Ranking the Emblems! 

I just wanted to say thank you for this incredible comment. I found it very insightful.

I have never even considered using Leif on Warrior. Thanks for an idea for my next run!

From personal testing I was pretty sure he prioritizes Ddg over every other combat stat instead of adding them all together, but considering I was testing that by using the Celica engrave, adding a cool 50 to the sum of stats, I'm not surprised I came away with that misconception lol (fwiw, he was perfectly consistent about picking Ddg > Crit > Weapon Mt > Hit > Avo in my testing, but that might just have been coincidence bc I used the same engraves to test the stats against each other) Does he factor in Spd at all? Bc that's also one of the six displayed combat stats and it'd be kinda weird if that was the exception. Granted, with his Bld boost it probably doesn't come up as often bc not a lot of your weapons will weigh you down.

I hope they patch Leif to consider skills like vantage and will prioritize what kills rather than WTA if the game sees that it won't leave your unit broken or something. Tbh his concept is very good but it's so fucking complex in hindsight and honestly they should've gone with a completely different gimmick.

Sommie is also the best boi. So he deserves S tier by default.

I force feed Sommie nuts every day. Sommie doesn't like them, but once his affection is maxed, petting Sommie refills him enough to counteract forcing my nuts into him anyways. I force feed Sommie nuts every day until he likes it.

Marth and Brave weapons is such a fun combination. If you break it is basically a reusable Loadstar Rush. Good emblem feel imo

Also if your mages can double wouldn’t divine speed shred the enemy? I know lodestar rush is calculated with magic for mystics, haven’t used him on any though yet but planning a mage heavy run and was looking for what non-magic based emblems would be good to try out on magic users

@@Liam-du1fn Celine can use a blade to destroy someone with loadstar rush yea

Mercurius Recover Sacrifice on an Armor Refuse to elaborate, then leave

​@@aprinnyonbreak1290 don't forget Parthia

@@alejandro_rodriguez_99 that's after chapter 10. Parthia is sigma SP grindset at home

Unless they Bouche it.

Awakening all over again

You can also use Soren who is even more broken

@nacitalatincirli793 but that requires paying for dlc, which when you are on a budget, you cannot afford to do that often.

It’s actually hilarious how activating the level 10 bond convo with him makes him so much worse

Insanely fun build. Personally I find it difficult to get into

@@jerrytealeaf the smash weapon is a cool idea I didn't think about that but it could also be an issue since It will easily beat out even forged Killer Axes. I would have to see if Killer Axe+5 can beat out an iron greataxe

I thought panette with the Lyn ring was a good idea to patch in her speed but looking at her stats I suppose she actually makes decent? use of leif's build increase for axes at least. And I guess if you're going for a crit build you're a little less interested in doubling anyway. I'll try it!

Best use I've found for Leif is to put him on Celine. In Maddening, Celine benefits a lot from adaptable helping her to take hits, as well as Leif's build to enable her to use heavier tomes. Ignis also gets a proc chance on all four of the attacks.

Actually a Sniper is also good because the Bond Attack actually has a small chance to generate 1000 gold if used by a Covert unit

Build is just worse than speed in every aspect

@@quijassajiuq900 Yeah, they did Leif kinda dirty

@@quijassajiuq900 Some units really want it though. Chloe for example can make great use of build.

@@DatakTarr But giving Chloe speed is just as good, and often better. Giving her +3 speed from Lyn offers the same benefits of +3 build from Leif for the same cost. Except now Chloe can wield a weapon that doesn't weigh her down and still have an additional +3 speed advantage that stacking build on her wouldn't give.

In my experience Leif so far is good with physical units that only use 1 weapon (in my case: Kagetsu), because he gives them the option to never be Broken.

Definitely true, a no dlc run is gonna cherish Celica, whereas she might not even be deployed in a DLC run

Yeah, it's also a point in favor of certain units or unit types, that they might be able to make really good use of otherwise mediocre emblems. You can throw Ike or Lyn on basically anyone and have a good time, but a unit that can make really good use Lucina, or Lief, or something can often be better for a team than your otherwise fourth best guy using leftover Emblem rings

Yes, same in my first playthrough this allowed me to rush everyone and seadall can always catch up

Lucina needs to be passed around like a bong so that everyone gets Dual Assist+; chain attacks are broken as fuck, and if *everyone* can do them from a large range, it gets pretty nutty pretty fast. Of course, in a run-through like yours where characters are restricted to only one ring, only a handful of units get Dual Assist, so her effects just aren't as obvious.

Lucina is very good on maddening. You get 3-4 turns where 3-4 units are sudo invincible. She also turns any non backup unit into a back up unit. This means that cavs, mages, and archers with their large range can dual assist+. Thieves can also dual assist and they apply one layer of poison each time

@@07_shintaro Dual Assist only works for Backup units. If OP isn't running a lot of backup, it is pointless to pass it around.

Roy is good on fast, anemic units like Lapis, where his offense can really ramp them up into butchers. Lucina is awkward, but rewarding. I find she's fantastic on a Wolf Knight, since chain attacks apply poison, which is great for bosses, and cavalry are great units to have a 100% bond shield chance.

Why would they stack? They boost two different things. If your asking if they will both activate, then yes they both will independently activate.

The reason that most don't give sigurd the credit for canter is because it's cheap. It's more economical to inherit canter for 1000 and sync a skill like speedtaker than to inherit speedtaker for 2000 and sync canter

​@@gameboyn64 I think I was a bit unclear : my point was that some people are willing to ignore synced skills on emblems when judging them, forgetting the fact that Sigurd allows you to not spend 1000 SP for canter, Lyn 2000 for speedtaker, Ike 2000 for wrath... I think those free skills should be taken into account when tiering emblems.

@@Ximnart2 i don't think people are forgetting sync skills. Sigurd giving canter isn't that big a deal because its cheap so he isn't saving a whole lot of sp. Sigurd provides canter, momentum, and headlong rush worth 2200sp, maybe 4200 but momentum+ and canter+ don't add a lot. An emblem like lyn is giving alacrity and speedtaker worth 3-5000sp. Erika gives lunar brace and gentility worth 5-8000 sp. You are almost always better off just using a more capable emblem and inheriting canter than the other way around.

I don't know if mercurius alone puts Marth in A. It does take a fair amount of bond to get it making it relatively inflexible to train more than one unit and it only doubles the exp for a handful of kills as your likely only going to be killing 3-4 enemies at most with it but more likely 2 per map.

Leif tends to favor reducing damage taken than doing the most damage. The general probably had a lance which means arms shield reduces the most damage with the killer axe.

At least micaiah utterly breaks the game for the time she is around for.

The only reason I put micaiah under lyn, sigurd, and byleth respectively is her availability. Corrin is the last of the 5 that is very good, especially for keeping the hounds from ganging up on you or eliminating stupid terrain gimicks. Also putting corrin on a covert unit with terrential roar is so freaking good. In addition to the fog machine, these tools make her potentially the best emblem in the game.... buuut you don't get her until chapter 15, and even then it's on seadall which... no.

Why eirika in S tier? I find corrin's terrain utility amazing on different unit types, especially since you don't need to waste your engage meter to use it. Eirika is great, and twinstrike is phenomenal, but not enough to be in S tier. Lunar and solar brace are too hard to inherit on everyone.

@@leargamma4912 Inheritance is not a part of this list. This list focuses solely on what the ring itself brings to the table. Otherwise i would have sigurd as the 3rd or 4th best ring in the game just for canter. From ch 17 onward just about every story enemy you fight is corrupted. The sieglinde is one of three corrupted effective weapons in the entire game essentially having 36 mt 90 hit and 9 wt against every non boss enemy from ch 17 onward. The others are seraphim with a measly 6 mt (eff 18) and oligoludia rocking 8 mt (eff 24). Erika's lunar brace is incredibly effective late game maddening where enemy stats start to ballon. On an enemy with 20 def, which is low for late game standards, you are looking at 6 extra fixed damage per hit which is the same as fe3h death blow. Something else she gives is gentility. Gentility basically gives you +5 def and +5 res but has the benefit of being swappable for bravery which essentially grants +5 str and +5 mag. This means on enemy phase you can choose to limit damage taken or increase damage delt as you see fit. When engaged, Erika grants both at the same time essentially giving you +5 str, +5 mag, +5 def, and +5 res. Where things get crazy is the rings affect on other allied units. For every unit that inherits gentility, you can switch to bravery whenever Erika switches. On top of that, when Erika engages, every unit that inherited gentility will also receive the omni boost. This means that every unit that inherited gentility will do 5 extra damage and take 5 less damage for the next 4 turns. Here is the problem with corrin. Corrin's only has two good terrains, fog and fire. This means that only divine dragon, sniper, thief, high priest and sage can use it which makes it more difficult to fit on a team. Snipers typically want something else as they aren't great at using fog. For thieves, fog is really only ridiculously good on Yunaka. Zelkov can easily reach sub zero hit rates which make enemies not attack him and magic is still a threat. Corrin in general also still doesn't fix the thief's main problem which is damage output. Mages can use fire but fire is only really good at crowd control, in tight spaces, against non flying enemies. It also requires your mage to be in the front lines or the rear guard and not do what they do best which is use staffs and kill bulky enemies while safe from harm. Corrin's engage skill, dreadful aura, is pretty good against bosses but less so against generics. Quality time is just ok but not really impactful. Draconic hex is a shell of its former self only working on player phase. This means that you cant both dragon vein and hex. Hex is also limited by the fact that it only actually does anything if you don't kill your opponent and you subsequently would not have been able to kill your opponent with your next unit had it not been for the debuff. This basically limits its main use to boss killing. Pair up is basically only useful for thieves. Snipers and mages don't want to be attacked by melee foot units in the first place and shouldn't be in a position to be tanking hits. Corrin's engage weapons are all bad. No magic weapons for mages. The dual katana and the wakizashi are basically useless. The yato is basically just a forged silver sword with a marth engraving. I don't feel that corrin is a bad emblem. I have it at the top of A tier. It's just too inflexible and situational to compete with the S tier emblems. When it works, it's fantastic. When doesn't, it's incredibly underwhelming. Meanwhile the erika ring can realistically work on anyone and turn them into an offensive presence while also increasing their survivability.

@gameboyn64 wow. That's quite a lot. Thanks for the explanation. Maybe I'm just bad at sp management because getting gentility and bravery on multiple units seems impossible without grinding. Eirika being S tier is far more plausable when you put it like that. I never really thought about effective weapons on corrupted enemies since I mostly used magic and high damage units in my first playthrough. On hard. You make very good points, and I'll swap corrin and eirika in my rankings of s tiers

@@leargamma4912 gentility+ can be a bit tricky for some characters to get. I got it on alear and lapis while yunaka could only get the base gentility. The build is 4000 sp for gentility+ and canter which requires a unit like alear to lv up 37 times with an emblem ring. The base gentility build runs at 3000 sp which is the same as the canter dual assist+ build many backups go for. However with the wishing well update, it should be much easier to do now. 500 sp books are relatively common and 1000 sp books are also possible.

Great Knight Louis, or any other high defence unit. Use pair-up and they will be difficult to take down (avoid mages if Louis). I've been doing this to great effect on maddening. My Louis takes little damage from most physical things. Mind you, a mage will either 3HKO or 1RKO so you gotta be careful around any magic damage. I also like sending him out to do override on a nice line far away, and then rescue to safety. 10+ movement range on a tank is insane

When sigurd returns all he provides really is gallop and mov+1. Canter is really good but it's easy to inherit. His weapons are all meh, momentum and override are super situational, and dex def bld aren't exactly the best stats to be buffing. I find he is best on Seadall who could use an emergency move buff from time to time but is hard to justify over most emblem's.

Rise Above does go over Level Cap. When I played a paralogue I put Roy on my Level 17 Diamant. While Engaged he was Level 22, so above Level cap and he still level up normally to Level 18(23)

It does. It also lets characters stats go over their caps.

I think you have completely underestimated the marth and erika ring. The Marth ring if it had the availability of sigurd would be a clear s tier ring due to the pure offense it provides. On top of being the only ring to give both str and spd, lodestar rush is the most powerful engage attack in the game, break defense grants an additional 50% damage for initiating with weapon triangle advantage, and divine speed when engaged grants an additional 50% damage. The erika ring is by far one of the best combat rings in the game providing abilities that cut defenses, restore hp, raw boost to both attacking stats or both defensive stats or everything when engaged while also giving that omni boost to anyone who has inherited gentility, and she is the only ring other than celica to have a corrupted effective weapon giving you a 36mt 90hit 9wt weapon against basically every enemy in the main story.

@@gameboyn64 the marth ring. I mightve underrated. But my argument against it is that its not available for long(for the harder parts-the midgame) and it doesnt have a lot of utility aside from mercurius. In terms of combat performance id rather use the other emblems. For eirika. Lunar brace is broken. And shes very good on hybrid attackers but the chrobin emblem makes her less likely to be equipped.

@@koyoyoyo1170 your tier list says it's based on whether or not an emblem should be used not or not. By your tier list, availability isn't a consideration. It's pretty rough to rate erika lower because dlc exists. Dlc is completely broken by nature. It even breaks the structure of the game giving you access to a power that's clearly not supposed to be available to you.

@@gameboyn64 wasnt worded properly. I meant marth isnt available in the fights that he is most needed imo - namely the midgame coz late game when you have all the emblems there are better options. Eirika fair but i play with dlc so i grade acc to assuming i have dlc in a playthrough. Idk how the game wouldve played without dlc so i have no opinion on it.

Why? What happened to him?

I put Leif on Kagetsu and it worked just fine

@@OriginalRaisins He switched to light brand to counter weapon triangle. As a general. With 0 magic.

​@@peppy619 leif is only truly functional on sword units. That's why Kagetsu works.

@@gameboyn64 true, he works with units that only use 1 weapon

It also cares about the overall stats of the weapons, but treats every point of stat equally, so 5 points of Hit is equal to 5 points of mt as far as Lief is concerned. This is largely why the Light Brand is such a pernicious issue. It doesn't look at how well the weapon is going to do in an absolute sense, it just sees all the hit and crit on it, and says "best weapon XD" Ideally, you want to grab something with all around better numbers than it if you really, really want to avoid the Curse of the 0 Dmg Light Brand. Or throw him on a mage or Sniper.

Leif does not care about damage taken, just weapon triangle. If you have both the Flashing Fist Art and Shielding Art, and you can't counter, Leif will give you FFA and have you take 5 extra damage bc Leif says bigger number more gooder

Sigurd's gallop doesn't give a type bonus to flyers, only to horses and dragons You can really use it on anyone to save on the sp for canter because that is probably the best skill in the game

use him with a Warrior with a Killer Axe, Killer Bow, and a Longbow he can vantage sweep easily with this setup. only catch is you can't unlock the Master Lance and you have to work with the T1 Vantage threshold(25% hp)

@@migu6528 yeah... That sounds like it'd work out well. Just sucks you lose the better vantage versions though... I wish leif would prioritize hit and his own survivability 😔

@@vishuprathikanti9352 you can work around that by giving your unit Hold Out from Roy It'll be a endgame-ish skill pickup but thats around the time you'll want it since it'll be harder to meet the vantage threshold then

The thing about lucina is that you get an extra free backup and bonded shield. Leif really could use some extra utility, quadruple hit is underpowered and otherwise it's just defensive buffs to a unit.

@@SPZ-gv2on the bonded shield is nice I just tend to forget about it because I usually want to be offensive when I have units engaged. The backup attacks are okay but sometimes the extra damage is irrelevant and the random free backup attacks are nice but hard to plan around. Leif could use a little something more, maybe if he let units not be broken or something

@@BlueLuck17 Break immunity would be perfect actually, I like that. It would make sense with camilla making a unit a pseudo flier, lucina making a unit a psuedo backup, etc. The only class that doesn't have a really accurate emblem counterpart is armor (I don't count hector for that since break immune is only during storms eye and ike doesn't give break immune.)

Maybe it's a reference to roy being fire and ike being earth. It also fits the pre ch 11 emblems being the japan emblems and the post ch 11 emblems being the world released emblems

​​@@gameboyn64 micaiah is really hurting that statment there

@@strikingshadow0219 forgot about micaiah. The first statement still stands though

That's the nature of dlc and normal mode. Normal mode is easy enough to not utilize most of the mechanics in the game and still win. The dlc in engage is truly pay to break the game and have fun doing it.

It's better than pay for nothing which was what 3 houses was.

Imagine putting it into ANY GAME

Why is ike all the way down there? He's not broken but all the way at the bottom? Worse than roy?

@@leargamma4912 roy has hold out, level up boost, and flames

Even if his weapons aren’t very strong, inherent access to canter alone makes equipping him extremely useful as it frees up your skill slots for others like speedtaker or wrath. Also the huge movement gains are especially useful considering the max amount of move for a class is 6 in this game, not to mention its nice synergy with momentum. He also provides some decent stat buffs and override with ridersbane is great for taking on dodgy wolf knights.

Override is middling but doesn't suck, the weapons are barely relevant, canter is broken, and +5 move is broken. Sigurd is top.

Sigurd is outclassed by basically any other emblem for the emblem slot on any combat unit, any of his perks besides the mov boost are insanely easy to replicate with inheritance As such his best use is being slapped on seadall

Even if you disregard all his combat potential, which admittedly isn't great, sigurd still has great availability, being the first ring returned after chapter 10, and movement is simply the best stat in nearly every fire emblem game. Early-mid game when most of your units aren't promoted and locked to 4 movement, the move bonus is huge and allows a unit who might've had to stay towards the back get to combat much easier. And again, every unit wants canter, so being able to free up a skill slot by equipping sigurd can't be understated.

@@50mLsalt I disagree with every unit wanting canter. It can definitely be a strong filler option but there's plenty of units who want other skills like spd+, momentum, power skills, etc more Furthermore, Sigurd occupies an even more valuable slot, the emblem ring slot. My Sigurd user could have Roy for insane stats and binding blade, eirika for massive damage output, Lyn for infinite speed, mulagir and astra storm, byleth for goddess dance, etc etc and that's before you even factor in dlc emblems Even if you don't always have enough other emblems to compete, the bonuses from Sigurd besides the engage movement boost are small enough to where most units don't really care either way

No. He is pronouncing it fine. He's german give him some slack

@@leargamma4912 mekkah is niet Duits lmao

@@just-mees ok, I stand corrected. Sorry

@@leargamma4912 also in Dutch Louis is a pretty common name, and the s is silent over here..