# 15 - Lex (Genealogy of the Holy War)

     

            Ah Lex, one of my favorite characters in the series. Lex is an awesome unit that has a lot going for him: For starters he has perfect availability for a first generation unit, which is a definite boon for him. He also has the skill Elite (a.k.a Paragon) which means that his experience gains are doubled so he's going to level up FAST. Lex also has some really high defense, in fact he's pretty much a tank on a horse. He also gets Ambush/Vantage so in case his HP ever gets low (lol at Lex having low HP anyway) he gets the first strike, which is helpful in certain situations. His biggest advantage (arguably) is that he gets the Brave Axe at the end of Chapter 1 of Holy War.

    

                The Brave Axe is ultimately what gives him as high place as he has on any Holy War tier list since it compensates for his lack of Pursuit and gives him the ability to kill everything that isn't a speedy swordmaster. Once he gets the Brave Axe he instantly becomes one of the best units in the game. Combine that with Ambush, Elite, high defense and fantastic availability and you get a pretty awesome kick-butt unit.
             
             While this doesn't affect his placement on this list (or on any Holy War tier list for that matter) Lex also makes for a pretty good father. He's considered to be one of the best fathers for Ayra and Tiltyu's kids as well although somehow Lex!Tinny and Lex!Arthur always get RNG screwed for me.  Heck Lex even beats out Azel in the competition for Tiltyu's affections (Proof once again that Azel is a scrub).

           As much as I like the guy, Lex does have a couple of issues that keep him from getting a higher spot on the list.

• His start before he gets the Brave Axe: Out of all the cavaliers on this list Lex has the worst start by far. He's nothing special before he gets the Brave Axe (in fact he's not even that good). Granted, this doesn't happen for very long but it is an issue nonetheless and in a list full of top tier units even the smallest issues can affect so much. 

• The enormous power gap between him and Sigurd: Lex may be the second best first generation character but there's an entire tier between him and Sigurd. Why does this matter? Well it means that Lex's contributions tend to get overshadowed a lot and he doesn't look quite as good. Sure he's awesome, but in a list where you compare multiple awesome characters from multiple games the standard becomes a question of how significant are the contributions that each character makes in their own game. What Lex brings to the table in his game doesn't seem quite as significant as the contributions that other top tier characters make in their own games simply because the other characters aren't quite as outclassed and seem more necessary as a result.    

    ^ Now just because Lex has these issues doesn't mean that he's a bad unit. On his own merits he's great. Heck, he's # 15 on a Top Cavaliers List so clearly he's an awesome unit, he just has some really tough competition. All-in-all Lex will wreck everything and he's a great unit, which is why he gets the # 15 spot on the list.

# 16 - Hardin (FE 1)

                  In accordance with the rules I've set up for this list I have to pick the strongest version of a character if multiple versions exist (multiple versions could mean an appearance in multiple games, it could talk about the best class for a character in a game where reclassing exists, etc.)

                 So here we have Hardin, the original turban rocking cavalier with a mustache (screw you Alec, Hardin's actually really good in his game AND he's important to the plot. You're not even a good father Alec so you don't even have THAT going for you. #GetrektAlec).

                Don't get me wrong. Hardin is still one of your best units in Shadow Dragon, but he's even better in FE 1. There are several reasons for this: Caeda and Barst aren't anywhere near as powerful in FE 1 as they are in Shadow Dragon so he doesn't have as much competition. The enemies are also significantly weaker as well since FE 1 doesn't have a challenging hard mode like Shadow Dragon does so it's easier for Hardin to look awesome. Once Hardin promotes in FE 1 he gets another nifty perk that he doesn't have in Shadow Dragon: Paladins aren't weak to horse slaying weapons. They're still weak to rapiers, but the only unit who can wield those is in your army (Marth).

             Hardin's availability in FE 1 is the same as it is in Shadow Dragon so he joins early and is capable of wielding Jeigan's Silver Lance when he joins (whether that actually happens or not is a different story but at least he's capable of using it and that has to count for something). His growth rates are decent in FE 1 so he'll be making good use of his level-ups in Shadow Dragon. He also comes with solid base stats when he joins too so he'll be wrecking scrubs for forever.

            The only downside I can think of regarding FE 1 Hardin is that the weapon triangle doesn't exist in FE 1 so being able to wield both swords and lances doesn't seem to be as cool here as it is in Shadow Dragon. I guess you can say that the trade-off is that Fire Emblem 1 has a better avoid formula than Shadow Dragon so he gets to dodge things in exchange for the weapon triangle. To quote Jeff Mohr from the Fire Emblem Facebook group: "The avoid formulas from the DS games are an abomination."
                
So to recap all of the good things about Hardin:

• Solid base stats
• Great availability
• Loses his weakness to horse slaying weapons upon promotion
• Good growths for his game 

# 17 - Fergus (Fire Emblem 5)

                 Fergus is the man! No seriously, he's the best thing that a scrub like Beowulf ever produced. He's usually considered one of the best characters in Thracia 776 and for good reason. Fergus comes in with 5 PCC. 5 PCC! That is unbelievable and ridiculous! For those of you who don't know what PCC is I'll explain it to you. PCC stands for Pursuit Critical Coefficient. Pursuit Critical Coefficient is when a character's critical hit rate is multiplied by their PCC on the second attack of a double attack. I'll give you an example to illustrate this:
              Let's say in this example that Fergus double attacks an enemy and he has a 10 % chance of landing a critical hit. On the second attack Fergus's 10 % gets multiplied by his PCC which is 5 meaning that Fergus now has a 50 % chance of landing a critical hit on the second attack. Yeah that's pretty awesome!
               According to Mekkah Fergus has a base 35 % chance of landing a critical hit and each level-up in skill equates to a 5 % increase in critical hits. His critical hit also increases via Karen support which acts as icing on a very nice cake. Fergus starts at a C rank in swords with about 20 - 30 weapon level points away from attaining a B rank in swords. Once he attains a B rank in swords he can use the Fire Sword and the Brave Sword. While they aren't prf ranked he is arguably your best candidate for them.
            

                       Fergus also comes with another advantage unique to Thracia 776. In Thracia indoor battles are a thing which means that your mounted and flying units become unmounted and instead of using their regular weapons they switch over to swords. Usually these characters will have lower sword ranks than their normal weapon rank (which are usually lance ranks) so the weapons that they use will be relatively limited by comparison. Fergus doesn't have that problem. Fergus uses nothing BUT swords so he's using his primary weapon both outdoors and indoors.

                   Fergus also has good strength and speed, but unfortunately his defense isn't the best. He starts out with 5 defense and a 25 % growth, which isn't very good. His base stats also leave room to be desired too. That being said Fergus is one of your best units in Thracia 776 and it would be unwise to not use him.

# 18 - Matilda

             Yeah... Gaiden characters don't have very good artwork. Gaiden seriously needs a remake like right now.

                So here we have Matilda, the best cavalier in Fire Emblem: Gaiden (take that for what it's worth). Matilda joins half-way through her game right around the time Alm starts to slow down. What many people note about her is that her speed is excellent for her game so she can still double attack even if she's equipped with a weapon (yeah Gaiden's different like that. You don't even have to equip any weapons and you can still fight. Equipping a weapon to your character will increase your character's damage output but can also slow your character down and in this game you only need a speed difference of 1 to double attack).

            In comparison to Zeke and Maisen (your next best Cavaliers) Matilda: "winds up with the lowest HP and is tied for lowest Defense, she gets the highest Skill, Speed, Luck, and Resistance."

 Source: http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Matilda)

  ^ According to that same source Matilda crushes Clive / Clerbe (Clerbe-a-derp) in every stat except HP. Clive / Clerbe is the only cavalier who joins earlier than her and as for the other two Matilda joins significantly earlier.


Her growths are also either average or pretty good. Let's compare her growths to the growths of some of the best units in her group:

Matilda's Growths:

HP	S/M	Skl	Spd	Luk	Def	Res
40%	30%	20%	40%	10%	30%	0%

 
Alm's Growths:

HP	S/M	Skl	Spd	Luk	Def	Res
50%	35%	40%	30%	20%	30%	0%

Clair's Growths:

HP	S/M	Skl	Spd	Luk	Def	Res
20%	30%	50%	40%	50%	10%	0%

Cliff's Growths:

HP	S/M	Skl	Spd	Luk	Def	Res
50%	20%	40%	50%	20%	40%	0%

 Her HP growth isn't far below Alm and Cliff's yet twice as high as Clair's. She also is tied for second highest Strength growth and isn't far behind Alm's strength growth. Her skill growth sucks but her base skill is high enough to compensate for it. Her speed growth is also tied with Clair (in addition to having a high base speed), her luck sucks but her defense growth is tied with mother freaking Alm.

So what was the point of all this? Well Alm, Clair and Cliff are some of the best units in the game and Matilda can keep up with their growths while also boasting some great base stats:

Matilda:
HP - 26
Strength - 12
Skill - 14
Speed - 12
Luck - 13
Defense - 7
Resistance - 10
Movement - 8

A few notes about Matilda's base stats:

• Her Resistance is pretty darn high in comparison to most of the units in your army. Only Clair has a higher resistance by this point and only a Dread Fighter gets a higher resistance than her. A Dread Fighter is a third tier class btw. There are two other characters who beat her in resistance, but they both have less than half as much defense as she does so screw them. Moral of the story: Matilda is a magic tank in a game where very few characters actually have resistance.

• 8 movement. 8 movement is great no matter what game you're playing but in Gaiden most of Alm's army (the army that she's in) consists of infantry units. There are 3 other cavaliers and only 1 pegasus knight (Clair) and 2 of those cavaliers show up after Matilda so her having 8 movement is a big advantage that she has over most of her fellow troops.  

• Her Skill and Luck base stats are high enough to offset her crappy growths in both stats.

            Matilda wishes that her HP and defense were higher. Alm starts the game with 2 more HP than her. Matilda also shows up half-way through her game which hurts her because from here on out every cavalier above her (except for 2) shows up within the first 5 levels of their game while having offense that's greater than hers.

# 19 - Duessel

                     Well well. First we start out with Oifaye's mustache, now we move forward towards Duessel's beard. THE FACIAL HAIR IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE!

           Anyway, Duessel has some awesome things going for him besides dat manly beard. For starters he gets triple A rank in swords, lances and axes. Oh he also starts out with the entire weapon triangle in the palm of his hand. He also gets 17 base defense. 17 BASE DEFENSE?! Paladin Franz doesn't get that on average until 20 / 18 on average (http://serenesforest.net/the-sacred-stones/characters/average-stats/franz/paladin/) keep in mind that by the time Franz gets to that point Duessel will have surely gotten way more defense so yeah Duessel's a mounted tank. Duessel's base resistance is also equal to Paladin Franz's 20 / 17 average resistance. Yeah Duessel's a tank. He also comes with a base 17 strength which just screams WOW! Combine that base 17 strength with silver weapons and that damage output is awesome.

              Oh Duessel is weak against anti-horse / anti-armor weaponry eh? Well here's a little table I picked up from serenesforest.net that shows how much damage these weapons do (this table doesn't take Duessel's defense and avoid into account nor does it take the enemy's stats into account either):

Armorslayer: 4, 33 HIT
Zanbato: -2, 38 HIT
Horseslayer: 1, 23 HIT
Heavy Spear: 7, 23 HIT
Hammer: 10, 8 HIT

(http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=30833&page=2 from "Rewjeo")\

             ^ Now the enemy stats could differ and vary but these numbers aren't really that frightening and if you were to combine them with the lolsy "Hard mode" stats of the enemies from Sacred Stones this probably wouldn't even be that big a deal.

         

           Duessel does have a few drawbacks though:

• He wishes he could have more availability on Eirika's route. He shows up earlier in Ephraim's route (he joins you in Chapter 10 of Ephraim's route and in Chapter 15 in Eirika's route) so there's that so this isn't the biggest issue in the world. However, you do have to keep in mind that in a Top 20 list like this he's competing against a lot of other cavaliers who have even better availability than him so even if joining on Chapter 10 were considered good it just wouldn't be considered good enough comparatively speaking.

• 6 movement bites. Granted, this can be easily fixed with Swiftsoles / Boots, but there are other units who want those boots too.

•  Duessel, like Hector, has a huge constitution so while it's fantastic when it comes to wielding weapons it prevents him from being part of a rescue chain (I imagine this won't matter to a good number of people reading this, but to those who do this sort of thing this is a rather annoying negative to have and it's one that the other cavaliers don't share so this is a problem for Duessel) 

                 Before I end I'll leave you with this quote:

                                        "Duessel is manly. Hes Sean Connery on a horse." Enough said.

(Loki Laufeyson: "http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=30833&page=2")

                
                                

# 20 - Oifey

            ^ Look at dat mustache. Manliness right there. I like how Oifey starts out as a kid with a questionable gender and then grows up into a powerful cavalier who grows a freaking stache. FEAR THE MANLY MUSTACHE! FEAR IT AND DESPAIR!

        Anyway, Oifey is starts off the Top 20 Cavaliers list. He comes in with some things going for him. He has Pursuit and Critical so he can double attack and land critical hits (Holy War criticals > normal criticals since they normally do more damage. I should also note that if Oifey were in any other game he wouldn't have any skills since double attacking and landing critical hits are a given to everyone). Oifey also has an A rank in Swords and a B rank in lances so he can use any non-legendary sword. His growths aren't bad either:

HP: 100
Strength: 40
Skill: 50
Speed: 30
Luck: 40
Defense: 30
Resistance: 10

^ For Holy War, that's not bad. 30 % speed growth isn't that great, but some of your best units in the second generation also have either a 30 % speed growth or lower (Seliph, Aless and Shannan) and that didn't stop them from being awesome. His Resistance growth is below average for his game, but we can't have everything can we?

         Oifey also comes with an armorslayer, which is nice considering that there are A LOT of armor knights throughout the second generation (there are also a lot of bosses that are generals as well) so he'll be making plenty of good uses with it. Having a pony in Holy War is a huge boon given how huge the maps are. Oifey also has perfect availability for a second generation unit which is also another advantage for him.

       So why is he so far down the list? Well Oifey suffers from Chrom syndrome: He's a great unit on his own merits, but he's surrounded by so much ridiculous that he gets overshadowed and doesn't end up looking as good by comparison. He's in the same generation as Seliph, Levin!Arthur, Leaf, Aless, Shannan and Sety. Yeah, you're going to look so-so when matched up to mega gods like those. Oifey's also in a Top 20 list where so many other units are either the best unit in their game or pretty darn close to it. As a result Oifey's ranking is lowered, but he still made it on the list.

         ^ Btw those are not his base stats, contrary to what the picture said when I looked for Oifey pictures. It's still pretty cool so I thought I'd put it up here anyway.

Why Ike is my favorite character in Fire Emblem

                   Where do I begin when it comes to Ike? Ike is the first character inside of a Fire Emblem game that I actually got to see / know. (Notice how I said "inside of a Fire Emblem game"? Obviously I knew about Marth and Roy from Super Smash Bros. Melee before I knew about Ike which is why I included the phrase "inside of a Fire Emblem game")

                   Path of Radiance was the first Fire Emblem game I ever played so naturally I get a lot of nostalgia from this game and it holds a special place in my heart (besides the fact that it is an incredibly awesome game in and of itself). I was a year younger than Ike when I first started playing Path of Radiance. I remember feeling a connection to the character because I felt like I was learning and growing alongside Ike. As Ike learned the ropes of how to be a mercenary I was learning the ropes of this cool, yet awesome game that I had played nothing like before. When Greil died I wanted to get revenge on the Black Knight alongside Ike.

               (See this link for an awesome Ike photo. For some weird reason my blog won't let me upload it)

          Out of all the main characters in the series Ike in my opinion has the best character development. Correction: His Path of Radiance counterpart has the best development. Ike in Radiant Dawn didn't get a whole lot of development, but then again most of the cast didn't get a whole lot of development either so it's a moot point. In Path of Radiance we see Ike start out as a humble mercenary, but throughout the course of the game he grows and develops into a strong leader, a powerful warrior and an overall crazy-awesome hero. I loved this development because it felt gradual and you can see how Ike grew into the powerhouse that he is and I felt like I was growing with him (in a really weird way). Every time I play Path of Radiance I feel like I went on an adventure with Ike and that I accomplished something big and grand alongside him.

           
                     I like how blunt and straightforward Ike is. He yells at Sanaki in PoR, he yanks Sothe by the ear and nearly breaks Sothe's face (according to Nasir anyway) and his interactions with Aimee are pretty funny. Ike is also portrayed as pretty humble, which is a big deal considering that this guy has an impressive resume. In fact, I actually think that Ike has the most impressive resume of all the main characters in the Fire Emblem series. Ike has:

• Slain a goddess (Alm is the only other lord that I can think of who can be credited with defeating a straight up god. Medeus isn't a god so Marth doesn't get credit. If Grima's considered a god then I guess Chrom and Robin can make that claim)

• Defeated the Black Knight, one of the greatest villains in the entire series, in one-on-one combat TWICE!  

• Was also one of the few warriors in Tellius who could go toe - to - toe with Ashnard. (Ike doesn't get credit for killing Ashnard, since in PoR he's not the only one who can kill him. That being said, being able to take on Ashnard is an impressive feat all on it's own)

•   Liberated Crimea, defeating Daein in the process.

•  Helped bridge the gap between beorc and laguz

• Thwarted Oliver and helped Sanaki expose the underground laguz slave trade.  

                    Impressive right?  Also, Ike is a beast on the battlefield. Ike's Radiant Dawn version is one of the Top 5 most powerful lords in the series. In fact, Radiant Dawn Ike is the only lord in the Top 5 to come from an internationally released Fire Emblem game. That's pretty darn impressive if you ask me. His Path of Radiance version isn't as good as his Radiant Dawn self but Path of Radiance Ike is still an above average lord who's more impressive game-play wise than the majority of other lords in the series.

                 Feel free to read my other blog posts about how good I think Ike is in battle, although I will add that my favorite combat animation in the series is Ike's Aether animation. Gosh dang! It is so freaking awesome that it never gets old. Ever.

So there you have it. That's why Ike is my favorite character in the Fire Emblem series.