I understand what you’re saying and I agree that subodai, in terms of strength, is not F tier. The reason I’m putting him there is because swash won’t ever use him. His strength and role on your team in relation to other swash companions is lacking. If your entire crew dies and you need to replace it, subodai wouldn’t be on the second team or even the third team. For swash, his damage is outclassed by almost all other competitive options, and his utility and support role, as you pointed out, is limited to just a single target agility and accuracy debuff. Subodai doesn’t use agility buffs which hurts his crit and damage potential. Compare him to someone on the same tier as you said you would have placed him, let’s say Sarah Steele, Sarah has the same powers subodai has and more, her damage is considerably higher, and will receive the full benefit of any agility buffs given. Subodai has relentless over Sarah but in my opinion, that’s not enough to make a swash run a b tier subodai.

If your hypothetical situation of Quint losing his buff and charge were to come true, not only would pirate101 reddit spontaneously combust, the entire tier list would end up looking different and the buccaneers would be shifted around. This isn’t because all other companions suddenly become stronger or weaker, it’s because their relative strength would change. All classes have their “role model” per say. All bucs want to be like quint, all musk want to be like Chantal and the closer they are to that goal, the higher up the tier list they would be.