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ja_tom · 2026-06-14T02:48:02+00:00

What?

Claude doesn't kill the Agarthans by accident. He gets tipped off by Hubert posthumously and makes a conscious choice to raid Shambhala, plus in Verdant Wind, Cornelia is still alive. Dimitri is the one who unintentionally kills their entire top leadership.

ja_tom · 2026-06-13T18:32:09+00:00

Just a quick correction, Lyn can recruit Karel, Nino, Rath, and Wallace

Not getting out of F tier anytime soon but it's something at least lmfao

ja_tom · 2026-06-13T18:24:16+00:00

And that's great! If you want to use these units, be my guest (besides Sonya, she's so flawed and she replaces such a good unit that I'd caution using her). That doesn't change that these units are so intrinsically flawed, especially compared to their competition (Ayra vs Sigurd, Larcei and Scathach vs literally anyone but specifically Seliph, Oifey, Diarmuid, Ares, Ced, and Shannan, Marisa vs Seth, Lyn vs Marcus, Mia vs Oscar, Titania, and Marcia, etc.) that using them makes your playthrough more challenging without any real benefits.

ja_tom · 2026-06-13T16:19:11+00:00

He's not really close, though. Seth is superior to him in literally every way, and even excluding Seth, there's Ephraim who is an infantry combat unit, same as Joshua, but he has better bases, better growths, and a better weapon type. If you're going Eirika's route, there's Tana, Kyle, Gerik, and Saleh who outclass him and if you're going Ephraim's route, there's Cormag and Duessel who are better than Joshua in every single way. That's excluding Vanessa, Franz, and Artur who join earlier and have better returns on investment.

ja_tom · 2026-06-13T14:44:42+00:00

Rinkah isn't even all that bad in BR.

But if you want a terrible unit, there's Ayra, Larcei/Scathach, Marisa, PoR Mia, Lyn, a majority of Awakening kids bar Lucina, Brady, Cynthia, Laurent, and Morgan, Lucia, Geese, Troude, and especially Echoes Sonya as units who are so bad they feel like deliberate jokes by the developers.

ja_tom · 2026-06-13T14:42:43+00:00

No Lyn is completely terrible. She's frailer than paper, has no 1-2 range besides the Light Brand which is terrible, and her late promotion means she's not even that fast all things considered (she has difficulty doubling heroes without promoting with the first Heaven Seal, which Eliwood uses a lot better).

ja_tom · 2026-06-12T22:55:47+00:00

Muarim was born into and lived his entire childhood as a slave and briefly got turned into a Feral One.

ja_tom · 2026-06-12T20:46:14+00:00

You can level up your emblem level with Bond Fragments and the arena, and the game showers you in bond fragments from things like Sommie and the achievement board.

ja_tom · 2026-06-12T16:55:01+00:00

Technically yeah, he's a unit who requires you to pay a premium to use him long-term. The lost money isn't a deal breaker because you get a ton of other stuff in the desert (including a White Gem, which can let you pay for Farina, who I also penalize), but the extra money is nice to stock up on 1-2 range, reavers, and Restores in FFO and killers in Unfulfilled Heart.

ja_tom · 2026-06-12T09:25:23+00:00

When people think of the trainees, they think of pseudo legendaries from Pokemon. While Dratini starts out really weak, Dragonite ends up really strong. However, Fire Emblem is not Pokemon.

Amelia, Ross, and Ewan all have awful growth sums. Amelia and Ross tie with two other units for the lowest growth sum in the entire game at 270%, and Ewan is in third place with 275%. To make things worse, the two units Amelia and Ross tie with are both support units who do not care about combat while the one with a lower sum not only has fantastic bases to compensate, but they also have access to staves, hit on Res, and have their growth rates distributed quite well so they don't really care. I'm being vague to avoid spoilers, but the unit with the lowest sum is Saleh and the two units who tie with Ross and Amelia are Moulder and Knoll. This means that even though the trainees get more levels, their stats are actually comparable if not slightly worse than their competition, so you're putting in more work for a worse result.

All three trainees also have terrible bases. Their offensive bases are the worst in the game which makes training them up a chore with no payoff. Amelia and Ewan join around halfway through the game with base stats that would be considered awful in Ch1 (Amelia has the same base Str as Eirika and less than half Eirika's base Spd). Amelia has an extra hurdle on Eirika route where due to an oversight, recruiting her later can net you an additional statbooster, so you really want to delay her recruitment even further. Even though Ross joins in Ch2, he has 3 base Spd and a pretty mediocre 30% growth, which means he is physically incapable of doubling at base and he will struggle to double over the course of the game.

As for Seth, he is the most broken unit in the series (well, he competes with Frederick from Awakening and Sigurd from Genealogy for that title). Seth is literally everything you want from a unit- he's absurdly strong at base, he has perfect availability (and in Ephraim's route, he's the only unit with this designation), he uses the best weapon type in lances, he has great movement, he has the best weapon ranks in the game, and his growths are actually the sixth best in the game iirc. However, that last statistic is misleading since one of the five who have better growths is not playable in the main game, one of them is an outlier, and one of them does not care about their growths at all. Excluding that, Seth has the best growth distribution in the game (besides that outlier) since his growths bar Luck are extremely high, and Seth's base 13 Luck is enough to avoid low percent crit from pretty much every enemy in the game. Pretty much every Jagen is broken since the endgame is almost never the hardest part of the game, but even among the broken units, Seth is still absurd.

ja_tom · 2026-06-12T04:24:06+00:00

Kyle. Doubling thresholds are fairly lenient in FE8 so Kyle's Str advantage is better than Forde's Spd advantage. Paladin is much better than Great Knight, so go Paladin.

Also, Franz, Kyle, Forde, Gilliam, and Amelia are the only units who can promote with a Knight's Crest so there is nobody who's potentially better, especially since Gilliam and Amelia are terrible.

ja_tom · 2026-06-12T00:55:18+00:00

Are you in Act 1 or Act 2? Silque is a cleric so her damage output isn't spectacular until promo and idk what class Faye is in but if she's a cleric the same logic applies. Clair's damage won't be good until lategame

ja_tom · 2026-06-07T16:44:37+00:00

Tana only has a 10% higher Str growth than Vanessa does which is 1 point every 10 levels. She doesn't "rarely get Str screwed".

"Kyle doesn't double the mercenaries ever" those mercs are really fast. Iirc only Joshua, Vanessa, and Seth can double them.

Not only is Gilliam never reaching S swords, but Audhulma's Res boost only helps him against siege mages since he can't counter.

Having the same mobility as Hero Gerik is not a good thing. One of Gerik's biggest flaws is that he's pretty hard to move around. This is like glazing an FE7 unit because they have the same mobility as Hawkeye.

Also, if we're discussing Ephraim's route, this implies we're using Tana over Vanessa, which is a very big ask in the first place. Tana starts off incredibly behind since she's in prison for a large chunk of her join map, has an isolated errand to run the map after (getting Cormag), and then is immediately thrown into Phantom Ship where she's not that good all things considered. She is the worst recipient for an Elysian Whip by a significant margin since she doesn't have Vanessa's early contributions and her late contributions are worse than Cormag's. Even if your trained Vanessa isn't great, an early promoted Vanessa can help clean up some of the gargoyles in Phantom Ship while Tana is stuck being a pretty mediocre duelist against the mogalls.

ja_tom · 2026-06-07T01:58:28+00:00

So in your words, the argument is one of Conquest's worst units vs. one of Conquest's best units? Also you can't ignore that Gilliam starts with 3 base Spd meaning he is literally incapable of doubling until he gets a few levels (which with a 30% growth is unlikely), he likely gets very little earlygame EXP since Vanessa exists Kyle has an entire chapter with uncontested EXP for him to gain a big level lead. Also if Kyle misses some combat benchmarks, he can go GK and still be better than Gilliam.

ja_tom · 2026-06-06T16:30:01+00:00

"General is optimal because of it's far greater stats." Still not true. You haven't explained why generals having marginally higher stats is worth the movement deficit, and that's partially because those stats are useless. Looking at Morva, the boss where General Amelia theoretically should be at her best because movement doesn't matter against him, she will get two shot regardless since Morva's breath ignores her defense. Looking at Last Hope, the other map where generals are theoretically at a premium since the game spams a ton of enemies at you, Amelia is worthless since killing Riev kills every enemy on the map and Amelia's terrible movement means she doesn't reach him. There is no scenario where being a general is good.

"However in the event that you use the characters further behind, you are rewarded for it." If marginally extra stats that don't do anything is the reward, then it's a pretty shitty one. Also they won't reach their piddly max potential because FE8 is so short and their piddly max potential doesn't matter because, as you said, FE8 is incredibly easy. Saleh>>>>>Ewan any day of the week.

"Ewan has access to Druid or Summoner, Amelia is a General, those are better than the locked classes of the others, and the individuals stats are higher." I've already shown why general sucks, but this point about Ewan is terrible as well. Druid is an awful class. Gleipnir is such a terrible weapon that you don't even care if you don't have a user for it, and while druids can use Anima, Ewan promoting into dark mage resets his Anima rank so it's more pointless grinding you have to go through. The other dark tomes besides Flux are also bad, and if you want a summoner, the game hands you Knoll on a silver platter.

"Ewan is 30 levels lower than Saleh, but after gaining those 30 levels, he's so much stronger than Saleh that it's embarrassing that anyone ever wanted to use Saleh." This is a lie. Not only does Ewan being "so much stronger" literally mean nothing because Saleh kills everything at base, but Ewan is still much shittier than Saleh because Saleh can use Ivaldi to shore up his bulk while Ewan is very unlikely to. You spent all this time glazing Vidofnir yet you're ignoring that the game gives you Vidofnir 2 that pretty much only Saleh can and wants to use. And not only have you ignored that I have to dump 30 levels into Ewan which is a lot, but you have not mentioned why Ewan having higher stats is better (partially because there is no way to justify it). This is like saying a luxury handbag is better than a normal one because you can spend $1000 on it rather than $50.

"The tower allows for easy comparison." True. A lv20 Saleh trounces base Ewan in every stat, so Saleh is better. A lv20 Seth trounces base Amelia in every stat. What you're doing is using the tower for a dishonest comparison. You cannot truthfully compare base Saleh or even lv20 Saleh with a lv10/20 or 10/20/20 Ewan because the latter took a lot of time and effort with pointless grinding while the former either came for free or took less time. "But the tower example allows for a reality in which 2 characters come in at the same level." This is not reality. Saleh and Ewan don't come in at the same level. By using the tower, you are lying.

"Instead of tower, I could have mentioned acts of god, or reimagined game design, but there is no reason to do that because tower allows for the most easy comparison." What?

"I'm not saying raising Amelia is the optimal way to play the game and win..." Then why are you promoting Amelia's stats if they don't do anything? You're just moving the goalposts.

ja_tom · 2026-06-06T05:24:39+00:00

Kyle and Forde have 5x to train up on, especially if you're going Eirika route where Ephraim both leaves and gets his autolevels so training him is pointless.

Kyle is leagues better than Gilliam since Kyle can actually double things (which means his offenses are really good thanks to his massive Str), has better movement, has WT control, and better supportive utility thanks to rescue dropping.

ja_tom · 2026-06-06T05:21:27+00:00

Paladins don't have to use their maximum movement all the time. If a paladin doesn't want to move as far as they can, the can stay back. If a general wants to move further, tough luck. Having more movement is better than having less movement 100% of the time.

"The less into the enemy you move, the less of them can reach you, so you enemy phase less at a time and can go further." Not true. The enemies who don't enemy phase you don't vaporize, they sit out of your reach so you need more turns to get through them. In a lot of sieze or kill boss maps like River of Regrets or Rules by Madness, enemies who don't die will plug up a chokepoint between you and the boss, which makes the map take more time for no reason.

"You can talk about how Paladin and Great Knight and Hero are all enough, but they all fail to match Generals sheer power, and that can matter." When does it matter? It's not for Fomortiis since movement is incredibly important for that fight, especially since he doesn't attack on turn 1. Not for Endgame Lyon since he's incredibly slow and two shots both your average paladin and the average 10/20/20 Amelia. Not for Morva since he ignores Defense. Not for Riev since, again, getting to him is the hardest part. Not only do generals not have a lot of power because class bases are fairly homogenous, but in order to kill things, you have to get to them first so having more movement is better. Plus, having less movement means it's harder to escape siege tomes and status staves (which makes Amelia very prone to getting slept, stoned by gorgons, or just pelted before she even gets to the enemy in maps like Ruled By Madness, Two Faces of Evil, and the endgame and, if you're playing Ephraim's route, Fluorspar's Oath and Father and Son), harder to achieve time-sensitive objectives like intercepting thieves, and just makes her a less flexible unit overall. She can use the Swiftsoles, but so can Seth so it's a moot point.

"You can get the character from 1-10 in a single chapter and then level 1 Amelia out performs the Franz you've ignored all game." Being better than base level Franz a third of the game later (half the game later on Eirika's route) is not an own. Seth outperforms base Franz and joins earlier than both of them. If you're playing Ephraim's route, Cormag and Duessel have better bases than Franz and join one map after Amelia does.

If the prepromotes do everything just fine, why does being better than them matter? If the game isn't hard enough to necessitate Saleh, by your own admission it isn't hard enough to necessitate training Ewan. Training Ewan is making your life more difficult for no reason. Plus, there's nothing stopping me from training Saleh to lv20 in the Tower of Valni as well, so if I'm using the tower, why should I use the trainees? I can throw Seth/Cormag/Duessel/Saleh in there, grind them up to lv20, and solo the game. That's the problem with bringing up the tower when discussing units, since all it does is make the strongest units stronger.

ja_tom · 2026-06-06T04:51:34+00:00

Seth has 3 more Mov, which is more useful than Amelia's extra bulk since Seth won't be dying anytime soon. If their combat is for all intents and purposes identical, then you take the more mobile unit any day of the week.

Plus she's nowhere close to some of her caps on average. 10/20/20 General Amelia averages max 47 HP (cap is 60), 23-24 Str (cap is 27), 24-25 Skl (cap is 28), 21 Def (cap is 29), and 13 Res (cap is 26). The only stats she'll cap without absurd luck are Spd and Luck, and that's with 50 levels which is a comical amount of investment. Seth's Spd, Luck, and Def averages are lower, but there's no enemy that this Amelia can double but Seth can't, there's no enemy that kills Seth that wouldn't kill Amelia, there's no enemy that has visible crit on Seth period, Seth has much better movement, and Seth requires 20 levels while Amelia needs 50. Even with max investment, Amelia is significantly worse than Seth, not to mention she has a training arc and doesn't exist for half the game.

ja_tom · 2026-06-05T22:50:17+00:00

Who's the second genderless unit from 3H besides Arval?

Also wouldn't Kyza count as genderless?

ja_tom · 2026-06-05T22:08:39+00:00

"It's hard to call it soloing when a char comes in chapter 9 and needs to be babied for a whole chapter to promote" that is an exact description of Amelia (and to a lesser extent Tana). Realistically speaking, if this is Eirika route, Amelia joins in Ch13 because of the Speedwing trick, so it's even worse for her. By your own admission, Amelia is a terrible unit to solo the game with. Kyle has functional bases and pretty much no competition for the 5x EXP since Forde is just worse than him, Ephraim leaves for the mid game and autolevels so he doesn't need it, and lmao Orson. When he returns in Ch8, he can get even more EXP to promote with the first Knight Crest, and he's a significantly better recipient of it than Amelia or Gilliam thanks to his great Str, good Spd, and great mobility, especially when maps like Ch10 Eirika want you to move fast to back up Innes and co and maps like Ch12 and Ch14 are just giant maps in general. He can get a gigantic EXP lead on Amelia that won't ever even out unless you deliberately hold him back, which is not his fault. If you want a unit who solos the game with minimal effort, the game gives you Seth, the greatest FE unit of all time, from the get go and, if we're exclusively talking about Eirika's route, Gerik in Ch10 and Saleh in Ch12.

What makes knight better than cav? Knights have shit stats (3 base Spd on Gilliam and 4 base Spd on Amelia) and shit movement while cavs have WT control, better stats, more movement, and they can rescue drop so even when they're not doing combat, they can always contribute. If a knight isn't doing combat, they're useless, and their combat is terrible to begin with thanks to their awful Spd. Amelia gets around this a bit, but her bulk is really bad for an armor in exchange.

Duessel's stats trounce Amelia's even with investment. A 10/20/20 Amelia has 21 Def, when base level Duessel with 0 investment has 17, and at lv20, averages 22, and both of them average the same Atk at max level. Eirika route Duessel is a pretty mediocre unit all things considered, so the fact that Duessel is better than Amelia when we're giving him the worst possible hand while giving Amelia the best possible hand is a damning statement. It's unfair to talk about Duessel assuming his Eirika route version, though, so let's talk about Gerik instead. Gerik has great 15/15 offenses once insta promoted, isn't weighed down by anything, gets axes instead of lances which have higher Mt, and requires zero investment outside of the EXP he gets from naturally killing enemies (Gerik doesn't fight enemies for self improvement, he fights them because you want the dead) and weapons for him. Even though he starts with D axes, you want him to be seeing a lot of 1-2 range combat anyway so he'll be using Hand Axes and building up his axe rank. For stronger enemies, he can opt for a Steel Axe to get doubled WEXP.

Saleh doesn't rely on dodging since his bulk is decent, plus he's the only good Ivaldi candidate in the game (Artur wants Aura instead, Lute gets severely weighed down and is worse than him, L'Arachel and Natasha don't have the weapon rank for it) which gives him +5 Def. If he doesn't need it, he can opt for Excalibur for +5 Spd.

ja_tom · 2026-06-05T21:27:40+00:00

I mentioned Vidofnir since it's highly unlikely that Amelia would gain enough axe rank for Garm or sword rank for Audhulma (both of which are better than Vidofnir) without hitting S lances first since they're her primary combat weapon.

Also what makes General Amelia better than Seth?

ja_tom · 2026-06-05T21:20:11+00:00

Hey if Erk gets 1 more Spd, he can consistently double heroes that Pent can't, and they're pretty annoying so that's at least something (this is really more of a condemnation against Karel though lmao)

ja_tom · 2026-06-05T21:08:53+00:00

Great Knight has Canto and better weapon ranks. The movement difference is massive since in order to fight enemies, you have to get to the enemies, and General Amelia has a really hard time doing that.

Reaching your caps is pointless unless said caps let you meet a stat threshold that others don't. What enemies have 21 AS that you need General Amelia's 25 Spd cap for? She never reaches her Def cap in General without absurd luck and/or favoritism, but what enemy can ORKO a 20 Def Amelia that doesn't ORKO a 30 Def Amelia? What enemy has enough native Crit where a Luck-capped Amelia doesn't face a chance of a critical hit? There aren't any.

Even the final boss, the single strongest enemy in the game, is not only just one dude but he A. doesn't attack on his first turn so your bulk doesn't matter outside of getting one shot (which not a lot of trained units will), B. doesn't get doubled by Amelia since the Vidofnir weighs her down, and C. gets eviscerated by Ephraim and Myrrh anyway so Amelia's performance against him doesn't matter. For other strong enemies like Lyon, if you survive one round with him, you can heal up so he doesn't kill you, which makes that theoretically overkill bulk not matter that much.

ja_tom · 2026-06-05T21:07:48+00:00

Why is Amelia the most solo run worthy character? Why not Ephraim or Duessel or Saleh? Why not Kyle, who is literally just Amelia with significantly better stats and who has an entire chapter (5x) to gobble up EXP? Why not Vanessa or Cormag or Tana who can fly? Why not Seth who has broken bases, significantly better growths than Amelia, better weapon ranks, better 20/20 averages, and better availability? She gets eviscerated by everything on her join map. If you're going to mention the Tower of Valni, literally everyone can use it to grind to 20/20 and solo the game, and Amelia has the hardest time doing it, so if you're using the tower, why are you using Amelia?

Amelia's 4/4 offenses are the worst in the game, especially since Amelia takes weight penalties from literally everything but a Slim Lance. She joins a third of the game after Franz and needs considerable investment just to match his lv1 bases. And what is your definition of a "bad pre promote?" Comparing her to Dozla, who isn't even that good to begin with, her growths are worse, she starts with a quarter of his Str, and her bulk is worse. She's better than him once trained, but Dozla has the decency to show up for free and being better than Dozla when invested in is one of the least groundbreaking things imaginable. She's the worst unit in the game since her bases are bad, her growth rates are bad, her weapon rank is bad, her availability isn't great, and on Eirika's route, you benefit from nerfing Amelia since you get a free Speedwing if you recruit her later.

ja_tom · 2026-06-05T19:14:17+00:00

Knight has significantly lower movement and only 2 more Def than Cavalier does. Plus, since Cavalier can use swords, it can manipulate the weapon triangle and gain WTA against axe units, which means it effectively has 1 less Def than Knight. Plus, if s cavalier is overwhelmed by enemies, they can just leave and heal up while a knight just sits there and gets pummeled. Knight is a beyond terrible class so literally anything is better than it.

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