Serenes Tiering

[bethany81707]

On the plus side, we're having a solid conversation.

[dragonlordsd]

The thing is, there are some absolutes.

Reinhardt is, obviously, Reinhardt. His weapon is uninheritable, and even if it weren't, there are so few mage cavalry that he's still pretty freaking unique. Sure, you can use Olwen, but the lower attack will always hinder her.

Same with Hector. Statistically, he's a better axe armor than Sheena, who is his only actual competition, even before you factor in his divine weapon and distant counter.

Completely independent of IVs and Skill Inheritance, those two are obviously S+ class. They're just better than everything else.

It's when you get to the rest of them that things get tricky.

Sure, Ryoma's great, but what if you get a +hp/-att or spd? Is that really better than a +spd/-res Ike?

Edited June 20, 2017 by dragonlordsd

[bethany81707]

1 minute ago, dragonlordsd said:

Sure, Ryoma's great, but what if you get a +hp/-att or spd? Is that really better than a +spd/-res Ike?

...I think my Ryoma is +HP -Atk. It's not like he's been terrible.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

1 hour ago, dragonlordsd said:

The thing is, there are some absolutes.

Reinhardt is, obviously, Reinhardt. His weapon is uninheritable, and even if it weren't, there are so few mage cavalry that he's still pretty freaking unique. Sure, you can use Olwen, but the lower attack will always hinder her.

Same with Hector. Statistically, he's a better axe armor than Sheena, who is his only actual competition, even before you factor in his divine weapon and distant counter.

Completely independent of IVs and Skill Inheritance, those two are obviously S+ class. They're just better than everything else.

It's when you get to the rest of them that things get tricky.

Sure, Ryoma's great, but what if you get a +hp/-att or spd? Is that really better than a +spd/-res Ike?

 

Ryoma isn't the only unit who can be -ATK. Ike can too. Obviously in cases like that, you did your calculation and weight around how they will perform from your experience. Like say if i get -ATK Reinhardt, obviously i would calculate how Reinhardt fares against +5 enemies as a +0. Then i'd calculate his match up against Dancer. If its unsatisfactory, i dump him. If its good enough, then i run him

 

Being idiot proof is never going to be possible for any kind of Tier list on any kind of game since at the end of the day its just a rough guideline

Edited June 20, 2017 by JSND

[Raguna]

Actually let me ask a hypothetical question since I'm curious as to how this unit would be evaluated. Let's take Lukas as an example since he hasn't been categorized yet. I'm not exactly a master in this area so correct me if he has a better build out there or I missed something.

On the offensive side Lukas can have Brave Lance + with Deathblow 3 to simulate Effie with better movement. With an attack boon or hone attack he is capable of finishing off even Xander in one round and hold his own against most physical units even a good chunk of green axes. 

While not currently considered. On a defensive build, he can keep his inherent Killer lance +  and Fortress while acquiring Quick Riposte 3 and Ignis where he could kill almost physical unit that outspeeds him (that isn't difficult) on the Ignis proc. He can even survive Cherche in her most aggressive builds which says something. 

That said, he gets defeated by every mage except possibly Sophia and a Sanaki running TA in any build. Where exactly would he be categorized? I know this might be a pretty bad or barebones request for an explanation but I'm curious as to how it would work out or how he'd be evaluated.

My bets would on Handy but I may be missing something.

[Bartozio]

36 minutes ago, Raguna said:

Actually let me ask a hypothetical question since I'm curious as to how this unit would be evaluated. Let's take Lukas as an example since he hasn't been categorized yet. I'm not exactly a master in this area so correct me if he has a better build out there or I missed something.

On the offensive side Lukas can have Brave Lance + with Deathblow 3 to simulate Effie with better movement. With an attack boon or hone attack he is capable of finishing off even Xander in one round and hold his own against most physical units even a good chunk of green axes. 

While not currently considered. On a defensive build, he can keep his inherent Killer lance +  and Fortress while acquiring Quick Riposte 3 and Ignis where he could kill almost physical unit that outspeeds him (that isn't difficult) on the Ignis proc. He can even survive Cherche in her most aggressive builds which says something. 

That said, he gets defeated by every mage except possibly Sophia and a Sanaki running TA in any build. Where exactly would he be categorized? I know this might be a pretty bad or barebones request for an explanation but I'm curious as to how it would work out or how he'd be evaluated.

My bets would on Handy but I may be missing something.

Handy sounds decent.

With a brave lance set, he hits less hard then Effie (5 less attack, so 10 less damage), but still pretty hard and he has better movement, which is pretty important for a PP unit. Effie can have wary fighter to boost her survivebility though, and she also has acces to armour buffs, which I suppose is enough for the difference in one tier.

The defensive build is very good at shutting down physical threats, but with most offensive threats being mages, it makes him less useful.

So yeah, I feel he falls short of the Useful tier, but he easily reaches the Handy tier for shutting down physical units.

 

[!Skydiver]

53 minutes ago, Raguna said:

Actually let me ask a hypothetical question since I'm curious as to how this unit would be evaluated. Let's take Lukas as an example since he hasn't been categorized yet. I'm not exactly a master in this area so correct me if he has a better build out there or I missed something.

On the offensive side Lukas can have Brave Lance + with Deathblow 3 to simulate Effie with better movement. With an attack boon or hone attack he is capable of finishing off even Xander in one round and hold his own against most physical units even a good chunk of green axes. 

While not currently considered. On a defensive build, he can keep his inherent Killer lance +  and Fortress while acquiring Quick Riposte 3 and Ignis where he could kill almost physical unit that outspeeds him (that isn't difficult) on the Ignis proc. He can even survive Cherche in her most aggressive builds which says something. 

That said, he gets defeated by every mage except possibly Sophia and a Sanaki running TA in any build. Where exactly would he be categorized? I know this might be a pretty bad or barebones request for an explanation but I'm curious as to how it would work out or how he'd be evaluated.

My bets would on Handy but I may be missing something.

 

The purpose of Lucas is to be a physical wall and he does it very well. I would put him in a Handy classification too, as while good at his job, he doesn't have the same presence as someone like Reinhardt and he has a very significant weakness that isn't restricted to one color(mages overall can ruin his day).

---
About the tier list, I think it's useful especially for beginners. If it turns out to be a Smogon like system, it would really be useful for everyone as it's necessary to point out checks/counters and good teammates. Open discussion could bring a lot of new ideas to the table and possibly cheap solutions to some of the most threatening enemies on the arena.

[Ice Dragon]

52 minutes ago, Bartozio said:

Effie can have wary fighter to boost her survivebility though, and she also has acces to armour buffs, which I suppose is enough for the difference in one tier.

The armor buffs aren't really as important as Wary Fighter is because Wary Fighter is what keeps her from being one-round killed by magic users, which is the one big thing that holds Lucas back. Not much can break through 73 magic bulk in a single hit.

 

3 hours ago, dragonlordsd said:

Same with Hector. Statistically, he's a better axe armor than Sheena, who is his only actual competition, even before you factor in his divine weapon and distant counter.

Completely independent of IVs and Skill Inheritance, those two are obviously S+ class. They're just better than everything else.

Hector is hardly S+ tier. He's held back by the fact that he fails to one-hit kill on player phase due to his low Spd, he requires mobility assistance to reach his target on player phase, and his magic bulk is mediocre for an enemy-phase unit with low Spd.

He can use a Brave Axe+ to land player phase kills, but Cherche does the exact same thing almost strictly better (Hector can run Wary Fighter to prevent being double attacked on the counterattack for opponents he fails to kill, but that's it).

Compare with Effie who runs Brave Lance+ with at least 2 more Atk than anyone else can and is blue, which is a better offensive color than green.

He's a good unit, but he's not S+.

[Refa]

What's keeping Eirika/Ephraim from being exemplary?  Blade tome users would be significantly worse off without their support (seeing as they'd need multiple units to give them buffs), and the current meta is literally "buff your offensive powerhouses to win".  Besides horse/flier/armor/dragon themed teams, I can't think of a single other team that wouldn't benefit from having them on it.

Why is Lloyd so high?  I don't know shit about him, but I don't see how someone who is worse than Lucina in almost every way (even when taking his weapon into account) and doesn't have Distant Counter should be in the same tier as her/Ike/Ryoma.

Although on the subject of the Distant Counter boys (Ike, Ryoma, Xander, and Camus, to be precise), what's keeping them from being exemplary?  This is more of a genuine question than disagreement, since I don't quite get the logic here.

Eldigan appears to be a worse Xander.  Does he just benefit from his weapon/natures enough to keep up with Xander, or is Xander's advantage not significant enough to be a tier higher than him?  I don't have Eldigan and I haven't seen one in the arena myself, so I'm not particularly familiar with him.

From my understanding, the only thing Female Robin has over Julia/Soren is her physical bulk.  Is that a strong enough niche to keep her on the same tier as them?  Again, less disagreement here and more wanting an explanation.

Spring Lucina and Bride Caeda are weaker but slightly bulkier versions of Linde.  I don't think Spring Lucina has any advantages over Linde (at least on the Blade tome front; +8Def allows her to do a Raven build much better).  Bride Caeda slightly beats her in Spd (I dunno how important that is in practice, though), and has decent defensive stat advantages (although she two less HP).  I'm not arguing for either of these units to be on the same level as Linde, but I don't see why they're two tiers below her.

Odin can use blade tomes at 32 base speed.  His attack is piss poor, but I think that that alone warrants him being situational (still would be one tier below Mae).  Looking at his stats, I'm curious to see how well a Raven Odin build would work out.

Other than that, I find myself agreeing with everything else you've got down on the list.  Keep up the good work.

[DehNutCase]

43 minutes ago, Refa said:

What's keeping Eirika/Ephraim from being exemplary?  Blade tome users would be significantly worse off without their support (seeing as they'd need multiple units to give them buffs), and the current meta is literally "buff your offensive powerhouses to win".  Besides horse/flier/armor/dragon themed teams, I can't think of a single other team that wouldn't benefit from having them on it.

A team with multiple powerhouses that don't need many buffs wouldn't care for Eirika and Ephraim. If you have Rein, B.Cordelia, Azura, and, I don't know, Lucina or something, then you don't really need the great +3/+4 buffs from the Restoration L's. They're all perfectly functional without buffs, and a single Hone Atk---which anyone could provide---would be more than enough to murder anything that had even a chance of surviving before.

Basically, under my rating system of: Offensive Ability/Defensive Ability/Counter-kill Ability/Mobility/Support Needed, people with a high rating in Support needed wouldn't want Ephraim in their team, since that's a wasted unit slot compared to packing another unit with a high rating in Support needed---a high rating in Support Needed means you need less support, incidentally. (This is because, as good as Eirika and Ephraim are in providing support, their OA, DA, and CA are very low compared to other options, and their mobility is below average, being neither ranged nor on a horse.)

49 minutes ago, Refa said:

Although on the subject of the Distant Counter boys (Ike, Ryoma, Xander, and Camus, to be precise), what's keeping them from being exemplary?  This is more of a genuine question than disagreement, since I don't quite get the logic here.

1-2 range counter beefs up counter-kill, but doesn't actually do much for OA, DA, Mobility, or support needed. They still die to things that kill them, and they still can only kill things that they can kill, while being shackled to whatever mobility tier they had before.

Camus, for example, would probably have a score like B/B/B/B/B compared to (B in counter kill rather than A because a lot of units can kill him before he gets to counter), say, Vantage -blade Reinhardt with Close Counter, who's A/A/A/A/C. Camus dies to more units and kills less units compared to Rein, and also lacks Vantage sweep potential compared to Rein (who has over 100 OHKOs).

Note: The Camus rating is just a wild-guess, I would actually have to run the numbers to make a real determination. I don't imagine I'm far off, though.

52 minutes ago, Refa said:

Odin can use blade tomes at 32 base speed.  His attack is piss poor, but I think that that alone warrants him being situational (still would be one tier below Mae).  Looking at his stats, I'm curious to see how well a Raven Odin build would work out.

Other than that, I find myself agreeing with everything else you've got down on the list.  Keep up the good work.

Raven Odin suffers from the fact that, while he dies to basically nothing, he also kills basically nothing. -Blade with full buffs also dies to basically nothing, while killing a fair amount of the cast if he can manage full buffs.

Something like C/A/B/B/C would be my rating for Odin.

[Refa]

Pretty sure you could replace Lucina with Eirika and have that team perform better (especially if you're running Vantage Blade Reinhardt, which I didn't even know was a thing).  Regardless, all of the infantry Blade tome users benefit heavily from Eirika/Ephraim and they're all Exemplary units.

Fair enough WRT the Distant Counter units.

Right, Odin's offense is bad enough that he'd have a hard time killing even with a Raven tome and Triangle Adept.  No idea why they made him so shit, but at least this way, he's great for guilt free inheritance fodder.

 

[Ice Dragon]

1 hour ago, Refa said:

What's keeping Eirika/Ephraim from being exemplary?  Blade tome users would be significantly worse off without their support (seeing as they'd need multiple units to give them buffs), and the current meta is literally "buff your offensive powerhouses to win".  Besides horse/flier/armor/dragon themed teams, I can't think of a single other team that wouldn't benefit from having them on it.

Rally Atk/Spd, Fortify Def 3, S Fortify Res 1 can now be run by any character for almost the same buffs (+3/3/4/2 instead of +3/4/4/2). The only downside is the offensive stat pair costs you that character's turn, whereas Eirika or Ephraim spend their turn giving Rally Def, which is far less crucial.

Furthermore, as much as Litrblade users appreciate the additional buffs, unless you are attempting to sweep the opponent with a single unit, you don't need all of those buffs to kill relevant opponents that are neutral or weak to your unit on the weapon triangle. A simple Hone Spd 3 is usually enough to put the usual Litrblade users into one-round kill range for everything they need to kill.

 

1 hour ago, Refa said:

Odin can use blade tomes at 32 base speed.  His attack is piss poor, but I think that that alone warrants him being situational (still would be one tier below Mae).  Looking at his stats, I'm curious to see how well a Raven Odin build would work out.

Odin [+Atk] (Blarblade+, Life and Death 3) with +3/4/4/2 has 59/41 offenses. Mae [+Spd] (Blarblade+, Life and Death 3) with +0/4/0/0 has 58/43 offenses.

Odin [+Atk] (Blarraven+, Triangle Adept 3) has 50/32 offenses at weapon triangle advantage with 43/25/25 defenses. Robin [=] (Blarraven+, Triangle Adept 3) has 56/29 offenses at weapon triangle advantage with 40/29/22 defenses.

The scariest colorless thing a Triangle Adept Litrraven user absolutely needs to handle is Bride Cordelia [+Atk] (Brave Bow+, Life and Death 3), who has 30/35 effective offenses, and Bride Cordelia [+Atk] (Firesweep Bow+, Life and Death 3), who has 33/40 effective offenses and 36/17 defenses.

Edited June 20, 2017 by Ice Dragon

[DehNutCase]

3 minutes ago, Refa said:

Pretty sure you could replace Lucina with Eirika and have that team perform better (especially if you're running Vantage Blade Reinhardt, which I didn't even know was a thing).  Regardless, all of the infantry Blade tome users benefit heavily from Eirika/Ephraim and they're all Exemplary units.

You don't run -Blade Reinhardt outside a horse team, his support needed for that build is a C, meaning 'lots needed.' (Fortify is skippable, Hone Cavalry isn't) His default build is more like a A/B/C/A/A spread, low support needed, very good offenses, mediocre bulk, terrible counter-kill, and great mobility.

And Eirika doesn't come close to Lucina's 34/36 offenses---if Lucina's in a team, she's in there to kill things, not to buff. She can carry a Hone, a Fort Res (seal), and a Rally, but her main job is to hit something until it dies, which Eirika doesn't do nearly as well. If you had to put Eirika in the team, the person she replaces is actually Azura, not Lucina, because they're both support units with mediocre matchup spreads.

[Bartozio]

27 minutes ago, Refa said:

What's keeping Eirika/Ephraim from being exemplary?  Blade tome users would be significantly worse off without their support (seeing as they'd need multiple units to give them buffs), and the current meta is literally "buff your offensive powerhouses to win".  Besides horse/flier/armor/dragon themed teams, I can't think of a single other team that wouldn't benefit from having them on it.

While the Renais twins are great buffers, it's not like other units can't give buffs to their allies. Nino already nukes pretty much anything with a speed and attack buff, so it's not a requirement for her to get all 4 stats buffed. There's also the fact that Rally Attack Speed exists now, which means any unit who gets that skill can buff all 4 stats in one turn.

Erika and Ephraim are still the best buffers, while they're also pretty solid units on top of that, but they don't break the game or anything, -blade tome users do (and they would still do it without Erika and Ephraim).

27 minutes ago, Refa said:

Why is Lloyd so high?  I don't know shit about him, but I don't see how someone who is worse than Lucina in almost every way (even when taking his weapon into account) and doesn't have Distant Counter should be in the same tier as her/Ike/Ryoma.

His offence with the Regal Blade is actually comparable to neutral Lucina (1 less attack, 1 more speed), which is very good. Lucina can be stricktly better with a +spd nature though, and she'll also have Falchion's effect on top of that. Lloyd has the Res to use Glacies as a special and tank some magic hits, so he's not completly inferior I guess. He might still be a bit overrated though. Guess other people can chip in here?

27 minutes ago, Refa said:

Eldigan appears to be a worse Xander.  Does he just benefit from his weapon/natures enough to keep up with Xander, or is Xander's advantage not significant enough to be a tier higher than him?  I don't have Eldigan and I haven't seen one in the arena myself, so I'm not particularly familiar with him.

+def -hp Eldigan has a very similar spread as Xander, so the main difference between the two is the effect of their weapon. Xander has the problem of needing QR to effectively deal with units on enemy phase, which means he doesn't have the space to run vantage to take care of more then one mage (and even then he has to be careful to not die). Eldigan does even worse against mages, but is better against physical units, who Xander primarily wants to deal with anyway. I think Xander is slightly better, but not enough to warrant a difference in tiers.

27 minutes ago, Refa said:

From my understanding, the only thing Female Robin has over Julia/Soren is her physical bulk.  Is that a strong enough niche to keep her on the same tier as them?  Again, less disagreement here and more wanting an explanation.

Defence is pretty important for a raven user, since you want them to tank bow users. Haven't done any calcs, but it is an important stat.

[Refa]

2 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

You don't run -Blade Reinhardt outside a horse team, his support needed for that build is a C, meaning 'lots needed.' (Fortify is skippable, Hone Cavalry isn't) His default build is more like a A/B/C/A/A spread, low support needed, very good offenses, mediocre bulk, terrible counter-kill, and great mobility.

And Eirika doesn't come close to Lucina's 34/36 offenses---if Lucina's in a team, she's in there to kill things, not to buff. She can carry a Hone, a Fort Res (seal), and a Rally, but her main job is to hit something until it dies, which Eirika doesn't do nearly as well. If you had to put Eirika in the team, the person she replaces is actually Azura, not Lucina, because they're both support units with mediocre matchup spreads.

Fair enough.

The point was that you wouldn't need Lucina to do shit when you have Reinhardt/Cordelia and a dancer to get all of the kills for you.  I do agree that other units can...somewhat replicate Eirika's utility (not perfectly, but good enough that if you had a ridiculous team, it shouldn't make a big difference), though.

3 minutes ago, Bartozio said:

His offence with the Regal Blade is actually comparable to neutral Lucina (1 less attack, 1 more speed), which is very good. Lucina can be stricktly better with a +spd nature though, and she'll also have Falchion's effect on top of that. Lloyd has the Res to use Glacies as a special and tank some magic hits, so he's not completly inferior I guess. He might still be a bit overrated though. Guess other people can chip in here?

+def -hp Eldigan has a very similar spread as Xander, so the main difference between the two is the effect of their weapon. Xander has the problem of needing QR to effectively deal with units on enemy phase, which means he doesn't have the space to run vantage to take care of more then one mage (and even then he has to be careful to not die). Eldigan does even worse against mages, but is better against physical units, who Xander primarily wants to deal with anyway. I think Xander is slightly better, but not enough to warrant a difference in tiers.

Defence is pretty important for a raven user, since you want them to tank bow users. Haven't done any calcs, but it is an important stat.

From my understanding, Lloyd is roughly as good as (if not worse than) a +Spd/-Res Marth.  I believe Marth is generally considered to be worse than Lucina (although admittedly he isn't represented on the tier list here), so I don't see why Lloyd would be any different.

Eldigan's best build seems to be a QR build, same as Xander.  Unless Mistletoe is far better than I give him credit for, I don't think he's got anything over Xander.  However, you're probably right when you say that Xander's advantage isn't pronounced enough to warrant an entire tier gap between the two.

[Bartozio]

1 minute ago, Refa said:

From my understanding, Lloyd is roughly as good as (if not worse than) a +Spd/-Res Marth.  I believe Marth is generally considered to be worse than Lucina (although admittedly he isn't represented on the tier list here), so I don't see why Lloyd would be any different.

Eldigan's best build seems to be a QR build, same as Xander.  Unless Mistletoe is far better than I give him credit for, I don't think he's got anything over Xander.  However, you're probably right when you say that Xander's advantage isn't pronounced enough to warrant an entire tier gap between the two.

Fun fact, the people who make the wiki tier list used the fact that Xander has an easier time procing Ignis then Camus to place Xander a tier higher. Not saying that that makes it a good reason, but still.

Basicly, the moment Xander can proc Bonfire, Eldigan can proc Ignis. The moment Xander can proc Ignis, Eldigan can proc Aether. That should count for something at very least. The Mystletainn is a pretty good weapon, though I wouldn't want to debate it being better then the Siegfried.

[Refa]

Just now, Bartozio said:

Fun fact, the people who make the wiki tier list used the fact that Xander has an easier time procing Ignis then Camus to place Xander a tier higher. Not saying that that makes it a good reason, but still.

Basicly, the moment Xander can proc Bonfire, Eldigan can proc Ignis. The moment Xander can proc Ignis, Eldigan can proc Aether. That should count for something at very least. The Mystletainn is a pretty good weapon, though I wouldn't want to debate it being better then the Siegfried.

That's hilarious.  There are several especially egregious placements on the Wiki tier list, and Camus' is definitely one of them IMO.

I don't doubt that the Mystletainn is a good weapon, it's just hard for me personally to determine how good without experiencing it myself.  That's the problem with tiering units in a game where I don't even have all of them, I suppose.  Does it work well with Quickened Pulse?

[MrSmokestack]

@Bartozio Lloyd's offense is better than neutral Lucina's; same Atk, 1 more Spd. He does lack stat variation though Falchion having two effects doesn't necessarily make him worse unless your team has issues dealing with dragons.

15 minutes ago, Refa said:

Eldigan's best build seems to be a QR build, same as Xander.  Unless Mistletoe is far better than I give him credit for, I don't think he's got anything over Xander.  However, you're probably right when you say that Xander's advantage isn't pronounced enough to warrant an entire tier gap between the two.

Eldigan @ +Atk / Spd -Res

-Mystletainn

-Fury / Distant Counter

-Quick Riposte / Swordbreaker

-Hone Skill / Fortify Cavalry

-Swap / Draw Back / Reposition

-Ignis

-Quick Pulse

Except he has more Spd to benefit from Hone Cavalry. Not bad.

EDIT: Forgot the 'Pulse

Edited June 20, 2017 by MrSmokestack

[Bartozio]

17 minutes ago, Refa said:

I don't doubt that the Mystletainn is a good weapon, it's just hard for me personally to determine how good without experiencing it myself.  That's the problem with tiering units in a game where I don't even have all of them, I suppose.  Does it work well with Quickened Pulse?

I know what you mean, which is why it's pretty much impossible for one person to do the entire tiering on their own. Still, if evryone helps out where they can it works. I don't have Eldigan either btw, but I do know people tend to like killer weapons for these kind of sets.

Quickenend Pulse depends on the set I guess. If you use Sword Breaker or are +spd with cavalry support, you don't get doubled by evrything, so you would need Quickenend Pulse to ensure the Ignis proc.

15 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

@Bartozio Lloyd's offense is better than neutral Lucina's; same Atk, 1 more Spd. He does lack stat variation though Falchion having two effects doesn't necessarily make him worse unless your team has issues dealing with dragons.

Whoops, guess I accidently added only 1 attack instead of two for some reason. It still means +spd Lucina has better offence though.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

2 hours ago, Refa said:

Eldigan's best build seems to be a QR build, same as Xander.  Unless Mistletoe is far better than I give him credit for, I don't think he's got anything over Xander.  However, you're probably right when you say that Xander's advantage isn't pronounced enough to warrant an entire tier gap between the two.

Xander do have being free as his limitation

And in super whale level Mistletoe can be argued to be better than Siegfried

[Refa]

Just now, JSND said:

Xander do have being free as his limitation

And in super whale level Mistletoe can be argued to be better than Siegfried

That's why I figured Ursula was a tier below Olwen.  If she had natures, there wouldn't be any significant differences.

I never knew that about Mistletoe, though!  Why is it so much better at super whale levels?

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

7 minutes ago, Refa said:

That's why I figured Ursula was a tier below Olwen.  If she had natures, there wouldn't be any significant differences.

I never knew that about Mistletoe, though!  Why is it so much better at super whale levels?

The idea is basically Mistletoe is a -1 CD while Siegfried is a Distant Counter. Both DC and -1 CD is "worth" an A slot, but DC is an actual A slot skill while -1 CD can only be replicated through Heavy Blade

The arguable part is basically when weighting down the effect of that A slot, Mystletain + DC gave you 3 CD Ignis or 2 CD Bonfire, while SIegurd + Fury gave you +3 All stats

Edited June 21, 2017 by JSND

[MaskedAmpharos]

I've been seeing some disagreement on how to handle the issue of natures and merges, so I just want to bring this up so that we can come to a consensus. 

Are we going to take natures and merges (so that free, neutral-only units like Sharena and Xander are placed lower in the list) into account?

Or are we going to look at each unit in a neutral natured and un-merged (ignoring the possibility of future merges) state to compare all units on a level playing field?

[bethany81707]

34 minutes ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

I've been seeing some disagreement on how to handle the issue of natures and merges, so I just want to bring this up so that we can come to a consensus. 

Are we going to take natures and merges (so that free, neutral-only units like Sharena and Xander are placed lower in the list) into account?

Or are we going to look at each unit in a neutral natured and un-merged (ignoring the possibility of future merges) state to compare all units on a level playing field?

I'd honestly prefer (biased opinion incoming) to ignore merges, at least, because my goal is to provide a starting point for a poor player to identify where they should start. The kind of player who's prepared to make an investment on merges should know exactly what their team will be like before they start anyway.

Natures are a trickier beast. I'd honestly think it'd depend on whether a nature is a make-or-break deal or just 'something nice on top of that'. Some units don't mind being -Atk. Others die to it. A good question to ask is "would I run a neutral variation of this character, or do I desperately want a nature?"

[Refa]

33 minutes ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

I've been seeing some disagreement on how to handle the issue of natures and merges, so I just want to bring this up so that we can come to a consensus. 

Are we going to take natures and merges (so that free, neutral-only units like Sharena and Xander are placed lower in the list) into account?

Or are we going to look at each unit in a neutral natured and un-merged (ignoring the possibility of future merges) state to compare all units on a level playing field?

I'm going under the assumption of optimal natures but no merges.  Merges are, for the most part, only reliably accessible behind a certain pay wall.  However, people will naturally pick up numerous optimal natures through the standard course of play; only 5* locked characters are a huge PITA to get an optimal nature for.  For the purposes of this, though, I'm considering an optimal nature to be +good stat -bad stat instead of considering the unit's literal best nature.