The Greatest Pegasus Knight in the Series - Caeda (Shadow Dragon)

http://www.zerochan.net/801916

                       You want to know why Caeda is # 1 on this list? It isn't because of her base stats, it isn't because of her growth rates. The only reason why Caeda is this high up the list is that freaking Wing Spear. The funny thing here is that in every other game that she's in, Caeda gets outclassed by Palla and Catria. It's funny how the one time Caeda beats Palla and Catria is the one time where it actually mattered. The best to worst versions of Caeda go like this:

Shadow Dragon Caeda >>> FE 12 Caeda > FE 3 Caeda > FE 1 Caeda

                    Just to be clear, Caeda is never bad in any of the games that she's in, much like Palla and Catria, it's more about good, better and best. Caeda's strength and defense is usually brought up as a negative for her in each of the games that she's in. How she overcomes this problem affects her overall performance in each and every game. In Fire Emblem 1 she loses 5 speed and 2 skill upon promotion. Yeah, it's pretty sad http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Shiida. Her growth rates in that game are very good however (they're certainly better than her Shadow Dragon growths) and she's part of your army from Chapter 1 onward (just like in Shadow Dragon) so she's at least got that going for her. Her Fire Emblem 3 version is only slightly better. In Fire Emblem 3 she has small Marth and Ogma support bonuses (yes they existed back in Fire Emblem 3, although they're nothing like what supports are today) and this time around her promotion bonuses are better. However, Caeda still has that strength and defense problem and this time around she has to deal with dismounting, which also causes her to lose a few stats. Her Fire Emblem 12 version has the same perks as her Fire Emblem 3 version, but this time around she has the Wing Spear. True, the Wing Spear isn't as ZOMG-AMAZING as it is in Shadow Dragon due to the fact that there aren't as many horses in this game, but it still exists and is very helpful. In Fire Emblem 12 she can also reclass to a Paladin to help out with her strength and defense, which helps her out tremendously and forges exist in this game too. Also, Caeda is very useful in the prologue of Fire Emblem 12 too, even in the Lunatic and Reverse Lunatic difficulties. That being said, she is still outclassed by a good number of units (My Unit, Catria, Palla and Marth) which looks kind of "meh" in comparison to how awesome she is in Shadow Dragon.

             

                           Caeda is simply a monster in Shadow Dragon. There is no doubt that she is in fact your best unit. As I mentioned before the reason for this is that her Wing Spear breaks the game in half, so any serious discussion of Caeda must also discuss just how game-breaking that Wing Spear is. I should also mention that Caeda can also reclass into a swordmaster so that she can eliminate manaketes who are too fast to deal with as a wyvern knight. Fortunately for Caeda wyrmslayers exist and they can be forged too. The Wing Spear is basically a spear version of Marth's rapier. Here are the stats for the Wing Spear:
Mt - 8 

Hit - 90 

Crt - 10 

Wt - 4

* Effective against armored knights and cavaliers*.

                     What's better is that the Wing Spear can be forged. Every point of might that you increase on the Wing Spear becomes three extra effective might towards the vulnerable schmucks that cross her path. According to Ronaldo Villanueva "adding six Mt points leaves the weapon with 42 effective Mt, capable of decimating enemies in one hit, essentially duplicating its durability." For the sake of craziness let's assume that you forge the Wing Spear by the maximum amount of might that you can in this game, by 10 points. That leaves you with 18 might and 54 effective might which is almost double the might of a Jugdral Regalia weapon. Remember, we only need to add six might points just to murder things in a single hit. That is the insanity that we're dealing with. A forged Wing Spear allows Caeda to kill bosses who are armor knights and cavaliers in a single round of combat with ease. I've actually gone through the trouble to count how many bosses in Shadow Dragon are either armor knights, cavaliers or manaketes. 

I've also comprised a list of chapters where a significant number of armor knights, cavaliers and manaketes make up your enemy's army and have listed how many of each appear in their respective chapters:

20 / 29 bosses (15 bosses are either armor knights or cavaliers. 5 bosses are manaketes, not counting Medeus for obvious reasons)

Chapter 4: 7 / 18

Chapter 5: 7 / 16

Chapter 6: 8 / 24

Chapter 7: 7 / 17

Reinforcements: 8 / 8

Chapter 8: 13 / 17

Chapter 12x: 11 / 17

Chapter 14: 10 / 21

Chapter 16: 11 / 17

Chapter 17x: 11 / 27

Chapter 18: 20 / 21

Chapter 19: 10 / 17

Chapter 20x: 19 / 21

Chapter 24: 9 / 19

                    If you round up, Caeda kills 69 % of all bosses in the game in a single round of combat with either her Wing Spear or with a wyrmslayer. As you can see, there are also a significant number of enemies in numerous levels where there are a significant number of enemies that she will kill in a single hit with either a Wing Spear or a wyrmslayer. No other unit in her game has that kind of an impact. What's better is that this strategy's effectiveness isn't dependent on your play-style. You want to play casually? Go ahead. Caeda's still going to wreck enemies with ease. You want to Warp-Skip the game? Well she's your go-to boss-killer. As long as you're playing with growths (could someone confirm how effective she is in a 0 % growths playthrough?) she will break your game with ease. She can even turn H5 into a joke.

Credit to SubaruSumeragi http://www.zerochan.net/1272374

              Ronaldo Villanueva also had some great insights of his own to share about her game-breaking awesomeness:

                        Base Sheeda with a +6 Mt forged Wind Spear has 46 effective Atk, 12 AS, which is more than enough to reach the OHKO to the mentioned cavaliers with 30 HP, 7 Def. (He's talking about the cavaliers in Chapter 4) Additionally, base Sheeda with 46 effective Atk can reach the OHKO to Benson, the boss of the aforementioned chapter with 34 HP, 9 Def. Each level that Sheeda gets is valuable. Her strength growth of 20% doesn't matter since the Wing Spear has massive power, and she gets +4 Str as a promotion bonus anyways, but each speed point obtained through her 85% growth allows her to double-attack even more enemies in late-game. For example, Sheeda Lv11/2 has 24 HP, 49 effective Atk, 21 AS, 13 Def with a +5 Mt forged Wind Spear. With this, she can ORKO Stallone, the boss of Chapter 18, who has 44 HP, 11 Def, 17 AS, while she gets 2HKOd by his 34 Atk. GG the rest of the game.

                                 I'll finish up with a quote from someone on serenesforest.net about Caeda's impact on Shadow Dragon: If Marth goes Murderface with Forged Rapier...then Shiida goes on a rampage equivalent to watching all the movies in the Friday the 13th series in fast-forward AT THE SAME TIME thanks to Wing Spear. (Gone2Ground, "http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=31699)

Ronaldo Villanueva's Analysis: https://www.facebook.com/notes/ronaldo-villanueva/top-15-unidades-de-fire-emblem-de-todos-los-tiempos-parte-2/851379861570794 (Translated by Ronaldo Villanueva himself. Thanks buddy. :D )

# 2 - Catria (Gaiden)

http://www.zerochan.net/1124355

                   So Catria in many ways is just like her sister Palla. Catria exists in just as many games and usually serves the same, exact role as Palla. Depending on which game you're playing Catria might be better than Palla too. In Fire Emblems 3 & 12 Palla is the superior Pegasus Knight. In Fire Emblem 1, and in Shadow Dragon, Catria is the superior unit. I could be wrong since I'm not as knowledgeable about the Archanea games in comparison to the other games in the series. That being said, Catria is almost always awesome in each and every Fire Emblem game that she's in. If I had to rank the different Catria's together the order would look like this:

Gaiden Catria > FE 12 Catria > FE 3 Catria > FE 1 Catria > Shadow Dragon Catria

                  Shadow Dragon Catria joins late for her game and her base stats aren't that good either for her game. In Fire Emblem 1 the enemies are significantly weaker, her growths are better and her base stats are better here than in Shadow Dragon which is why FE 1 Catria beats Shadow Dragon Catria. In Fire Emblem 3 she's significantly better, in fact I would put Catria in the Top 5 Best Fire Emblem 3 characters. Her availability is fantastic, her combat is amazing from the word "go" (she can use silver weapons at base level) and her growths are still amazing. However, Fire Emblem 3 has the dismounting feature which nerfs her whenever you're in an indoor map. Catria is one of the few characters in the Archanea saga that didn't get nerfed between Fire Emblem 3 and Fire Emblem 12. She joins at the same time in FE 12 as she does in Fire Emblem 3 but she no longer has dismount issues and a couple of the units that used to be her competition in FE 3 are no longer her competition in 12 (Sirius and Linde). Also, Catria can reclass to a cavalier in 12 and gain some extra durability (not that she has bad durability as a Pegasus Knight). That being said, FE 12 Catria still has to deal with the existence of My Unit, Palla and Mallesia (to a lesser extent) so while she's great her contributions aren't as great as they are in Gaiden for reasons that I'll get into.

 

                    Catria is the best unit in Celica's army. For those of you who don't know, Gaiden tier lists always rank Alm and Celica's army separately. The reason for this is because Alm and Celica's group are separate from each other for 99.9 % of their game. The only time Alm and Celica's armies fight together is literally at the end of the game when you're fighting against Doma, the final boss. It's a similar reason to why the first and second generations of Holy War have their own separate tier lists. 

 

                  To repeat myself from before Catria IS the best unit in Celica's army. For starters, she doesn't have anywhere near as much competition here than in her other games. Caeda, My Unit and Mallesia don't exist in Gaiden and all of your warp bots are in Alm's army so the only competition that Catria has is from Palla. Palla and Catria both join at the exact same time and they both can fly which is a huge deal in Celica's route. Palla has a slight lead over Catria in HP, strength and defense while Catria's leads in speed, skill, luck and resistance are significantly higher. What gives Catria the edge are her growths. Palla has a 10 % speed growth in Gaiden so eventually she will run into enemies that she can't double. Catria never has this problem. Catria's strength and defense will eventually be greater than or equal to Palla's while she continues to maintain her significant leads in speed, skill, luck and resistance. Many of Catria's growths are considered excellent for her game except for HP, luck, defense and resistance which are considered average.

 

Character Growth Stat
HP		Str		Skl		Spd		Lck		Def		Res
30%		30%		30%		40%		20%		20%		0%

 

 ^ No I am not joking nor being sarcastic. Those are considered some of the better growths in this game. Catria also joins your army with the awesomeness that is the Angel Ring, an item that doubles stat gains during each and every level-up in addition to boosting luck automatically to 40, the maximum luck cap in the game. 

 

                    So after I decided to bump Marcia up to # 3 on the list I began to ask myself whether Marcia in Path of Radiance was better than Catria in Gaiden. In the end, I came to the conclusion that Gaiden!Catria was better for reasons that I'm about to get into. 

 

 

             The way I see it Marcia has two major advantages over Catria:

• Marcia joins earlier in her game: Marcia joins in Chapter 9 of Path of Radiance, whereas Catria doesn't join your army until half-way through the game. That's a pretty big advantage.

•  Marcia promotes earlier than Catria: Marcia benefits greatly from bonus experience which she is going to get a lot of, Catria doesn't have this advantage in any of her games, much less in Gaiden. Not only does Gaiden have the worst experience gain formula in the entire series but also Pegasus Knights promote way later than the vast majority of the other classes. Pegasus Knights don't promote until Level 12 in Gaiden, whereas the majority of second tier classes are promoting to third tier by Level 10. When you combine that with the horrific experience gains that this game gives you it will feel like 129837129035109235618536745823 years have transpired before these ladies get to promote. 

         Well those are some pretty big advantages right? So why is Gaiden!Catria ranked higher? Well...

• Catria has a better start than Marcia: Even though it doesn't take very long before Marcia turns into a powerhouse unit, she still doesn't join your army as that great a unit. To quote Ronaldo Villanueva's Marcia analysis, At first sight, Marcia's base parameters are mediocre, with 20 HP, 8 Str, 8 Def, which is not capable of enduring a considerable amount of hits, while it lacks capability of doing good damage on a consistent manner.(https://www.facebook.com/notes/851371554904958/)   Catria, by contrast, doesn't have this problem. Catria is awesome from the moment you get her to the moment where the game ends. This feels like more of a nitpick considering how quickly Marcia becomes powerful, but when you're comparing two amazing units even the smallest pros and cons can make the difference between placement on a list like this. 

• Catria outclasses her competition more than Marcia does: This, for me, is the biggest reason why I consider Gaiden!Catria to be better than Marcia. Marcia is a great unit, but she's a great unit in a game full of great units. Catria by contrast is part of an army of mostly mediocre units. Every unit in Celica's army, prior to the arrival of Palla and Catria, starts out with 4 movement. Even if you manage to promote them (which is being very generous when you take Gaiden's experience gains into consideration) your characters still aren't likely to have more than 5 movement, so they're at a huge disadvantage when they're up against a unit that will most likely have 3 extra movement and can fly (which means that she can ignore terrain that they can't). Catria's strength, and durability (which includes her resistance) also manages to be above average in comparison to the rest of her army while she outclasses everyone in terms of speed, luck and skill.

                       Marcia, by contrast is in the same game as Titania, Oscar, Jill, Kieran and Tanith. All of them have high movement, awesome combat ability, rescue utility, and most of them have decent join times. I'm not saying that Marcia is bad, but if her contributions stand out as much as they do in her game when you have a bunch of powerful units to pick and choose from then think about how much Catria's contributions would stand out when she's in an army mostly full of mediocre units.

•      Catria has better in-game perks than Marcia: This is the final point I'd like to make before ending this really long post. Marcia and Catria come from different games and can therefore take advantage of different perks that their games give them in order to succeed and dominate. I personally believe that Catria has superior perks to Marcia in this regard.

                         For example, every level in Gaiden has a rout objective which means that all Catria has to do is charge ahead and kill everything while Marcia's maps have more variety in terms of objectives, which means that it's harder for her to do everything at once while Catria only needs to get better stats and she can murder everything in sight. It's true that Marcia gets support bonuses from some of the best units in her game, but Catria doesn't have to worry about bows. In fact, there isn't a single weapon in Gaiden that deals effective damage against fliers so Catria can charge ahead without having to worry about what weapons the enemy has. 

 

                  Also, after Catria promotes she can land an automatic critical hit against monsters. Remember all the monsters from Sacred Stones? Well 99 % of them originated in Gaiden. Instead of having a bishop with Slayer, it's the Falcon Knights who are the monster killers and considering the fact that the majority of enemies in Celica's route are monsters this is a HUGE advantage that Catria has since she can easily crush them all.

                    So to sum it up: Gaiden!Catria is the best of the 5 Catrias, Catria is a juggernaut in an army of mooks so her contributions tend to stand out more and her ability to crush things without fear of the consequences is a huge advantage that she has going for her. All-in-all Gaiden!Catria is a freaking goddess on wings.

# 3 - Marcia (Path of Radiance)

             So if Karin was the least anticipated candidate on this list then Marcia's Path of Radiance version was easily the most anticipated character on this list. When you start to take a look at her parameters and all the positives that she has going for her, you start to see that all the praise that she gets is warranted and easily justified. Heck, even Ronaldo Villanueva considers her to be the eighth greatest unit in the Fire Emblem series. So why is Marcia praised so much?

                Well, like the vast majority of Pegasus Knights on this list she joins your army early, which is always a plus. Her base stats aren't the best though. 20 HP, 8 strength and 8 defense is nothing to brag about. However, as Mekkah points out, Path of Radiance is the best game to start out bad in (http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=29384&page=10#entry1798082). Why? Because bonus experience exists. Marcia's levels can be raised super early in the game, resulting in her getting really strong really fast. Because she's a flying unit, and can therefore get to the enemies first, she's objectively one of your best candidates for this. As Ronaldo Villanueva puts it "her offensive growths of 40% Str, 50% Skl, 55% Spd are really good, allowing her to reach high offensive stats after a BEXP investment". Marcia also has a couple of advantages over the GBA Pegasi too. Because Path of Radiance calculates attack speed based off of the strength of a unit, rather than constitution, Marcia doesn't suffer ridiculous attack speed losses from wielding a non Slim lance so she is free to use whatever weapon she pleases. Also, forges exist. This increases Marcia's damage output immensely, letting her avoid another issue that plagued Florina. Ronaldo put things in perspective when he said that at Lv20/1, Marcia's 28 Atk, 20 AS with an Iron Lance forge pretty much ORKOs everything until Chapter 16, but by then Steel Lance forges are available which make her ORKO everything until Chapter 20.

Mr. Cotton Candy for brains is screwed.

                One really huge advantage that comes with flying is that a unit can easily ignore terrain that all the other units in your army are forced to deal with. Path of Radiance has a lot of maps with terrain so this becomes a huge advantage for Marcia.

Chapter 11: Villages block your path. If only we had a unit who could fly over them. Oh wait....

Chapter 12: Ha. Ha. Ha. Your entire army is stuck on a really small ship while Marcia can fly all over the place and murder all the birds for you. Jill may have joined you, but Marcia's most likely going to be higher leveled at this point, and definitely won't get double attacked by the ravens unlike Jill at this point.

Chapter 13: Multiple ships attached to each other by bridges? Screw that nonsense. Marcia can just fly over and wreck everyone.

Chapter 15: The game's desert map. Ha. Ha. Ha. Marcia is one of the few units with unhindered movement. Get rekt laguz scrubs. She's your best candidate to beating this level quickly. Also,
Offensively, Marcia Lv20/3 has 41 effective Atk, 21 AS with the Laguz Lance. This means that Marcia is one of the few units that can fly across Chapter 15 and ORKO Muarim (45 HP, 14 Def, 17 AS) in Turn 2.

 Chapter 17 - 4: Oh there's a mage with Meteor? Let me go shank him in the face for you. Also, Marcia can reach Mario, I mean Oliver, sooner than most of your army normally would be able to. 

Chapter 19: Ronaldo says it all: In Chapter 19, Homasa has defenses of 37 HP, 11 Def, 20 AS. Marcia Lv20/8 with a forged Steel Lance has 33 Atk, 24 AS. She 2HKOs, and is one of the few units that can either double-attack Homasa or reach him in Turn 2 without taking risks to deal with Naesala. She is the only one that does both of them.

Chapter 20: There are mountains she can fly over to get to the boss early. If nothing else, she can at least go murderface on the ballistic tome mages.  

Chapter 21: Marcia can fly over that little body of water in the left side of the map and can really reduce the number of turns in that map. 

Chapter 23: Marcia laughs as she's one of the few characters that isn't affected by all those annoying pot-holes. Also, she can fly over those little walls too which is really nice. You get the Full Guard in Chapter 16, so Marcia doesn't care about ballistae. 

          
            I could keep going, but you got the point a long time ago. Also, Savior exists in this game. Savior for those of you who don't know is a skill that negates penalties to a character when they're rescuing a unit. Sure, it comes late, but think of all the things you could do with it. Mekkah summed up Marcia well when he said, Marcia really has everything the "chicks with wings" group has going for them, except her combat is so easy to make good that it's laughable. Good combat, high move, availability, and flying are really the core things that make a unit good (not in any particular order), and Marcia pretty much has all of them. (Again, from the same link posted above. So yeah, Marcia is a monster in Path of Radiance.

(Here is the link to Ronaldo Villanueva's post about Marcia that I quoted multiple times: https://www.facebook.com/notes/ronaldo-villanueva/top-15-unidades-de-fire-emblem-de-todos-los-tiempos-parte-1/851371554904958 

                   Obviously it is still in Spanish so major kudos and props to Sagit Heim for translating that massive wall of text for me. I greatly appreciate it. Also to Ronaldo Villanueva: Why haven't you translated the rest of your list? Your analyses are freaking amazing and our group would benefit so much if you were to post them. Seriously guys, his Top 15 Greatest Fire Emblem Units list is AMAZING and very informative.

# 4 - Palla (Mystery of the Emblem)

http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/File:Palla_%28Fire_Emblem_Monshou_no_Nazo_-_3%29.png

                                You want to know the reason why I have a rule in place where I only pick the strongest version of a unit if multiple versions of that unit exist? Palla is one of those reasons why. Palla currently exists in 6 games (FE 1 - 3, & FE 11 - 13) and in the 5 games where she's not a dlc character she is never bad. Palla at worst is meh and at best is one of the greatest units in her game. Most versions of Palla could make this list. Personally I think it would be pretty boring to repeatedly put Palla's different versions on this list. When you realize that most of Catria's versions could also make this list too you start to see my point. A Top 10 Best Pegasus Knights list would easily turn into a "Top 10 Best Palla and Catria List with a splash of Marcia and MAYBE Florina". Yeah, I don't think that would be a list most people would care to read. Needless to say Palla is a great unit across 5 different games and picking which version to go with wasn't easy.

                    In terms of the order of best Palla to worst Palla the order goes as follows:

FE 3 Book 2 Palla > Gaiden Palla > FE 12 Palla > FE 1 Palla > Shadow Dragon Palla 

            Four of the five Pallas all join you with a Silver Lance. Gaiden!Palla is the only version that doesn't start out with a Silver Lance, she starts out with a Javelin. Since weapons don't break in Gaiden (that's right, FE 14 did not invent that) starting with a Javelin is a big deal. You can't buy weapons in Gaiden. so the trade-off is that you don't get access to nearly as many of them as you would in a normal game. You only get access to one javelin in Gaiden and it's the one that Palla joins with, so it's a pretty big deal. An interesting trait that all Pallas share is their craptastic speed growth. Throughout the 5 games Palla's speed growth ranges from 10 % (Gaiden) - 30 % (Heroes of Light and Shadow). Fortunately, they all have fantastic speed bases combined with either a javelin or a silver lance so they'll be kicking lots of butt. 

"The Whitewing Sisters in Mystery of the Emblem." http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Palla

                   So now I'll get to the reasons why I've ranked each of the Pallas in the order that I have. Shadow Dragon Palla is meh in comparison to the other Pallas because her base stats are the worst for her game in comparison to the other games and her join time is usually considered to be a major negative for her. Palla in Fire Emblem 1 is good, but she doesn't have the same kind of impact that she does in her other games. Fire Emblem 12 Palla has 16 base Spd coupled with 10 Str, and a str growth at a whopping 60% and Spd growth of 30% as a Pegasus Knight and 24 HP / 9 Def with 70% / 30% growth (which actually is good for a Pegasus Knight). (http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=31822 Palla also starts in Chapter 3 of her game so her offense and speed are AMAZING and she joins you very early on. FE 12 Palla does have a few issues though. Like the rest of the cast Palla lives in the shadow of My Unit so her contributions are relatively limited by comparison because of My Unit's Seth level of domination. Her 30 % speed growth will bite her in the butt eventually, but she's your best candidate for a speedwing so that's not as big of an issue. That being said, Palla is your second best unit in FE 12 so she's still really good.  

                   Then there's Gaiden!Palla. Gaiden!Palla and FE 12 Palla are both really awesome in their games so this was kind of hard to gauge at first. However, I think the biggest difference is that Palla is outclassed far more by My Unit in FE 12 than she is by Catria in Gaiden. Palla is the second best unit in Celica's route in Gaiden and she's fairly durable for a Pegasus Knight. Palla has great base stats and even gives Catria a run for her money. The only issue is that Palla's growths (particularly in speed where she has lol 10 %) will let her down and she'll have some issues double attacking a few enemies here and there. It doesn't make her bad since she double attacks the vast majority of enemies in Gaiden but at this point you have to nitpick because she's just so good. Her HP will always be great and she's got great strength and defense growths so she'll wreck enemy schmucks easily. With that being said, it's now time to talk about FE 3 Palla and why she's the best Palla of the five.

http://www.zerochan.net/1105416

                     Fire Emblem 3 is the only game where Palla can actually claim to be your best unit. Like her FE 12 counterpart Palla joins you in Chapter 3 with a Silver Lance, however this time around there's no My Unit and the enemies are significantly weaker. In the vast majority of cases FE 3 units are usually better than their FE 12 counterparts. There are two major reasons why. The first is that My Unit exists in FE 12. My Unit dominates his game similar to how Seth dominates Fire Emblem 8. This in turn makes everybody else look bad by comparison. The second reason is that in Fire Emblem 3 the enemies are a joke, whereas in Fire Emblem 12 they aren't. Lunatic and Reverse Lunatic in Fire Emblem 12 are up there with Lunatic and Lunatic + mode in Awakening when it comes to being the most challenging difficulty modes in the Fire Emblem series. Fortunately Reverse Lunatic isn't RNG b.s like Lunatic + in Awakening is.There are exceptions to this rule, but they are exceptions and for the majority of cast their Fire Emblem 3 counterparts are better than their FE 12 ones.

               Sagit Heim was kind enough, once again, to create a wonderful analysis of Palla's in-game performance:

Palla´s base stats are AMAZING. She starts with a perfect lvl 10 with 10 STR, 16 SPD, 24 HP, 9 DEF. She can use the Silver Lance at BASE level, needles to say, Palla has the best personal bases in the early-game... Yes, even better than Sirius.

Palla!SilverLance lvl 10 has 24 atk and 9 AS, enough to kill every enemy of the early-game in 1 round.

The player can promote her with the Elysian whip of chapter 7, which makes her even better thanks to the str bonus and 10 movement. The speed could be an issue since she only has 20% but she has enough base speed for the entire game (0 AS Paladins in chapter 15???? HELLO????), and you can use Libra´s star shard to increase her speed growth (20%---->60%)

Palla Lv15/1:
15 STR 17 SPD. 29 Atk, 10 AS with the Silver Lance. ORKO´s every human enemy in the game, gg, OP pls nerf.
14 DEF 32 HP. Oswin on a flying horse.

She may have problems in indoor maps, but she still a great unit because she can use special weapons to kill dragons (Dragon Killer), Knights (Armor Killer) and Bandits (Lady Sword)

Inb4 “But she is weak against archers”

No because you get the Delphi shield in chapter 4 ;)TL;DR: kills everything in 1 round, dies in 1783287472378437347 hits

http://gallery.minitokyo.net/view/464311

           
                  So if Palla is such an amazing unit why is she # 4 then? Well, for starters competition on this list is pretty intense. I used to believe that Titania was better than Marcia, but I've recently changed my mind and after talking to certain individuals I now believe that Marcia is your best unit in Path of Radiance. This makes Marcia more competitive, but more importantly, I received some new information regarding Palla's performance that has caused me to believe that she's not as great as I once thought her to be. Don't get me wrong, Palla is AMAZING in Fire Emblem 3, but when you're comparing 2 different amazing units from different games, even the smallest nitpicks can make an impact on where a unit goes on a list like this.

                  For the first issue I'd like to go back and quote my Sagit quote from my Linde post back when I was rating all the mages in the series:

 I must explain one thing. From chapter 11 onwards, you're in Anri's Path. In this part of the game, Dragons are the most abundant enemies, and they're ferocious foes to face. Dragons are tanks with 40 HP and 10 of defense. Using common weaponry against them is futile. You need to use the Dragon Killer to ORKO them... or use Magic.

Palla lvl 1 Draco Knight (Dragon Killer)
Dmg 35 x 2, ORKOs Dragons

Sirius lvl 7 Paladin (Dragon Killer)
Dmg 32 x 2, ORKOs Dragons

Linde lvl 1 Bishop
Fire, Dmg 20 x 2, ORKOs Ice Dragons
Blizzard, Dmg 23 x 2, ORKOs Fire Dragons
Shaver, Dmg 20 x 2, ORKOs Flying Dragons

The three of them ORKO dragons without problem. What makes Linde special then? Well, Sirius and Palla need to dismount in order to use the Dragon Killer, and with this they lose a few points in stats and the high movement. They also need to compete for the weapons: Dragon Killers are rare and expensive while you don't have enough money to buy a ton of them. Linde, unlike Sirius and Palla just needs common weaponry to ORKO dragons without having to lose movement and stats. Linde has just become your best unit in the Anri's path. 

                  Basically, once the dragon appear Palla is no longer your best unit, Linde is. Sure Palla can annihilate dragons with anti-dragon weaponry, but as Sagit points out they suffer some penalties and anti-dragon weapons are few in far in between with multiple characters competing for them. Since Linde doesn't have this problem she becomes more relevant while Palla becomes less relevant. Since this is the FE 3 version of Palla we're talking about, we have to mention indoor combat. Whenever a mounted unit fights indoors they have to dismount, which means that they only get 5 movement and they can only wield swords. They also lose a few points in stats so they are slightly weaker. This means that Palla cannot fight to her maximum potential on certain maps and it's a hindrance that Marcia never has to deal with in Path of Radiance. Also, Palla's relevance gets further shafted once the Warp and Again staves are brought into the picture. Imagine if a dancer has the ability to refresh every unit on the map from any distance away and that's basically the Again staff in a nutshell. So basically, once Warp and Again show up, you're mainly going to try and warp Marth near the throne which means that you won't need Palla as much.

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                So to sum up this huge, gigantic post: FE 3 Palla is the best version of Palla in the series, she's an amazing unit whose relevance dwindles a little bit towards the end-game. FE 3 Palla has to deal with issues that Marcia never has to face, thereby giving Path of Radiance Marcia the necessary edge over Palla. That being said, Palla is awesome and a worthy addition to this list.