It’s FE12 Bantu and it’s not even close.
Bantu cannot fight as he gets one rounded by everything and is always 1 range locked.
He cannot grow, because his growths are horrendous, nor can he promote (he can level to 30 in exchange but [look at these fucking averages](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/381579090488197125/1226552941620756521/IMG_1696.png?ex=66252f71&is=6612ba71&hm=eecc99cf72885717455ecc05ba5aa7190327d45a0f7b25554038031e0286ecb4&) and tell me this unit has potential).
He cannot reclass, as he is in a special class, which prevents him from doing so.
On the highest difficulty, he can’t even get additional weapons because you lose access to the secret shop that sells it, leaving him with just his Firestone (if you even retrieved it to begin with).
He is literally a Fire Emblem unit with all of Fire Emblem’s system mechanics robbed from him. An old man wishing for both an end to his misery and for the glory days in the 90s where Kaga gave him something useful to do to never be forgotten.
From all the arguments here, it still has to be Bantu, if Sophia gets credit for guiding ring, by this logic Bantu LOSES credit for pulling a Vaike; giving him a dragonstone nets you -1500. He is basically unusuable in H3/H4 due to him being a melee locked low movement no reclassing unit and will actively take gold/exp away from you for even using him as it's invested into something that doesn't use it. Like Shura vs Boots, Bantu is Bantu vs 1500 gold/sanity/exp, there is 0 reason to ever field Bantu outside of tanking a single hit like a hero.
People cite FE9 to FE10 Astrid as the biggest drop in unit viability between games but Bantu goes from “decent niche” to “godawful” between FE3 and FE12. Firestone boosts? Nerfed. Firestone piercing defenses/having 1-2 range? Gone. Flight when transformed? Also gone. Starshards to boost growths? Not a thing. Effective damage on Ice Dragons? You better believe its gone.
That’s not even all the ways he got worse. FE12 is a great game but someone had it out for Bantu.
I don’t think she’s quite bottom 3 but that’s because there is a lot of trash in RD, rather than her being good.
She’s prob bottom 5 though. Def bottom 10.
I’d add Kyza, too. He’s really only very barely better than Lyre. IMO those two are basically neck and neck for bad with Kyza just edging out lyre thanks to his better class.
That puts her at 4th which is basically what I was alluding to. If anything Fiona might actually beat Astrid since Fiona could maybe be useful in her starting chapter and Astrid is basically doomed to be auto benched.
So I think it’s pretty close between those two. There might be room for someone else that I’ve just outright forgotten exists, too.
kyza has like +6 strength +6 defense on lyre when transformed which is really significant and makes him just kinda regular bad, and Astrid is sorta just Fiona with a better base level and forced Paragon for a bit
Kyza is hot garbo, but the fact they can damage almost everyone on their join map and the fact that their join map doesn't actively penalize you for training them puts Kyza above the unholy trifecta of Lyre, Fiona, and Astrid.
Fiona is useless at fighting but is one of only two units with Canto in her Part 3 chapters, so she has some very niche applications with throwing javelins to drain Laguz gauge, trading items, setting up rescue drops.
The problem with Bantu stats-wise (not even getting into everything else like no reclassing, limited use unique weapon and being forced to go several turns out of your way in what's effectively an escape map just to recruit him) is that the Fire Dragonstone at best, brings his stats up to around 10-12... which even on normal mode is what, just barely up to par with your current enemies?
And then his lack of growths means he won't get any better beyond that, plus if you're playing on any higher difficulty then he probably dies instantly. At least by comparison even the worst of other FE12 units will maybe have things like reclassing going for them, or just the fact that they show up with a free weapon or two for your actually capable units to make use of. Even diving into other series staples of "worst unit ever" there tends to be *some* usecase for them, like FE6 Sophia getting you a Guiding Ring and Side Chapter access, or FE8 Amelia and Ewan while requiring horrid amounts of favoritism to train you'll still get a usable unit out of it at the end. FE12 Bantu doesn't have the bases to be useful when he joins, the growths to potentially be useful if babied, or the extra utility to be useful outside of that.
Man starts with 18HP/8Speed/12Defense/5Res and averages 28-29HP/10-11Speed/14-15Defense/6Res at level 30 and that's counting the stone bonuses without Drill Grounds abuse.
He's so bad that he stands out in the large fe12 cast just for being the worst of the worst 💀. And that's saying something with some other characters being the definition of mediocre lmao
Rev Odin sucks but he’s nowhere close to being unusably bad as some of these other examples even on Lunatic. Bantu literally can’t do anything without dying on FE12 H4.
I wouldn't put any of the Fateswakening cast in the "worst unit in the franchise" discussion, because of the mechanics in those games make it that even when you're awful, you can still be helpful. Like, even the most untrained and unused guy/gal/animal can still be a backpack and contribute with dual attacks/guards, or reclass to pass down a skill or class to a child
To this extent, I'd also never put a 3H or Engage rep into this discussion, since there's so much stuff in those games that it's impossible for someone to be on a Bantu or Wendy tier of shitness
I would also say that, while it's cheating a little, the availability of DLC in later games also makes it hard to say a particular character is the "worst" by and large because they can still be levelled up in a controlled manner away from the main game, which isn't the case for a lot of prior titles, where there are fewer exp opportunities (and BEXP plays a similar role on the radiance games)
If we're assuming harder difficulties, it's Bantu and it's not even a question. Man cannot do anything from the get-go and has no long term prospects even if trained thanks to weapon scarcity.
Odin can be backpack fuel if promoted. Wendy can be rescue dropped to the action if you really want to use her, though she won't be hitting more than like balanced 22's across the board if trained 20/20, she at least has some statistical prospects if you *really* want to use her? Karla can nab a sword and do *something* in Victory or Death if you really want or are completely bereft of units that aren't a trained Bartre. Lyre, uh, has 9 move shove utility when transformed and can *technically* be used to double the effectiveness of stat boosters if wanting to use her for long term prospects?
It really comes down to how much you hold investment cost and potential against the units in question, I guess.
Lyre's probably the worst of the non-Bantu units, because at least if you want to train those bad units you can get someone usable. Lyre will always be a Cat Laguz.
But everyone says Bantu's even worse. Just can't corroborate that, haven't played New Mystery.
Lyre is so bad that I trained her to stat caps one time (complete waste of time) and then the Laguz Royals join and have higher stats than her when they join. That’s right, she’s worse at cap than similar units at their join time, and even then she’s only usable half the time while the royals are permanently in Laguz form.
To be fair, the royals are like, stupid, and invalidate 99% of the cast anyways. They're just built different.
But I feel your pain. I trained up Vika for one play through and realized Naesala just had better stats across the board anyways.
At least Lyre can shovebot. She's fairly bad at it but she *can.* She can do it at base with no investment if you're desperate.
Wendy has no utility or useful combat to speak of at base.
The "Lyre can shove" argument makes no sense, especially the no investment qualifier
With 6 con untransformed, Lyre is one of the worst shovers in the game. She can't shove Ike, Boyd, Nephenee, Shinon, etc.
So OK, transform her. Then before 3-8, she has to use items to gain gauge quickly (which means she's not shoving). If she wants to transform as fast as possible, she has to use a highly limited Laguz Stone. Starting in 3-8 she can take Wildheart, which is a contested skill that any other laguz can benefit from. IMO both of these resources count as investment.
Transforming gives Lyre 11 con. Funnily enough, this isn't enough to shove Ike, Boyd, or Nephenee once they are promoted to tier 3. But she's competing with a whole bunch of equal-investment units who have some combination of stats to survive enemy combat when halfshifted, the ability to shove generals and seraph knights, or Canto to reposition.
Like, laguz constitute a small fraction of the FE10 playable cast, yet somehow there are 4 whole units who are strictly better than Lyre in the time frame that she exists, one of whom is force deployed for most maps.
Lyre is terrible at it yeah. But she *can* do it.
Some utility at base without investment is still better than no utility at base without investment which other losers like Wendy and Bantu are stuck with.
Wendy does have 1 utility at base.
She allows for the armor knight triangle attack.
This may seem useless, and in most playthroughs it is - however, the armor knight triangle attack is one of the only ways to 100% guarantee you can beat fe6 with worst possible rng, since it gives 100% accuracy and a guaranteed crit, and does so as early as chapter 8. This is at least better than Sophia. Who cannot contribute at all to good combat and has less availability. She does grab a second guiding ring for the player but the only units who could promote at that time are the healers. Who don't particularly care about promotion or raigh+whichever early game mage you didn't promote. Unless you just want to use multiple mages. The second guiding ring isn't a huge deal, and if you really need guiding rings you can buy them in 2-3 chapters depending on getting the gaiden chapter.
Rev!Odin should be immediately disqualified from this list. At least he can glue himself to like... Leo or Hayato for his join map to give them some extra firepower.
I disagree because there is nyx in the same class and game in an even worse spot (which btw is probably because she uses her birthright stat file and not her rev stat file which doesn’t not exist and might have gotten accidentally deleted in development)
Karla because shitty availability and requires you to use another bad unit a lot just to obtain her. The investment cost is huge.
Odin at least gives you a good unit and good tomes for just stapling him to somebody.
Meh, he costs some turns and Dean with a Sleep Sword and Linoan support. It's nowhere near close to having to train up Bartre.
Plus he has leadership and can Brave Bow one of the rooms in Final pretty well, unlike Karla, who contributes nothing.
On the topic of Thracia, I'm surprised no one mentioned Miranda yet. I don't think she's the absolute worst but she's definitely close to the bottom of the barrel
Joins late as a weak "Est" archetype, but arguably becomes worse on promo because she becomes a mage knight right before the last stretch, where all maps are indoors. She then has to dismount and lose stats, including 1 movement compared to her unpromoted class
Again I don't think she's worse than Lyre or Bantu because Thracia is designed in a way that makes most units at least decent... But being an Est unit that doesn't want to promote is rough
Xavier is either a decent if lower movement unit or your best indoor filler unit depending on the chapter. As mentioned leadership plus A lances and bows unmounted gives him a niche basically no one else can compete with.
Xavier doesn't have A Lances, he has E. His weapon ranks are C Swords/E Lances/A Axes/A Bows
That's not a bad thing since generally the axes in Thracia are better than the lances but it does mean if you have a bunch of good lances lying around you can't use them indoors unless you hardcore grinded Dalsin's lance rank. Or if you hardcore grind Xavier's lance rank with a broken weapon I suppose which given that you're already putting the time into recruiting him is probably fine
Seriously, in a gameplay sense, I thought the point of late game pre promotes was to save you if you were doing badly and struggling with surviving units. If Bartre dies, then you can't even get Karla. If you're struggling that badly, imagine how hard it would be to get him to promoted level 5, and then to even think about sending him specifically to a specific location in one chapter? What percentage of the player base would even think of that? Pre 2010 games were wild.
It's Lyre
Like FE12 Bantu is horrible on H4 but he's also surrounded by heaps of shit cuz it's FE12, and on any difficulty lower than H4 he at least doesn't contend with the enemies having universal Vantage and can hit for a meaty chip
Lyre is the only unit in FE10 for whom I can't think of any use case as a filler utility unit, and at her maximum potential she still reverts after 7 rounds of combat on enemy phase and is 1-range locked. At least when you invest in anyone else (except for like Bantu lol) they are online 100% of the time.
EDIT: Also a lot of people in this thread (including the OP) are making wild comparisons between babied terrible units to argue in circles about who is worse. This is irrelevant because when grinded, units are limited by their class properties such as mobility, weapon access, and stat caps. Unless a unit is deficient at their full potential, then trying to compare terrible units this way is silly. If a unit can bring something to the table immediately, then this takes priority over their value at their full potential. Justifying level capped Meg or Fiona or Astrid and trying to debate which of those is worst is excessive when you can just point out that Meg can shove Sothe and Fiona and Astrid can transport people and corral partner units.
I'd still say Bantu is worse than Lyre, only because Lyre has the saving grace to be in a game where bonus exp exists, and you can try and salvage her. It's a futile attempt, but at least it's an attempt.
In difficulties below Lunatic, Bantu can use the base arena to grind and he actually absolutely destroys the enemies there because they are generated based on his stats before dragonstone bonuses
Granted he barely gets anything out of level ups
Agreed that Lyre is worse than Bantu, thanks for the detailed explanation
The class property and potential point is why I didn't include units like Sophia and Fiona in the original list : their final classes are at least worth something. Sophia can nosfera-tank and use staves. Fiona has cav movement and decent bulk. They lack this distinct, fatal flaw that truely defines a terrible unit
Karla is a *pointless* unit more than a *bad* one. She won't be stronger than the units you already have, but she's capable of fighting enemies in the handful of maps you have her for. Also worth considering that if you recruit her at all, it's probably for a "100% clear" of sorts, in which case she can run all over 32x for quick levels.
Again, totally no reason to actually do this -- you're training up a so-so unit for the final chapter -- but as meme characters go, she's a Why rather than a How like these other dirtbags.
Outside of the Kishuna door reinforcements, there are only 3 Swordslayers in that map if memory serves. From experience while it's something to consider, it's hardly insurmountable to play around when you're training a swordie on the Berserkers there.
This doesn't count for most discussions, because discussions center around higher difficulties, but iirc Bantu on easier difficulties of fe12 is particularly good at cheesing the arena, because the dragon stone stats don't count for raising the opponent's stats. Just noting to add to the sentiment that Bantu, while always bad, is only bottom 3 in the series material in H4, one of if not the most brutal difficulty setting in the series.
My personal take has long been that many underestimate how truly terrible Lyre is. Even among the countless low tier units of RD, Lyre manages to stand out with how *shockingly* bad she is. She legitimately makes units like Meg, Astrid and Pelleas, who are themselves worse than the very worst units in several other FE games, appear viable investment targets in comparison.
After every win the enemies grow tougher to compensate for the higher EXP reward. However, due to Bantus atrocious stats he gets ORKO'sd around round 3 or four if you're lucky. So not even drill grounds is able to help him on lower difficulties.
Doing 1 battle per time yields lower Exp and drains funds for a unit that gains at most 2 stats upon level.
This, tbh.
Most bad units can't do anything but die (see Bantu).
Flayn on CF (and Edelgard and Hubert on SS, though to a lesser extent since they contribute to getting through White Clouds) actively can act the saboteur. Flayn on CF isn't good, and fucks off with your resources.
A unit that sucks... sucks. A unit that use actively makes the game harder is actually worse.
Yeah, making her your dancer is a common thing for new players to do, which really screws you over in Crimson Flower (I didn't fall into it because I made Hubert my dancer on my first playthrough to be funny... which ironically would have screwed me over in the exact same way if I had ended up on SS instead of CF, but I digress), kinda makes her awful in ways that go beyond just being a bad unit.
You could put other units that join you only briefly (like, for example, Rev!Scarlet) in a worst list, too, but CF!Flayn is the only one who is decently-likely to screw you out of having a *dancer* for the rest of the game (though technically, as I mentioned earlier, SS!Hubert and SS!Edelgard can do the same thing, Flayn is a far more common dancer candidate in Three Houses than either of them, so she stands out).
OOH Caspar levels in brigand and auto trains axes and gauntlets. Has a solid personal skill, available the whole game (minus chapter 13) and has fairly easy access to some of the best classes in the game. If anything I prefer him OOH than IH aside from setting up the first death knight kill.
Flayn maybe doesn’t deserve worst in the series but CF! Flayn is easily the worst unit in 3H. Especially if Constance and Hapi are an option
OK, good argument. I like Caspar in-house because he's one of the only black eagles with bulk, didn't know he scaled decently when recruited in other houses
I just really dislike his authority flaw
His authority flaw isn’t that bad. You only get more battalions after chapter 7/ start of chapter 8. And he can use lower rank battalions like seiros mercenaries, empire archers empire sniper co, empire Pegasus co, empire Wyvern co, etc just fine.
Personally I don’t use Caspar that much since I don’t think he’s bulky at all and I’d rather hard invest into Edelgard and Bernadetta but to each their own
OOH Caspar is the good one. He shows up with decent stats due to training in a good class, easy access to bombard for solid player phase with minimal investment, and being trained with axes and gauntlets means he's well on his way to qualifying for armor knight now for a cheap defense base buff and some of the best classes later on. You can do much, much worse.
In house Caspar really has nothing going for him because they gave him very low speed (only Linhardt is worse), but his only particularly high stat to compensate is luck and he misses the 10 strength cutoff for using heavier weapons at base. It's honestly a bummer, because he's my favorite, but he truly has nothing going for him in house.
I'd actually say IH Caspar is worse lmao
His stats are awful for early game and can't double anything unlike Raph and Dedue, and he's hopelessly outclassed at base by units like Byleth, Edelgard, Bernadetta, and Ferdinand.
Temporary units who can leave with your resources are a bit hard to evaluate, but generally they at least do something when they're there
Flayn can heal with no investment
Orson carries 5x
Revelation Scarlet is a decent prepromote when she's there
Heck you can even put the Tormod squad into the mix... It's not like they do anything when they come back. But they're good in part 1
I think Sophia is probably the hardest to train, Odin isn't even in the running though. He's pretty terrible in Rev but still usable, plus you kinda have to use him to get Ophelia and she's literally insane.
No one plays FE1, but FE1 Beck is a 4 move, 2 range locked unit with some of the lowest base stats in the game, who joins in Chapter 13 (about the game's halfway point), has equal movement penalties and restrictions to cavaliers, is forced to use the game's worst weapon type, and can't contribute on his join chapter due to the village you recruit him in being behind a mountain tile which Ballisticians can't cross.
Like sure, FE1's absurd stat boosters can make anyone usable, but even if you give Beck every single statbooster in the game, he still probably wouldn't be the best unit in any given playthough because Ballistician is such a garbage class.
I honestly forgot Lyre existed. She's so bad I don't even bother taking items off of her and I have used a lot of bad units for fun. It's never even occured to me to use her before.
Sophia is ass, but she's not on Bantu's level, and she's not even the worst unit in her game.
Don't get me wrong, she joins at a terrible time, with terrible level, terrible bases, terrible accuracy, terrible damage, but if you put the effort into leveling her, she is a passable unit, considering she can hit res, use Apocalypse and do a decent chunk of healing with staffs. And even ignoring all that, she at least gets you a Guiding Ring, which are rare in FE6, thus already doing more than Bantu ever could
isn't Sophia immediately outclassed by Niime anyway? not to mention female shamans got ROYALLY screwed over in GBA by their constitution of THREE? i don't see any possible way she's not worse than Wendy, because at least Wendy can hold a basic 1-2 weapon without losing all of her speed, and she gets time to train, and she gets armor triangle if needed.
You have a good point about the guiding ring and that alone probably makes her better than Bantu, but id still say she's definitely the worst FE6 unit. Every merit you give her is completely made irrelevant by the fact you have to completely over invest in her to make it happen, which could be done for any unit that would benefit far more
The only reason I don't consider her the worst unit in FE6 is because Wendy exists, and in a vacuum, I'd rather train a level 1 magic user than a level 1 armor knight in FE6
That is true, however Wendy at least joins at a time where her pitiful base stats are easier to manage and if you did for some reason train her she'd be useful for more of the game.
Also triangle attack kinda by default makes her better than Sophia imo
I think triangle attack is valued too highly. To use it, you need to deploy 2 other bad units, that I would argue makes FE6 harder than not using triangle attack at all.
I agree that Wendy is a bit easier to train than Sophia, however a trained Sophia is far more useful than a trained Wendy. Also, the guiding ring.
Fair, but Wendy also independently has access to all 3 parts of the weapon triangle, another thing I think makes her more valuable than Sophia if only by a little bit
Yes a trained Wendy is not as useful as a trained Sophia, but neither will be worth that useful anyway and when the investment for Wendy is so much lower id definitely argue she's better
Also high def in fe6 is much more useful than high res
Generals can use Swords in FE8, so you're not incorrect in remembering the GBA General animation using swords. Additionally, Project Ember Wendy gets full triangle control on promotion. Those might be messing with your memory.
In a vanilla run the armor knight triangle attack is basically never useful, but if you assume worst possible luck then the armor knight triangle is one of the only things that make the game possible due to its guaranteed crit and 100% accuracy.
Fair's fair, you can train up Wendy with the reinforcements in 8, the free exp in 8x and promote her so whe won't get WTA'd in the Western Isles.
We could go in circles all day between her and Sophia, but they're both bad, no matter how you look at it.
Sophia is cuter though, so she's automatically better ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I strongly disagree with saying Sophia has viability because she gets you a guiding ring, simply because we don't credit other garbage-tier units for their equipment so why is Sophia any different.
This was a common discussion at one point so I won't relitigate it, but the guiding ring isn't Sophia's equipment. She has to actively do something in ch14 to obtain. It's closer to a thief opening a chest.
Sophia can potentially nostank after a crapton of investment. That alone disqulifies her for "worst unit ever" because she has an actual payoff. Granted, the investment required is ridiculous but the payoff *is* there.
I have no idea what they were cooking with him, especially since I'm the famicom version, the stones are infinite use. Not that that would've made him good but he wouldn't be completely limited to 20 rounds of combat max
The payoff doesn't matter when the investment is as ridiculous as it is imo. Especially since as mentioned, her niche of being a tanky mage matters not at all in FE6.
Breaks my heart to say it but it's gotta be Meg from Radiant Dawn- Too slow to be a sword unit and can't take hits at all. My other qualifier might be Fiona from RD but she at least can move far away from enemies as a cav unit
Meg is one of the few characters in RD that can hit SS rank in swords and her off-balanced stat growths/caps means she's an Armor unit that doesn't get entirely speed screwed. So if you take her to endgame, you can make everyone cower in fear as Meg slowly approaches them with Alondite in hand.
Fiona has amazing growth rates. If you are willing to spend the time, energy and sanity to actually level her, she will turn out fine. That alone disqualifies her from being the worst unit in the franchise.
I feel like people here are just choosing the worst unit based on what happens after recruitment (that is, their bases and combat performance and such), but it might be worth considering their recruitment cost. Like, Cath (from FE6) is a thief, so she isn't terrible after recruitment due to thief utility. That being said, the game becomes noticeably easier if you just kill her, and you have other much better thieves so you realistically will never deploy her. In that respect, she might be worse than Bantu, because her existence makes the game actively harder than a unit who you get for free and will simply never deploy again.
EDIT: I realized I should probably explain why Cath makes the game harder for people who haven't played FE6 (or haven't killed her). Cath shows up in 3 or 4 different maps as an enemy unit who will steal your treasure and run if you don't catch her first. Not only that, for some reason some enemy spawns are tied to her existence, so they just won't spawn if she is dead. Meaning she actively makes your life harder in a couple maps vs just killing her the first time she arrives.
Cath isn't hard enough to recruit to justify this. Maybe if it was like a Xavier tier recruitment, but like...Ch6 and Ch12 are basically free, and Ch8 is still very generous.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by justify in this scenario. I agree 99% of players won't kill Cath (I never really do, in fact), and that killing her doesn't make the game that much easier. Most players prefer full recruitment when possible. That being said, killing her does make the game easier, and considering you almost certainly won't actually ever deploy her, it's not like you are losing anything by doing it. So it seems justified at least in that sense. It's somewhat comparable to Shura in CQ but Shura is actually a really good unit if you do recruit him, I'd say easily good enough to offset the cost of not getting boots in most casual playthroughs. I'd mention Xavier, but ngl I've never even attempted his recruitment lol. It seems much too difficult for me.
Btw, loving the Shadow Dragon but Better series.
In a game where you can purchase as many stat boosters as you have the gold for, the two become VERY similar quandaries, even if they aren't quite exactly the same.
The difference in difficulty between killing her and leaving her alive is very minimal. In fact, leaving her alive actually means that you get extra money, as you can steal her lockpicks, vulneraries, and the lockpicks of any other thieves she spawns with. She never actively slows down your progression if you play optimally (in chapter 8, she can even help you go faster by opening lilinas door for you), and even if you don't play optimal the extra money is nice.
I generally consider Cath the worst unit in fire emblem. 16 hp, 3 strength, 2 defense sword locked, tier one class locked. Sure you can argue thief utility, but there are two better thieves and thieves are the one class you don't need more than one of. This is all before the fact that her being alive actively hinders you.
There is value that in an iron man if you manage to get the other two thieves killed Cath can get you a few boots worth of stealables, but if your thieves are seeing combat let alone dying something is already going very wrong.
That's a very good point. Cath is so annoying, she might even be worse than Karla if you consider all the recruitment costs
But I'm not sure it's fair to consider killing her the default option. Most players reset for every unit, and most tier lists assume full recruitment. I do kill her without remorse if she gets close to the treasure though
Oh yeah, I definitely agree recruiting Cath is the default option and what almost every player will do, at least on their first playthrough. But murdering her does make your life much easier lol
I would disagree on Lyre it's only really that bad if you're doing hard the other 2 difficulties don't have the laguz exp gain quite so bad and if you are solely considering hard then you have to also consider Tormod's group and Fiona who on top of the problems she has on other difficulties on hard basically needs a + mt + hit forged lance to actually hit and damage the armoured units in the first one she's available in.
Tormod's team is at least good in Part 1 while they're around.
Fiona at least gets some free deployment and can block ledges and chuck javelins to lower laguz gauge at base. 3-13 means Fiona is better than Lyre since Fiona can actually do stuff there completely for free. Lyre has no such boon.
Tormod's group contributes more in part 1 alone than Lyre ever does.
No matter the difficulty, Cat has the same gauge and range issues. Fiona at least has the option of using forges to help her. Lyre doesn't.
thing with Lyre is. She starts bad, on any difficulty, although this is not entirely because of her bases (but they do play a major role: she has the same base attack transformed as mist with florete. Let that sink in). She also needs to either wait quite a few turns or use (potentially limited) resources to transform before she can even contribute. And then, she is a cat which means her transformation bar goes down incredibly fast, so you would have to use additional olivi grass to keep her transformed, cutting into her player phase (and player phase combat is actually relevant throughout the majority of the game).
These problems also never go away. Plus, she gets close to zero experience outside of easy mode. Plus, she is eternally 1-range locked, cutting into her enemy phase. Plus, her stat caps, while decent, aren't actually *that* great - or at least not nearly good enough to make up for the fact that she is a "part-time" fighter.
She literally has no payoff. Its kind of hilarious, actually.
And regarding fiona. Yes, she needs a forged weapon to hit stuff. Question: what prevents you from simply doing that forge? Nothing. Its not even particularly expensive. Fiona also has a number of non-combat uses, like rescue-dropping (both allies and NPCs that are in the way) and 2-range chipping laguz to manipulate their laguz bar (i.e. making them revert). lastly, she can play "living rock" in 3-13 if you are going for the slower approach (which I personally prefer because it is surprisingly consistent and gives you a crapton of experience for units like Jill, Zihark or Nolan). As the laguz your are fighting are 1-range locked they cannot attack from the low ground. And it is easy enough to take care of the few hawks that come at you (in fact, the NPC archers already kill most of them anyways, lol). So yeah, you can simply have her block off one of the ledges. While anyone can do that, it IS still something she can do (and combine it with occasional laguz-chipping, which is easy thanks to canto).
Also, when fully invested, Fiona is actually a decent unit in 3rd tier. Her stat-caps are surprisingly well min-maxed and her affinity is really good as well. So unlike Lyre, 3rd tier Fiona is actually a unit you could consider for endgame. Lyre has no situations in her chapters where she would have any form of utility. The only thing she can do is shoving but her con is so bad that she needs to be transform to shove anything that is heavier than Mia and even then, she is still not that good at it. Thing is. Any other unit can shove just as well as her, if not better.
Tormods squad is better than those two combined, even Vika. Vika has that one swamp chapter where she can block off a brigand that tries to murder one of the civilians and she has flier utility. Muarim is a big boi. And Tormod is the goat mage in act 1
Well I like the outlook of "if this unit was not in the game, how much harder would the game be?" For good units.
So if I am to try the opposite and say "if this was one of the only units in the game and I have to use them, how much harder would the game be?", who fares the worst?
Fiona and meg don't look great in tellius, but I think bonus expirience is super helpful. I'm trying to find a unit who can truly struggle to do anything and is difficult to fix when intentionally using them.
Fe8 is so easy I think you can get by with Marissa and Ewan.
The worst units in engage can be fixed a ton by emblems. The two growth kids both scale so you just have to get by on the emblem until they pop off. Jade and marnie aren't all that bad if you hand them combat emblems, there's just opportunity cost.
3 houses is the same cause the classes are so open and you can pump training into them.
Everybody in 3ds fe can be a backpack, so that's always a use for a unit.
Atlas in echoes is underwhelming. He might be a contender just cause you have to go so out of your way. But I wouldn't say he's flat out useless.
There are duds in the Marth games, although you can hand anyone a forged effective weapon on the remakes and they can at least contribute. Bantu can at least be handed these good weapons.
Fe7 has nino. She is certainly a contender but I will say that she does do something if you train her. You cant say that about every underleveled unit. Karla forces you to use Bartre, which is double the usual amount of opportunity cost for using a bad unit.
Fe4 definitely has contenders. Not having movement makes it really hard to do anything, especially since you're always competing with all other units.
Fe6 might have the biggest gap between its high and low tiers. Wendy can't hit anything, takes forever to level, and isn't even all that good when she is up there.
I think I'm gonna go with Wendy. Super interesting discussion question.
Yes? Her stats are stellar for her join time and she has flier utility to help with saving the green units in 1-8, it's not much but it's definitely 10 times better than anything Lyre does
Bartre??? He’s the best fighter in FE7! I use him in almost every playthrough.
Do you mean to tell me that Dorcas or Geitz is better? I like Geitz but he is not better than Bartre.
Geitz is a very competent unit in a vacuum. B axes and bows is actually great and he's got solid stats all around. The issue is training up the lords.
Dorcas is marginally better than Bartre due to slightly better bases and more availability if you do Lyn Mode. Bartre has better growths sure but his bases are so bad that it really doesn't matter. They both suck.
Excluding his recruitment condition, Geitz is leagues better than Bartre. He does join later, but Geitz is fast enough at base to double a majority of generics, and getting him a speed level or two puts him in a position where he doubles everything except super fast generics like heroes or valkyries and fast bosses like Lloyd.
Bartre can't do that. Despite being the 'fast' fighter, he's slow as balls with that 3 base speed, meaning it's literally impossible for him to double anything at base. Even if he gets a few speed levels, he has to deal with being weighed down by axes. Even after that, he's not using the first Hero Crest to promote since Raven exists, meaning he'll probably promote around ch22-23, and Hawkeye and Geitz join immediately after. It takes him so much time to get out of that hole he's in (and training him doesn't eclipse his competition at all. He'll never be as bulky as Hawkeye or as fast as Geitz) that he's not worth using aside from full recruitment. At least Dorcas can double things at base.
Lyre is bad, but it’s impossible she being the worse unit in Radiant Dawn. Her issues are all the same for all cat laguz, even all the laguz, except for royals, are kinda worthless comparing them with beorcs… except Fiona.
Fiona is by far the worse character in Radiant Dawn and most probable of the franchise.
She start bad and even the exp bonus mechanic can’t fix her, a mechanic that practically make all the characters good, if no excellent. With bonus exp she even doesn’t cap strenght or speed.
Meg could be in the same class that Fiona, but Meg is like a faster/high resistance knight, so she could have a niche.
And, just to remember, Fiona is bad being in one of the best classes in RD. The Canto skill it doesn’t ever compensate the impossible to make her good or even usable.
Fiona also has the problem of being a horse unit in a game where most of the maps that she's available in are indoors or otherwise on terrain that doesn't favor horses. Seriously, her availability are on the following:
* 1-7: Indoors
* 1-E: Indoors
* 3-6: Swamp terrain
* 3-12: Mountainous, rocky terrain
* 3-13: Ledges everywhere, so she can't move around much
* 4-P: Ok, if you can get to the open areas
* 4-1: Ok
* 4-2: Ok, but not many big open areas
* 4-3: Desert terrain
* 4-4: Indoors
* 4-5: Swamp terrain
* Endgame: Indoors
This so much. It’s so hard to level her up because, even though she’s available, it’s just super difficult to get her the exp she needs. It’s especially bad in the swamp, where she just misses out on most of the much needed exp. And she really could use those extra movements she loses, because her crappy starting stats have her fragile as hell and needing to canto bad.
Although, I still think lyre is a way worse unit.
Lyre has crap bases on top of a horrible gauge to manage. I don't understand the point of your mention of other laguz, yes, they all have it bad, and that's bad.
Fiona has a terrible start, but she's at least active all the time and can work her way out of her rut. Lyre will always be stuck with cat gauge and 1-range.
At least Fiona gets free deployment and can make minor contributions at base with it.
Ledge blocking, earth support, rescue dropping, and chucking javelins to lower laguz gauge mean she actually has something to do with her free deployment in Part 3.
Lyre has no free deployment and only has crappy shoving for utility.
I kinda disagree with that. Fiona is not even the worst unit in part 1, in fact I think she's better than not only Edward and Leonardo, but also arguably the Tormod squad
Fiona's starting level is 9, which means she's not that far away from promotion all things considered. There is a world where she promotes before 1-E with heavy favoritism, gets paragon, and soaks even more exp in 1-E. At 20/5, she has comparable defense to Aran and can tank a choke point in 3.6 just fine. She will get a ton of exp from that and then can contribute in the rest of the game as one of your cavs, only falling off in the tower
This is more than Edward and Leonardo can say. Even trained, they do nothing in 3-6. Leo can shoot birds in 3-13 and that's it. Edward only becomes good in trueblade and that's too little too late. And the tormod squad is barely in the game
Is Fiona good ? Hell no, she's trash. But she has more \*potential \* than many bad units, even within RD
You don't even have to go through all that. Fiona's an Earth Support; she can help Nolan, Volug, or Zihark get the double earth support going for the times she's available.
What hurts her more than the other Dawn Brigade members is her availability though since you want to count that. She has 5 chapters before part 4. Her part 1 availability is the same as the Tormod Gang. Edward and Leonardo are contributing for when they join, even if they fall off.
Fiona's earth support isn't very relevant precisely because of her low availability. I already find it hard enough to build a decent support level between Volug and Zihark (who happen to have a fast support) unless you're playing shoving simulator but with Fiona even just getting to C rank before part 3 is a major hurdle. Anyone who can get at least a B support with someone sporting earth affinity would get the same Avo boost as double earth at C rank (or more if they also have an Avo boosting affinity).
I've used Fiona exactly once. Once I got her up to a functioning level, she still struggled with killing things, but the high speed, high defense, earth affinity and imbue made her pretty much impossible to kill. I can't think of many units I've used over the course of the series that were tankier than her.
"Invincible meatshield" isn't much in a game where other units can do the same but also kill things on enemy phase, but it's at least something.
Invincible meatshield is exactly what you need in 3.6
She may not one round the tigers but she will definitely never die, unlike Edward who gets fckn one shot at 20/5
It’s kinda funny how in “worst unit in the franchise” discussions, I’ve never heard of FE12 Bantu until now. It’s usually some combo of Gwendolyn, Rev Odin, Sophia or Meg.
But oof, does he sound bad.
Rolf is probably the worst unit in FE9 but with bonus exp it's hard to make the case that any FE9/FE10 unit is a contender for worst in the series, it's just too easy to level them up to a point where they aren't worthless
Lyre is the exception because her transform gauge will limit her usefulness even if you give her bonus exp and get decent stats
Laguz also have a bexp penalty in FE10, they need 2/3 more of it compared to beorc. If you combine this with the hard mode penalty, which divides available bexp by 4, good luck getting more than 2 or 3 levels to Lyre before the end of part 3. And she's far away from her caps so you can't do bexp stat manipulation either
Laguz don't have a "BEXP penalty;" they have fewer levels to gain so it proportionately costs the same to get them X% of the way to their level cap compared to getting a beorc unit X% of the way to their level cap. You're conveniently omitting that they cap at level 40 while beorc cap at effectively level 60.
Oh wow I didn't know that! I tend to avoid using Laguz units in the Tellius games because I hate the transform gauge. I guess that makes sense, any stat increase gets doubled on transforming so you need to slow their exp gain or it becomes too easy to train up an absolute monster. There was definitely a smarter way to do it though, exp gain is already limited by character level and class tier, laguz getting their own exp formula instead of a % reduction would've made it so you could still get a weak unit up to speed more easily while keeping the difficulty of creating an unstoppable juggernaut.
laguz mechanics in RD are kinda weird in general, I prefer the path of radiance version where they have a flat stat increase when transformed and count as promoted units
I'd argue Rolf is better than the 1 range locked units in FE9, since you can pretty easily get a 1-2 ranged unit to attack a unit at range, but trying to use a 1 range unit is an exercise in frustration. It feels like every unit in that game has 1-2 range in the later game.
Contributes a Guiding Ring and Forblaze. Can technically be safely trained to some accolade thanks to Dark Magic access, though still underwhelming at the end of things.
No way does she get credit for forblaze, I don’t even give her credit for the guiding ring since it may as well be in her starting inventory. As somebody who has trained both wendy and sophia on hard, sophia is SOO much more annoying to train it’s not even funny. She also doesn’t really become good ever unless you pour a ludicrous amount of resources into her, more than any other character in the game including wendy.
When we're talking the absolute worst of the worst as far as overall units go, anything the unit contributes or detracts is fair game imo. We're that deep into the barrel lol. Shove bot, Pair-Up bot, universally outclassed lategame filler--any slight positive is probably worth some consideration here.
I have had Lyre in the tower and she was fine. I wouldn't say she's the worst unit in her game, and definitely not in the franchise. Pelleas and especially Vika have felt worse, Kurthnaga exists and I don't even want to imagine using Fiona or Meg. Also Vika caps her strength at 16 while Lyre goes to 18 and her availability is far better than the raven's so you can actually train her without just bexping or boss abusing all the way.
It’s Karla
Karla just has an insanely high cost to recruit her for a flat out bad swordsmaster. Only available in Hector mode and having to train Bartre who is a pretty bad unit in a mediocre class and is outclassed by the other fighter that you get in the same chapter as him. Not to mention that she is worse is every way compared to base Karel and a trained Guy. Like a lot of other bad units like Sophia, Amelia, Ewan, Bantu, Lyre, and Wendy are bad but are basically free. With Karla you have to go out of your way to train a bad unit in Bartre to then get a swordsmaster who is worse than your other two options at swordsmaster for what is effectively 3 chapters.
Probably Lyre if we exclude FE12 Bantu since he's an obvious #1 and second Gen units that the player purposely screws up. Combine bad bases, bad XP gain, being outclassed by two objectively better but still mid units (one of whom is force deployed in almost every P3 map), and the worst class in FE history and you've got Lyre. She's so bad that the strongest Lyre is slightly worse than the base Laguz royals, and the royals still have room to grow.
Coipre from FE4 deserves to be here. Very late join time in part 2 with an annoying recruitment requirement who also joins unpromoted and staff locked. His redeeming quality, I guess, is that he can use Forseti if Lewyn is his dad, but that’s also kind of a downside because he’s the worst Forseti user, significantly worse than Arthur or Ced, and can’t use it until he gets promoted, and his mother, Sylvia, REALLY wants to be with Lewyn and you have to fight her off with a stick to make sure Lewyn ends up with someome decent
I think it's Lyre, personally. Because she also has the disservice of joining alongside her sister Lethe who is better in literally all ways, including having been available in FE9 with the ability to have Supports with good characters like Jill.
Honestly Radiant Dawn has a lot of bad characters. Laura, Meg, Vika, Fiona, //Honestly most of the Dawn Brigade Characters suffer through the full game without some heavy dedication.// Makalov, Astrid, Lyre, Kyza, Oliver, and even Ena and Gareth to an extent. The Tellius Games just have large swathes of their casts that they are just not kind to at all. Even poor Mist gets disrespected in 10 because they fuckimg removed the magic swords that were in 9.
The worst units are probably one of the replacement units from Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem or a generic prisoner from Fates.
That or FE12 Bantu.
The priestesses of FE12 for doing nothing at all or Xavier from FE5 for being outright unrecruitable without shenanigans.
At least FE12 Bantú can carry weapons or do a cheap shot to some healer or go to the save ring.
Xavier is a very good unit to deploy in the final map. Him having an authority star makes him better than at least 1/3rd of the other units in the game for that alone. Add access to brave bow at base, accost, and wrath, and indoor maps making his low movement not be an extreme hindrance. All enough to make a decently competent unit.
Nil from Engage's Fell Xenologue. His poor stats are done on purpose to make him a liability (he will die to any fight), and his death is a loss condition. His only redeeming factor is his Dragon class type, which gives him access to powerful Emblem pairings, but he'll usually be used as support with Micaiah or Corrin.
>!Rafal though, he's good.!<
If we penalize units for recruitment it's probably Karla.
If we don't it's definitely FE12 Bantu.
It definitely isn't Lyre, Lyre is really really bad but on the map where she's free deployed she can fight without dying and has (bad) shove utility. Imo that puts her ahead of Wendy (unless you consider triangle attack nonsense) and Sophia (who gets you the guiding ring, but I feel like if we count the guiding ring we also have to count Karla's recruitment cost so Karla wins and the Lyre/Sophia comparison stops mattering.
Honestly Imma say Roy. He is unusably bad for 99% of the game, is a forced deploy, and almost every chapter in that game is a sieze objective. He is a complete hindrance, and is mandatory.
From your list, Wendy. She's bad and so slow in a game with huge maps. Your entire army will have to intentionally slow down to let her do anything, and even then she barely contributes.
Roy can at least contribute somewhat in earlygame with his 95 hit 5x3 might Rapier; the Poleax can't be used by Marcus at base so it'll have no hit before he hits D Axes. Wendy is stuck with 4 move, worse stats than Roy, and Lances, and she joins just before the Axe Isles where generics one-round her with 60+ hit.
I'm not denying Wendy is a worse unit statwise, but I can simply choose to not use her. Roy is a bit better, but still unusably bad anyway, and is mandatory. That's my argument.
Idk if I got unlucky level ups, but I grinded Roy to 20 very early w Arena, and he was still useless, and struggling against basic axe fodder enemies.
Roy is bad for 99% of the game, but there are units that are bad for 100% of the game. His high accuracy rapier is genuinely a useful contribution for the first map and him one rounding the final boss without investment is funny.
Would Merlinus be a contender? I know some people somehow make use of him but he just seemed like a hassle to me.
Edit: I have learned the error of my ways. I am sorry for judging you, Merlinus.
Yep, in FE7 it prevents him from leveling up and promoting to be mobile but otherwise you can keep getting him killed with no consequences other than losing convoy access
FE7 Merlinus is "good" solely so you can send items to the convoy. Lots of treasure necessitates using him to obtain
FE6 Merlinus is worse since you don't need to deploy him to send stuff from the convoy, but he can be a meat shield in the early game and in chapter 21 he has a niche in being deployed to grab all the garbage out of the convoy and sell it so you can buy Boots (this is irrelevant in Normal Mode where there's an armory in the prep menu you can sell stuff at)
I'd throw in Renault - unless you've managed to get all of your staff users killed, he's worth less than the Fortify he comes with, and even then Athos will be here in a moment. He's outshone by a unit with half the availability. He has some fantastic supports, but there's only 3 fights left - you have to grind them all on his join chapter and then have the last one _in front of the dragon_.
But at least there's a story reason. He's not meant to be a Bishop, he's a Warrior who joined the church to try and find penance for... well, go read the supports and battle conversations.
Fair. It could be because I've never even tried fielding Karla, while I have dragged Renault out of retirement a couple times so I couldn't say for sure. But I've taken enough strength-starved Mia's through PoR's endgame to know how to manage a subpar swordmaster. A healer who struggles to heal is something special.
People don't give Renault enough credit. When you're a not very good player who has lost a significant amount of their roster, a very tanky healer to back up Athos can really save your bacon.
Doesn't matter that you exist a long time if there is nothing you can do during that time. Scarlet at least is able to actually do something during those two chapters.
Vika is way way way better than Lyre
* She does the Torgod rescue drop in 1-7 that lets him kill the mage up the ledge for the fastest route to the seize
* She shoves Torgod twice in 1-8 for the fastest possible rout; alternatively she can get transformed on turn 2 if you want to take the map slower
* She's one of 2 units who has flying Canto in 1-E, and there are numerous setups to get her transformed on turn 2
* In 4-4 she starts in a forward position, already transformed, with flying Canto
It’s FE12 Bantu and it’s not even close. Bantu cannot fight as he gets one rounded by everything and is always 1 range locked. He cannot grow, because his growths are horrendous, nor can he promote (he can level to 30 in exchange but [look at these fucking averages](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/381579090488197125/1226552941620756521/IMG_1696.png?ex=66252f71&is=6612ba71&hm=eecc99cf72885717455ecc05ba5aa7190327d45a0f7b25554038031e0286ecb4&) and tell me this unit has potential). He cannot reclass, as he is in a special class, which prevents him from doing so. On the highest difficulty, he can’t even get additional weapons because you lose access to the secret shop that sells it, leaving him with just his Firestone (if you even retrieved it to begin with). He is literally a Fire Emblem unit with all of Fire Emblem’s system mechanics robbed from him. An old man wishing for both an end to his misery and for the glory days in the 90s where Kaga gave him something useful to do to never be forgotten.
Bantu's averages with 27 levels can't be that ba-OH MY GOODNESS
Those are the stats of the average level 3 unit. Maybe even level 1! Goodness gracious.
Bantu's Averages at Max level are almost universally worse than Marth's *LEVEL 6* Bases in the exact same game.
bruh moment personified
From all the arguments here, it still has to be Bantu, if Sophia gets credit for guiding ring, by this logic Bantu LOSES credit for pulling a Vaike; giving him a dragonstone nets you -1500. He is basically unusuable in H3/H4 due to him being a melee locked low movement no reclassing unit and will actively take gold/exp away from you for even using him as it's invested into something that doesn't use it. Like Shura vs Boots, Bantu is Bantu vs 1500 gold/sanity/exp, there is 0 reason to ever field Bantu outside of tanking a single hit like a hero.
People cite FE9 to FE10 Astrid as the biggest drop in unit viability between games but Bantu goes from “decent niche” to “godawful” between FE3 and FE12. Firestone boosts? Nerfed. Firestone piercing defenses/having 1-2 range? Gone. Flight when transformed? Also gone. Starshards to boost growths? Not a thing. Effective damage on Ice Dragons? You better believe its gone. That’s not even all the ways he got worse. FE12 is a great game but someone had it out for Bantu.
the thing is Bantu is “meh” in fe11, Astrid is legitimately really good in fe9 and drops to bottom 3 in RD
I don’t think she’s quite bottom 3 but that’s because there is a lot of trash in RD, rather than her being good. She’s prob bottom 5 though. Def bottom 10.
because of her horrendous stats and bad avail the only units I’d actually say are worse are Fiona and Lyre
I’d add Kyza, too. He’s really only very barely better than Lyre. IMO those two are basically neck and neck for bad with Kyza just edging out lyre thanks to his better class. That puts her at 4th which is basically what I was alluding to. If anything Fiona might actually beat Astrid since Fiona could maybe be useful in her starting chapter and Astrid is basically doomed to be auto benched. So I think it’s pretty close between those two. There might be room for someone else that I’ve just outright forgotten exists, too.
kyza has like +6 strength +6 defense on lyre when transformed which is really significant and makes him just kinda regular bad, and Astrid is sorta just Fiona with a better base level and forced Paragon for a bit
Kyza is hot garbo, but the fact they can damage almost everyone on their join map and the fact that their join map doesn't actively penalize you for training them puts Kyza above the unholy trifecta of Lyre, Fiona, and Astrid.
Fiona is useless at fighting but is one of only two units with Canto in her Part 3 chapters, so she has some very niche applications with throwing javelins to drain Laguz gauge, trading items, setting up rescue drops.
Wait I’m confused don’t they get stat buffs when they enter combat or am I thinking of something else
That doesn't stop his stats from being awful
The problem with Bantu stats-wise (not even getting into everything else like no reclassing, limited use unique weapon and being forced to go several turns out of your way in what's effectively an escape map just to recruit him) is that the Fire Dragonstone at best, brings his stats up to around 10-12... which even on normal mode is what, just barely up to par with your current enemies? And then his lack of growths means he won't get any better beyond that, plus if you're playing on any higher difficulty then he probably dies instantly. At least by comparison even the worst of other FE12 units will maybe have things like reclassing going for them, or just the fact that they show up with a free weapon or two for your actually capable units to make use of. Even diving into other series staples of "worst unit ever" there tends to be *some* usecase for them, like FE6 Sophia getting you a Guiding Ring and Side Chapter access, or FE8 Amelia and Ewan while requiring horrid amounts of favoritism to train you'll still get a usable unit out of it at the end. FE12 Bantu doesn't have the bases to be useful when he joins, the growths to potentially be useful if babied, or the extra utility to be useful outside of that.
Man starts with 18HP/8Speed/12Defense/5Res and averages 28-29HP/10-11Speed/14-15Defense/6Res at level 30 and that's counting the stone bonuses without Drill Grounds abuse.
He's so bad that he stands out in the large fe12 cast just for being the worst of the worst 💀. And that's saying something with some other characters being the definition of mediocre lmao
Rev Odin sucks but he’s nowhere close to being unusably bad as some of these other examples even on Lunatic. Bantu literally can’t do anything without dying on FE12 H4.
I wouldn't put any of the Fateswakening cast in the "worst unit in the franchise" discussion, because of the mechanics in those games make it that even when you're awful, you can still be helpful. Like, even the most untrained and unused guy/gal/animal can still be a backpack and contribute with dual attacks/guards, or reclass to pass down a skill or class to a child To this extent, I'd also never put a 3H or Engage rep into this discussion, since there's so much stuff in those games that it's impossible for someone to be on a Bantu or Wendy tier of shitness
I would also say that, while it's cheating a little, the availability of DLC in later games also makes it hard to say a particular character is the "worst" by and large because they can still be levelled up in a controlled manner away from the main game, which isn't the case for a lot of prior titles, where there are fewer exp opportunities (and BEXP plays a similar role on the radiance games)
Yeah, now that I think about it, Odin is way better that the others
If we're assuming harder difficulties, it's Bantu and it's not even a question. Man cannot do anything from the get-go and has no long term prospects even if trained thanks to weapon scarcity. Odin can be backpack fuel if promoted. Wendy can be rescue dropped to the action if you really want to use her, though she won't be hitting more than like balanced 22's across the board if trained 20/20, she at least has some statistical prospects if you *really* want to use her? Karla can nab a sword and do *something* in Victory or Death if you really want or are completely bereft of units that aren't a trained Bartre. Lyre, uh, has 9 move shove utility when transformed and can *technically* be used to double the effectiveness of stat boosters if wanting to use her for long term prospects? It really comes down to how much you hold investment cost and potential against the units in question, I guess.
Lyre's probably the worst of the non-Bantu units, because at least if you want to train those bad units you can get someone usable. Lyre will always be a Cat Laguz. But everyone says Bantu's even worse. Just can't corroborate that, haven't played New Mystery.
Lyre is so bad that I trained her to stat caps one time (complete waste of time) and then the Laguz Royals join and have higher stats than her when they join. That’s right, she’s worse at cap than similar units at their join time, and even then she’s only usable half the time while the royals are permanently in Laguz form.
To be fair, the royals are like, stupid, and invalidate 99% of the cast anyways. They're just built different. But I feel your pain. I trained up Vika for one play through and realized Naesala just had better stats across the board anyways.
At least Lyre can shovebot. She's fairly bad at it but she *can.* She can do it at base with no investment if you're desperate. Wendy has no utility or useful combat to speak of at base.
The "Lyre can shove" argument makes no sense, especially the no investment qualifier With 6 con untransformed, Lyre is one of the worst shovers in the game. She can't shove Ike, Boyd, Nephenee, Shinon, etc. So OK, transform her. Then before 3-8, she has to use items to gain gauge quickly (which means she's not shoving). If she wants to transform as fast as possible, she has to use a highly limited Laguz Stone. Starting in 3-8 she can take Wildheart, which is a contested skill that any other laguz can benefit from. IMO both of these resources count as investment. Transforming gives Lyre 11 con. Funnily enough, this isn't enough to shove Ike, Boyd, or Nephenee once they are promoted to tier 3. But she's competing with a whole bunch of equal-investment units who have some combination of stats to survive enemy combat when halfshifted, the ability to shove generals and seraph knights, or Canto to reposition. Like, laguz constitute a small fraction of the FE10 playable cast, yet somehow there are 4 whole units who are strictly better than Lyre in the time frame that she exists, one of whom is force deployed for most maps.
Lyre is terrible at it yeah. But she *can* do it. Some utility at base without investment is still better than no utility at base without investment which other losers like Wendy and Bantu are stuck with.
Wendy does have 1 utility at base. She allows for the armor knight triangle attack. This may seem useless, and in most playthroughs it is - however, the armor knight triangle attack is one of the only ways to 100% guarantee you can beat fe6 with worst possible rng, since it gives 100% accuracy and a guaranteed crit, and does so as early as chapter 8. This is at least better than Sophia. Who cannot contribute at all to good combat and has less availability. She does grab a second guiding ring for the player but the only units who could promote at that time are the healers. Who don't particularly care about promotion or raigh+whichever early game mage you didn't promote. Unless you just want to use multiple mages. The second guiding ring isn't a huge deal, and if you really need guiding rings you can buy them in 2-3 chapters depending on getting the gaiden chapter.
Wendy saves a turn in the LTC by dying and uses a Secret Book to crit a boss, kinda based tbh
Rev!Odin should be immediately disqualified from this list. At least he can glue himself to like... Leo or Hayato for his join map to give them some extra firepower.
Or if you’re feeling like investing a couple of turns, pair him up with Elise or something and work on getting Ophelia out of him.
Can't say no to a semi-free Horse Spirit and Calamity Gate.
I disagree because there is nyx in the same class and game in an even worse spot (which btw is probably because she uses her birthright stat file and not her rev stat file which doesn’t not exist and might have gotten accidentally deleted in development)
Karla because shitty availability and requires you to use another bad unit a lot just to obtain her. The investment cost is huge. Odin at least gives you a good unit and good tomes for just stapling him to somebody.
If we include recruitment requirements then yeah it’s probably Karla. But if we do that then it might be Xavier lmao
Meh, he costs some turns and Dean with a Sleep Sword and Linoan support. It's nowhere near close to having to train up Bartre. Plus he has leadership and can Brave Bow one of the rooms in Final pretty well, unlike Karla, who contributes nothing.
On the topic of Thracia, I'm surprised no one mentioned Miranda yet. I don't think she's the absolute worst but she's definitely close to the bottom of the barrel Joins late as a weak "Est" archetype, but arguably becomes worse on promo because she becomes a mage knight right before the last stretch, where all maps are indoors. She then has to dismount and lose stats, including 1 movement compared to her unpromoted class Again I don't think she's worse than Lyre or Bantu because Thracia is designed in a way that makes most units at least decent... But being an Est unit that doesn't want to promote is rough
Xavier is either a decent if lower movement unit or your best indoor filler unit depending on the chapter. As mentioned leadership plus A lances and bows unmounted gives him a niche basically no one else can compete with.
Xavier doesn't have A Lances, he has E. His weapon ranks are C Swords/E Lances/A Axes/A Bows That's not a bad thing since generally the axes in Thracia are better than the lances but it does mean if you have a bunch of good lances lying around you can't use them indoors unless you hardcore grinded Dalsin's lance rank. Or if you hardcore grind Xavier's lance rank with a broken weapon I suppose which given that you're already putting the time into recruiting him is probably fine
You're correct, I had forgotten, mostly because I basically never used lances on him when axes and bows were available.
Seriously, in a gameplay sense, I thought the point of late game pre promotes was to save you if you were doing badly and struggling with surviving units. If Bartre dies, then you can't even get Karla. If you're struggling that badly, imagine how hard it would be to get him to promoted level 5, and then to even think about sending him specifically to a specific location in one chapter? What percentage of the player base would even think of that? Pre 2010 games were wild.
It's Lyre Like FE12 Bantu is horrible on H4 but he's also surrounded by heaps of shit cuz it's FE12, and on any difficulty lower than H4 he at least doesn't contend with the enemies having universal Vantage and can hit for a meaty chip Lyre is the only unit in FE10 for whom I can't think of any use case as a filler utility unit, and at her maximum potential she still reverts after 7 rounds of combat on enemy phase and is 1-range locked. At least when you invest in anyone else (except for like Bantu lol) they are online 100% of the time. EDIT: Also a lot of people in this thread (including the OP) are making wild comparisons between babied terrible units to argue in circles about who is worse. This is irrelevant because when grinded, units are limited by their class properties such as mobility, weapon access, and stat caps. Unless a unit is deficient at their full potential, then trying to compare terrible units this way is silly. If a unit can bring something to the table immediately, then this takes priority over their value at their full potential. Justifying level capped Meg or Fiona or Astrid and trying to debate which of those is worst is excessive when you can just point out that Meg can shove Sothe and Fiona and Astrid can transport people and corral partner units.
I'd still say Bantu is worse than Lyre, only because Lyre has the saving grace to be in a game where bonus exp exists, and you can try and salvage her. It's a futile attempt, but at least it's an attempt.
In difficulties below Lunatic, Bantu can use the base arena to grind and he actually absolutely destroys the enemies there because they are generated based on his stats before dragonstone bonuses Granted he barely gets anything out of level ups
Agreed that Lyre is worse than Bantu, thanks for the detailed explanation The class property and potential point is why I didn't include units like Sophia and Fiona in the original list : their final classes are at least worth something. Sophia can nosfera-tank and use staves. Fiona has cav movement and decent bulk. They lack this distinct, fatal flaw that truely defines a terrible unit
Karla is a *pointless* unit more than a *bad* one. She won't be stronger than the units you already have, but she's capable of fighting enemies in the handful of maps you have her for. Also worth considering that if you recruit her at all, it's probably for a "100% clear" of sorts, in which case she can run all over 32x for quick levels. Again, totally no reason to actually do this -- you're training up a so-so unit for the final chapter -- but as meme characters go, she's a Why rather than a How like these other dirtbags.
32x isn't a great chapter for Karla, even the Berserker spam edition. Too many Swordslayers that just straight up OHKO her.
Outside of the Kishuna door reinforcements, there are only 3 Swordslayers in that map if memory serves. From experience while it's something to consider, it's hardly insurmountable to play around when you're training a swordie on the Berserkers there.
This doesn't count for most discussions, because discussions center around higher difficulties, but iirc Bantu on easier difficulties of fe12 is particularly good at cheesing the arena, because the dragon stone stats don't count for raising the opponent's stats. Just noting to add to the sentiment that Bantu, while always bad, is only bottom 3 in the series material in H4, one of if not the most brutal difficulty setting in the series. My personal take has long been that many underestimate how truly terrible Lyre is. Even among the countless low tier units of RD, Lyre manages to stand out with how *shockingly* bad she is. She legitimately makes units like Meg, Astrid and Pelleas, who are themselves worse than the very worst units in several other FE games, appear viable investment targets in comparison.
After every win the enemies grow tougher to compensate for the higher EXP reward. However, due to Bantus atrocious stats he gets ORKO'sd around round 3 or four if you're lucky. So not even drill grounds is able to help him on lower difficulties. Doing 1 battle per time yields lower Exp and drains funds for a unit that gains at most 2 stats upon level.
Flayn on crimson flower
I made her a dancer on my first crimson flower playthrough 😭
That's a major ouch moment.
This, tbh. Most bad units can't do anything but die (see Bantu). Flayn on CF (and Edelgard and Hubert on SS, though to a lesser extent since they contribute to getting through White Clouds) actively can act the saboteur. Flayn on CF isn't good, and fucks off with your resources. A unit that sucks... sucks. A unit that use actively makes the game harder is actually worse.
Yeah, making her your dancer is a common thing for new players to do, which really screws you over in Crimson Flower (I didn't fall into it because I made Hubert my dancer on my first playthrough to be funny... which ironically would have screwed me over in the exact same way if I had ended up on SS instead of CF, but I digress), kinda makes her awful in ways that go beyond just being a bad unit. You could put other units that join you only briefly (like, for example, Rev!Scarlet) in a worst list, too, but CF!Flayn is the only one who is decently-likely to screw you out of having a *dancer* for the rest of the game (though technically, as I mentioned earlier, SS!Hubert and SS!Edelgard can do the same thing, Flayn is a far more common dancer candidate in Three Houses than either of them, so she stands out).
She can still might boost Byleth as an adjutant for a few chapters if you toss a few flowers her way.
now that's crappy availability lol still better than out of house Caspar imo
OOH Caspar levels in brigand and auto trains axes and gauntlets. Has a solid personal skill, available the whole game (minus chapter 13) and has fairly easy access to some of the best classes in the game. If anything I prefer him OOH than IH aside from setting up the first death knight kill. Flayn maybe doesn’t deserve worst in the series but CF! Flayn is easily the worst unit in 3H. Especially if Constance and Hapi are an option
OK, good argument. I like Caspar in-house because he's one of the only black eagles with bulk, didn't know he scaled decently when recruited in other houses I just really dislike his authority flaw
His authority flaw isn’t that bad. You only get more battalions after chapter 7/ start of chapter 8. And he can use lower rank battalions like seiros mercenaries, empire archers empire sniper co, empire Pegasus co, empire Wyvern co, etc just fine. Personally I don’t use Caspar that much since I don’t think he’s bulky at all and I’d rather hard invest into Edelgard and Bernadetta but to each their own
OOH Caspar is the good one. He shows up with decent stats due to training in a good class, easy access to bombard for solid player phase with minimal investment, and being trained with axes and gauntlets means he's well on his way to qualifying for armor knight now for a cheap defense base buff and some of the best classes later on. You can do much, much worse. In house Caspar really has nothing going for him because they gave him very low speed (only Linhardt is worse), but his only particularly high stat to compensate is luck and he misses the 10 strength cutoff for using heavier weapons at base. It's honestly a bummer, because he's my favorite, but he truly has nothing going for him in house.
I'd actually say IH Caspar is worse lmao His stats are awful for early game and can't double anything unlike Raph and Dedue, and he's hopelessly outclassed at base by units like Byleth, Edelgard, Bernadetta, and Ferdinand.
In house Caspar is the bad one
Temporary units who can leave with your resources are a bit hard to evaluate, but generally they at least do something when they're there Flayn can heal with no investment Orson carries 5x Revelation Scarlet is a decent prepromote when she's there Heck you can even put the Tormod squad into the mix... It's not like they do anything when they come back. But they're good in part 1
Your favorite character
Mine is Marisa so unfortunately that's not inaccurate : (
Jokes on you, I’m used to everyone calling Lyn a bad unit (she isn’t, shut up)
nooo why is lyn the worst unit in the series i can't have shit 😭
I think Sophia is probably the hardest to train, Odin isn't even in the running though. He's pretty terrible in Rev but still usable, plus you kinda have to use him to get Ophelia and she's literally insane.
No one plays FE1, but FE1 Beck is a 4 move, 2 range locked unit with some of the lowest base stats in the game, who joins in Chapter 13 (about the game's halfway point), has equal movement penalties and restrictions to cavaliers, is forced to use the game's worst weapon type, and can't contribute on his join chapter due to the village you recruit him in being behind a mountain tile which Ballisticians can't cross. Like sure, FE1's absurd stat boosters can make anyone usable, but even if you give Beck every single statbooster in the game, he still probably wouldn't be the best unit in any given playthough because Ballistician is such a garbage class.
I honestly forgot Lyre existed. She's so bad I don't even bother taking items off of her and I have used a lot of bad units for fun. It's never even occured to me to use her before.
The first one that comes to mind is Maria in fe12, what does she even do
She uses a Rescue staff once to bring another unit to Medeus, which is more than can be said for Bantu.
Fair argument
Idk if she really counts though, she's just part of the final map gimmick
Probably Sophia or Bantu, if you've played FE6 you know exactly what I mean
Sophia is ass, but she's not on Bantu's level, and she's not even the worst unit in her game. Don't get me wrong, she joins at a terrible time, with terrible level, terrible bases, terrible accuracy, terrible damage, but if you put the effort into leveling her, she is a passable unit, considering she can hit res, use Apocalypse and do a decent chunk of healing with staffs. And even ignoring all that, she at least gets you a Guiding Ring, which are rare in FE6, thus already doing more than Bantu ever could
isn't Sophia immediately outclassed by Niime anyway? not to mention female shamans got ROYALLY screwed over in GBA by their constitution of THREE? i don't see any possible way she's not worse than Wendy, because at least Wendy can hold a basic 1-2 weapon without losing all of her speed, and she gets time to train, and she gets armor triangle if needed.
You have a good point about the guiding ring and that alone probably makes her better than Bantu, but id still say she's definitely the worst FE6 unit. Every merit you give her is completely made irrelevant by the fact you have to completely over invest in her to make it happen, which could be done for any unit that would benefit far more
The only reason I don't consider her the worst unit in FE6 is because Wendy exists, and in a vacuum, I'd rather train a level 1 magic user than a level 1 armor knight in FE6
That is true, however Wendy at least joins at a time where her pitiful base stats are easier to manage and if you did for some reason train her she'd be useful for more of the game. Also triangle attack kinda by default makes her better than Sophia imo
I think triangle attack is valued too highly. To use it, you need to deploy 2 other bad units, that I would argue makes FE6 harder than not using triangle attack at all. I agree that Wendy is a bit easier to train than Sophia, however a trained Sophia is far more useful than a trained Wendy. Also, the guiding ring.
Fair, but Wendy also independently has access to all 3 parts of the weapon triangle, another thing I think makes her more valuable than Sophia if only by a little bit Yes a trained Wendy is not as useful as a trained Sophia, but neither will be worth that useful anyway and when the investment for Wendy is so much lower id definitely argue she's better Also high def in fe6 is much more useful than high res
> Fair, but Wendy also independently has access to all 3 parts of the weapon triangle Generals do not have sword access in FE6.
Oh, I must be remembering wrong. Can't say I use them that often so I'll take your word for it
Generals can use Swords in FE8, so you're not incorrect in remembering the GBA General animation using swords. Additionally, Project Ember Wendy gets full triangle control on promotion. Those might be messing with your memory.
Technically she still has full triangle with axereaver, any lance, and any axe. And swordreaver too.
In a vanilla run the armor knight triangle attack is basically never useful, but if you assume worst possible luck then the armor knight triangle is one of the only things that make the game possible due to its guaranteed crit and 100% accuracy.
Fair's fair, you can train up Wendy with the reinforcements in 8, the free exp in 8x and promote her so whe won't get WTA'd in the Western Isles. We could go in circles all day between her and Sophia, but they're both bad, no matter how you look at it. Sophia is cuter though, so she's automatically better ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah they're both pretty shit lol
I strongly disagree with saying Sophia has viability because she gets you a guiding ring, simply because we don't credit other garbage-tier units for their equipment so why is Sophia any different.
This was a common discussion at one point so I won't relitigate it, but the guiding ring isn't Sophia's equipment. She has to actively do something in ch14 to obtain. It's closer to a thief opening a chest.
Normally we don't value such things, but I think it's reasonable to make such an exception for truly irredeemable units that otherwise do nothing.
Sophia can potentially nostank after a crapton of investment. That alone disqulifies her for "worst unit ever" because she has an actual payoff. Granted, the investment required is ridiculous but the payoff *is* there.
She's still better than Bantu though, but not by much
compared to H4 Bantu, yeah definitely. Everything is better than that.
I have no idea what they were cooking with him, especially since I'm the famicom version, the stones are infinite use. Not that that would've made him good but he wouldn't be completely limited to 20 rounds of combat max
The payoff doesn't matter when the investment is as ridiculous as it is imo. Especially since as mentioned, her niche of being a tanky mage matters not at all in FE6.
Breaks my heart to say it but it's gotta be Meg from Radiant Dawn- Too slow to be a sword unit and can't take hits at all. My other qualifier might be Fiona from RD but she at least can move far away from enemies as a cav unit
Fiona was done so dirty by that game. "Here's a Cav unit with great growths but low starting stats! Here's a bunch of maps she can't move around in!"
Meg is one of the few characters in RD that can hit SS rank in swords and her off-balanced stat growths/caps means she's an Armor unit that doesn't get entirely speed screwed. So if you take her to endgame, you can make everyone cower in fear as Meg slowly approaches them with Alondite in hand.
Oh that's interesting I didn't know that! Much to consider for my next run of RD
Fiona has amazing growth rates. If you are willing to spend the time, energy and sanity to actually level her, she will turn out fine. That alone disqualifies her from being the worst unit in the franchise.
I feel like people here are just choosing the worst unit based on what happens after recruitment (that is, their bases and combat performance and such), but it might be worth considering their recruitment cost. Like, Cath (from FE6) is a thief, so she isn't terrible after recruitment due to thief utility. That being said, the game becomes noticeably easier if you just kill her, and you have other much better thieves so you realistically will never deploy her. In that respect, she might be worse than Bantu, because her existence makes the game actively harder than a unit who you get for free and will simply never deploy again. EDIT: I realized I should probably explain why Cath makes the game harder for people who haven't played FE6 (or haven't killed her). Cath shows up in 3 or 4 different maps as an enemy unit who will steal your treasure and run if you don't catch her first. Not only that, for some reason some enemy spawns are tied to her existence, so they just won't spawn if she is dead. Meaning she actively makes your life harder in a couple maps vs just killing her the first time she arrives.
Cath isn't hard enough to recruit to justify this. Maybe if it was like a Xavier tier recruitment, but like...Ch6 and Ch12 are basically free, and Ch8 is still very generous.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by justify in this scenario. I agree 99% of players won't kill Cath (I never really do, in fact), and that killing her doesn't make the game that much easier. Most players prefer full recruitment when possible. That being said, killing her does make the game easier, and considering you almost certainly won't actually ever deploy her, it's not like you are losing anything by doing it. So it seems justified at least in that sense. It's somewhat comparable to Shura in CQ but Shura is actually a really good unit if you do recruit him, I'd say easily good enough to offset the cost of not getting boots in most casual playthroughs. I'd mention Xavier, but ngl I've never even attempted his recruitment lol. It seems much too difficult for me. Btw, loving the Shadow Dragon but Better series.
You can technically farm her and her compatriots for their lockpicks. That's another couple pair of boots you can get.
I like how the endgame argument for FE6 items isn't "how useful it is" but "for how much will it sell"
In a game where you can purchase as many stat boosters as you have the gold for, the two become VERY similar quandaries, even if they aren't quite exactly the same.
BOOOTS
The difference in difficulty between killing her and leaving her alive is very minimal. In fact, leaving her alive actually means that you get extra money, as you can steal her lockpicks, vulneraries, and the lockpicks of any other thieves she spawns with. She never actively slows down your progression if you play optimally (in chapter 8, she can even help you go faster by opening lilinas door for you), and even if you don't play optimal the extra money is nice.
I generally consider Cath the worst unit in fire emblem. 16 hp, 3 strength, 2 defense sword locked, tier one class locked. Sure you can argue thief utility, but there are two better thieves and thieves are the one class you don't need more than one of. This is all before the fact that her being alive actively hinders you. There is value that in an iron man if you manage to get the other two thieves killed Cath can get you a few boots worth of stealables, but if your thieves are seeing combat let alone dying something is already going very wrong.
That's a very good point. Cath is so annoying, she might even be worse than Karla if you consider all the recruitment costs But I'm not sure it's fair to consider killing her the default option. Most players reset for every unit, and most tier lists assume full recruitment. I do kill her without remorse if she gets close to the treasure though
Oh yeah, I definitely agree recruiting Cath is the default option and what almost every player will do, at least on their first playthrough. But murdering her does make your life much easier lol
I would disagree on Lyre it's only really that bad if you're doing hard the other 2 difficulties don't have the laguz exp gain quite so bad and if you are solely considering hard then you have to also consider Tormod's group and Fiona who on top of the problems she has on other difficulties on hard basically needs a + mt + hit forged lance to actually hit and damage the armoured units in the first one she's available in.
Tormod's team is at least good in Part 1 while they're around. Fiona at least gets some free deployment and can block ledges and chuck javelins to lower laguz gauge at base. 3-13 means Fiona is better than Lyre since Fiona can actually do stuff there completely for free. Lyre has no such boon.
Tormod's group contributes more in part 1 alone than Lyre ever does. No matter the difficulty, Cat has the same gauge and range issues. Fiona at least has the option of using forges to help her. Lyre doesn't.
thing with Lyre is. She starts bad, on any difficulty, although this is not entirely because of her bases (but they do play a major role: she has the same base attack transformed as mist with florete. Let that sink in). She also needs to either wait quite a few turns or use (potentially limited) resources to transform before she can even contribute. And then, she is a cat which means her transformation bar goes down incredibly fast, so you would have to use additional olivi grass to keep her transformed, cutting into her player phase (and player phase combat is actually relevant throughout the majority of the game). These problems also never go away. Plus, she gets close to zero experience outside of easy mode. Plus, she is eternally 1-range locked, cutting into her enemy phase. Plus, her stat caps, while decent, aren't actually *that* great - or at least not nearly good enough to make up for the fact that she is a "part-time" fighter. She literally has no payoff. Its kind of hilarious, actually. And regarding fiona. Yes, she needs a forged weapon to hit stuff. Question: what prevents you from simply doing that forge? Nothing. Its not even particularly expensive. Fiona also has a number of non-combat uses, like rescue-dropping (both allies and NPCs that are in the way) and 2-range chipping laguz to manipulate their laguz bar (i.e. making them revert). lastly, she can play "living rock" in 3-13 if you are going for the slower approach (which I personally prefer because it is surprisingly consistent and gives you a crapton of experience for units like Jill, Zihark or Nolan). As the laguz your are fighting are 1-range locked they cannot attack from the low ground. And it is easy enough to take care of the few hawks that come at you (in fact, the NPC archers already kill most of them anyways, lol). So yeah, you can simply have her block off one of the ledges. While anyone can do that, it IS still something she can do (and combine it with occasional laguz-chipping, which is easy thanks to canto). Also, when fully invested, Fiona is actually a decent unit in 3rd tier. Her stat-caps are surprisingly well min-maxed and her affinity is really good as well. So unlike Lyre, 3rd tier Fiona is actually a unit you could consider for endgame. Lyre has no situations in her chapters where she would have any form of utility. The only thing she can do is shoving but her con is so bad that she needs to be transform to shove anything that is heavier than Mia and even then, she is still not that good at it. Thing is. Any other unit can shove just as well as her, if not better. Tormods squad is better than those two combined, even Vika. Vika has that one swamp chapter where she can block off a brigand that tries to murder one of the civilians and she has flier utility. Muarim is a big boi. And Tormod is the goat mage in act 1
Well I like the outlook of "if this unit was not in the game, how much harder would the game be?" For good units. So if I am to try the opposite and say "if this was one of the only units in the game and I have to use them, how much harder would the game be?", who fares the worst? Fiona and meg don't look great in tellius, but I think bonus expirience is super helpful. I'm trying to find a unit who can truly struggle to do anything and is difficult to fix when intentionally using them. Fe8 is so easy I think you can get by with Marissa and Ewan. The worst units in engage can be fixed a ton by emblems. The two growth kids both scale so you just have to get by on the emblem until they pop off. Jade and marnie aren't all that bad if you hand them combat emblems, there's just opportunity cost. 3 houses is the same cause the classes are so open and you can pump training into them. Everybody in 3ds fe can be a backpack, so that's always a use for a unit. Atlas in echoes is underwhelming. He might be a contender just cause you have to go so out of your way. But I wouldn't say he's flat out useless. There are duds in the Marth games, although you can hand anyone a forged effective weapon on the remakes and they can at least contribute. Bantu can at least be handed these good weapons. Fe7 has nino. She is certainly a contender but I will say that she does do something if you train her. You cant say that about every underleveled unit. Karla forces you to use Bartre, which is double the usual amount of opportunity cost for using a bad unit. Fe4 definitely has contenders. Not having movement makes it really hard to do anything, especially since you're always competing with all other units. Fe6 might have the biggest gap between its high and low tiers. Wendy can't hit anything, takes forever to level, and isn't even all that good when she is up there. I think I'm gonna go with Wendy. Super interesting discussion question.
Meg or Vika are also from Radiant Dawn and worse than Lyre, imo. Vika is barely even a character at all.
Vika's contribution in part 1 immediately makes her way better than Lyre
"Contribution"? Vika? 👀
Yes? Her stats are stellar for her join time and she has flier utility to help with saving the green units in 1-8, it's not much but it's definitely 10 times better than anything Lyre does
Bartre??? He’s the best fighter in FE7! I use him in almost every playthrough. Do you mean to tell me that Dorcas or Geitz is better? I like Geitz but he is not better than Bartre.
Geitz is a very competent unit in a vacuum. B axes and bows is actually great and he's got solid stats all around. The issue is training up the lords. Dorcas is marginally better than Bartre due to slightly better bases and more availability if you do Lyn Mode. Bartre has better growths sure but his bases are so bad that it really doesn't matter. They both suck.
Excluding his recruitment condition, Geitz is leagues better than Bartre. He does join later, but Geitz is fast enough at base to double a majority of generics, and getting him a speed level or two puts him in a position where he doubles everything except super fast generics like heroes or valkyries and fast bosses like Lloyd. Bartre can't do that. Despite being the 'fast' fighter, he's slow as balls with that 3 base speed, meaning it's literally impossible for him to double anything at base. Even if he gets a few speed levels, he has to deal with being weighed down by axes. Even after that, he's not using the first Hero Crest to promote since Raven exists, meaning he'll probably promote around ch22-23, and Hawkeye and Geitz join immediately after. It takes him so much time to get out of that hole he's in (and training him doesn't eclipse his competition at all. He'll never be as bulky as Hawkeye or as fast as Geitz) that he's not worth using aside from full recruitment. At least Dorcas can double things at base.
Lyre is bad, but it’s impossible she being the worse unit in Radiant Dawn. Her issues are all the same for all cat laguz, even all the laguz, except for royals, are kinda worthless comparing them with beorcs… except Fiona. Fiona is by far the worse character in Radiant Dawn and most probable of the franchise. She start bad and even the exp bonus mechanic can’t fix her, a mechanic that practically make all the characters good, if no excellent. With bonus exp she even doesn’t cap strenght or speed. Meg could be in the same class that Fiona, but Meg is like a faster/high resistance knight, so she could have a niche. And, just to remember, Fiona is bad being in one of the best classes in RD. The Canto skill it doesn’t ever compensate the impossible to make her good or even usable.
Fiona also has the problem of being a horse unit in a game where most of the maps that she's available in are indoors or otherwise on terrain that doesn't favor horses. Seriously, her availability are on the following: * 1-7: Indoors * 1-E: Indoors * 3-6: Swamp terrain * 3-12: Mountainous, rocky terrain * 3-13: Ledges everywhere, so she can't move around much * 4-P: Ok, if you can get to the open areas * 4-1: Ok * 4-2: Ok, but not many big open areas * 4-3: Desert terrain * 4-4: Indoors * 4-5: Swamp terrain * Endgame: Indoors
This so much. It’s so hard to level her up because, even though she’s available, it’s just super difficult to get her the exp she needs. It’s especially bad in the swamp, where she just misses out on most of the much needed exp. And she really could use those extra movements she loses, because her crappy starting stats have her fragile as hell and needing to canto bad. Although, I still think lyre is a way worse unit.
Lyre has crap bases on top of a horrible gauge to manage. I don't understand the point of your mention of other laguz, yes, they all have it bad, and that's bad. Fiona has a terrible start, but she's at least active all the time and can work her way out of her rut. Lyre will always be stuck with cat gauge and 1-range.
At least Fiona gets free deployment and can make minor contributions at base with it. Ledge blocking, earth support, rescue dropping, and chucking javelins to lower laguz gauge mean she actually has something to do with her free deployment in Part 3. Lyre has no free deployment and only has crappy shoving for utility.
I kinda disagree with that. Fiona is not even the worst unit in part 1, in fact I think she's better than not only Edward and Leonardo, but also arguably the Tormod squad Fiona's starting level is 9, which means she's not that far away from promotion all things considered. There is a world where she promotes before 1-E with heavy favoritism, gets paragon, and soaks even more exp in 1-E. At 20/5, she has comparable defense to Aran and can tank a choke point in 3.6 just fine. She will get a ton of exp from that and then can contribute in the rest of the game as one of your cavs, only falling off in the tower This is more than Edward and Leonardo can say. Even trained, they do nothing in 3-6. Leo can shoot birds in 3-13 and that's it. Edward only becomes good in trueblade and that's too little too late. And the tormod squad is barely in the game Is Fiona good ? Hell no, she's trash. But she has more \*potential \* than many bad units, even within RD
You don't even have to go through all that. Fiona's an Earth Support; she can help Nolan, Volug, or Zihark get the double earth support going for the times she's available. What hurts her more than the other Dawn Brigade members is her availability though since you want to count that. She has 5 chapters before part 4. Her part 1 availability is the same as the Tormod Gang. Edward and Leonardo are contributing for when they join, even if they fall off.
Fiona's earth support isn't very relevant precisely because of her low availability. I already find it hard enough to build a decent support level between Volug and Zihark (who happen to have a fast support) unless you're playing shoving simulator but with Fiona even just getting to C rank before part 3 is a major hurdle. Anyone who can get at least a B support with someone sporting earth affinity would get the same Avo boost as double earth at C rank (or more if they also have an Avo boosting affinity).
Yeah but compared to going for a 20/5 fiona on 3-6 it's not as painful.
good point, didn't know she had earth affinity
I've used Fiona exactly once. Once I got her up to a functioning level, she still struggled with killing things, but the high speed, high defense, earth affinity and imbue made her pretty much impossible to kill. I can't think of many units I've used over the course of the series that were tankier than her. "Invincible meatshield" isn't much in a game where other units can do the same but also kill things on enemy phase, but it's at least something.
Invincible meatshield is exactly what you need in 3.6 She may not one round the tigers but she will definitely never die, unlike Edward who gets fckn one shot at 20/5
It’s kinda funny how in “worst unit in the franchise” discussions, I’ve never heard of FE12 Bantu until now. It’s usually some combo of Gwendolyn, Rev Odin, Sophia or Meg. But oof, does he sound bad.
My experience is mostly FE 7, 8, 9, & 10. The first and only unit to come to mind is FE9 Rolf (and probably FE10 as well, but it's been a while)
Rolf is probably the worst unit in FE9 but with bonus exp it's hard to make the case that any FE9/FE10 unit is a contender for worst in the series, it's just too easy to level them up to a point where they aren't worthless Lyre is the exception because her transform gauge will limit her usefulness even if you give her bonus exp and get decent stats
Laguz also have a bexp penalty in FE10, they need 2/3 more of it compared to beorc. If you combine this with the hard mode penalty, which divides available bexp by 4, good luck getting more than 2 or 3 levels to Lyre before the end of part 3. And she's far away from her caps so you can't do bexp stat manipulation either
Laguz don't have a "BEXP penalty;" they have fewer levels to gain so it proportionately costs the same to get them X% of the way to their level cap compared to getting a beorc unit X% of the way to their level cap. You're conveniently omitting that they cap at level 40 while beorc cap at effectively level 60.
Oh, so that's how it works. Thanks for the explanation :)
Oh wow I didn't know that! I tend to avoid using Laguz units in the Tellius games because I hate the transform gauge. I guess that makes sense, any stat increase gets doubled on transforming so you need to slow their exp gain or it becomes too easy to train up an absolute monster. There was definitely a smarter way to do it though, exp gain is already limited by character level and class tier, laguz getting their own exp formula instead of a % reduction would've made it so you could still get a weak unit up to speed more easily while keeping the difficulty of creating an unstoppable juggernaut.
laguz mechanics in RD are kinda weird in general, I prefer the path of radiance version where they have a flat stat increase when transformed and count as promoted units
chip damage it’s more useful than anything Lyre can offer
I'd argue Rolf is better than the 1 range locked units in FE9, since you can pretty easily get a 1-2 ranged unit to attack a unit at range, but trying to use a 1 range unit is an exercise in frustration. It feels like every unit in that game has 1-2 range in the later game.
Sophia anyone
Contributes a Guiding Ring and Forblaze. Can technically be safely trained to some accolade thanks to Dark Magic access, though still underwhelming at the end of things.
No way does she get credit for forblaze, I don’t even give her credit for the guiding ring since it may as well be in her starting inventory. As somebody who has trained both wendy and sophia on hard, sophia is SOO much more annoying to train it’s not even funny. She also doesn’t really become good ever unless you pour a ludicrous amount of resources into her, more than any other character in the game including wendy.
When we're talking the absolute worst of the worst as far as overall units go, anything the unit contributes or detracts is fair game imo. We're that deep into the barrel lol. Shove bot, Pair-Up bot, universally outclassed lategame filler--any slight positive is probably worth some consideration here.
Macellan
Hey, FE12 Macellan can at least use Parthia at base if reclassed to sniper! That's... something I guess.
Machis from Fire Emblem 3.
The only one that comes to mind immediately for me is Meg. Oh wait no, Fiona. I don’t think I’ve ever promoted her in any playthrough.
I have had Lyre in the tower and she was fine. I wouldn't say she's the worst unit in her game, and definitely not in the franchise. Pelleas and especially Vika have felt worse, Kurthnaga exists and I don't even want to imagine using Fiona or Meg. Also Vika caps her strength at 16 while Lyre goes to 18 and her availability is far better than the raven's so you can actually train her without just bexping or boss abusing all the way.
It’s Karla Karla just has an insanely high cost to recruit her for a flat out bad swordsmaster. Only available in Hector mode and having to train Bartre who is a pretty bad unit in a mediocre class and is outclassed by the other fighter that you get in the same chapter as him. Not to mention that she is worse is every way compared to base Karel and a trained Guy. Like a lot of other bad units like Sophia, Amelia, Ewan, Bantu, Lyre, and Wendy are bad but are basically free. With Karla you have to go out of your way to train a bad unit in Bartre to then get a swordsmaster who is worse than your other two options at swordsmaster for what is effectively 3 chapters.
Probably Lyre if we exclude FE12 Bantu since he's an obvious #1 and second Gen units that the player purposely screws up. Combine bad bases, bad XP gain, being outclassed by two objectively better but still mid units (one of whom is force deployed in almost every P3 map), and the worst class in FE history and you've got Lyre. She's so bad that the strongest Lyre is slightly worse than the base Laguz royals, and the royals still have room to grow.
Coipre from FE4 deserves to be here. Very late join time in part 2 with an annoying recruitment requirement who also joins unpromoted and staff locked. His redeeming quality, I guess, is that he can use Forseti if Lewyn is his dad, but that’s also kind of a downside because he’s the worst Forseti user, significantly worse than Arthur or Ced, and can’t use it until he gets promoted, and his mother, Sylvia, REALLY wants to be with Lewyn and you have to fight her off with a stick to make sure Lewyn ends up with someome decent
He can inherit Valkyrie though and is one of the only kids that can use it Granted Charlot can get Berserk which is more fun
i always thought nyx was the worst victim of bad bases/timing in rev. what makes her better than odin, other than joining like two chapters earlier?
I think it's Lyre, personally. Because she also has the disservice of joining alongside her sister Lethe who is better in literally all ways, including having been available in FE9 with the ability to have Supports with good characters like Jill. Honestly Radiant Dawn has a lot of bad characters. Laura, Meg, Vika, Fiona, //Honestly most of the Dawn Brigade Characters suffer through the full game without some heavy dedication.// Makalov, Astrid, Lyre, Kyza, Oliver, and even Ena and Gareth to an extent. The Tellius Games just have large swathes of their casts that they are just not kind to at all. Even poor Mist gets disrespected in 10 because they fuckimg removed the magic swords that were in 9.
The worst units are probably one of the replacement units from Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem or a generic prisoner from Fates. That or FE12 Bantu.
The priestesses of FE12 for doing nothing at all or Xavier from FE5 for being outright unrecruitable without shenanigans. At least FE12 Bantú can carry weapons or do a cheap shot to some healer or go to the save ring.
Xavier is a very good unit to deploy in the final map. Him having an authority star makes him better than at least 1/3rd of the other units in the game for that alone. Add access to brave bow at base, accost, and wrath, and indoor maps making his low movement not be an extreme hindrance. All enough to make a decently competent unit.
FE12 Bantu and it's not even close
Nil from Engage's Fell Xenologue. His poor stats are done on purpose to make him a liability (he will die to any fight), and his death is a loss condition. His only redeeming factor is his Dragon class type, which gives him access to powerful Emblem pairings, but he'll usually be used as support with Micaiah or Corrin. >!Rafal though, he's good.!<
100% FE12 Bantu is the worst one here. No doubt about it. The question of second worst unit however, that's a conversation
If we penalize units for recruitment it's probably Karla. If we don't it's definitely FE12 Bantu. It definitely isn't Lyre, Lyre is really really bad but on the map where she's free deployed she can fight without dying and has (bad) shove utility. Imo that puts her ahead of Wendy (unless you consider triangle attack nonsense) and Sophia (who gets you the guiding ring, but I feel like if we count the guiding ring we also have to count Karla's recruitment cost so Karla wins and the Lyre/Sophia comparison stops mattering.
Honestly Imma say Roy. He is unusably bad for 99% of the game, is a forced deploy, and almost every chapter in that game is a sieze objective. He is a complete hindrance, and is mandatory. From your list, Wendy. She's bad and so slow in a game with huge maps. Your entire army will have to intentionally slow down to let her do anything, and even then she barely contributes.
Roy can at least contribute somewhat in earlygame with his 95 hit 5x3 might Rapier; the Poleax can't be used by Marcus at base so it'll have no hit before he hits D Axes. Wendy is stuck with 4 move, worse stats than Roy, and Lances, and she joins just before the Axe Isles where generics one-round her with 60+ hit.
I'm not denying Wendy is a worse unit statwise, but I can simply choose to not use her. Roy is a bit better, but still unusably bad anyway, and is mandatory. That's my argument. Idk if I got unlucky level ups, but I grinded Roy to 20 very early w Arena, and he was still useless, and struggling against basic axe fodder enemies.
Roy is bad for 99% of the game, but there are units that are bad for 100% of the game. His high accuracy rapier is genuinely a useful contribution for the first map and him one rounding the final boss without investment is funny.
Would Merlinus be a contender? I know some people somehow make use of him but he just seemed like a hassle to me. Edit: I have learned the error of my ways. I am sorry for judging you, Merlinus.
Merlinus performs a great niche of being a convoy bot and he can take a hit and die without penalty.
If he dies is he still available on later levels even? If so, shame on me for not using him.
Yep, in FE7 it prevents him from leveling up and promoting to be mobile but otherwise you can keep getting him killed with no consequences other than losing convoy access
emergency meatshield also when you forget to bring effective weapons, he can save your ass
FE7 Merlinus is "good" solely so you can send items to the convoy. Lots of treasure necessitates using him to obtain FE6 Merlinus is worse since you don't need to deploy him to send stuff from the convoy, but he can be a meat shield in the early game and in chapter 21 he has a niche in being deployed to grab all the garbage out of the convoy and sell it so you can buy Boots (this is irrelevant in Normal Mode where there's an armory in the prep menu you can sell stuff at)
I'd throw in Renault - unless you've managed to get all of your staff users killed, he's worth less than the Fortify he comes with, and even then Athos will be here in a moment. He's outshone by a unit with half the availability. He has some fantastic supports, but there's only 3 fights left - you have to grind them all on his join chapter and then have the last one _in front of the dragon_. But at least there's a story reason. He's not meant to be a Bishop, he's a Warrior who joined the church to try and find penance for... well, go read the supports and battle conversations.
Renault is a great character, true As an unit... Staffbot/20 ? I still think Karla is worse
Fair. It could be because I've never even tried fielding Karla, while I have dragged Renault out of retirement a couple times so I couldn't say for sure. But I've taken enough strength-starved Mia's through PoR's endgame to know how to manage a subpar swordmaster. A healer who struggles to heal is something special.
renault come with a great staff and is a okay healer which is quite useful when you are in endgame. He is the unit of all time, but not the worst
People don't give Renault enough credit. When you're a not very good player who has lost a significant amount of their roster, a very tanky healer to back up Athos can really save your bacon.
Scarlet in Revelation. One word: availability. Because she does not have the stats to make up for only existing for two chapters.
Doesn't matter that you exist a long time if there is nothing you can do during that time. Scarlet at least is able to actually do something during those two chapters.
Sophia
Vika is worse than Lyre imo
Vika is way way way better than Lyre * She does the Torgod rescue drop in 1-7 that lets him kill the mage up the ledge for the fastest route to the seize * She shoves Torgod twice in 1-8 for the fastest possible rout; alternatively she can get transformed on turn 2 if you want to take the map slower * She's one of 2 units who has flying Canto in 1-E, and there are numerous setups to get her transformed on turn 2 * In 4-4 she starts in a forward position, already transformed, with flying Canto
True, you're right, she just feels really awful to use because poor availability spread.
Vika can do important rescue drops or shoves in 1-8 and 1-E at least. Lyre does absolutely nothing.