Fire Emblem

I mean it depends on how much weight we put behind the Reddit tier list. It’s not the be-all end all of opinions or ratings in the game, so I’d say both is a perfectly good category to put him in. There still exist plenty of people who would argue that Sothe isn’t one of the best units in RD.

The fact that opinions and ratings are varied is why he belongs in the “both” category. Otherwise you’re ignoring one large segment of players in favor of the group you happen to agree with more.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Jun 19th 2020 at 1:21:05 AM

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

So Vanessa is joining Eirika's run.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

In most games in the series, a character can still be useful as long as they have enough time to grow. This is why most of the time, characters who start out early tend to be high on tier lists, with some early game characters falling only because of their lackluster growths.

With Sacred Stones, since you can grind at times, most characters I would say aren't bad.

That being said, I found this tier list made by votes on the FE subreddit, which lists Neimi, L'Arachel, Marisa, Ewan, and Amelia as the worst tier and Seth, Vanessa, Franz, Arthur, and Cormag as the best tier.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

How about a Serene Forest rating?

Grinding is usually not factored in when tiering characters.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Jun 19th 2020 at 1:23:04 AM

Where there's life, there's hope.

I used L'arachel and Amelia for my endgame team.

Was i doing something wrong?

Edited by RedHunter543 on Jun 19th 2020 at 1:21:52 AM

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

No, not really. You just spend a lot of time on the tower instead of the main chapters.

Where there's life, there's hope.

You don't even need Valni for the weaker characters (well, maybe Amelia unless you're really good). It's just a lot harder to train them up to something reasonable while also maintaining an efficient pace. L'arachel especially is a pain because she joins so underleveled and so late in an already short game.

Your preferences are not everyone else's preferences.

Look her Heroes portrayal made me want to build her, and hey, grinding on the towers did give the game more shelf life.

Speaking off, i really REALLY hated the phantom ship level.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

Heroes put her in the General Amelia class, which is quite a meme build because it is both hilarious and terrible.

Where there's life, there's hope.

Exactly.

Well i was also referring to L'Arachel. But really Heroes did a lot of good for the Sacred Stone cast.

Except Selena. There is no salvaging her arc.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

Except Seth, ironically. The best character in his game gets turned into a mediocre sword cavalry.

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

He got a couple of good lines against Veronica in the paralogue so he has that.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

Back to Sothe

Most if not all tier lists are only applicable for high-level plays, in this case high difficulty and low-ish turn counts. Even Smash tier lists are worthless when you have casual players with items on duking out.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Jun 19th 2020 at 1:44:04 AM

Where there's life, there's hope.

I’m stressing that Reddit and Serenes are not the be-all end-all of the playerbase’s opinions. If people exist that rate Sothe low due to his crappy mid-lategame performance and people exist that rate him high because he’s a Crutch Character early, then both opinions need to be documented if we are depicting it neutrally. Hence both category.

“Everyone loves Sothe and considers him one of the best characters in RD” isn’t a neutral or honest depiction of the gamut of opinions on him.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Jun 19th 2020 at 1:53:00 AM

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

I'm having a hard time finding a post 2015 tier list where Sothe isn't high tiered, though.

Where there's life, there's hope.

I will say that most tier lists I see mention something to the effect of "He's high tier but drops off later and isn't good later" or something to that effect.

Its a weird way to rank a unit where you say top tier for one specific section of the game and then just give a passing "Oh well later on he isn't", so thats why I don't fully put stock into groups like the FE Reddit besides using it for some very rough gauge of info. Its a weird Selective Obliviousness.

Edited by keyblade333 on Jun 19th 2020 at 1:56:21 AM

Muramasa got.

Being good in a hard chapter is better than being good in an easy chapter. The only chapters Sothe is bad in are the easiest chapters in the game and the chapters he is good in are the hardest chapters in the game. Furthermore, the total chapters that Sothe are good in are higher than the total chapters that most other characters are good in.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Jun 19th 2020 at 1:59:36 AM

Where there's life, there's hope.

Granted certain opinions are so heavily concentrated on certain sites that it’s pointless to try to argue against them in tiering discussions, and so only people that agree with the grain tend to speak up.

I know Reddit for example is heavy optimization/LTC to the point where using other measures to argue a unit’s viability or strength, or conversely why one thinks a unit isn’t good or as good as is rated, aren’t seen as legitimate or are ignored.

EDIT: I mean, Sothe falls off as early as Part 3 DB chapters, not just P4.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Jun 19th 2020 at 2:02:48 AM

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

Not directly, but pushing someone to do one or the other will usually result in a greater appreciation for the better investments in casual play.

Barring grinding, at lower difficulties, sure. Pushing the game to its limits, the lower-tier units start to be really awful in terms of what it takes to get them going versus their pay-out. For example, people can get away with throwing Donnel around willy-nilly on Normal or Hard, but he's little more than an awful liability in Lunatic+.

Yeah, he, unfortunately, released at a time when IS was still giving out mediocre kits to a lot of units. He really needed a set and refine that allowed him to take advantage of the ability to throw out big Ignis procs. Instead, we got a really wishy-washy gem-weapon, half-support unit.

FE: New Mystery Fresh Cart Lunatic 7PM PT Sun, Mon, Fri; Expert Unicorn Overlord 7PM PT Wed, Thurs: http://www.twitch.tv/kuroitsubasatenshi

If Sothe is "both" for his bad endgame performance, then why aren't people like Old Marcus, Arran, and Minerva there? Hell, even Young Marcus, whose endgame performance is better than Hector, is in the "both" section.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Jun 19th 2020 at 2:16:30 AM

Where there's life, there's hope.

I'm iffy on Tier Induced Scrappy, which is why I think Base-Breaking Character fit better with the issue.

Muramasa got.

There’s way less discussion of FE6 and the Archanea games in general here, due to the fact that either a much smaller segment of the fandom has played or is interested in those games comparatively speaking. So you don’t have nearly as many editors or people interested in tiering or discussing tiering of those games.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Jun 19th 2020 at 2:24:11 AM

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

Except the low tier entries are pretty elaborate.

Where there's life, there's hope.

Arguing about this is getting a little tiresome imo, but I think the meat of the issue is that if there’s a divided opinion on the character’s viability for varied reasons, it belongs in both, regardless of what just Reddit or Serenes alone thinks.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Jun 19th 2020 at 2:28:06 AM

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

I'm pretty sure that I can dig up recent arguments that Amelia is good somewhere in the internet. I can even find people who think dancers are bad.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Jun 19th 2020 at 2:32:32 AM

Where there's life, there's hope.