On the off chance you see this, you should ABSOLUTELY play Crimson Flower, if only for wyvern lord + stride + amyr on Edelgard. Flying around one-turning "kill boss" maps by chaining kills is so ridiculous.
I like how you highlight mercedes and flayn power leveling. I haven't heard another fe content creator talk about that. In my first playthrough mercedes was my strongest unit aside from byleth and in my second playthrough I went first day exploring and all other days going into battles and even dragging them out to spent my heals (usually 20-50 turns per battle) and had her reach lvl 90+ for the luls. I could literally sent her anywhere on the map and equip fire or any other spell with many uses and she'd clear areas in one turn. hahaha
Finally someone agrees with my views on rescue. I do a lot of solo runs on maddening and just being able to keep rodrigue, Jeralt and Judith from suicide is a godsend! Also Seteth starts as a wyvern rider not a wyvern lord so you still need to reclass him. Still I think he has many qualities like swift strikes and crest of cichol is a beautiful combo!
I'm also of this mind; I've gotten a lot of smack my way for saying Warp is overvalued in comparison to Rescue on maddening. You get more Rescues than Warps, and by the time you have more Warps, it's more about convenience. Rescue once you start getting it is very useful, and you can still do a lot of LTC plays with it if you want to be clever. EDIT: Warping or Rescuing away Green units like Rodrigue is almost mandatory on Maddening as they just seem to want to run into enemy units that will 100% kill them.
Great video! I am just starting three houses coming from fire emblem engage maddening run. Hard was too easy so jumping into maddening. Thank you for all the videos. Subscribe to this man. It is pure upside!
I would move Anette to viable, or extremy viable, she gets her rallies extremely early, which allow other units to reach benchmarks, and her autority boon lets her use the Blue lions dancers as soon as she can, which allows you to refresh 4 units including your dancer. I would move Mercedes to viable, her personal skill is way overrated, being a healer she shouldnt take damage in the first place, fortify is also not that good if you are using a vengeance unit. Shamir is god tier in my opinion, Snipers are broken in this game, hunters volley is basically a kill button, and her bases remain useful all the game. Balthus ahould be in extremly viable, great atk and def, and a personal that allows him to tank early game, he should never go into war cleric, that class is just bad, same with trickster. His best class is problably grappler, using him as a player phase nuke, his fierce iron fist combat art is a kill button. I believe that if a unit gett a brave combat art, be it swift strikers, point volley blank, hunters volley or fierce iron fist, that unit should be extremely viable. Sorry for any mistakes, english isnt my first lenguage
I put Mercedes high for flyer squad build and she can get to level 30 by chapter 9-10 from spamming fortify for XP on aux battles, and on average is 15-25 levels higher than everyone else by end game.
Bro, Ferdinand is good because he gets swift strikes and has boons in all three regular melee weapon skills. Put him on a wyvern or a horse and he just player-phases down the whole game
I legit forgot I made this video, I'd take it with a grain of salt I only have 500 hours on three houses so there are things I might not be aware of. A lot of hardcore 3h players have 1k+ hours etc :) Appreciate the input though I agree, swift strikes is great.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming plus there's just a ton of shit in this game overall. I def learned some things from this vid and didn't mean to be only critical. But my boy Ferdinand hard carried me through the Edelgard route and it hurt me to see him shamed lol
@@IcedCoffeeGaming F.E.D. did a RU-vid live stream maddening run recently that i watched some of, then repped the Failure Emblem channel and I watched some of that. Now this vid is in my feed along with like 90 other FE3H tier lists
I would put Balthus a tier higher through, I have to say. His proficiencies offer many different options for him and his Personal Skill is extremely viable in early game due to how ridiculous the stat boost is. STR/DEF +6 is should not be underestimated and his solid res reduces his trouble with mages greatly. That means that you'll basicly have a insanely overpowered early game unit, especially since
Thanks! Golden Deer is pretty chill, Blue Lions has the best story though IMO. Silver Snow is hardest so probably avoid that one for first playthrough.
Hanneman is so weird to me as a unit, he has bow skill B and Reason B when you get him, so I threw a magic bow on him and reclassed him to sniper. The magic bow did more damage than any of his spells ever did. It was a weird kind of feeling watching him shred flyers and armors. I wasn't even planning on investing anything into him and he was pretty much online instantly in hard mode due to his combat artes also centering around magic bow damage.
Ywa he is the best singer in game and since You normally don't want to give a utility magic of Mercedes since she's pretty much the only sniper that can perform the same role. But you don't have to worry about that with him. You're not giving up any good spells by making him a sniper. he is the best Magic sniper in the game. And honestly has probably the highest potential in the game with hunters volley
@@114bleachfan right, I gave him the dark bishop skill poison strike to boost his free damage even more then that coupled with Hunters volley he ended up needing very little investment to do decent chip damage or even 1 round with effective damage. He’s a good stride bot as well if his leadership is high enough
I do believe your comment about playing aggressively given the preferential treatment given to healers. Originally, I was a big fan of fortify but over the course of several playthroughs I have come to the conclusion that it isn’t as necessary as I once thought. Basically, it’s helpful in battles against large beast with several health bars such as Claude & Leonie’s paralogues or against Rhea. I would bump both Flayn and Mercedes down to viable like the other healers. (Linhardt does have restore btw.) Mercedes ability to self-heal is nice but other than the occasional mage fight, she shouldn’t be seeing much damage to begin with. Rescue is a nice ability but Constance with a higher base magic and better magic growth means she’s going to be having larger rescue range and has the perk of a stronger spell list. Given the praise you give fliers I’m surprised you think Valkyrie is better than Dark Flier. The 1+ extra range traded for 1 movement seems like an even exchange but with calvary movement being impeded by forest, stairs, and sand or inaccessible terrain like rivers, mountains, or buildings for the most part the extra range only helps with walls. Dark Fliers do in fact get canto as well and they also have dark tomefaire, whereas Valkyries essentially have an empty ability with giving range to both black and dark magic range. (Only female character that has both in their spell list is Edelgard, everyone else has one or the other.) I do think the mastery skill is better on Valkyrie so I still put units through the class, but its part of the journey, not the destination. Bernadetta could replace Mercedes in the highest tier. Her passive and early access to vengeance make for a great early game when units have to work more to distinguish themselves. Similar to Lysithea she’s able to take on the Death Knight in chapter 4 if focusing in on her skills. She’s ironically one of the few units that doesn’t want her crest to make activating her passive easier with crest weapons. Ferdinand does merit going up a tier. His recruitment difficulties are greatly exaggerated. At C+ support its possible to recruit with a D+ in Heavy Armor. This is easily achievable by chapter 4 or 5 with minimal effort. Each house has a unit with comparable bases and growths that has a combat art that can double (Sylvain, Leonie, and Ferdinand) and given that the other 2 are part of extremely viable he should be in the same tier. His passive is actually easier to keep active compared to position based passives because those have 2 requirements, an adjacent unit and one of the correct gender. Ferdinand makes for a good evasion tank and so damage doesn’t tend to knock him out of range, its usually a level up. Between vulneraries, healers, sacred weapons, passives (Dorothea) there are more ways to heal units than there are to ensure the correct gendered unit is adjacent during combat. This also seems to go against using canto because the hit and run component leaves the adjacent unit behind. Unless they were using a ranged attack before the melee character goes. Cyril should at least be viable. He doesn’t make a good adjutant, he lacks a special allies bonus and has his own merit as a unit. I’m not sure mages make the best units for an adjutant, I tend to stick this with units that have access to auto doubles/high speed and unique relationships. Raphael and Alois make great adjutants because they can give Ignatz and Leonie +3 might on top of their regular 10 avoid/hit from being adjutant and they have proficiencies in brawling to get a guard class with virtually no effort. The guaranteed double from classes or combat arts turn the +3 might into 6 damage, which in essence giving the unit another death/fiery blow skill. Cyril has a bit of an ugly duckling problems, where hes not quite amazing when you get him, but turns out great if you have patience. He combines vengeance and point blank volley which are stand out feature on Bernadetta and Leonie who are in extremely viable tier. His bases are meh, but when you change classes they auto correct his most glaring stats and his growths work out for the better. He’s capable of doubling from chapter 5 and on maddening is much earlier than the other character’s who eventually unlock similar skills. He’s more or less a diet Claude on non Golden Deer paths. I probably wont change your mind but dancers are legit. It's like asking if I would prefer to have a unit from decent tier and god tier act once each or have a god tier act twice? Based on your own conclusion at the end of the video, you project at best 4 god tier units, so even if you had 6 extremely viable units, there’s still a chance that the units from the first tier could out preform them. A dancer gives you the flexibility to choose what is most needed that turn. Whether its push forward or pull back or offense attack or gambit, there’s just a lot of wiggle room you get from a dancer. I will concede that not dancers are created equally. Dancers with siege spells are more viable for their overall team contribution. They’re passively giving hit/avoid to the team. How much comes down to your team composition but Dorothea and Hilda are unique in this regard. They’ll have up to 40 tiles, 10 range in each direction, to give units with supports with 10 hit/avoid passively. As counter intuitive as it is, I do think Hilda makes for a better dancer because she can provide Claude and Balthus +3 might and if she’s positioned correctly her passive can give another male unit +3 might. Even if it’s not a full team, lets just say 5 units can support them, that 50 hit/avoid they’re providing to the team, and with Hilda up to 9 might, 3 on 3 units. I also think Hilda is better since she can use Fetters of Dromi without hurting herself since she has a crest and she also doesn’t have a riding bane so she can also get +1 move twice as fast as Dorothea with her bane. Between a dancers 6 move, +1 from the accessory (which I’m guessing is fair since we discussed Valkyrie and Dark Flier classes) and +1 from riding, we have an 8 move dancer, so they don’t fall quite behind as we suspect, especially with canto coming included with the accessory. We do give up a solid fighter, but again, there are several strong fighters, but few excellent dancers. Plus there’s always the fact that it’s inline with canon because she’s one of the few who is excited when asked. Well even though it’s a lot of writing, I do agree with most of your list, just those 5 who I believe could fit to another tier. To give you an idea of where my perspective is coming from, I’ve played over 750 hours and have completed each route at least twice, once on normal and once on maddening. I want to say I’ve played golden deer 5/6 times since it’s my favorite route. Most of my runs are “deathless” I have occasionally let a couple of units left behind but its normally not how I play. My more self imposed challenged is that I don’t repeat any classes, so 1 unit of each max. Perhaps that also colors my opinion of dancers because I don’t have 2 bishops or 2 wyvern lords.
My problem with dancers is that the "+20 sword avoid" skill is just wasted on them. With it, you can REALLY push dodge tanks to the next level. Some enemies can have hit rates of 160. Withouth avoid +20, there is a chance to be rng screwed every turn: it essentially becomes a gamble, and the odds are not in your favour. With avoid +20 though, a dodge tank can literally handle an entire map on its own. You can send them on the left of a map, and just completely eliminate half of the enemies from the equation because they will be too busy trying (and failing) to hit ONE unit. What's more viable to you? Your god tier hitting twice or having a virtually immortal unit?
@Sans The blaster It’s unfortunate that the development team decided to give dancers +20 sword avoid, it would have been nice to see it on another class. I basically consider it a lost skill because the value of a dancer is so high. Losing a dancer has what I view as a cumulative loss. Take the enemies you’re referring to with 160 hit, let’s be generous and say you run into them around chapter 14 (by my recollection this is a bit early but still for arguments sake say this is when you run into them) so at this point we’ve trade 5 chapters of not having a dancer for a unit to get +20 avoid with only 1 specific weapon type to use on an uncommonly seen enemy? A dancer can extend a units movement, allow for specific unit attack such as unique combat arts from the hero’s relics, repositioning, eliminate an enemy, heal an ally, or allow for an ally to get additional experience in a class or weapon type. The versatility of this really can’t be understated. Additionally, depending on the dancer, they can also increase allies’ avoid if they have high range magic such as Dorothea or Hilda, you could give several unit +10 avoid and it would be available to them regardless of the weapon type. It could come down to play style or other factors but there’s just less that’s being offering by the avoid skill vs the dance ability. Now I do have the DLC and I give my dancer the Fetters of Dromi to get extra mobility and keep up with mounted unit so even when they have poor positioning, they can usually get out of it.
@@hugog1523 I see that my example wasn't very helpful, so let me be clearer. What I was trying to say when I said "there are enemies with 160 hit rate" is that, no matter how much you try, you will never create a fully reliable dodge tank without avoid +20, as there will always be enemies with absurd hit rates that will have a solid chance to hit you, even in the end game. Obviously, this applies through the entire game. In chapter 8, for example, enemies will probably reach a maximum hit rate of 120, but your unit will also have a maximum avoid of 95. What really makes avoid tanks borken for me is their ability to handle huge clusters of enemies while your main army completes the objective. This means that they'll need to survive multiple turns without getting hit. Having to face even ONE enemy that has a 20% chance of hitting you really screws up the whole idea, especially in maddening, which is the context of this video. Seeing that one enemy might make you decide that the risk is not with it. Or worse, it might make you decide that it IS worth it, and then you get hit 6 turns later and you have to somehow rescue the unit from the other side of the map. Again, it just turns into a gamble. Not having to worry about that one enemy is a HUGE deal. You made some really good examples of how versatile a dancer can be and how many possibilities it opens, but the thing is... I don't really need those options. I often find myself with a bunch of units that just don't have anything to do, and not because they are useless. It's just that, when half of the enemies are not even attacking you, your whole army isn't needed. Having a dancer gives you more options to tackle a problem while having a dodge tank eliminates the problem in the first place. Admittedly, this is not the most enjoyable way to play the game: it's mindless and doesn't require much strategy. However, maddening can be really insane (heh) without NG+, so I often find myself using these kinds of strategies to finish the hardest maps. Maybe if I was better at the game I could be less dependent on dodge tanks and try out some other classes, but that's sadly not the case yet.
@@sanstheblaster2626Dude that's just b.wrath builds but higher effort lmao, you can have half a team of those and none will require sword avoid, in fact all of them will rather use axes, or lances if dual phasing.
@@pepeelghetto1231words cannot describe how much I hate trying to use battalions' durability to my advantage, ESPECIALLY on NG. Too much menu shuffling, too much prep time, too much attention required. At least for me. With dodge tanks, you put them on the map and that's it. Having to worry at all times about battalions' durability is too much effort. Or rather, it requires me to do a thing I dislike too much. Dodge Tanks are truly mindless. If I have to skip a map with broken stuff, I prefer not playing it at all compared to having to play the game in a way I dislike, even if the mindless strategy ends up taking more time. Because that's the only difference here: dodge tanks can do everything bat wrath can, just slower because you don't oneshot.
Dorothea is also one of the best dancers in the game. Cuz while she doesn't see much combat, she can still equip meteor and the way 3 Houses supports operate on attack range she can always be giving support to most allies nearby while shes holding Meteor Also Raph is fun with gauntlets just cuz his high atk makes him pretty fun on Player Phase
I ran Anette as a physical axe unit. With no stat boosters she is easily one of my best units in my all flyer squad. With a brave axe she can do like 120 damage in one turn. She is now one of my favourite units due to this ”meme” build. I would say that she works even better with physical build than magic build
My thoughts: I like this tier list; it mirrors a lot of my experiences in two maddening playthroughs. I had to laugh when somebody else rated Mercedes below Anna as a bottom tier; what you said about her and Part II give her a Magic Bow and Hit +20 (or uncanny blow) and she can make some kills when not busy. Sylvain/Felix/Leonie are all good but they got stat screwed in my runs. Valkyrie Lysithea is excellent; should've had her dual that class alongside Gremory [depending on map] in my 1st run. Hapi is great but not for Warping; takes her too long to get. I agree Flayn is underrated. Ingrid took a lot more investment in-house than out to be great. If you get Gilbert to pass Wyvern Rider for the speed bump he becomes a lot better. I agree Balthus is not a good War Cleric except for getting Brawl avoid, but that early game personal for the +6 def just nullifies the danger of a lot of enemy units, and easy to proc because of poison strike enemy bows. He made the Tower so much easier.
I get why you value mobility and canto but in a game where a unit can wield any weapon they want and have range having canto is not really a valuable option as you might think. Also while generally I agree comparing mages by their spell list and I know you didn't account for playing something in a vacuum... I do think you are doing a major disservice to some characters by not considering the utility they bring with items such as levin weapons. They are generally faster and are better than some options. Great upgrades the value of (chin) Lorenz and Annette knowing you can Wyvern rider around with fiendish blow from range.
Interesting list Perso I don't really care about flyers I understand why ppl love them to death but I think it slightly overrated because flyers lose 1 thing to get to there: (Battalion are shity or rare, lose punching, lose magic ability, lose range. So overall sure a flyers is nice and all but... it not that great in my opinion It got big flaw too they wryven are kinda stupid with how much STR they get for free like WTF? why that classe got 99999999 STR for nothing and good SPD? like SPD? why? it a freaking flyer it can't even do 2 atk before needing to turn back and do a 180 :D) Any way I understand it tho Mobility is great... But like Range is also great... Physic, Warp, Rescue, Meteore, Toron, Hunter's volley longbow, are quite useful too. I personally think any way. (sure you can cheese with flyers but)... like Silence on Marianne is Godlike on some map. EDIT: Also Hubert being 2 tier bellow the Darkspike girl is a bit much since he get better HP, DEF, RES, and also got better spells overall with a 3 range spell like they are really similar but Hubert shouldn't be like 2 freaking tier bellow he trade like 5 damage for being not a unite that die in 1 hit to everything :)
@@IcedCoffeeGaming To be fair I play not optimally so take that as you want (I play with an army that got multiple role and I quite like my healer for exemple as they are bassicly 20 range dancer for what it worth in my opinion. Godlike Without them the rusher would need a elexir or something on them and would also need to lose a player phase turn to heal. :D)
Alois + Shamir + Killer bow + Hunter's volley is queen of crits... *but probably unplayable on Madening I would guess every unite in mad got like 10000000 luck for no reason.
@@pepeelghetto1231 Glade it still work on Madening it a really fun combo that skill + luck + Rally STR + Luck = great damage + high crit rate and SPD is pointless on Hunters volley so it work great. If your crazy you can give her a rally dex too but that hard to find onlike Alois's STR + Luck buff for free.
She is one of the worst healers in the game, doesn't have physic or restore. Also doesn't have fortify which is nice to have but Physic is something I want on my healers at minimum. Heal (D) Nosferatu (D+) Ward (C) Silence (B) Warp (A) Her only healing spell is heal. Byleth at least also gets recover. Ward is so/so, silence is ok, warp is great but there's a lot missing here. She also has a weakness in reason, making her learning offensive spells take longer. She is kind of in a no mans land of bad healer and bad reason mage. Lysithea, Lindhart, and Hapi also get warp but are much stronger units.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming While I'm not going to argue with your other reasons on why Manuela's a bad unit I will say I disagree with your rationale on why you'd prefer Physic over Silence. Silence is nothing more than a offensive Physic in most cases. Being able to take out a unit's entire turn many times gives you so much more than the damage you would have taken by luring them and healing after especially on low res units. It gives you the flexibility to move in closer or take risks on some maps setting up your next turn soo much better. On a game mode where its kill on player phase I would rather take the proactive silence vs. reactive physic any day. Additionally soo many units do good healing. You don't need more than one...maybe 2 that can heal. Sure the mores the better but after a point doing damage and preventing damage are far more valuable than being able to heal more. This is what makes units with Silence great. Now the only problem with silence is its usually in more limited uses like warp. But considering it both stops their attack and prevents damage (thus acting like a heal) it definitely is worth the limitation.
@jameshopkinsipg physic heals physical and magical damage where silence only prevents magical damage on mages who don't have unsealable magic. Every Mage has 4 or 5 move and 2-3range, and can be outraged by most Canto units/ Bow users. The ones without unsealable magic can be orkoed by pretty much any brave combat art. This makes the mages that silence works against some of the least threatening enemies on any map simply because they are easiest to kill. Silence only really shines vs bolting/meteor enemies. In any other scenario, killing the Mage and using physic for the damage taken by the non orko unit is better. In the runs I've used Manuela, she usually doesn't do anything but chip damage for 4 maps then comes in clutch with a crucial silence vs a siege Mage like the paralogue in the throne room.
@@jameshopkinsipg Silence isn't really necessary in this game. Even in Maddening, mages tend to be pretty easy to take out. Because of her low magic and growths Manuela's warp range is ridiculously short. If you're using her for that, you're basically wasting a unit slot for a short-range movement option you can only use once or twice a map in a game with a ton of movement options. It's not even easy to grind her XP to increase her range. With three other warp units with longer range and who are still viable units after using their warp, Manuela is a one-trick pony in a game with plenty of better ponies performing the same trick.
