye is underrated.
Most people say hawkeye is okay I guess. Just a B unit
I say Hawkeye is just Aethos if he hit the gym instead of the library. The game is basically over the moment hawkeye is on the scene
Sometimes I don't even use hawkeye because he just feels unfair to the game
If you think this list is spicy, wait till you see fe6
Something to note at the end, there is a step-by-step LHM guide on serenes that works consistently and ensures good units, Lyn Florina Sain and Kent get some really nasty levelups, Sain ends with 20 str iirc and florina with 11-13 str.
I do not factor in rigging levels. You can rig anyone to have good stats.
@@DaniDoyle i wouldnt call it rigging since theres no RNG manipulation to speak of but fair enough
There is actually RNG manipulation... If you're following a guide to ensure specific level ups that is RNG manipulation. Otherwise, those level ups are not guaranteed.
I’m not super into the fandom, but I didn’t know Pent was overrated! I genuinely just liked him 😢:(
A lot of people disagree with me, but we can all agree pent is great 💜
@@DaniDoyle playing fates bc of your fates vid btw :)!
12:00 folks.
Guy solid but flawed, Erk promoted its really good. Said and Kent both nearly flawless. Florina Solid but flawed. Just give her 2 con and that is 4 con plus the 1 with promoting that is 5 extra con placing her in 9. Also give her the 7+hp and you get a Super sayayin.
Tbh after playing Hector Hard mode, I agree this game doesn't hold up well.
The units you get access to are just not fun to use, and the deployment slots are too few. Combine that with some truly shitty maps (like Battle before Dawn) and I have a hard time justifying playing FE7 over literally any other game in the franchise. Its a shame having to say that about the game that introduced me to the franchise, but we need to be able to view these things without thick rose-tinted glasses clouding our judgement.
I haven’t watched it, but Merlinus too low
I can understand the mentality behind putting Lucius in F but I don't see the logic in including a tier for redundant units if you're going to put units in F purely for redundancy. Like yeah in a run where you choose to use Canas, Lucius is garbage, but if you just didn't feel like using Canas for whatever reason, maybe you think his monacle looks silly, Lucius is not performing at the level of an F tier unit.
I don't have a "redundant" tier so I'm not sure what you're talking about?
@@DaniDoyle my bad I think I misunderstood what the Outclassed tier was for
The tier descriptions are just there to indicate what a tier means, anyone below C tier is also outclassed by the people above them. Lucius is outclassed by a unit in the outclassed tier (erk), being outclassed by people who are themselves outclassed is a damning fate.
Lucius made me gay and trans. SSS tier unit
Oh shoot youre right i overlooked that m damn I'm canceled now
Dart promotes better than Hawkeye in Strength & Speed and also gets above 50 health with the best weapon type in the game
Dart's HP is pretty good but he doesn't have Hawkeye's absurd defense and resistance to back it up. Plus Dart joins a lot weaker and promotes with the Ocean Seal, so you're effectively paying a premium to promote him.
Dart also has awful res and pretty low defense, so he often gets wrecked while enemy phasing
I think playing him in a zero percent run does him a disservice at the very least
Honestly never understood the "Marcus is the best unit" debate. Like hes really good dont get me wrong but like... He seriously falls off. I dont even play Hector Hard Mode and he still ends up falling below where he needs to be in the mid-late game whenever I use him, so to me he's only the best unit in the early game when everyone else is still being babied for EXP
I think hector is a d tier unit, barring being able to kill a few cavs early game he’s such dead weight especially after promotion when he still has 5 mov and barely anyone can carry him, unironically my least favorite lord to deal with aside from fe9 Ike because at least the other fe7 lords aren’t forced deployed every map.
I disagree with Marcus not being alone in s, no unit matches his value of steamrolling the whole game
I think guy is above raven, if not it’s definitely not a full tier difference, they’re both swordlocked and while raven probably promotes and guy obviously doesn’t, guy’s early game combat is more appreciated than raven’s is when he joins and is more important than raven’s promotion which doesn’t give him str, a hero with like 12 str after 5 levels of being swordlocked is not as good as guy being your 3rd best combat unit in the early game imo. If oswin is that high for his early game then guy is also in b tier
I absolutely agree about Marcus, thats why hes the only "standard" unit in s, ninian as a dancer is.. very weird to rate. I honestly think anywhere within S and A tier is valid. As for guy, while his early combat is very appreciated, I think this combat is still arguably worse than lowen's, and is definitely worse than Oswins and Marcus's. 3rd/4th best combat for a short time isn't worthy of B tier in my eyes. I do think he's often underrated though.
I also really dislike this game lol, the deployment slots restriction takes away a lot of the fun, and the other modes are way too easy (I still enjoy them more, though)
Putting Pent below Priscilla is such a power move I kind of love it. Ive also started a run of FE7 so Im glad to have this list
Also Idc how bad they are im dragging Bartre and Dorcas with me to endgame, theyre my dads 😂
I heard if Bartre kills the fire dragon you get the secret ending where he and Dorcas kiss
@@DaniDoyle 😳
Half of this list is "This unit seems pretty okay on paper, but unfortunately FE7 sucks and that means they're garbage."
(not a criticism of the tier list at all)
TBH thats one of the reasons fe7 is interesting to tier, is how units who would otherwise be good are uniquely hurt by it. Unfortunately, its still not fun to play
Axe bros might be trash but they are MY trash
I also just think Bartre's hot in fe6