"why 's this character missing" "why's this unit in x tier?" this is a video, not an image with a comment section. turn your volume slider up and press the play button. or use the timestamps to get to the relevant character.

Robin after wiping out an entire army while protecting his cheerleader Chrom. “now that’s strategy”

Character analysis timestamps: Intro 0:00 Robin 4:00 Frederick 13:00 Sumia 16:39 Chrom 23:40 Anna 28:43 Cordelia 33:20 Panne 39:33 Cherche 46:53 Lucina 53:44 Vaike 59:10 I hope this helps and that you have a great day!^^

A cool thing you can do with Sumia is to use her mainly with Fred before the timeskip, giving him speed support and poaching kills for herself when possible, but also make sure to get some support with Chrom. That way she can spend most of her time early on with her best partner, but she can also benefit from the automatic marriage after chapter 11. I can only really speak about Lunatic and Lunatic+, but I know on those difficulties she is *very* helpful for reaching doubling thresholds early on. Those thresholds are pretty static for a long time, hovering around 16 Spd for most of the early game.

I really liked this, I look forward to the next installment! I'm also interested to hear Casey's takes on my personal favorite units. c:

Thanks for having me on, Mekkah! I had a lot of fun doing this!

My honest opinion is that the child units should be on a separate tier list. They be good regardless of who their parents are.

Very fun list to listen to! I was curious where tharja and Olivia are?

I finally can count myself among the group of people who defeated Lunatic+. A flyer just for the movement with Olivia on their back for Dance. A second 8 move character to move Maribell/Sage for Rescue. Maxed out Morgan Bow Knight with a +5 attack forged Brave Bow with Great Knight Chrom with his Exalted Falchion paired up. Maxed Robin/Barbarian with S tier affection Cordelia/Sorcerer.

I'm going to offer an alternative perspective on some of awakening's units, as I believe that more of a case could be made for some units moving around in this list. It definitely feels a bit strange pitting my arguments against a player who is as unbeliveably good at the game as Casey is, but I'm going to make them all the same because I believe in them. That being said, there were a lot of times during the video that I felt that the ratings were absolutely bang on and so many points were mentioned that aren't as commonly brought up but are absolutely correct. My criticism comes from a place of genuine interest, and I mean no disrespect to either of you. I'm not going to pick apart every little thing in the video because I've done that before and it was more antagonistic and less helpful/productive, so I'm just going to touch on a few key things: Dark Flier: I'm really not buying the hype on this class. Let's take galeforce out of the equation for a second and look at what Dark Flier actually does. 8 mov, magic, flying sounds really OP. But that doesn't mean that it is. Firstly, flying combat units are at a disadvantage in awakening compared to other games. The large enemy phases and dense enemy formations lead to it being much harder to isolate and kill archers and win mages, meaning that your combat unit usually has to eat their damage. Fliers can't do this, and it does make them bulk decrease significantly. They also won't be able to gain terrain bonuses, which isn't a super big deal, but is annoying on certain maps. Similarly magic , isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's not a terrible weapon type, but a lot of people really do overrate it. This isn't GBA FE where enemies all have 1 million defence and 3 Res- it's actually pretty 50/50 on enemies having more Res or more Def. And while 1-2 range is great, many, many, many promoted classes have access to 1-2 range and their weapons are usually a tad stronger, as good tomes not only take longer to appear in the shops, but also if you're promoting from Pegasus, are going to take longer to learn how to use as well, being stuck in E rank with 1 might wind, 2 might fire and 3 might thunder. 8 Mov is good. I won't deny that. But that isn't enough to break a class on it's own and certainly isn't so when the class is a walking (or I suppose flying) contradiction. Let me put it this way: what would you want an 8 move flying unit to do for your army? If you said "be a utility ferry bot" or words to that effect, then congratulations, you know how to use your fire emblem units efficiently. But Dark Flier tries to be a combat unit anyway. My question is this: what is the point? Awakening is not a game that rewards generalist utility/combat split past the midgame (before midgame you can argue the converse is true), which is almost exactly when you're going to be getting the Dark Flier class. And yeah, you can cheese maps with Dark Flier on lunatic+. But you don't need to. You could also just train a unit in an actually good combat class and kill everything instead. I won't deny that it's certainly a lot easier to Dark Flier cheese certain maps, but I would argue that the cheese only has really insane value if the map is actually hard to complete otherwise with other units. Now let's put galeforce back in. Is this class good? Meh. Bear in mind that to get to level 15, you have to be actively entering lots of combat, which kind of goes against the strengths of the unit (great mobility and chip damage but poor bulk) purely to get a skill which isn't even that good in the first place. I know it's almost sacrilegious to say that about galeforce, but it really only matters on lunatic+ mode. Even then, it's not going to make a bad unit good and the lack of it isn't going to make a good unit become bad. There isn't a single map in the entire game post Gangrel that can be one turned by galeforce that can't also be one-turned by using rescue (a much lower investment option). And while it has certain combat niches, that still isn't going to make a unit with bad combat like Sumia have good combat all of a sudden. Speaking of which... Sumia: A lot of things were listed in her favour so I'll go through them and explain why I don't consider them to be great arguments. 1) Sumia can ferry Frederick through the desert which can make them great pairup partners. This sentence is half right. Sumia is great at ferrying Frederick through the desert. Luckily for her though, she can do that if she's level 1 and hasn't supported with Frederick for the entire game. When you consider that Sumia is only really going to spend maybe 4 turns ferrying him around deserts across the entire game, the pairup is not as big a deal as it is otherwise made out to be in this context. 2) Early game you don't have other fliers Sumia joins in chapter 3. Cordelia joins in Chapter 7. In Chapters 3,4 and 6 flying is literally useless as there is next to zero terrain for it to matter. Sumia has some uses in chapter 5 with the cliffs, and paralogue 2 with the lakes and trees. It's not as great a monopoly on utility as you might first think. No, Cordelia existing doesn't make Sumia's utility go down, but I also don't accept that her being an "early flier" makes her good unless you're also using that argument for Cordelia. 3) Frederick I actually agree with Casey that Chrom is not the best partner for Sumia. I would say that (discounting robin) Sully is best for Chrom and Sumia is best for being married to the bench. Jokes aside, I don't see how Frederick can be seen as a part of Sumia's viability. Yes, Sumia can help out Frederick, but as I stated before, that does not mean Frederick is legally obligated to help out Sumia when she needs it. In many cases, it can be more effective to just have Fred be a fast killing machine and not care whether or not Sumia is made stronger. And as before, there is basically no argument you can make for Sumia/Fred that you can't make for Cordelia/Fred, barring join time leading to slightly earlier support gain. However, Cordelia has the massive advantage of not being awful at combat at base. 4) Sumia has a good return on investment. She doesn't. Sumia doesn't have standout combat with investment and doesn't really have standout utility with a lot of investment either. I won't disagree that Falcon Sumia can be a decent return on investment, because you don't invest very much into her and she can become great for utility, but when Sumia is being actively given resources, there isn't a whole lot she can actually do with them compared to units with good combat stats and skills. Cordelia: The actual points being made are really good, but it's illegal to then place her below Sumia. She's an incredibly utility unit that takes a mere 3 levels to reach falcon knight, but then gets placed below the unit that takes 9 levels of more competitive exp with comparatively worse bases for their join time. Why? Why not use both? 2 falcon knights is good. 2 Dark Fliers is less so because its double the number of exp vacuums that don't lead to anything. Panne: 1) Wyvern Panne One thing I'm just going to leave on the table before I start is that Wyvern Panne loses 5 speed on her class change. I'll let that sink in for a second Anyway, is flight useful on Panne? Not really. It's as useful as flight is, that is to say, occasionally during the earlygame and much more for utility during the mid and late game. But that's my point. Flight is great for UTILITY in the mid and late game. But not so much combat, as I mentioned in the Dark Flier section. Wyvern Panne has even more weaknesses and is in some respects worse at combat than your average Dark Flier and lacks any kind of redeeming feature in the lategame. Put simply, Wyvern Panne's combat performance in the lategame is just bad. So whatever you do to her, her lategame is going to be exclusively determined by her utility. This is fine if she is low investment and has a great early game, but is the opposite of fine if she has a high investment earlygame and doesn't even spike that hard. Wyvern Panne has a high investment early game and doesn't spike that hard. Second seal+ 4 levels minimum to even get to wyvern in the first place, plus all the exp to keep her combat up, plus a way of working around units that can blast her out of the sky, plus a speed pairup to compensate for the lost speed... you get the point. Casey mentions growth differences but they also don't matter in this context. Small differences in growths don't fundamentally change how a unit works. Secondly, as even Casey admits themselves, Wyvern Panne falls off a cliff past the midgame. Who cares what their growths are? They aren't going to matter for more than a few maps anyway! Thirdly, the wind tomes weakness is absolutely Panne's fault. Yeah, it's my fault if I put her in range and she dies, but it's Panne's fault that I can't put her in range in the first place. And you know what the saddest part of all this is? Taguel is a fucking good class! Look at the glorious pairup bonuses it provides: +3Str/+4Spd. That's enough to break any melee unit. You think Sumias pure speed pairup is good? Panne literally has Sumias speed pairup but stacks it with strength at the exact same time. And on top of that, Panne still has very reasonable combat and 6 move in Taguel, making her completely fine when she has to enter combat anyway, especially since she has that massive speed to keep her avoid and doubling up.

25:57 that's a Fates moment for poor Frederick.

The background music choice is 1000/10

I read this title as no-stank Robin which is hilarious to me Good video too

Can anyone link me to the let's play in the vid? I saw robin's Notfred name in the let's play but I can only find noodle on mekkah's channel

Picked up my 3DS after years away, and started Awakening again! I ran Robin originally in dark mage, but the merc to hero route sounds interesting! What’s the best boon and bane for melee Robin?

he should be high as robin tier because if u think about it? fredrick and chorm are one of the few who can do lunatic+ and the paladin will carry u until like u can start dlc which is like chapter 4 I believe?

Awakening was the first Fire Emblem game that I played and I remember coming to the conclusion that soloing it would be the most optimal, but it didn't seem like the most fun way to play. I then played FE7 next and was shocked to hear someone on KZfaq say that Lyn was a bad unit. Oh how little did I know then.

"Sumia or Cordellia?" "Why not both?" Me: *_Always both!_*

It’s pretty easy to train Chrom in the first few chapters of lunatic mode. Lunatic plus is probably another story but I can’t agree for standard lunatic where I like to make Chrom one of my carries. I question the idea of making him a cav because that will just slow him down when he could just promote at 20, get huge promo bonuses from great lord andreach javelins from one map of focused bronze lance use or just use an arms scroll.

Is Tharja missing?

This was a surprisingly casual discussion for a tier list, which is honestly right up my alley. Casey being so up-front about their biases and what they personally like to do over what might overall be statistically the "best" for a Unit is so refreshing, and especially for Mekkah's channel is IMO a better fit than some of the more hyper-efficiency focused tier lists like the Echoes and dear god FE8 ones. There are some takes I don't entirely agree with (biggest disagreement for me is Cherche 'cuz while she does suffer from a speed issue, I find it's actually quite easy to fix, plus Deliverer is underrated), but overall it's quite a pleasant watch (or listen in my case since this is playing in the background while I work on my own SRPG).

I'm curious what the rationale was to review units based on Hard mode vs Lunatic mode, since Lunatic actually poses challenges?

Uh I don’t see Lon’qu on this list, if you don’t mind me asking, what would you place him, I would say B maybe a next to Vaike and Gregor, he has good stats and has helped me in a lot of runs

This is based on my sole hard mode run (and my only playthrough of awakening in general) so take this with a grain of salt, but i was definitely able to make Cherche work by pairing her with Virion. Cherche and Virion make a surprisingly good pair since Virion gives Cherche not only the speed needed to double, but also the skill needed to stand up to higher level sword users (your swordmasters, your heroes, etc.) and have decent hit rates. Also, since Cherche can fly, and Virion's only effective role is to hit flying targets, then (with enough support) Cherche and Virion just melted through almost flying unit that they happened to come across.

Tiering Awakening is such an interesting challenge in a game where pretty much any unit can work if given enough time, which I sort of love in a way, it's a fantastic sandbox. I've just started a Project Thabes+Gay Awakening, both of which basically laughs in the face of meta, so this released at just the right time! Looking forward to more videos from the both of you!

It's really odd how they are saying anathema, for the first like half of the video I didn't know what they were talking about. Anna -Theema. Once I figured out what they were saying it was okay to follow, just funny to hear.

Awakening my beloved? Today is a good day

47:49 I see what you did there.

Depending on which boon you give Robin, I always give Robin a Def boon instead of Speed and what happens is that Robin doesn't actually double later in the game. With decent Pair Up bonuses and some of the skills, especially Rally Spectrum, I find Robin to be a more suitable Support unit in the latter half of the game. This is all considering that I don't reclass with Second Seals, these are base classes and all for my playthroughs.

Robin is not only an S+ Tier unit, but also an S+ Tier wife This applies to both

uh-*NATH*-uh-muh 🙂

Sumia is by far my favorite unit, usually she ends up clearing maps by the mid game for me.

Sumia is good even with Chrom Pair Up. Her bulk is not the best but her Speed just makes her very dodgy, something that Cordelia has trouble in that department with despite having some bulk to her. Also to note, Cordelia is not good in her joining map, it's quite unfortunate.

For complete God Mode, you need male Robin to get Counter/Miracle for the meme Assassinate counter, along with Armstrift/Limit Break/Vantage with Aversa's Night for infinite absolute devestation ... Celica's Gale to 100% confirm kill the big enemies. Literally, the only weak point in this build that can bring down this monster is another person with Counter on Enemy phase, which is easily dealt with if you pay attention.

I wish Awakening used the Fates model letting kids accumulate higher stats if their parents marry later with higher stats. I forget if you ever did a Thracia 776 tier list. Some of my friends give Machyua, Brighton, and some others higher ranks due to availability. I personally use Nanna and Mareeta a lot.

20:05 I was so said when it was about spd not skill 😢

If you wanted to use Chrom reliably with his Falchion against breaker units you absolutely would have to go Archer then Sniper for the massive hit bonus ability. Counter/Aegis is the most dangerous combination on an enemy for me personally. Either Javelin or Handaxe is the solution though this game on Lunatic does not always allow for the optimal solution requiring the least optimal strategy to be viable for a reliable win at times. I am surprised the +gold bullion ability on one of your characters was not brought up. It is literally required to reliably keep enough gold to keep your team properly equipped in Lunatic. Robin solo for Lunatic is something which does not exist. Too many runs in Lunatic I got to the final boss with something like a strong Robin, Chrom, Lon'qu or other character and could not close the game out. It definitely is required for your personal sanity to just group Chrom/Robin together to keep both of the units which end the level together.

im sorry, do people usually play fe games with only 4-5 combat units??? ive played a lot of fe and i always use all my deployment slots fairly equally lol

Awakening was the reason I got into fire emblem not my first but seeing some of it and hearing about it made me try out a rom of fe7 so it has a special spot in my heart but how dare u put donnel in F he needs his own teir above robin the donnel teir

Funny enough I’m playing the game for the first time on lunatic and I do need help on chapter 5

I've spent too much time on the funk and jazz parts of KZfaq... was wondering why Robin has no stank 😳

Vaike deserves to be higher IMO, especially when compared to Panne. He’s nearly as fast as Robin when it comes to turning into the win button, and I don’t think flight is a desirable trait to have for a combat unit at all (not to say flight is bad, but you don’t really want your units with good stats to be flyers). Putting him below Sumia Cordelia and Panne is overrating flight compared to more desirable traits

Why isn't stahl on this tier list

I honestly think in my opinion Cordelia is a better Sumia. Though i feel like they both are better in earlier chapters and tend to fall off. I think strength is more important to have as pegasus knights will always have good speed. Magic will tend to always be meh on Sumia since its not her base stat line but will be better than Cordelias, but majorly the thing you want dark flier for is galeforce, which is good but is a lot of investment and something you dont exactly need. I think Javelins are good enough on their own and fuck up the enemy quite a lot. I also really like Miriel. I think she saved me a lot in my runs. Paired with robin and her magic being so high she becomes less of a combat unit and more utility to being able to rescue from so far away. This helped so much in the Mila Tree map. I also notice she crited quite often. Not sure if anyone had the same experience as me but thats how it went.

Honestly whenever I play Awakening Hard mode I choose to not use Pair up since it makes it at least a little more challenging so how I would rate certain units would be different since they never get the Pair up bonuses.

Did you miss Olivia and Inigo?

Where's Nowi?

I will say this - Panne needs to be higher. Wyvern access is so huge in Awakening (double breaker quick burn deliverer) that not having it or pegasus knight are actively worse than any other class. Combine that with how much easier Axe ORKO thresholds are compared to magic ORKO thresholds, Panne's naturally high stats, her good bases, and how good of a mother Panne is for Morgan F, and the reason she's the only non-Fred non-Robin unit in S on my tier list becomes apparent. NOTE: You should remember that I look at this game from the perspective of a draft racer, someone who tries to beat every map quickly and efficiently without the main character. Panne has the fastest times, over units with galeforce and other wyverns, with no Chrom support (who she will be paired up with) due to her high Str, Spd, and amazing class sets/availability. EDIT: Damn, no Wyvern Robin love? Wyvern Robin's so good due to axes being good and the wyvern family skills being good.

Looks like teach just got tenure

Is Sumia really deserving of being in the same tier as Chrom, Anna and Cordelia? Her bases are really bad: Units up to chapter 3 with higher base HP than Sumia (18) Chrom(20), Frederick (28), Sully (20), Stahl(22), Vaike (29), Kellam (21), Robin(19) Higher Str than Sumia (6) Chrom(7), Frederick(13), Sully(7), Stahl(8), Vaike (9), Kellam (10) Higher Def than Sumia (5) Robin(6), Chrom(7), Frederick(14), Sully(7), Virion(6), Stahl (8), Kellam(14) And while flight utility is good I wouldn't say it's that amazing in Awakening, especially considering that reclassing is so easy. She needs a Frederick pair up to do anything meaningful in chapter 3 as her other pair-ups are generally more independent. Chrom, Vaike and Fred are all solid combat units and can grow more easily than Sumia. Sully doesn't give her an S support,so only Kellam is a really good pair up partner that doesn't have to be held back to give her usable combat. She is also probably never going to get to galeforce and there are a lot of ways to give characters more speed. Maybe I'm missing some valuable hard or lunatic strats she's really useful in, but she generally seems worse than the units in the same tier as her.

some of these comments pain me

Kneejerk reaction is Panne should definitely be S tier Wyvern Panne is nuts

Vaike S+ 🗿

I know nothing about this game. I'm watching this video to know who to use and who not to.

Sumia A tier is too high. Needing more investment than other characters to be on par with them makes a unit worse, and needing more investment than other characters to be better than them means they're just average. Everyone gives high returns with favoritism.

No stank you say

I saw Donnel at the bottom and didn't watch the video.

Second

Sumia is good, but she's slightly overrated relative to Cordelia. Still definitely a great unit, but I'd put her at the bottom of the 'good unit' tier along with Panne, rather than at the top of it. On Hard, the gap between 'gets 2HKOed by everything' (which she does) and 'gets 3HKOed by everything' (which other squishy units do) is much larger, whereas her fragility is less critical on Lunatic because she isn't meaningfully easier to kill than other units, since everyone dies in one round of combat against typical enemies. A typical combat unit on Hard is going to hit a point where they become durable and powerful enough to only need minimal assistance, even if they aren't 100% self-sufficient like Lucina or Robin typically will be. Sumia's bulk and bulk growths are so miserably bad that she will never hit that point, even with a defensive pair-up like Frederick. What she does offer is an absolute truckload of speed to a support partner later on, but her limited support pool means that the people that want that the most (Vaike, Gregor and Stahl) don't get it, and the units she does offer it to either don't need it (Chrom and Robin) or are becoming a pair up bot by that point themselves (Frederick). She's good with Henry, but he shows up late and needs more help even beyond a speed support. She has a ton of utility from being an early flier, and she'd be at the top of the 'okay unit' pack purely for being able to put Chrom or Frederick on a fort in chapter 5 on turn 1, but I think her combat particularly is being sold as way better than it actually is.

Also guys, you forgot Stahl and Kellam. In fact, there A LOT of missing characters.

Donny if F tier da fuck ?

First

What the heck, donnel f tier and the kids in C. This tier list SUCKS!!!!

Sumia is one of the most disgustingly overrated units ever put in a FE

Wehr is Olivia and her son ,this tier list is pretty bad

Awakenings one of the only games that I never really see people do unit analysis for so this is nice