Fire Emblem Fates Tier List

[Extrasolar]

Okay, I'm going to give my two cents. Spoilering for length. (Not a cumulative list at all, just a few right off the top of my head.)

Birthright
 

Spoiler

S+ Tier
Ryoma: He starts off strong, and doesn't slow down. Can attack from both one and two range, and is the only unit capable of wielding the Raijinto, itself an immensely powerful weapon. Gets Astra, and with his high skill will be activating it a fair amount of the time. His naturally high Avoid means that even though he has low defense, He can reliably dodgetank most enemies that attack him. Struggles a bit at endgame versus high-defense enemies with silver lances. Only caveat: His recruitment is somewhat late in the game.

S Tier
Takumi: The best archer on the Birthright path, if not the entire game, based on stats alone. Comes with the Fujin Yumi, a great weapon which provides stat bonuses and terrain bonuses. He's got good availability, especially for a unit of his power. He's slightly fragile, but he's got good Avoid to make up for it, and that high skill means that he'll be critically-hitting pretty often.

A Tier
Sakura: An early healer, proving herself invaluable to the team. While she can be hard to raise barring scratch damage heals due to her lack of an attack in her first tier, she proves herself a competent attacking unit once she's able to wield a bow.

Hinoka: A surprisingly tanky flier. Her tendency to get strength-screwed harms her the most and keeps her out of the top tiers. She'll always be able to take a hit and deal some, if not great, damage to the enemy. Decent Avoid means that she has even more staying alive power. An alright frontliner.

Hayato: Low-levelled when joining and needs to be handled carefully, but his personal mitigates this somewhat. A better magic user with better potential than the other diviner on the path, Orochi. A pretty high magic growth and decently high speed growth, but very frail. By the time he gets some levels on him, he'll be able to take a hit or two. Good strength growth means that he's a viable promote into Basara, and even with an E rank naginata he'll be dealing good to respectable damage, and his high skill means he tends to crit often, though his magic power suffers somewhat in this path.

B Tier
Subaki: One of the few tanks on the Birthright path, he proves his worth as a frontliner. Also one of the few flying units that can eat a bow shot and live with a respectable amount of HP. He has a fairly high Avoid rate even for a unit with middling speed due to his personal, helping him out with tanking even more. Has a decent-ish strength growth, meaning that he's ideal for softening up enemies for other units to finish off. His speed is relatively low, but high enough so that he isn't doubled most of the time.

Hinata: Another Birthright tank. He's also good for the front lines, but not quite as much as Subaki. His decent strength growth means that he'll be dealing good damage, and his high skill means he'll be critically-hitting fairly often. His avoid is decently high as well.

C/C- Tier
Hana: More prone to RNG screwage than any unit I've ever seen, even to the likes of Arthur.  She starts out with weak bases and is a hassle to train up, as she dies to a stiff breeze, and tends to get slapped by 30 and 40% hit chances far more often than she should due to how Fates RNG works. She has absolutely paper defenses, relatively low strength, but high speed. She'll be doubling everything, but her low strength means she often fails to deal meaningful damage. Even her critical hits often fail to kill higher defense enemies. Pass.

Orochi: The worse of the two diviners. She deals less damage than Hayato, and lacks his good personal and speed. She tends to turn out mediocre and forgettable if raised.

Rinkah: She starts off painfully mediocre, with stats spread oddly across the board. She never much carves out a niche for herself, and time spent raising her is time spent raising units that will give you better results. Her personal is alright, but it's not enough to save her.

Conquest
 

Spoiler

S Tier
Effie: Effie is an absolute monster. Her amazing strength growth is enough to one shot the enemy a lot of the time, and her good defense means she takes little if any damage on the return. She's got low speed, but doesn't need to dodge anything and doesn't care about being doubled due to her high defense. Her low resistance could be a problem, but she's liable to one-shot a ninja with a Flame Shuriken or a mage as long as you get the drop on them first.

A Tier
Keaton: Like Effie, he's got an amazing strength growth that decimates the enemy, as well as great natural HP and defense. His decent skill means that he tends to crit fairly often, and once he's a Wolfssegner, Better Odds ensures that you won't have to waste staff uses on him unless it's an emergency. His low resistance does make him somewhat susceptible to mages, and he can be worn down by poison-striking ninja, but play your cards right, and Keaton will wreck hard.

Ophelia: Give her a mother that buffs her great critical rate like Selena, and Ophelia will be tearing through enemies with her personal tome in no time. She is a bit on the fragile side, but she more often than not doubles and kills or crits the enemy to death before it has the hope of killing her.

Xander: The tankiest goddamn thing in existence, other than Benny. His horse gives him a huge mobility advantage over Benny and Effie, and he's got enough attack power that he tends to one-shot most squishes. Comes with Siegfried, a powerful weapon, and is the only one who can equip it. Poor speed means that he won't double, and sometimes might get doubled by higher speed enemies, but his high defense mitigates it. However, his resistance is paper, and he'll get destroyed by mages if he doesn't attack them first.

Camilla: Comes in strong, and her great mobility as a flier is put to good use on several of the Conquest maps. Has high strength and good speed, letting her double a lot of the time and more often than not kill whatever it is she's attacking. Her weakness to bows does hurt her standing a bit.

B Tier
Leo: Boasts good balance; he seems to be the most 'balanced' unit in the game. Functions well as a mage tank due to his high resistance and Brynhildr's effect. Brynhilder itself is a decently powerful tome, and is unique to him. Can work as a frontliner due to decent defense, and once he gets Lifetaker, he'll often recoup his HP losses from fighting enemies. Poor speed means that he won't tend to double attack, but he also doesn't tend to get doubled himself. In a vacuum, the least spectacular of the royals.

Benny: Amazing defense means that not much of anything using a physical weapon is going to get past him. But he tends to get overshadowed hard by Effie, whose far better strength lets her kill things more reliably. If you need a wall who won't be killing much of anything that soon, Benny is your guy.

Niles: Niles starts out immensely useful as one of the few Conquest bows, and his high speed ensures that he'll be doubling everything that he attacks. High resistance makes him an amazing anti-mage unit...and then his poor strength growth starts showing by midgame. He'll still be useful if promoted to Adventurer by virtue of being able to heal, and he still works as an anti-mage unit, but his past glories are over.

Jakob: His healing is absolutely required early game, and his relatively high starting stats means he won't have much trouble fighting anything at all in the first few chapters. Like Niles, he falls off hard due to his mediocre strength growth, but he's always good for fighting low defense enmies like mages.

C/C- Tier
Kaze: Kaze's strength-screwage does him absolutely no favors, and it makes him infinitely harder to use on Conquest than he is in Birthright., when enemies in Conquest generally pack on more defense. Poison Strike is always relevant, though...and if promoted to Master Ninja he does get the chance of activating Lethality for an instant kill. But in practice, he's often too fragile and weak to kill much of anything.

Odin: Odin's growths are mediocre to subpar in every area he needs to succeed as a mage. He'll be...okay in everything. He'll have okay defenses, letting him take a hit or two, he'll have okay magic, letting him deal okay damage to the enemy. He'll have okay speed, letting him not get doubled a lot of the time...but there's just nothing spectacular about him whatsoever. He's not bad, per se, but he's definitely not good. ...But at least he's more useful than Nyx? And he does give Ophelia, so there's that.

Nyx: An enormously high magic growth, but she comes in with poor bases and poor growths in other areas. She needs to be babied before she even gets off the ground, and is so frail that she falls to a stiff breeze should she be attacked. Can work, but requires an enormous investment to do so, and is generally difficult to use effectively when Ophelia exists.

 

Edited March 13, 2017 by Extrasolar

[Jedi]

1 hour ago, 11volt said:

I could make a pretty reasonable one in like, 10 seconds (top -> bottom = best -> worst) - 

Ryoma Tier: Ryoma

A bit above everyone else tier: other Royals

Everyone else tier: everyone else

Gunter Tier: Gunter

Kaze is better than Ryoma in Birthright and Revelation, he exists longer and is basically a better Ryoma by the time he exists, Saizo also has the same potential.

Both Ninjas are also better than the other 3 royals.

Edited March 13, 2017 by Jedi

[Eselred]

3 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Corrin isn't completely OP like Robin but s/he's still pretty damn good. Fates is just harder to solo than Awakening was, but for my money that's a good thing.

Ryoma disagrees.

7 minutes ago, KadenTheKitsune said:

Well, the royals aren't the only characters in the game (even though it seems like they are sometimes). And even then, some characters are much better than the royals. I was hoping to discuss this, but instead, I mostly got comments about Einherjar and ice cream cake from @joshcja. And it IS possible to form a tier list without bias. You just need to focus on the facts.

OK

S+++++++ Tier:

Ryoma

S Tier:

Xander
Camilla

A Tier:

Corrin
Royals

B Tier:

The rest

C Tier:

Gunter

Edited March 13, 2017 by Eselred

[KadenTheKitsune]

1 minute ago, Jedi said:

Both Ninjas are also way better than the other 3 royals.

Who are you referring to here? Kaze and Saizo?
Edit: Never mind. Didn't read everything, didn't see Saizo. Sorry

Edited March 13, 2017 by KadenTheKitsune

[KadenTheKitsune]

@Extrasolar Wow, this is a LOT of information. Thanks for all of this, I truly appreciate it. This is definitely going to help!

I think you might have put Kaden under Conquest though. Did you mean Keaton?

@Eselred Thanks for you help!

@Jedi Thanks for your input, but I'm only doing it based on Conquest and Birthright. (Sorry for my last post, I just skimmed through and completely missed the Saizo part.)

Edited March 13, 2017 by KadenTheKitsune

[Eselred]

6 minutes ago, Jedi said:

Kaze is better than Ryoma in Birthright and Revelation, he exists longer and is basically a better Ryoma by the time he exists, Saizo also has the same potential.

Both Ninjas are also better than the other 3 royals.

Wat?  No.  That's like saying Lowen is better than Marcus.

[Extrasolar]

Just now, KadenTheKitsune said:

@Extrasolar Wow, this is a LOT of information. Thanks for all of this, I truly appreciate it. This is definitely going to help!

I think you might have put Kaden under Conquest though. Did you mean Keaton?

You're welcome. And that's not the end of it, by any means.

Shit, that typo. Thanks for catching it. Gonna edit it.

[KadenTheKitsune]

@Eselred I agree with you, Kaze and Saizo are awesome, but I don't think that they are as good as Ryoma. But they might be more reliable in terms of hit rate.

@Extrasolar Don't worry about the typo, that's okay. Glad to see that Kaden's on your mind vs. Keaton lol.

[Eselred]

I admit it's been a while since I played Fates, but I distinctly remember giving Ryoma a great pair-up and solo stomping the maps, while Kaze was tinking everything in sight.  I haven't played Fates as much as most other FE games, but it's plain as day that Ryoma is on a tier of his own...and it's not even close.

[KadenTheKitsune]

I think that we can agree that Ryoma is S+ material.
I think that Kaze starts off okay, but gets better over time. I just think that Saizo is the better ninja due to his high Strength and Speed Stats.

[Dark Holy Elf]

11 minutes ago, Jedi said:

Kaze is better than Ryoma in Birthright and Revelation, he exists longer and is basically a better Ryoma by the time he exists, Saizo also has the same potential.

Both Ninjas are also better than the other 3 royals.

Kaze has something like 8 less strength than Ryoma even once he catches up level-wise and thus has far more trouble one-rounding enemies. Saizo also has less strength - much closer, admittedly - but also has less speed and less avoid by quite a bit. Ryoma also joins far stronger than the ninjas will be when he appears, unless you do a lot of optional grinding or favour them over other units immensely (in which case Ryoma is still better because he didn't disadvantage the rest of your army to get this good).

I dunno if Ryoma is quite "on a tier of his own" (and he certainly isn't in Revelation) but he certainly is excellent and even if you want to argue someone else is better, nobody surpasses him unambiguously.

 

[Jedi]

19 minutes ago, Eselred said:

Wat?  No.  That's like saying Lowen is better than Marcus.

Lowen doesn't exist way longer than Marcus does they join at the same time, Kaze exists for entire like 10 chapters before Ryoma exists, so by the time Ryoma exists, Kaze has the stats to match and do what he does. Plus by that time, Kaze has done much more than Ryoma will in his existance.

Anyone who wants to contest my claims can go to any Birthright Draft and talk to the drafters there.

Edited March 13, 2017 by Jedi

[KadenTheKitsune]

@Dark Holy Elf I didn't mean that Ryoma overpasses everybody else, I just said that he's S+ tier material. Other units can be S+ too if they are good enough.

@Jedi It depends on how much you level Kaze. Ryoma is better than Kaze in some ways, but Kaze is better than Ryoma in some ways .

[Jedi]

Just now, KadenTheKitsune said:

 

@Jedi It depends on how much you level Kaze. Ryoma is better than Kaze in some ways, but Kaze is better than Ryoma in some ways .

A tier list by definition is "who is the most effective in a particular situation" and since Kaze is pretty much the best early game unit, he should be getting the majority of use, which by the time Ryoma would arrive in such a run. Kaze would be a higher level, of course my standards of tier lists go by that of LTC, and efficiency.

Its not really worth tiering people in a casual setting. Considering anyone can be made to be good in that context. 

[Extrasolar]

Eh... I'm not sure that "Kaze joins first" is a good argument for why he's better than Ryoma. By that logic, the Dawn Brigade of RD would be higher tier than the Greil Mercenaries because you play them first...when they're clearly inferior in terms of performance.

[noook]

Birthright tier list

Spoiler

Ryoma Tier

Ryoma

Not Ryoma Tier

Scarlet

Jakob

Everyone else who isn't those 3

Conquest tier List

Spoiler

(no order within tiers) ((also assumes FCorrin since that's what most of my playthroughs are))

S Tier-

Camilla, Silas, Mozu, Niles, Odin

A Tier-

Corrin, Xander, Laslow, Jakob, Arthur, Beruka, Elise

B Tier-

Shura, Felicia, Kaze, Charlotte, Selena

C Tier-

Leo, Effie, Izana, Keaton, Peri, Benny, Flora

Don't use these-

Gunter, Nyx

Azura-

Azura

 

Kids are naturally hard to tier, given how incredibly customizable they are, and I don't want to commit to placing them in tiers beyond "use Ophelia and Nina, don't use Siegbert and Kana."

Edited March 13, 2017 by noook

[Jedi]

4 minutes ago, Extrasolar said:

Eh... I'm not sure that "Kaze joins first" is a good argument for why he's better than Ryoma. By that logic, the Dawn Brigade of RD would be higher tier than the Greil Mercenaries because you play them first...when they're clearly inferior in terms of performance.

It's called availability, and the Greil Mercs have more maps overall than the Dawn Brigade does along with better bases. Ryoma in terms of raw stats sure he's an amazing unit, but he takes a very long time to even show up, Kaze has tons of stages to do things while Ryoma doesn't exist so in that sense he's better, and by the time Ryoma shows up Kaze can basically replicate what he does.

Radiant Dawn is a much longer not to mention weirder game, where everyone is divided and Radiant Dawns whole deal is quite a bit different than most FE's in general.

Edited March 13, 2017 by Jedi

[Extrasolar]

17 minutes ago, Jedi said:

It's called availability, and the Greil Mercs have more maps overall than the Dawn Brigade does along with better bases. Ryoma in terms of raw stats sure he's an amazing unit, but he takes a very long time to even show up, Kaze has tons of stages to do things while Ryoma doesn't exist so in that sense he's better, and by the time Ryoma shows up Kaze can basically replicate what he does.

Except he doesn't. Kaze has far worse strength than Ryoma, while Ryoma also has a unique (and powerful weapon). And by that logic, Ryoma's bases also far exceed Kaze's. Plus, Ryoma has better defense than Kaze, iirc.

Availability alone does not make a good unit make.

Not saying Kaze is useless, but he doesn't hold a candle to Ryoma.

[Jedi]

5 minutes ago, Extrasolar said:

Except he doesn't. Kaze has far worse strength than Ryoma, while Ryoma also has a unique (and powerful weapon). And by that logic, Ryoma's bases also far exceed Kaze's. Plus, Ryoma has better defense than Kaze, iirc.

Availability alone does not make a good unit make.

Not saying Kaze is useless, but he doesn't hold a candle to Ryoma.

Kaze has much better resistance meanwhile, however the enemies in Birthright are pathetic and Kaze doesn't need to have Ryoma's overkill strength to do the exact same things as him. 

Availability is one of the key things required of a unit to be S tier in the eyes of the community, you'd do well to remember that. Again ask any of the drafters of Birthright, they will tell you that Kaze & Saizo save way more turns than Ryoma ever could in efficient play.

Edited March 13, 2017 by Jedi

[Heruseus]

Ok, before a make tier list, I'd like to point out all this drama. Chill out everybody. This may seem like a shock, but Fire Emblem is a game and ice cream is ice cream and cake is cake. Fire Emblem may be the best game, and whatever cake is the best cake and whatever ice cream is the best ice cream, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. These are all first world problems. I won;t deny and say I do this drama too, but everyone chill. It looks like everyone is really tense. Go get a massage. And if you need more positivity, go play Pokemon, okay? Jeez. 

Edited March 14, 2017 by Heruseus

[KadenTheKitsune]

Looking bad at all of our posts in this forum, it looks like a got a LITTLE bit out of hand. Who knew tier lists could cause all this drama? I guess we all tried to defend our views on something we all love: Fire Emblem. But we all have to agree on something from now on: We have to respect people's opinions, even if you don't like them at first. Just listen to them, they may persuade you to agree with them. At the end of the day, we're all still going to love Fire Emblem. A tier list isn't worth losing friends over. I think that we should start over on this, and try to come up with a simple tier list together (just with no Einherjar) Who's with me?

[KadenTheKitsune]

http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Kaze
http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Ryoma

Wikia links to Kaze and Ryoma. These are the facts going to be used on the tier list, not someone else's opinions.

[guedesbrawl]

No matter how broken Ryoma might be, being present for only half of the game should make him unable to reach S+ status.

Reserve that kind of thing for Prologue->Endgame gods like Seth and Robin, plz.

 

Anyways, is this factoring "efficiency"? as in... does this consider Turn Count as a resource, despite the game never demanding speed or punishing the player for killing one enemy at a time if they feel like it, given the lack of a ranking system like in FE7?

[joshcja]

For any sort of in game play on any difficulty under any set of restrictions. (Banning Ice Cream Cake) Here's the objective tier list.

CQ:

Units that matter: early males, kids, waifu's, dancer, freestaves, Corn, 1st servant.

Free units you can use but have no real reason to: No Stave Prepromotes past Ch12.

Units that do not matter: Everyone else

BR:

Units that matter: Ryoma, Hinoka, Scarface Lady, Scarlet, Nerds you start with on Ch6, Free Staves.

Free units you can use but have no reason to: Kids.

Units that do not matter: Everyone Else

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Within the "units that matter" Tier everyone will slapfight endlessly over their waifu/husbando based on their preferred set of arbitrary restrictions. 

Edited March 14, 2017 by joshcja

[guedesbrawl]

Kids are grinding and should be banned in any tier list.