Top 30 Fire Emblem Characters of ALL TIME Countdown

[Mekkah]

8. Dancers, from pretty much every game

Dancers are so amazing but also so plentiful that they just had to be merged for this to be tolerable. For the record, when I say "dancers" I mean the following:

Feena (FE3 B2)

Sylvia, Leen, Laylea (FE4)

Lara (FE5)

Lalum, Elphin (FE6)

Ninian, Nils (FE7)

Tethys (FE8)

Reyson (FE9)

Rafiel, Leanne, Reyson (FE10)

Feena (FE12)

There's a ton of them, but thankfully they are very similar. One interesting thing about them is that they never seem to have amazing availability: they tend to join around halfway through the game, give or take a few. But for the half they are around, they are very often your MVPs, even though at first sight they don't have a direct impact on your efficiency.

But that's because their approach to helping you is very subtle. Most of them have been classified before as "a copy of your best unit every turn", which isn't descriptive enough but it's getting there. It is one of the most simple and wonderful things they can do though: making your best unit move again, kill another enemy. This is most useful against the toughest of bosses, who usually can't threaten your dancer directly. Even if you have to dance in their attacking range, a simple rescue/drop from another two mook units can bring them to safety while still allowing them to dance again next turn if needed.

But they can do so much more than this. They extend a unit's movement towards the chapter's goal, or a secondary objective. They allow fliers and horsies to both rescue and drop in one turn. They allow a unit to attack something from a rather dangerous position, only to be able to retreat from there without requiring Canto (or like double the movement they have). Using dancers to their full potential often requires you to base your strategy around them, rather than just having them tag along. If you don't do that, they'll have some useful targets for the first few turns, but inevitably fall behind, and before long they'll hardly be of use at all. It's worth letting a few units fall behind a little just to facilitate the dancer to move up in line.

Most dancers are very simple. They have about as much movement as your foot units, about as much durability as wet cardboard, and they allow a single other unit to move again. But some of them have additional quirks that deserve a highlight.

FE4's dancers are possibly the most amazing of them all, revitalizing the four units around them instead of just one. Setting up diamonds for them is easy for the first few turns, but after that they're going to need the help of the Rescue staff (Gen 2 mostly) and/or Leg + Knight Ring to keep up. If you CAN lend your short-skirted dancer these resources, you can speed up your respective lord by 300% or even 400%, but that requires quite a bit of trickery. If not, then you can also use them to let your foot units keep up a little better with mounts. The quadruple refresh works very well with this game's ridiculous incarnation of Canto. When fighting a group of units with a group of your own, you can set up the diamond so easily, and as a result take out four extra enemies every turn.

FE5's Lara is unique before she turns into a dancer, as she's actually just a regular thief (with very, very crummy stats) before then. She retains the ability to lockpick and steal after "promoting" (and losing stats, lol) which is nice, but generally she's better off dancing. Lara faces the problem of very, very low HP in combination with the fatigue system, but hopefully you can work around that by using her dances sparingly, or using S Drinks.

Also, all dancers so far can fight with low-level swords, and my God they suck at it. Don't do that.

FE7's Ninils have an additional use: rings. The use of these is very occasional, but when can put them to use, it's often a very good use. Nini's Grace is probably the most useful one, giving its target +10 Def/Res for the turn. This allows even Lucius to take on a number of enemies on enemy phase (not too big of a number, but still), and makes semi-durable units complete tanks. The others aren't too great, though Fila's Might allows Athos to OHKO the Dragon with a Luna critical.

The herons are obviously the biggest outliers. FE9 Reyson has a modest 5 movement, but he has wings, and therefore he can bypass terrain. Because of this, he makes a pretty good candidate for the Knight Ring and/or Boots. If you manage to get him to transform (laguz stone being pretty much the only way to do it in a reasonable time frame

), he not only gets +3 move, but he can also refresh four people at once!

FE10 Herons are even more ridiculous. Rafiel is pretty much a modern version of the FE4 dancers, always able to refresh four people but unable to keep up with anything whatsoever. If you transform him, he loses his ability to move up ledges. Useful, huh? Leanne can always refresh two units on opposite sides of her, but she flies and can move after refreshing. Reyson is nearly the same as his FE9 counterpart, except now he always moves after refreshing and has a ton more movement. FE10 also has much better support for filling laguz gauges.

Dancers are only as good as the moves you make. Not only do their refreshing abilities take some thinking to use, but they're also very frail and generally unable to counter effectively. One wrong move can cause a chapter reset. Great additions to any team. A little broken, but very rewarding to good players!

[Rewjeo]

You never discussed Feena, in either FE3 or FE12. Was that intentional?

[eclipse]

I think Feena's "uniqueness" is the Rapier in FE3 and Lady Sword in FE12. Tethys doesn't get a mention, either.

[Icon of Sin]

I think Feena's "uniqueness" is the Rapier in FE3 and Lady Sword in FE12. Tethys doesn't get a mention, either.

The Lady Sword can be used by all sword using females, not just Feena. In fact, it was better in FE3 because it was effective vs Thieves, Pirates, Bandits and Barbarians back then.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Dio

[eclipse]

Hence why "unique" was in quotes.

[deranger]

By virtue of their nature, shouldn't dancers tie for 1st?

[Renall]

Dancers are not that good. And even in the games where they are essential cogs in the LTC machine, other characters do more critical work, or are more durable, or are faster. They're important units, but flawed and often weak (Ninils and Tethys and the herons don't attack at all). That they still get top ten shows how good moving again actually is. I predict the same for Warp or Rescue users liable to appear down the list...

[dondon151]

There are some things that are actually impossible to do without dancers, so they are pretty damn good.

[Parrhesia]

At least some of the Jagens are going to be thrown together in the single entry, if not all. There simply aren't the spaces for it to be otherwise. I'll be interested to see the rest of the non-Sigurd entries. ...And even interested in those entries. I dunno, I'm enjoying this series.

[Bluedoom]

Actually, I think all Jeigans would be in one entry since they're clutch in their first few chapters in every game. Now Seth and Titania are exceptions since they can almost solo the game. And maybe Sothe, if you consider him a Jeigan/Oifey. Oh yeah, forgot about Marcus.

And yes, I was referring to hard modes.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Marth

[Mekkah]

You never discussed Feena, in either FE3 or FE12. Was that intentional?

Feena and Tethys are bland normal-movement refresh-one-unit dancers. I didn't feel they needed elaboration.

[Dark Sage]

At least some of the Jagens are going to be thrown together in the single entry, if not all.

Arran, Jeigan, Sothe and Oifaye above the dancers? GTFO. They have actual flaws and are kind of bad mid to lategame (Oifaye is merely average by that time and certainly not better than Celice/Dancers).

7 slots left. My prediction will be:

1. Safy

2. Sigurd

3. Seth

4. Haar

5. FE9 Titania

6. FE7 Marcus

7. Levin!Arthur

Of course it is likely Haar might top Seth, but yeah. There's not enough units better than Dancers to justify dumping the best Jeigans into one slot.

[Bluedoom]

I do think the Tellius Herons should be say, a .5 rank above the other refresher units. They do a lot of cool stuff- Can refresh 4 at once, can give a bit of extra healing, two have better movt which becomes mounted movement with Celerity, can move again, and they can do stuff like bliss and others at higher levels. Just something worth mentioning here.

@Gaf: A dancer refreshes. Those units do the actual combat. A dancer would be useless if you didn't have any combat units. Granted dancers are pretty useful on their own, try playing through the hard modes of FE 10, 11 and 12 without using the Jeigans and tell me how easy it is to get through it. Plus your dancers have availability issues as is.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Marth

[Mekkah]

You can pretend they are .5 point higher if that makes you sleep at night. :) And by they I mean Reyson. The others have such poor availability.

[dondon151]

I do think the Tellius Herons should be say, a .5 rank above the other refresher units. They do a lot of cool stuff- Can refresh 4 at once, can give a bit of extra healing, two have better movt which becomes mounted movement with Celerity, can move again, and they can do stuff like bliss and others at higher levels. Just something worth mentioning here.

Disagree on this one. FE10 map objectives aren't as demanding on dancers as other FE games like FE5 and FE6.

[Mekkah]

7. Arthur, from FE4

This might just be the unit I have been most passionate about through all my millions of words playing and debating Fire Emblem. There is probably no mounted unit as powerful as Arthur (raw stats wise). I'd also say the only units that have gotten shafted more by, well, people who don't know how to break a game properly, are those early Paladins that HOG ALL UR EXP AND ARE EVIL!

Arthur, like a lot of the kids, is kind of like one of those freshly hatched Pokemon from the Day Care. You know, they inherit all the strong moves and genes, but their stats have yet to develop. It's kind of adorable in a way. Arthur is kind of different. What kind of L1 Pokemon has stats equivalent to a L50 Pokemon? Well, if Arthur was a Pokemon, that would be what he has. Of course, it would require you to breed a male Levin with a female Tiltyu.

The result is that Arthur joins with 40 base Atk, 45 with Magic Ring, enough to one-shot several things already. And then there's those Critical and Continue rates, and the possibility of Pursuit Ring. For a more detailed analysis of what exactly Arthur can do, clicky. I'll be a little more brief here than usual since man, I've had to defend Arthur so often I grew tired of it.

Summary: Arthur starts off kind of mediocre, actually, because 5 mov is so bad. But he has great opportunities to gain EXP fast enough to where it doesn't impact his insane potential much at all, and in no time, you have pretty much the ultimate unit: mounted, 1-2 range, OHKOing and/or ORKOing stuff left and right, even those ridiculous bosses that give almost your entire army trouble. It is kind of expensive to have Arthur do everything, but then again, if he does everything then he might as well get the right resources to do so (eg the Bargain Ring that Levin can pick up so easily). Proper use of inheritance, arena, and Patty should fuel your greed for Holsety KOs enough to the point where it starts gaining extra crit chances due to having 50+ kills.

Arthur is so uber that enemies sometimes refuse to attack him due to them having 0% hit, but thankfully if you want him to slaughter those enemies anyway you can place him on a road tile. It's kind of like putting on one of those training capes in DBZ. Or like Goku throwing the enemy a senzu bean. It's just too unfair otherwise.

For the silly few of you that still think Sety is better: by the time Sety arrives, Arthur is promoted and Sety has nothing on him. ;/

Oh yeah, you can pair Tiltyu with other people too, but why would you? (for the sake of efficiency, that is)

Edited December 29, 2011 by Mekkah

[bottlegnomes]

I was wondering when you were going to get to him, seeing as you've referred to him in about half of your posts

On a completely off topic note, has anyone ever actually seen a lv 1 pokemon?

[Mekkah]

Mons hatch from L1 in Gen 5.

[Narga_Rocks]

I hate Arthur. He's like Haar to Sety's Ike(T). Sety is just so invincible and such a killing machine that it makes me sad that a guy with worse stats (aside from move) and worse skills manages to be significantly better.

[zorbees]

Gen 4 as well Mekkah

[Mekkah]

Gen 4 is terrible.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

With all the hate this particular Arthur gets for having 5 MOV at the start and all the resources being poured down Celice's throat for C6, I wasn't expecting him to be in the top 10.

Try not to go off-topic discussing solely pokemon in a FE thread.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Sirius

[bottlegnomes]

^Considering the guy making the rankings did write a "dissertation" on him, is it really that surprising?

Mons hatch from L1 in Gen 5.

Answers that question. Makes more sense than them hatching at level 5.

[riariadne]

I hate Arthur. He's like Haar to Sety's Ike(T). Sety is just so invincible and such a killing machine that it makes me sad that a guy with worse stats (aside from move) and worse skills manages to be significantly better.

Arthur also has significantly more availability than Sety.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

^Considering the guy making the rankings did write a "dissertation" on him, is it really that surprising?

I don't remember this "dissertation" thing and considering how Arthur has an unpleasant start efficiency-wise while folks like Othin and Felgus are good from the get-go and didn't end up in the top 10, yes I do find it surprising.