Most useless unit in Fire Emblem?

[MacLovin]

lmao Gareths a free buffbot.

[Tryhard]

If we're not (ab)using scrolls, Marty is pretty atrocious. Quite a few of the late promote recruitments in FE12 are fairly useless too.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Edgelord

[indigoasis]

I wouldn't necessarily say that there is a useless unit in Fire Emblem. Some are better than others, that I will agree with, but every unit can serve some sort of purpose, whether it be to take the items they have and give them to other units, or put them dead center in the enemy army as a distraction so your other units can get away unscathed.

But to answer the topic question, Camus in FE1 and FE11. You can't even recruit him, so what's the point?

In all seriousness, I don't have any definitive answers. If I had to choose, I'd probably go with the DLC Cipher units in Echoes. They're not bad by any means, but they're locked behind a paywall.

[Tryhard]

Actually, if I'm going to revise my answer and if TearRing Saga counts, then Maerhen from that game.

http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Maerhen

To round up: he's got bad base stats, the worst growths in the game that would put many Jagen's to shame, okay availability though by the time you get him he's really bad, and he has the skill mug, which provided he can kill something (not likely), he will steal the weapons and items they have. This sounds alright, but the other part of this skill is that he gives every allied unit around him a -50% change to avoid and hit as an anti-charisma. He makes everyone around him shit and he wasn't good to begin with.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Edgelord

[BrightBow]

45 minutes ago, Edgelord said:

Actually, if I'm going to revise my answer and if TearRing Saga counts, then Maerhen from that game.

http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Maerhen

To round up: he's got bad base stats, the worst growths in the game that would put many Jagen's to shame, okay availability though by the time you get him he's really bad, and he has the skill mug, which provided he can kill something (not likely), he will steal the weapons and items they have. This sounds alright, but the other part of this skill is that he gives every allied unit around him a -50% change to avoid and hit as an anti-charisma. He makes everyone around him shit and he wasn't good to begin with.

Maerhen is hardly useless. First of all Mug has only a range of 3 tiles. So it's not like you can't work around that to exploit the hell out of that skill.

More importantly though, it's not the only thing he can do. He can also open doors and chests, so for all intends and purposes he is a thief. Which is pretty valuable on Holmes' route since plenty of maps require you to open all chests to beat them.

Edited July 23, 2018 by BrightBow

[Baldrick]

There's a difference between a useless unit and one that just requires "too many" resources. A unit that provides a middling utility for a very high investment may not be "worth it", but it's still more useful than a unit that won't provide any kind of utility, no matter how high the investment.

 

 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Baldrick

[Tryhard]

31 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

Maerhen is hardly useless. First of all Mug has only a range of 3 tiles. So it's not like you can't work around that to exploit the hell out of that skill.

More importantly though, it's not the only thing he can do. He can also open doors and chests, so for all intends and purposes he is a thief. Which is pretty valuable on Holmes' route since plenty of maps require you to open all chests to beat them.

I dunno about that, man. I've used Maerhen before to mug a dark magic tome but he's still pretty horrendous. He has 9 strength base as his best stat and that isn't going anywhere, and he has essentially no growths. For what it's worth, you'd rather want the Mug tome you eventually get if anything. "Utility" only goes so far.

You'd rather use Yuni for that to be honest and Holmes has picklock for that reason too.

I'll give it to you that he has some out-of-combat (kind of) use that can be exploited if you really want to force a mug drop, but he's pretty much a joke character.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Edgelord

[BrightBow]

26 minutes ago, Edgelord said:

I dunno about that, man. I've used Maerhen before to mug a dark magic tome but he's still pretty horrendous. He has 9 strength base as his best stat and that isn't going anywhere, and he has essentially no growths. For what it's worth, you'd rather want the Mug tome you eventually get if anything. "Utility" only goes so far.

You'd rather use Yuni for that to be honest and Holmes has picklock for that reason too.

On those maps you have to open all the chests in order to win, so it's beneficial to deploy as many characters with Picklock as possible. Besides, Holmes is probably better used for the actual fighting rather then chasing after the chests.

The Mug Scroll is only found late on Runan's route. So for the most part Marchen doesn't have to compete with that. 9 Str isn't that low and he is one WEXP+ away from being able to use the Thunder Sword or the Kill Sword to further help him out. Personally I am more worried about his movement to help him get into position.

But for all his issues, he is still very much the best way to steal things for most of the game. Besides Mug the only other ways to steal are the Steal skill and the Thief Sword. The Steal skill is entirely random and you also only get a random item. By comparison Mug will always trigger and net you the target's entire inventory as long as you can kill them. The Thief Sword could in theory be the best way to steal as you will get an item as long as you can hit. The problem is actually getting it first. You can get it during one of the trading sidequests on Holmes' route but that's one hell of a pain to do. Otherwise it's carried by some enemy thieves later into the game. But since they don't drop it, you will have to use the other methods of stealing things first.

Edited July 23, 2018 by BrightBow

[Slumber]

46 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

There's a difference between a useless unit and one that just requires "too many" resources. A unit that provides a middling utility for a very high investment may not be "worth it", but it's still more useful than a unit that won't provide any kind of utility, no matter how high the investment.

 

 

If you're referring to Gwendolyn and Sophia, then I really have to disagree with this assessment. 

As I've stated, Gwendolyn will only be a marginally better unit with marginally less babying and investment. On paper, I'd argue that they're very, very close in the grand scheme of things, and both two of the worst units in the game. 

The investment of more valuable resources is where Gwendolyn crosses the line from just a bad unit into useless. She's a Cavalier without a horse, a weakness to Armorslayers, and her incredibly niche utility is going to be more detrimental than beneficial. Without the resources, this would just make her a bad unit, but she's a bad unit to the detriment of VERY good units, hence she has no real use. 

Sophia is just a bad Mage. 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Slumber

[Tryhard]

20 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

On those maps you have to open all the chests in order to win, so it's beneficial to deploy as many characters with lockpick as possible. And Holmes is probably better used for the actual fighting rather then chasing after the chests.

The Mug Scroll is only found late on Runan's route. So for the most part Marchen doesn't have to compete with that. 9 Str isn't that low and he is one WEXP+ away from being able to use the Thunder Sword and the Kill Sword to further help him out. Personally I am more worried about his movement to help him get into position.

But for all his issues, he is still very much the best way to steal things for most of the game. Besides Mug the only other ways to steal are the Steal skill and the Thief Sword. The Steal skill is entirely random and you also only get a random item. By comparison Mug will always trigger and net you the target's entire inventory as long as you can kill them. The Thief Sword could in theory be the best way to steal as you will get an item as long as you can hit. The problem is actually getting it first. You can get it during one of the trading sidequests on Holmes' route but that's one hell of a pain to do. Otherwise it's carried by some enemy thieves later into the game. But since they don't drop it, you will have to use the other methods of stealing things first.

Fair, but seems pretty unreliable - personally I never found much of a need for Holmes, Yuni and another thief but hey.

He has no growths, so unless you want to dump stat boosters on him, he's gonna have 2 skill, 4 speed, 4 defense and okay HP. If he misses an attack for a kill that has been softened up for him, he's probably gonna get doubled and die against any enemy worth their weight eventually.

Thunder Sword would probably be the best way to go though you would need to give him a WEXP booster to do that, and his hit rate is still not going to be great.

Is there really much worth stealing? Like I said, I did get the Earthquake tome which I believe is unobtainable without using Mug, but I don't recall many other instances where you would want/need to steal an enemies weapon. It's a decent amount of effort that most of the time would be thrown out in the case of growth characters.

Question though: is the -50% hit/avoid detriment always active or is it only when Mug has been "used". I used Maerhen a bit but I can't remember, and from what I remember of the Julius map the NPCs with Mug caused anything within 3 spaces to have the debuff at all times.

Who's worse in the same game? Krisheena is a thief that can't open locks or chests, only steal, Rina is a pretty poor Est, Hagaru is pretty pathetic for when you get him to my recollection, Leteena for being the biggest effort-sink, but she's still a healer.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Edgelord

[Baldrick]

I disagree with your definition of useless.

I also don't understand how increasing your hit and crit rate can be detrimental.

[Slumber]

1 minute ago, Baldrick said:

I disagree with your definition of useless.

I also don't understand how increasing your hit and crit rate can be detrimental.

Because it requires fielding all three Knights and moving them very slowly in a triangle.

The Triangle Attack is not good. 

[Baldrick]

How is it detrimental? How is it worse than nothing?

[Slumber]

5 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

How is it detrimental? How is it worse than nothing?

Because you have limited deployment. All of the Knights in FE6 are bad, and FE6 is the most Horse Emblem game outside of FE4. You're saying that all three should be deployed to make Gwendolyn better. It's something that sets up a single enemy unit in the player phase, then leaves all three open on enemy phase. 

If you were to give "Useless" a definition that's localized to FE6, that would be it. 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Slumber

[Baldrick]

Wendy with 3 deployment slots is less useless than Wendy with 1 deployment slots, if you ignore the opportunity cost of deployment slots.

If you don't ignore the opportunity cost of deployment slots, Wendy with 1 deployment slot is still less useless than Sophia with 1 deployment slot.

[Moblin Major General]

1 minute ago, Baldrick said:

Wendy with 3 deployment slots is less useless than Wendy with 1 deployment slots, if you ignore the opportunity cost of deployment slots.

If you don't ignore the opportunity cost of deployment slots, Wendy with 1 deployment slot is still less useless than Sophia with 1 deployment slot.

Except Sophia is in a standard move tier while Gwendolyn is not. Bad as she is, Sophia won't lag behind most of your other units while Gwendolyn certainly will, and because this game has untelegraphed ambush spawns from the rear, Gwendolyn won't be in an ideal position to effectively deal with that. Also, if you deploy them, who is getting benched? I would say any cavalier, because you need their Knight Crests, and Alan and Lance are indispensable for Binding Blade. This is a serious detriment, especially because it means the whole army is slower, and that leads to instances of getting caught with your pants down.

[Baldrick]

To think I was called silly for making an argument against "higher movement is all that matters".

Edited July 23, 2018 by Baldrick

[Slumber]

15 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

To think I was called silly for making an argument against "higher movement is all that matters".

No, I called you silly for questioning if Treck was better than Rutger. 

Immediately after that, I said that if you put two comparable units side-by-side(Like Sophia and Gwendolyn, NOT like Treck and Rutger), yeah, the one with more move is gonna get way more use. 

If you want to convince anyone of anything, it'd be better to not lie about the arguments, especially when anyone can go back two pages and see that what you just said is not true. 

[Moblin Major General]

8 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

To think I was called silly for making an argument against "higher movement is all that matters".

It is silly. You took the best of one and the worst of the other. That's a biased comparison. You should compare best to best and worst to worst. Treck might be worse than Rutger, but he's better than Ogier. And Marcus and Percival both equal Rutger in absolute utility and necessity if only because Rutger has a lot of positive circumstances based on coincidence. Without at least 1 thing going well for him, he'd be mid tier. 

[Baldrick]

I was talking about ping, not you.

[Lormpa]

For the most useless unit in TRS, it's definitely between Rina and Hagar, personally I think Hagar is worse. Hagar's only use is pretty much if you really want to use Stonehoist whereas Lina can open doors at the bare minimum I guess and if you do give her some mastery potions for the levin sword she can be okay I guess? There's really no purpose to using either one but if one of them was gonna be used Lina would probably be the better one. 3 movement is just so bad.

[Von Ithipathachai]

33 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

I was talking about ping, not you.

Who's "you"?  Slumber or Hylian?  They posted in fairly close proximity of one another.

At any rate, @Slumber, @Hylian Air Force, I'm sorry to be rude, but both of you are wasting your time trying to reason with someone who clearly isn't going to budge.  All I'm going to say is that you (Baldrick) must have a crazy amount of favoritism for Gwendolyn to still be trying to defend her like this.  I mean, I love Marty and Rinkah, but even I'm willing to admit they're pretty mediocre and take too much effort to make competent than they're worth.

The facts are that Gwendolyn has bad Movement, has bad bases that her growth rates aren't high enough to adequately compensate for, can't fill her class's role like she should, and has to rely on a situational, difficult to set up Triangle Attack with two other poor units just to serve a purpose (boss killing) that a similar number of better units could do just as well while having more utility elsewhere.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Von Ithipathachai

[Baldrick]

The argument I have been making is that Sophia is more useless than Wendy. How did you translate it into "Wendy isn't mediocre"?

Stop misrepresenting my arguments and insulting me.

 

[Von Ithipathachai]

9 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

The argument I have been making is that Sophia is more useless than Wendy. How did you translate it into "Wendy isn't mediocre"?

Stop misrepresenting my arguments and insulting me.

Sorry.  Reading back, I guess you're not the fanboy I misappraised you as.  Most of this thread has been "Gwendolyn, Gwendolyn, Gwendolyn" and I only get notified of activity when Slumber replies.

But it still stands that the Triangle Attack alone isn't enough to justify making her and the other Knights mainstays of your team.

[Sage of the Mist]

22 minutes ago, Baldrick said:

The argument I have been making is that Sophia is more useless than Wendy.

The thing is, thats highly debatable, just as other have been saying, Wendy has a way earlier join time and still manages to be even worse than Sophia, who at the very least isn't hindered by terian, has constant 1-2 range meaning she isn't constantly on the brink of death like Wendy, hits res, nets you a guiding ring, has growths that at the very least suit her class and doesn't need two other shit tier units to be deployed to do something of marginal use (triangle attack)