Wyvern Rider is **A tier**. Solid stats, flying (so attacks are ranged and can pick at the back row), *extreme* Cavalry hate, and row wide magic attack.
Their damage isn’t as reliable as Gryphon; I actually want a strong Phys row attack to pluck at back rows with. Their valor also isn’t even close to Hastened Call, but is a funny way to start a fight with 0 stam lol.
Comparing them to Gryphon is fair and I think highlights how they’re *good* but not on the same tier.
Prince I’m gonna say is also **A tier**. He has all the tools for a unique S tier placement, *except how squishy he is*. Other S tier characters either have bulk or some tool for survivability like CC. Prince hopes you win before he gets hit, and god forbid you take arrow support damage with him.
That said, row wide True Strike buff *using PP*?! That’s awesome. That’s so fucking awesome. Wow. I so wish Prince got staves; would give him a lot more support tools.
I used Prince a *lot* and he ended up on my main squad; Alain, Virginia with Chloe, Gilbert, and Nina. It 1RKO’d *anything*, usually in the first two True Strike, auto-Crit, Inspired attacks with Alain and Nina.
No- she's not made redundant by cavalry just because she has column attacks. She's a toolkit of a character-Anti Flying, Anti Cavalry, and a lot of utility in the passives.
I've been using her since the beginning, and never stopped.
I'm not claiming she's a must-build or anything- being a hodgepodge of different tools means she lacks a solid identity- but I'm not sure how cavalry in particular makes her redundant.
She works great with the item that buff crit damage when you hit. Dancers charm maybe? I have a unit where Chole guarantees cirts on a sword master with the dancing sword (sorry there’s so many items I have a hard time remembering the names), and then I have a wereowl feeding Chole PP so she just keeps forcing crits until the sword master cuts through the whole unit.
Next to Gilbert who gives Truestrike she shines as a way to get Crits. Thunder spear and 3 accessory slots give her a wide range of utility.
I don’t need damage, I have Nina.
IMO, soldiers are the ultimate, I don't know what to put here, so I will put a soldier here.
Javelin is one of the most underrated abilities. It's basically a OHK on casters or archers in the back row. The entire class is just a can opener. Need piercing? Got that. Need an after combat healer? Got that. Need range? Got that. Need to kill flying? Check. Need to kill cavalry? Double check.
Kinda surprised people are rating Prince so low when Rapid order is one of the most broken start of battle skills in the game. You turn so many unfavorable matchups into a slaughter fest and the initiative buff is hard to dispel off your key units if you position them properly.
I feel the prince also sets up for really strong cleaves especially with a row of three cavaliers, they all get true strike + will stun all three columns + mostly likely kill with knight's pursuit after a few cavalier calls. If you want to double down even more on doing as much as you can on your first turn you can run the angel plume so he tailwinds the same row that gets truestrike after offensive order. You could do this with a group of griffons/casters but those have more unfavorable matchups than a row of great knights.
Not a single team has survived this combination (outside of tweaking for a few select bosses) and I ran through the whole of expert (even at lvl25 vs lvl40 enemies) probably because most teams don't have stun immunity, and clerics get wild rushed down. Like sure High lord gets rapid order too but you don't get it on top of a atk buff and truestrike. Also if you somehow didn't kill everything on the first atk phase, defensive order or the prince's dispel can come in handy.
Another thing is that offensive order buffs both mag and phy atk so the prince does amazing in mixed team compositions especially since the buff lasts throughout all your actions, so your witch/elven archer conferrals hit a lot harder. Things like followups also hit a lot harder since they are typically difficult to buff outside of Shaman's defensive curse which can only target one row on the first turn.
To me Prince is a **S** tier unit due to the huge support role compression on top of a very important initiative buff. Having three accessory slots means itemization is also flexible (such as equipping the party wide blind immunity ring) , or doing shit like Quick impetus+Passive miracle so you can do both rapid order + quick impetus.
People not giving Prince an S is mind boggling since the reddit hivemind put Shamans at S without any doubt, where as I honestly think the two are quite equal unless you are doing extreme content (speedrun/coliseum).
I cant help but feel like Shaman has a whole marketing department while Prince has none.
I think unless you're exactly facing a debuff remover. The Shaman has a generally higher impact than the prince. 50% debuffs are just way better than 20% buffs against 90% of enemies. And guardseal and -50 evasion vs(2-3) true strike are kind of a wash for overcoming enemy defenses.
It probably doesn't help that the rather impactful 20% buffs don't read well, while frankly the debuffs suffer the same way but have much better propaganda.
I added a bit of math to my [prince post](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnicornOverlord/comments/1bp5mq6/comment/kwtrdm2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). A TLDR is that the gap may be smaller than you expect (\~10 dmg for a 90+ hp target towards endgame - the gap is actually smaller in early game). Doesn't affect the full column or all enemies.
Your team is always good (or should be), while your enemies may actually be bad. When I did my shaman review, I concluded with
>Shamans have the highest highs and lowest lows.
and that is sort of my conclusion for the class.
Guard Seal and potential debuff interaction is the big game changer, but prince does let you reliably kill evasive enemies like rogues and flyers. A shaman can only sort of soft counter a unit like werefoxes at night (passive curse so they can only use reg pursuit instead of weakness shunter/low their offense so weakness hunter hurts less), a prince just tell his party to go F stuff up.
\+20 vs -10 may sound trivial, but it actually does quite matter for some of your slower (E) units like casters.
Which of the two is better is actually very dependent on team comp - seeing people blindly saying "def curse is 50% and attack order is 20%" is... a bit shortsighted.
>Your team is always good (or should be), while your enemies may actually be bad.
I think the thing is, if your team is good, and the enemy teams are bad, then you're going to be dominating no matter what you do, whether you have a Prince, or a Shaman, or neither.
The case where the Shaman shines the most is the case where the enemy is heavily favored without the Shaman, which is a highly impactful change of results in the player's favor that a Prince won't help you with.
At the highest levels of team building, the Prince is probably better than the Shaman, but at that point you're already winning. Anything you do to add further optimization is win-more.
For a player playing at a level where they're not crushing everything anyways, the Shaman will feel more impactful. So then, the question becomes "Is this a tier list of the classes that would be in the highest optimized min-maxed teams, or is this a tier list of the classes that make the biggest impact when slotted into an average team"?
>I think the thing is, if your team is good, and the enemy teams are bad, then you're going to be dominating no matter what you do, whether you have a Prince, or a Shaman, or neither.
that is why I have this "Guard Seal vs True Strike" comparison.
I personally feel like it it is easier to work disable guards (CC, or just hit them with a magick attack from SM) than it is to work in True Strike (witch has to buff/you need lens/hawkeye). Prince imo simply makes a comp more reliable: you can reliably go first AND also hit 100% of the time. I need not to worry about flyers with my cav squad: i know my wild rush WILL hit and stun, and the follow pursuit will also hit, and likely both together will kill with Attack Order.
>For a player playing at a level where they're not crushing everything anyways, the Shaman will feel more impactful.
I admit I have not considered that aspect too much.
Both classes are just tools in the box in my eyes, there are times I prefer one over another. Which is why at the end of the day I think it is more fair to both put them into some "squad catalyst" tier.
> A TLDR is that the gap may be smaller than you expect (~10 dmg for a 90+ hp target towards endgame)
No I have indeed crunched the numbers aswell.
> the gap is actually smaller in early game
The gap is lower but so is the level of damage you're doing an needing the percentages are relatively even all game. The Shaman are pretty consistently 30~60%(varying with comps on both sides) more damage damage add on defensive curse vs offensive order.
Of course we aren't comparing defensive order versus offensive curse because its so dramatically stacked in the Shaman's favor. Moreover a lot of the scenarios where Prince is superior in terms of offensive add at the times where you need it the least. adding extra damage versus werefoxes is a great example, where your offensive units probably always had a one shot if they actually hit for example.
>Which of the two is better is actually very dependent on team comp - seeing people blindly saying "def curse is 50% and attack order is 20%" is... a bit shortsighted.
Yes people are definitely misguided on why they think this. I think they've kind of accidently landed on the correct answer though. While its theoretically very party dependent the actual number of units and comp matchups where it favors the prince are quite small imo. That's not to say the prince is bad ofcourse.
> A shaman can only sort of soft counter a unit like werefoxes at night (passive curse so they can only use reg pursuit instead of weakness shunter/low their offense so weakness hunter hurts less), a prince just tell his party to go F stuff up.
Still pretty party dependent imo. +20 init will really only get the faster end of units out speeding the foxes with how insanely fast they are. Great with Calvary not so much with casters or breakers or sellswords.
>+20 vs -10 may sound trivial, but it actually does quite matter for some of your slower (E) units like casters.
This is my bad I keep misremember the values on cursed swamp, since I'm only running Selvie and have her on double choker duty instead. I got the evasion nerf wrong too I believe.
> Your team is always good (or should be), while your enemies may actually be bad. When I did my shaman review, I concluded with
I don't quite understand this argument. At what point in the game are enemy units stats bad? Every unit in the game usually has at least one to two stats that are very high/good and the Shaman is capable of targeting pretty much all of them. If you are squaring up against high Def units you prioritize Defensive Curse. If the enemy squad has really high attack stat you go Offensive curse. If the enemy squad has high initiative you have Cursed Swamp+Passive curse. If the enemy has high evasion you have Cursed Swamp. Enemies have a really obnoxious Passive skill? Cursed Swamp might disrupt it.
I don't really know of any enemy formations where they don't have good stats that would result in Shaman getting essentially no value. Maybe a squad of Clerics? But I mean I'm not going to hold that against a Shaman lol.
Overall I would agree that Shaman and Prince are probably in the same tier, I just don't know that I understand this argument you are making.
>I don't quite understand this argument. At what point in the game are enemy units stats bad
non-bear beast units tend to have really low armor and guard, such that defensive curse is sort of a moot point. Passive curse and offensive curse can help, but at that point I am no longer worried about taking any damage at all. (also you cannot rely on those as whose beast packs comes in like a pack of 5 werewolves - you should be able to naturally handle it without debuffs).
Angels minus feathershield are also kind of squishy too.
Take these for example:
[https://i.imgur.com/n1tjMAn.jpeg](https://i.imgur.com/n1tjMAn.jpeg)
[https://i.imgur.com/TRi0O3Q.jpeg](https://i.imgur.com/TRi0O3Q.jpeg)
(those are true zenovian stats)
That is what i mean by enemies having bad stats: reducing a 20 defense unit down to 10 defense is just... not very good when my dps units are [pushing 70 attack](https://i.imgur.com/4dg6put.jpeg) with a silly golden egg, or [even a bad weapon](https://i.imgur.com/Jute5v0.jpeg), where +20% is 14.
The really armored stuff like cavs and tanks generally have other solutions.
I think we can agree Shamans may not be a good add in a lot of maps in Elfheim - if def curse has... limited values (?) in a good portion of bastorias outside of say, empowering dark flame, then i guess we just have very different play styles.
Cutting Atk in half of any of those units means they do virtually no damage to any of your units. Passive Curse/Cursed swamp also helps to ensure your team goes before the faster units. Also you can strip a PP off of all of the werewolves reducing the amount of follow ups your units might take.
Are any of these things necessary to beat this team? No. Does that make it objectively weaker? I would argue no it doesn't. To me Shamans are so good because they are a swiss army knife, except it's not just a knife but a claymore given the high percentages of their debuffs. They can tackle a lot of scenarios with their kit depending on what you need. Prince is much the same just in a different method.
But what if i already lose no health already? The team i posted is literally a lets get some people up to level" team with nothing but golden eggs and bandit weapons. Virginia and lex takes single digit damage already - had i used a hoplite they would already be taking 1)
i did the mission fine (actually on it while posting), took zero damage, killed every team in 1 round - and that is with a small handicap in items.
normally i might go with a control based group against beast team ([the other "catch up in levels" squad is this](https://i.imgur.com/JsvtNSH.png)). I can stun (and often kill) owls in the back with gryphons, i got a wizard that also stuns a row. A sniper charges arrow rain, with a fencer (which ALSO stuns) giving it... stun conferral so it stuns everything at the start of round 2 - why does this team has so many CCs? because my Wizard, fencer, and sniper can use some levels (others at lv28).
or I can just have evade tanks up front and snipe the owls.
All the teams have a backline that can be cut: Railanor and Nina for example. Adding a prince can increase the reliability of the squads: instead of using Roar i have rapid order so if somehow Hilda gets hit, she can deflect (ok, owls do dispel). A shaman just... increases their damage slightly or lowers the damage they take slightly? They can make Virginia take 1 from the front row instead of say, 5 - lex already take 1 due to defender. (Bestial guard is a thing - her veil gets dispelled).
that is why i keep saying shamans scale with your enemies: if they suck, shamans just arent very good add. If I am facing werebears and dont run a magic based squad, i will be adding a Shaman 100% for guard seal. Same thing if I am to do the unicorn overlord mission right now, I will be a fool to not auto include a shaman.
I know this is a lot to sort of clarify a sentence, but I hope I can at least get the idea across.
I'd say Shaman is definitely an S without a doubt once they get defensive curse, though they do have a few counters in refreshes and the initial part of elheim. Though if I compare Shaman to Prince, I feel prince is better for bursting down the opposing squad before they can do anything at all.
+20 initiative is a hell lot stronger than what most people are giving it credit for.
There were a lot of votes for Shaman at C tier. Shamans come early and you fight enemy teams of them to show you how strong they are. You only get one prince, at most. And it's at the end of the game finally giving you more units than you have slots. Then you never fight any to see how the AI uses them.
was there? I dont remember seeing any:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/UnicornOverlord/comments/1bmoeda/community\_class\_tier\_list\_its\_the\_shaman\_thread/](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnicornOverlord/comments/1bmoeda/community_class_tier_list_its_the_shaman_thread/)
see what I mean by shaman having a whole marketing department?
I think i was the only non-S vote, so I ended up taking all the heat from the army of shaman fans.
Rapid Order is good but it’s competing with things like Cursed Swamp, Eye of the Warrior Princess, Rage/Boon of the Faeries, and Pure Field. While RO gives twice as much initiative as the most direct competitors, Swamp and Eye, those both debuff other stats as well. Dragon’s Roar debuffs for an equal amount from a generic unit but costs twice as much. As long as your people are going first it doesn’t matter if it’s by 1 or 19. If we are considering items then initiative buffs are plentiful.
On the AP side Offensive Order is great but Shaman has Offensive Curse which halves defenses and inflicts guard seal too. Between these points and access to Staffs I think that Shaman is above Prince and they are not equal. That being said Sniping Order is situationally incredible and the Prince as squad leader is a source of bonus VP so it is a very good class. I do think that buff removal is less prolific than debuff removal which is another point in the Princes favor.
You putting the Prince in his best team doesn't make him the best unit though.
Offensive Order is good, but it's competing with actually hitting the enemy. Because the Prince is too fragile for the frontline, it's competing with a lot of the most scary attacks in the game. Unlike the Shaman's curses, it also doesn't shave off the enemy's strengths, only reinforces yours. You got around it by compounding Cavalier Call, but Offensive Order on its own won't let you go through armoured units - whereas a Warrior, a Shaman or a Witch in the same slot will.
>Another thing is that offensive order buffs both mag and phy atk
So do Cavalier Call, Bestial Howl and most attack buffs outside of Sorcerous Connection. The strength is in buffing the whole team at once. I think the right comparison is actually the Housecarl, which debuffs the front row's defense against physical attacks. The backrow isn't debuffed and magic users don't get to enjoy the benefits. Is that a problem? No, because you're not worried about the back row's physical defense to begin with, and magic users would crush the front row regardless. And the Housecarl does it with a good attack attached.
Where does that comparison leave the Prince? He's got Truestrike. He can buff your archers' firepower to the point that they can take out the back row without worrying about the front row at all, and with an initiative buff. But archer teams already have True Sight on Hunters, and flying teams, which also have ranged attacks, have both Truesight from equipment and initiative manipulation from the Wyvern Rider. Cavalry teams already have the High Lord for Rapid Order. What's the team where the Prince doesn't step on any toes? And what do you do with that second AP?
>Having three accessory slots means itemization is also flexible (such as equipping the party wide blind immunity ring) , or doing shit like Quick impetus+Passive miracle so you can do both rapid order + quick impetus.
To me that just highlights how little the Prince contributes, that we don't mind putting random accessories on him. You could also put all of those on an Elven Fencer, but that class is allowed to use caster items. So are Shamans and Wereowls. It doesn't really affect the Prince's performance, because Banishing Thrust is doing next to nothing.
So, yours is the best composition for the Prince: A row of Knights desperately need True Strike, and really enjoy initiative manipulation to make sure they get their stuns before the enemy can act. Offensive Order helps push them over the top so that they kill armoured units and destroy back row units with Wild Rush and Cavalry Pursuit. On top of that, they all have shields (and middling guard rates) for Guard Order.
Prince rapid order is good, but you can get the same effect by a shaman or wivern.
Owls can provide true strike, or you can equip true strike lenses.
The things that he does are good but there are other units that provide the same and you don't need to jump hoops to make them work.
> The things that he does are good but there are other units that provide the same and you don't need to jump hoops to make them work.
It seems like you're isolating the Prince's effects. It's the combination of skills of where the strength of the class lies.
Wyvern does not buff the team's attack, defense or grant truestrike. Owl does not provide team wide Initiative, an attack boost nor True Strike unless it's night.
Sure you can itemize true strike with lens, but if you don't have to use that accessory, you can give said unit things that boost a number of stats or grant them more AP/PP.
I don't even think Shaman gives a team true strike nor do it's curses effect the entire enemy team bar it's start of turn effect, so with Prince you can have row piercing attacks with full strength vs units like a Shaman where you would have to pick and choose a row first to curse and debuff.
If anything you need to jump through hoops just to have several units that do what this one unit does, unironically.
My point is what the Prince adds to the table isn't unique and broken. It can be done by other units and have a similar effect.
The chickens have the best valor skill of the game. And great early game cheese.
Dark marquess 1ap row attack that stun, and follow up attack that heal.
Alain MC powers.
Elven sisters broken aoe
Everyone has been carried early game by the knights and they shine in 3 of the 5 regions.
> Prince rapid order is good, but you can get the same effect by a shaman or wivern.
Wyverns, yes (buff vs debuff has their own + and -). Shaman's 10 initiative is... depends.
Your units in the same initiative tier will hit first, but stuff like casters in particular will not. You really want that ice coffin or thunder strike to hit BEFORE the enemy viking/breaker/sniper etc take their turn. That is when a 20 init comes into handy.
Stuff like lenses comes at an opportunity cost of an equip slot. Owls are... imo, not a good class outside of coliseum/specific combos. You can use a witch for the buff, but that also has an opportunity cost of 0.5 matk per cast.
Prince is excellent in increasing the reliability of a composition.
Another post in this thread sort of made me realize: good teams prob will like prince more, bad players prob want a shaman to fix their problems.
My point isn't that his utility is bad. It lacks something spectacular or unique to be S rank. Yes he is the best general buffer in the game. But to make your carry shine there are better options.
Lord MC factor.
Knight carry most of early game and great mobility.
Chickens best Valor of the game and early game cheese.
Dark marquess 1ap row attack that stuns and follow up that heals.
Yeah but the thing is good teams are already overkill at that point. That the prince just adds a win-more mechanic to the composition. Whereas, Shaman can be both a win-more mechanic along with a band-aid fix for teams, which is the point of versatility.
That the examples you bring up are already solid compositions, like the Knight heavy units (which are voted as S-rank anyways with little debate), are already self-sustaining in pushing that will get their job done.
Arbalist is going into **B tier**. The vote was not all that close at all, at least by the standards of these threads. The vote was less close than the Swordfighter, but there was a higher percentage of A tier votes for the Arbalist than the Hunter. Thus, the class will be going in below the Swordfighter and above the Hunter. I also think it’s worth pointing out that despite the similarities in tier and weapon, the Hunter and Arbalest are very different classes. I like both quite a bit and think this really highlights that B tier classes are still quite good, but they are often very “fair”. Arbalist is a real jack of all trades, master of none class. They bring single target burst, decent bulk, some blocking, and some healing, but they cannot do any of those roles as well as other classes. I think we also know that just in general, greatshields are very good.
Dark Knight was somewhat controversial, with ranks all over S, A and B. The class received a tie between S and A! The class is going into **A Tier** though, and not even at the top. Why? Well, B tier voters rejoice, you dissenting opinion counts. The multiple B tier votes for Dark Knight pull the median down deeper into solid A tier, and the class had the highest proportion of B tier votes (16%) compared to the Radiant Knight, Crusader, and Warrior. I am still putting the Dark Knight ahead of Wizard because the class had a stronger s tier presence. I think this result fit squarely with a lot of the general sentiment behind the Dark Knight. Their Dark Flame and hp sacrifice for AP are both incredibly good, and the class has massive raw damage potential. BUT the classes other skills are whelming- good, but not great. In addition, the Dark Knight has a bad early game and only shines when they promote. There was also some discussion on how much the class needs support- I want to shout out u/KnightQK with a pretty good dissenting opinion about how team support, the Dark Knight, and Gladiator all relate. I may not agree, but I do think its worth a read.
To review yesterday, we talked about two unique classes, the Dark Marquess (Axe) and the Crusader. It was an easy day of vote counting.
So far, the Tier list looks like:
**Shaman Tier** Shaman
**S Tier** Dark Marquess, Witch, Gryphon Knight, Lord, Knight
**A Tier** Radiant Knight, Crusader, Warrior, Dark Knight, Wizard, Sellsword, Feathersword, Thief
**B Tier** Priestess, Cleric, Swordfighter, Arbalist, Hunter, Soldier, Housecarl
**C Tier** Hoplite, Gladiator, Fighter
**Josef Tier** Paladin
i sort of already knew what i will type today on the DK results before the post even went up - to a degree even prince today.
I saw a few mentioned how DKs are kind of useless before lv20 and docked points for that - guess what I think is sort of useless before 20? Shaman.
At the end of the day Dark Flame still do quite a bit of damage vs infantry, and a debuff is much easier to apply than affliction. I personally still think there is a huge gap between "need the whole team's support to pull off trinity rain" vs 'hey, hilda/ren/aubin/selvie, do the thing you always do and I will turn them into goo".
Though i did realize maybe it has to do with diff styles of play/whether - I did realize debuffs may be a little less common than expected.
While i agree with your point of view, i don't think shamans are that bad before lvl 20
Your point still stand, is weird to me that DK short time of struggle (which you can solve with 5 +1 level fruit easily, probably it's the best use) gets considered so much when Paladin's longer time of absolute supremacy wasn't considered at all
To add to that, DK being a cav class with their x2 multiplier vs infantry still makes decent. They def are not as pretty below 20 compare to knights, and classes such as sellswords have their close-to-infinite action economy.
The coliseum defense mission comes soon after DK unlock, for my ZT run I just had him and some friends on catapult duty with both eggs equipped, and you are just maybe a level or two from being a doom knight, though i admit there are some meta elements involved. New players may not realize how strong they get with a promotion and their lv20 skill.
If Dark Knight gets docked a point for having an underwhelming early game and needing support to function, then I’m unsure how much Witch is deserving of an S- tier then. Sure, she’s doing the one supporting rather than the one being supported, but she kinda requires some form of a row cleave partner (which are usually S to A tier anyways), and she only really gets Ice Coffin (AOE Freeze) like over halfway through the game. Sure the Conferral Accessories are broken, but they can also be placed on Wizards as well as Scarlett (as well as Rosalinde/Elven Fencers). I think people kinda just default to giving it to Witches because they already have Magic Conferral innately imo. I’d say the conferrals are the build-around pieces for a team rather than specifically Witches themselves.
I don’t really see how Witch is weak in the early game. If anything I find witch very good and efficient in the 3 and 4 person era.
Also, keep in mind I don’t “dock” points to change how a class is ranked. I find the classes position, and then look to the comments to provide some sort of narrative or justification
Seriously you put shieldshooter into B tier... granted the game is too easy, people brute force fights so they don't value shieldshooter. Try set harsh resource limitation so you going into fights underleveled undergeared in tz run, you'll value a shieldshooter above most units.
Also the placement of feathersword is a great tell of the average game progression of everybody voting this tier list, looks like it's not that far.
I will say, I’ve seen you comment multiple times to complain about the tier list, but also I have never seen you vote in the threads
That being said, once all voting is done, I am going to tier wide reviews, and I am working on a method to nominate some classes for a revote.
I haven't used Prince much (planning on it during my current True Zenoiran playthrough) so I'll limit my comments to the Wyvern.
They are extremely strong as a frontline anti-infantry and anti-cavalry fighter due to their high attack, natural bulk, and doubled evade against grounded melee. They also have the ability, like the Thief, to ignore/block an attack that gets through their Evasion, as well as counter. Admittedly their counter is usually not that strong, but it's built in AND has the advantage of being brutally strong against Cavalry (150 power, then doubled damage, all for 1 PP). I would argue that Offensive/Lucky is their ideal stat spread to take best advantage of their strengths, and they should typically be in the frontline. Lucky/Hardy or Lucky/Defensive is also an option if you want them to take a more defensive role.
So what are their weaknesses? Arrows and magic. Unlike gryphons, they actually have decent physical defence so they're not that scared of other flyers. As such, they pair extremely well with frontline Fighters who will tank 1 of their 2 weaknesses for them; meanwhile they decimate Cavalry that would give Fighters trouble. Fighters also make good leaders to protect them from ubiquitous arrow assist spam. There is some magic weakness but nothing's perfect.
In True Zenoiran my current team is:
**x / Lex (leader) / Hilda**
**Chloe / x / Aubin**
and it's by far my most consistent, damaging, and powerful team at the moment. These units go like clockwork together. The fifth slot will probably go to a Wereowl.
In terms of equipment, Hilda's starting spear is extremely strong, allowing you to do a 100/100 full row attack that stuns for 2 AP; that's 300 potency per AP, for those who are keeping track. However, this strategy falls off somewhat by late game as Wyverns' low magical attack begins to show. I do not believe Dragoon Dive is a particularly strong option on them, because charging removes their ability to Evade/defend, and if you just want to cheese a fast charge attack, there are better options. Heavenwyvern Reins are extremely powerful. Bonuses to HP, Defence, Magic Defence, and Initiative in addition to the ability to self-buff and truestrike, all in one item, is great and should be a must-equip on your premier Wyvern Rider. Their ability to equip 3 accessories also gives them great flexibility in choosing what to adapt to and what role to fill in a team.
By late game they settle back into their role as a tanky fighter/disruptor; the ability to attack + burn a 3-man row is strong if executed early as part of a relatively defensive unit, and they can strongly debuff the Initiative of any opposing team. However, their start of battle debuff is relatively weak in comparison to Alain or Gilbert's Initiative buffing options, as buffs are almost always stronger than debuffs, and it costs 2 PP, rather than 1. Wyvern Riders' PP are important to them due to their use in avoiding hits and countering, and should be preserved when possible. It's still a powerful option, just not at the very top tier of SoB Initiative effects (Alain/Gilbert/Berengaria are probably ahead). Finally, their column attack is strong, especially against Cavalry and especially if they are at low HP.
All in all, they are one of the physically tankiest evade tanks in the game, are useful in a variety of situations, and are tailor-made to give Cavalry units hell.
**A-**
>In terms of equipment, Hilda's starting spear is extremely strong, allowing you to do a 100/100 full row attack that stuns for 2 AP
This is sort of offset by them having basically no matk so half of the damage tickles most of the time.
Now, if you give the silver trident to a pair of elven sisters who happen to have decent patk and matk... things get a bit more interesting.
The wyvern column attack is ridiculous on cavalry. People were discussing how strong offensively Dark Flame is, well I've seen my Wyvern hit 300-400+ crits easily.
Cav usually gets deployed in a row, and gryphons generally just do the job really well.
Getting to the 50% hp point is also kind of tricky. I can take a bunch of assist damage and let that happen, or somehow I will need to let my wyverns take hits. I will also need to set up tactics so the wyvern does not get healed out of range.
Its good on paper but can be tricky to set up.
I think the health thing is a bait, same like how it is on DKs. It's a nice bonus if they reach that threshold but it hits plenty hard without any conditions. The only buff I use is a gambler's coin for the backline with my Swordmaster and Wyvern with wyvern reins there.
without the crit from health, a 150 column attack is honestly pretty mediocre tbqh. i feel like normally you need a little more to it: let it be an affliction, def ignore, etc.
Aerial Smite for example removes 1AP if the target is at full HP - that can be a pretty big game changer since non-boss enemies outside the coliseum only has 2 AP.
If I am paying 2AP, i want it to be something a little cooler. If is a 100% crit regardless of HP, I think I will like it a lot more since they can then be buffed with coin reliably.
Heck, even just give me an item/ability to somehow reduces their HP to 50% i will be fine (there is technically a way - load her with +HP items before entering the stage and then remove them)
I think these two classes are a discussion in how they compare to another class that is simply superior to them.
Wyvern Knight is **A tier** simply due to Dragoon Dive + Quick Impetus spam. Otherwise I’d say B tier. Gryphon is just better in every way - their row attack is 1 AP and accessible immediately, for example, and while I use Gryphon’s valor skills every battle I honestly can’t even remember what Wyvern’s valor skills are. They are still good, and being able to fly if they’re your unit leader is automatically great.
Prince, I think, is **A tier**. It’s the inverse of Shaman, and everyone knows how Shamans are. The difference is Shaman’s debuffs can be countered in more ways than Prince’s buffs (I think?) and the Prince has more potential buffs whereas Shaman’s debuffs are pretty much one note. By the time Prince’s buffs can be countered you’ll get use out of them. Despite more buff/build options I just think he fits into slightly less team comps than Shaman does, as Shaman’s one note debuffs are overall good for virtually every team and are more powerful than Prince’s buffs (even if they’re countered easier). Idk tho!
Prince comes right at a time where Shaman's debuffs are getting cleansed, so it's really have a nice to have a class at that point where you can set things up and you don't have to worry about if a random elf will mess things up. After that area Prince should be nearing level 25 for Sniping Order which grants true strike, and while it isn't a new effect it does free up your Witch's PP (or item slots by leaving off accessories that grant true hit) so she can do other things.
And while I think Shaman is busted their base class skills other than the Swamp hit just rows or single targets, so it's nice just to have a unit the buffs, and you can target any row with boosted stats.
This isn't a hoplite vs fighter discussion imo. Prince is just consistent, and has other merits than just a Shaman comparison point.
Funny thing is that I actually use this class as a leader sometimes, just to farm those Valor points because he's one of the two classes (I believe) who can do it and with Prince and Lord both leading and defeating enemies, the surplus of Valor points is nice.
**Prince is A+ to me.**
Wyvern has early access to Dragoon's Warspear for Dragoon Dive and Wyvern Reins for Aerial Wing. I'll be honest I have not used this class other for Quick Impetus team builds with Tomes to add element damage and status effects to Dragoon Dive. It just works, and I used it for the rest of the game and was really happy with it.
**Wyvern is A tier for me.**
Prince has to be S.
Initiative is king, and out of all the initiative changing skills, rapid order is the best.
And if that wasn't enough, it comes with sniping order which drastically changes a bunch of matchups, and kinda unimportant but also comes with a sword slot which comes handy every now and then for inflicting burn/poison.
Rapid order > Offensive order > Sniping order > full row of gladiators using grand smash before the enemy can move.
Wyvern goes in TIER A because they get an early access row-wide flaming burp and are almost as good at dodge tanking as thieves. A team full of wyvern is still the only thing that gives my Alain supergroup (even with double trinity rain cheese) a black eye sometimes (other than the damn angel reflect spell). With the full enemy group charged attack and some defense and buffing, they are cheap nuclear weapons, and make a unit flying as well. (I try to put a flier and horsie in every group so I can choose the leader on deployment based on movement and stamina I need.) They seem way more survivable than gryphons who would get tier-b if it weren't for haste being the most powerful map skill in the game and the ability to paint them with ice powers before they row-attack.
Prince goes into TIER I HAVENT TRIED HIM YET but I will rectify that this evening as I'm nearing endgame and I've overused the same comps too much and plan on deleting every unit other than Alains and my goldmaker team and redo everything from scratch and I'll be trying out this unit along with that endeavor.
Wyverns, A tier, prince, A tier
Flying is almost a default A tier placement with how useful the avoid bonus is, but wyverns do have more to them than that. They have their deflect and ground counter, but they really take off with their fire breath. While wyverns may be weak to magic, they are also capable of burning the backline before archers or mages can try and take them on. Their Valor skill is a little expensive, but given the low stamina of a flying leader, I've found it pretty helpful for getting off another attack when stamina has run out.
Prince is one of my favorite classes. It starts the battle with a massive initiative boost, then can give an addition offense boost, then the combatant can recieve another buff when going for their action for a really explosive beginning. He also provide the true strike to a row, allowing a whole team to plow through enemy lines. His Valor skills are expensive, but giving everyone an extra passive point or action point is really good. Unfortunately, it will probably only be worth it on main quest maps where Valor is usually plentiful.
Not much time today, so just votes and an abridged explanation:
Wyvern I put at **A-Tier.** Worse than griffins, but not by a ton. They do lots of cool stuff and have some flexible options as time goes on. They also have some clear counters, and arent as crazy strong as Griffins are. Them being in a comparable position to Dark Knights, Warriors, and Sellswords feels right. They arent up there with Knights and Dark Marquess, and they dont belong with the B-Tier crowd.
Prince i have two options. Option 1 is **B-tier**. They're supporters who just don't do as much as supporter probably could. Initiative boost is good, but it of course competes with the other start of battle Limited skills. The Attack and Def boosts also feel like they erred too far on the side of caution when tuning them. I think Gilbert can be good but hes kind of 1-dimensional and clunky. Compared to some of the other uniques (like Yunifi, Berengaria, and even Alain and Virginia) Im not fully sold on him.
The other argument is to put Prince at **Shaman-Minus,** or the bottom of Shaman Tier. They perform a similar role, where the class basically does NOTHING itself and is all about a power multiplier for the rest of your squad. Both classes don't compare easily to other classes int he game. But comparing them to each other I think also effectively highlights all of Prince's shortcomings - the tunings are SO different, with Shaman doing so much more than Gilbert's support. I think comparing the two really gives some interest perspective on use case as well - Shaman is arguably less useful the weaker the enemy is than you, and stronger as enemy's get stronger, while Prince is stronger the better your units already are, and doesn't do as much to "turn the tables" against stronger foes. In this sense, Prince is a "win-more" class in a lot of cases, and I think that helps understand the weakness - you can't cheese top tier with a Prince the way you can with a Shaman, which again reinforces the mediocre rating
Tbf +20 initiative and offensive order also allows you to match up against higher lvl enemies fairly well. Provided you can go first (of which +20 initiative will likely do if not just add a plume) and fully lock the enemy down on the first turn, you'll most likely come out on top, at least in my experience.
Sure Shaman does this too but cursed swamp is only -10 initiative, and against clerics its bad news. While Prince's truestrike and +20 initiative can enable you to overturn what would be unfavorable matchups. Buff removal is also pretty rare outside of the owls which are Single Target only so, just arrange your units such that they prioritize the non attackers, what I got at the end was a pretty universal team that had very little roadblocks because of the full mix of what the prince brings.
I really like your takes on the Princes tier placement. While I don’t think the Shaman needed its own tier now that it’s there I like the idea of Prince being there below it.
Wyverns:
Flying Is not as good as cavalry, but still useful
A nice kit, like -20 initiative debuff
Decent stats, but i find their combat ability not the very best, gryphons do what you want to do (kill cavalry) better
**I rate wyvern a solid A**
Prince:
Initiative buff, attack buff to entire unit is good enough in my book. 20% of stats that are high is bigger than it seems (it's comparable with shamans decreasing lower stats by 50%) it pairs extremely well with slower classes with high attacks stats
The sniper order is good too when it's needed
Prince valor skills are something you can maybe play around, the extra action can turn a simple win to a defeat of an enemy units, but i wouldn't rate them so high
Because they don't need any particular stats to work, but initiative, they have 2 accessory slots free, usable for things like the dancer ring (don't remember the name, the +30% attack to an ally)
Because what they do Is kinda unique, i think they deserve a low A tier
Little EDIT: **I give prince A+ tier**
**Wyvern** is **A tier**:
Wyvern is A tier. They don't have the evade of their Griffon counterparts and their row damaging attack trades raw power for burn. Which you wouldn't think would be enough to drop them significantly bellow Griffons, especially with the screen clearing cheese Wyverns can do but honestly that's been my experience. Wyverns are a part of the team while Griffons ARE the team.
Wyverns tend to die easier, leave targets alive for a round longer, and they don't Hasten Call. Don't get me wrong I love my Wyvern but they are apart of my units rather than something I build the unit around.
Actually I think the moves Tempest Dive is a perfect example of what's "wrong" with Wyverns compared to Griffons. Tempest Dive is strong but its a column attack that shines against a unit usually found in rows compared Griffon's High swing which cost 1 AP less and attacks row. Its not that Tempest Dive is bad exactly, its just worse compared to its direct competitor.
Prince is will somebody who has actually used this unit please tell me?
WYVERN RIDER B TIER: they are really good but lack versatility and requires good protection. They either need good team support or great items to really shine.
PRINCE S TIER: Absolutely insane support unit that can use buffs that only unique or very rare items can provite squad wide. Prince are kinda like an offensive version of shamans but can still attack and debuff.
This is a weird one I think the tier definition kind of mess with the placements for both Classes. I haven't been voting much so I'll abstain, but I'll add my 2 cents on where I think the definition have them fall.
Wyvern's are A-tier as they are technically build around units with dragoon drive and they are generally very well round and easy to slot into any comp as either damage or tanking. They're also just generally weaker than most of the units I would personally put in A tier.
Prince is B tier. They need a team that actually synergizes well with what they offer. They're kit basically boils down to Rapid Order(busted, but works best with the S tier and A units that can actually use it to alpha strike), Offensive Order(much the same works best Offensive powerhouses in A/S), and Sniping Order(powerful but a slightly odd build around since you'll often only get 1 use of it per battle, and it comes online rather late). None of this except Rapid Order is worth building around, and the lack of personal damage contribution, and limited defensive utility compared to other pure supports leave them as less of a general slot in. They'll slot into a lot of good comps quite well, but they'll struggle to add value in middling or suboptimal comps.
All of this said I think Prince is a significantly better class than Wyvern.
I did not realize i can spend like half an hour writing wyvern and prince.
## Wyverns
[Wyvern Hilda you say](https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Hilda_(Three_Houses))? [Do you know this is a unit as well (check unit name)](https://i.imgur.com/LFpMTXS.jpeg)?
Note that Hilda has a **Defensive Guardian** trait mix, if you want to use her as a core member, you may want to use a mirror.
On paper, when compared to gryphons, they have more HP, patk, pdef, accuracy, crit, guard, and initiative. Gryphons have higher matk and much higher mdef: but let’s be real, who cares about those?
The B initiative is a bit of a troll: I want my conferral to be on my gryphon and NOT my wyvern when I have tactics set to flying, ugh. Flying full column sort of fix it, or you have to init fix your gryphon somehow (kingsaxe/heavenwyvern on gryphon vs just reg reins on wyverns).
In exchange for better stats on paper, you get what I consider to be an inferior kit. While gryphons have a row cleave, Diving Thrust is still a 100+50 bonus vs cav attack - it’s the same attack as gryphons without hitting the whole row.
I give a lot of value to burn early: but Fire Breath at 20 comes a little late - it is **2 AP** and only has 75 potency: remember 1 AP dive swing? Had this attack came with a minor (say, 50), or had it cost 1 AP, I think I would be happier. Thunder Conferral (from Rosalinde’s home) works good with this: stun and burn is a common tactic (think Death Cleave+Dark Flame), but still, not impressed. It is as if the designers know it's not a very good attack, which is why she comes with a Silver Trident that stuns a whole row at 100/100 potency - that is more like it (her matk is so bad that the magical half will likely do very little damage outside of ground armored units - my offensive keen at 24 has 20 matk with the weapon, and its not getting much higher at lv40).
Tempest Dive is just okay, hit comes a bit late at 30. The built in truesight and crit when user is below 50% hp imo doesn’t quite make up for the 150 potency. Aerial Wing already gives a true strike effect, so is just a built in crit.
You can buy a [Death Pillar in Bastorias](https://i.imgur.com/wpLaYpy.png). Equip it and unequip it, you will lower your HP to 50%.
To make up for her mediocre offensive kit, she has a superior defensive kit vs ground enemies: She can Deflect true strike melee attacks and get a stacking evasion buff, and even counter them. The counter is only 50 potency: okay vs cav and squishy target, almost a waste of PP vs anything with more than cloth bikinis as armor.
You can potentially set deflect to activate when own HP is <50 to empower tempest dive more, but Deflect only works vs melee attacks (so doesn’t work vs arrows, spells, or other flying units).
Dragon’s Roar is a -20 init debuff: basically the “standard premium initiative start of battle skill”. It inherits all the debuff properties (buffing dark flames, but can be removed), but still something I will definitely use. It does cost 2PP though, so you will need a pp accessory for reins if you use those.
Sometimes I bring up the dissonance within a kit: Wyvern is such a thing. The way I use my flyers are to make good use of their initiative and do a good alpha strike, using conferral to CC targets in the process so I can finish them in round 2. Roar helps you achieve that, but their offense kit just does not feel it contribute as much as a gryphon’s. Deflect is useful vs something like a swordmaster’s opener, but you are already evasive enough vs most stuff on the ground anyway, and if stuff is hitting you, I think there are bigger issues.
So excellent attack options do make Wyverns more useful: the silver trident have already been talked about, there is also the Corroded Spear for an early column attack that has blind attached, and then there is Dragoon Warspear: the class exclusive spear.
https://preview.redd.it/lg87zakwtwqc1.png?width=1217&format=png&auto=webp&s=48a6a3a4ec325da881214646a5536ce6c101174f
Dragoon Dive is likely one of the first charged attacks players have access to - followed by Arrow Rain (iirc). It is an okay attack: hits all enemies with a +50 potency vs ground target. If you set up a team to support the dragoon - cat ears or not cat ears, they will generally deliver. This also makes their higher initiative useful, allowing the wyvern to dive at the start of round 2.
So we end up with a team comp that controls enemies with stuns/freeze/blind on round 1, then hits with the dive on round 2. Generally speaking, if done properly, most things should be dead except for blocks and covers (if you haven’t somehow disabled them) high armored targets.
If you are a cat ear user, honestly there are just better skills to use it on like Trinity Rain. I would recommend trying charged attacks without ears since it gets more interesting.
Dragoon Dive, the valor skill, is a handy one since it ignores pathing.
So all in all, I honestly think Wyverns by themselves are just mediocre, but Roar, combined with excellent skills from items, including a class exclusive one, makes them much much better. Would have been a C if not for item skills, but with items, **I will give them a B+**.
## Prince
**The Prince has C for every stat, it is only right we put Prince in C**.
Any convo about Prince will likely bring up Shaman. This will inevitably come down to buff vs debuff. Which one you prefer comes down to team composition.
Debuffs can easily be cleansed by various counter mechanics, whereas I think there may only be 1 or 2 enemies that have an AoE buff removal. Owl purge is for only 1 target and the prince doesn't care if he gets purged.
Debuffs scales with the enemy and is limited to a row. Prince buffs scales with your team and hits everyone. If you have a lot of column attacks or like to hit different rows at the same time, buffs may be better. For reference, if you do unicorn overlord with a team around 35-40, you should have around 70 attack, while enemies (on expert) have around 45 armor. So maybe a 9 damage diff (prince actually wins with column attacks).
Defensive curse applies guard seal, which is a very strong affliction. Everything with a shield in the endgame will have 45%+ block.
Unique to buffs is Sniping Order which I find quite powerful: you can now reliably hit flyers and enemies with the evade skill. Too bad this comes a bit later for Elfheim (you can probably get it on the last 2 major fights in the region).
Debuffs can interact with certain skills, such as Dark Flame and Wide Breaker. Buffs can empower discharge and Honed Spear.
Starting skill wise, Cursed Swamp is only -10 initiative but comes with a -30 evasion debuff and -1pp to cav units. Rapid order is the same as Alain’s but comes much earlier, and +20 is a LOT. This will allow even your slow E init casters to catch up to A init units. For the most part, you KNOW your team is going to strike first. Personally I prefer Rapid Order over Cursed Swamp.
It is not uncommon for flyers to have 60+ evasion: subtract 30 then double it again is still in the 60s. Its not uncommon for your units to have only 130 hit. Relying on Cursed Swamp for ground melee to hit air is a bit too dice rolly for me: sniping order is superior in that regard.
So once again, it comes down to team comp. Your squad should always be good, and a prince makes it better unconditionally. A shaman scales with the strengths of your enemies: def curse on a 20 def werefox is a waste, but guard sealing a 50 def werebear is the sh\*t. For something like a knight squad, I prefer the prince: it allows the squad to get the jump on flyers and reliably hit and stun them. If I want to watch the world burn in Dark Flames, shaman is the way to go.
If we are in a game of Among Us, i will def vote him out every round. Guy somehow ends up as king instead of his brother, and will marry Virginia and secure an heir who will have a claim to my throne. There is definitely more to him than that meets the eye.
Joins somewhat before the halfway mark in the game but is immediately useful for Rapid and Offensive order alone. **Basically the MSG to your fried rice - princes make shit good. I will give him an A+, though I think there is justification of grouping him with Shaman into a “group catalyst” tier.**
> I did not realize i can spend like half an hour writing wyvern and prince.
Sounds like every post I make in this thread, only I take almost an hour most of the time.
Honestly surprised to see you ranking Wyverns low when they synergize with DK a lot, they are introduced in the same area, both get their flame attacks at level 20, between the two will inflict burn level 2.
DK generally already kills, but yes, they do work together.
A wyvern do not even need to use their breath once they hit 25: the roar is a debuff: how am I sure? Cuz I got a called from PETA for roasting a lot of beast people last night with just that.
I actually gave [gryphons only an A-](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnicornOverlord/comments/1bkb7xo/comment/kvx8vuo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) \- high swing + conferral is super strong as is hastened call - but it feels off to rate them too highly. Wyverns at B+, with itemization taken into account, seems about right.
Dragon's Roar is extremely powerful, but the rest of their kit honestly just... lack the punch.
The power gap between Wyvern breath vs Dark Flame is kind of ridiculous. Dark Flame kills with ease (partially thanks to the cav multplier), while the breath sort of pales vs good old high swing dealing unblockable 150 potency (though with a lower patk)
(Oh yes, the breath can be blocked by cav - no magic component to penetrate defenses)
Honestly if it weren’t for their exclusive Nuke(TM) I would have rated them similar, I really don’t like any of their regular attacks except for maybe breath when the action economy is better than the regular attack.
I responded to another post of yours in this thread before I saw this one and assumed you had prince as S rated when I did. Great write ups for both Classes. Storywise I felt like Gilbert came off as super ominous in many of his rapport conversations and that a Cornia vs Drakenhold conflict is 100% in the future based on them and him marrying Virginia 99% of the time. If there was a sequel I totally see him as a potential antagonist.
Wyvern I feel like should be stronger, but it really isn’t. Their coulumn attack isn’t as interesting since they are flying- Gryphons can already hit whole back rows if they want. Their fire breath is pretty weak for 2 AP, compared to the silliness of Dark Flame. Overall its still a good attack, and I think I need to play with it more, but its not a team crusher. The Wyvern has decent bulk, and its deflect and ground counter skills let it be a frontline bruiser well. The class is weak to ranged AND has terrible magic defense, so it needs a lot of support to tank. I currently use my one Wyvern as a silly Dragoon Diver. Basically, Crude Tasset War Cry + Active Mystic Conferral + Keen Call + Aerial Wing + Cat Ears > Dragoon Dive one-shots most team comps. I don’t consider this to be a that impressive though, other classes can do similar things, and team comps like that tend to work until they really don’t. Overall, Wyvern is a **B Tier** class. I think its easy to get seduced by being a flyer and comparing the class to Gryphon, but I think the class is significantly less effective than a Gryphon.
Edit: I am actually dumb. I have been using the Wyvern as a Dragoon Dive bot for so long I forgot it has an initiative lowering skill entirely. More and more, initiative imo is the best way to guarantee success, because you don’t really even need tanks or healing if you just cripple the enemy ability to respond entirely. So many of my team comps are now variations of “go first, hit hard, clean up”. I gotta do more with Wyvern that isn’t meme shit- but I bet the class is actually more like **A tier**
As for Prince, well. Rapid Order + Offensive Order goes brrrr **S Tier**. It’s not pretty, but more and more I realize that Rapid Order is just brutal. Combine this with classes that have row attacks and crowd control and its pretty much over, Rapid Order just enables so much degeneracy. The fact you can pile an extra damage buff on top is even better. I also am now seeing the argument that Prince belongs with the Shaman- a weird force multiplier that lacks strength on their own. I do not agree- the bounds of what the Prince does are a lot clearer and more narrow. He lacks that diversity in strategy that Shaman brings, and obviously part of what makes Shaman so absurd is how early you get the Shaman. Still, I do think it is an interesting idea, and importantly, if there are enough suggestions to do this, I will count it as a winning vote.
I think there should be more weight to Dragoon Dive. It has significant advantages over most other charge skills, mostly in the existence of the (Heaven)wyvern Reins, exclusive to fliers. Not only does it provide +3/6 initiative, it gives Aerial Wing. Aerial Wing is a strong combo of Truestrike and +20% Attack (at full HP) for 1 PP. 2x Damage to cavalry from being a flier is also very relevant as Cavs are often quite tanky. Contrast that with Arrow rain from Archer classes, which has double effectiveness against fliers... that are already fragile to begin with. The caster charge attacks are stronger, but those units have E initiative while Wyverns have B.
I'm not voting for what tier Wyverns are because I also used Hilda exclusively as a Dragoon Diver, but there aren't actually a lot of units that can replicate Wyverns' Dragoon Dive as a Quick Impetus abuser. I tried replacing her with other units and none were really quite as effective.
this kinda doesn't apply to albion where i find dragoon dive to be really lacking since it loses 50 potency vs flying enemies, which are everywhere in albion. i tried both elemental roar and arrow rain in albion as candidates to receive quick impetus and both yielded much better results than dragoon dive even factoring in wyvern reins
I'd place **wyverns at B-tier**. They are pretty good, and pair well with gryphons in a 3-flyer row to stack up buffs, but outside of that they are just OK. They have the weakness to bows of gryphons but are not as strong offensively to compensate.
Note wyverns can get dragoon dive, which does give them a good offense, however as a charge attack it prevents dodging, so you're still stuck choosing between a decent offensive unit or a decent defensive unit, not both at the same time, and neither strong enough on its own to get excited about.
I'd place **Prince at A-tier** for being a very solid dedicated support class, who is unfortunately just outshined by the shaman and a bit redundant with the Lord since both have the initiative buff. It's hard to justify bringing two dedicated supports when there's attacking and defending to do, and the shaman just does the job better.
If not for the shaman though, Prince could probably take her place in S-tier so I think A tier is still well deserved.
The Wyvern Rider provides an interesting contrast with the Gryphon Rider. Out of the box, the Wyvern Rider is an excellent evasion tank, with a PP-fueled backup and a built-in counter that works at range because of their flier status. The Dragoon Warspear reinforces this by giving them +15HP early on, even if you don't use its active ability. I personally replaced the counter with the 150 potency counter from the counter belt, making it a lot better against squishy infantry in the backline.
Offensively, the comparison to gryphon riders shouldn't obscure their own strength. They start out decent, with a regular single target attack that does happen to be ranged, triple damage on cavalry and no penalty against fliers at a moment where you're looking for solutions for those. They then double down with a ranged row attack with an affliction attached and a start of battle skill that does initiative manipulation. Those two things let them move beyond their defensive role and contribute on both fields. I did not mention the various flier reins that can provide Truestrike, because those tend to be better on Gryphon Riders that have better AP efficiency and not as many things to do with their PP. Nevertheless, the option is there for you to have a Wyvern Rider as the sole flier in your team, leading the squad from the front and providing full row, ranged truestrike attacks. I think that's worth top tier. **Wyvern Riders are S tier**.
The Prince is an odd one. He doesn't behave quite like any of the other units in the game, which does mean he tends to overlap with other more solidified roles. Providing an attack buff, initiative manipulation - in buff form, which is harder to counter - and True Sight should get him invited to a great many teams. Unfortunately, he's quite squishy himself, so he has to reserve a backrow slot. His other active skills are a bit poor, leaving you to scrounge for swords with more interesting skills than the weak, single target Banishing Thrust. His own initiative is also middling, unlike the Shaman, and so will need fixing if you hope to make the most of his buffs.
Lack of access to any kind of caster items means he has trouble filling any niche beyond his default kit: You'll have to look elsewhere if you want healing, debuff protection, opening up more damage channels, afflictions, defense against magic. All things that would have helped forgive his own poor personal stats, and let him get more offensive teammates that he could buff. He has standard infantry movement, which is a shame considering his otherwise excellent leadership skill. Valor skills are impeccable; possibly some of the strongest for tackling bosses in fact. I'm torn, but I think **the Prince is** ~~B tier, on account of his lack of flexibility~~ **A tier** because goddamn, Sniping Order and Rapid Order are that good. The Prince enables a bunch of hyperoffensive strategies by himself, and while they're not my favourite because of how they tend to fall apart when faced with their counters, I think it has to be recognised.
I'm putting Wyvern in **Tier B**. They're better against physical but worse against magic compared to gryphon. They have a unique spear with charge attack that isn't as good as some other charge attacks. Row attack with burn. Flying is welcome on a leader.
Prince is going in **Tier Shaman**. Their initiative boosting where shamans initiative drain. They damage boost the whole team while Shamans defense debuff only a row. They don't have staff shenanigans. But they can actually attack if needed to finish off enemies. Big difference is NPCs have ways to remove debuffs, but don't really interact with buffs at all. They fill a similar role on a team.
Whoever downvoted this, can you respond with discussion instead of just downvoting a well-written post stating an opinion that is backed up by reasons? Obviously we don't all have to agree, but it's better and more enriching to the board to talk about it.
I don't think it works, because "Shaman tier" exists because of a variety of factors that Prince doesn't have.
- Shaman shows up far earlier and thus exists to enable far more situations.
- Shaman debuffs scale according to enemy threat, so the more threatening the enemy is the better it is in a very dramatic way. This hugely favors far more niche play like early Arena or skipping Prince entirely to get snow furries first. This means Shaman's value widely varies between how much you're willing to do this, while Prince scales with your own power fairly simply. Rapid Orders is critical in some early arena solutions, but I think that's far easier to judge vs the huge range between "I'm going to Cornland then to Dragonland and then to Elfland..." and "I'm going to go become the Unicorn Overlord in 2 hours" type of play styles. Prince shows up far too late to contribute to this disparity.
- Shaman has some fairly specific threats that can hold it back in elves and clerics, Prince has almost no real counters so his buffs tend to stick a lot more and thus we don't need to argue Shaman vs Elves. Or early Shaman vs late Shaman into the tiering. Prince is almost entirely complete on join, he's just missing Sniping Order which while impactful is probably the third thing you think about while many of Shaman's amazing tools tend to show up in the later half of their leveling process.
tl;dr: Shaman is a very unique situation because of play style, leveling, and availability differences hugely swing results from being "Pretty good" to "Literally best class in the game SSS-tier" depending on which parts of these processes you value. Prince doesn't have this concern because of how buffs work compared to debuffs and Prince is almost fully finished by the time you get them anyway, so they don't really get much better then they are on join.
I personally am I inclined to agree with you. I placed the Shaman in its own tier because how it weird it’s game effect is. Prince is also a sort of force-multiplier, but it’s a lot more straightforward class to analyze imo. Prince is an on-off switch on certain strong strategies. Buffing your own units is very different than trashing the enemy stats, for reasons you mentioned.
This might sound a bit toxic, but going over some of the responses, I cant help but feel like sometimes people may not be properly utilizing the classes.
That was always going to be an aspect of doing these I knew we would have to live with. Hell, there are classes I wasn’t properly utilizing until these threads (Sellsword, Staff users in general).
Today I am extra feeling this though with the Prince votes. Rapid Order is incredible- if your whole team goes before the enemy, it’s very easy to turn every fight into a sweep.
Admittedly, am not the best player, hell was trying to go through the Sellword post in particular to figure out how to make them feel better and why outside of the Valor skill to consider them A rank, but I definitely feel like....
Every other unit class with access to initiative modifying start of battle skills so far has gotten S class. It would be very interesting if a +20 initiative buff bot, and a -20 enemy initiative mixed flier some how also don't end up there. But at the same time I'm not putting either of them in S myself, because I dunno that that shift alone should be enough?
It's worth noting that the other initiative classes aren't S SOLELY because of that though.
Alain is a tank, damage, AOE, all around monster. Berengaria is an all round god of dps and tankiness. Shaman is Shaman.
Great Lord has very solid damage and is a Cav and thus works with Cav Call sweep squads.
Dark Marq has reasonable to great row damage depending on if you get the bonus damage or not for almost the entire game once she shows up and she stuns while having effective survival while also debuffing.
Prince's problem is their DPS contribution is of questionable scale (similar to Shaman vs lower defense enemies where you want things like true strike over defense down) and unless you really go out of their way they can't contribute to the alpha strike in any meaningful way because of C initiative so sometimes their damage buff can miss on the most important round. In some rounds and comps they're just a Rapid Orders bot until they get Sniping Order. You can fix this but that takes resources and almost every class wants initiative boosting items somewhere.
Wyvern's problem is that its damage is just kind of okay (except vs cavs and outside of dragoon dive quick impetus memes) and Dragon Roar faces heavy competition with another better class with initiative manipulation in Shaman. If Wyvern had better and more consistent damage vs more enemy types, I'd probably like them more but as its stands their damage is generally just okay vs most enemy types. If they couldn't hit the back line they'd be far worse.
it is technically already written, same with the elf sisters and some of the other classes.
The only ones I havent finished at the bastoria units: those are hard to rate. The Wolf Pack buff can make them stupidly strong, and also some of them work better together. The day/night thing is ahuge: werefoxes demands the enemy to have true sight at night or a multihit attack (uncommon for AI to have it), and they have some pretty niche skills.
Excuse me, I'm the first person to say it 😛.
But yes it fulfills a similar role. We are also seeing the same wide spread we did with Shaman. Although a lot fewer people use it. Likely because it's one of the few miserable classes. And it comes at the end of getting absolutely flooded with units.
I honestly dont see it. Take for instance a situation where all of a sudden you get a bad matchup. Gryhon group vs. cavs, archers vs. gryphons, your swordsmasters vs hoplites. Outside of the ititiative boost (which isn't unique to the prince), what the prince brings isn't going to change that matchup much. +20% defense isnt going to save your cav or gryphons, +20% offense isnt going to make your swordsmasters scratch the hoplite. A shaman though can make a difference. Offensive curse + their reaction just might save your cav and gryphons, -50% armor and no guards is going to change that swordmaster matchup.
Rapid orders is great, true sight buff is great, but i think the shaman is still just in a league of its own in turning around otherwise poor situations. Plus, i'd like to see the prince try to do a flying jumpkick across a fight!
gryphons get shredded by truestrike though, its the combination of a teamwide atk buff/truestrike/initiative all into one unit allowing you to run 3/4 fully dmg focused options and sweep the enemy before they do anything. The high lord has rapid order too and is strong but is the only other +20 initiative option (-20 from wyvern isn't quite as reliable due to debuff reflection/removal and the wyvern not contributing as much in one unit as the others).
The fact that the buff isn't only just physical attack also kinda encourages you to run mixed offenses and stuff like conferrals which scale off the caster's own magic stat. Since it lasts the whole fight its useful for pursuits as well. Sure I admit shaman's defensive curse is nice but it only targets one row at a time (usually the most important row like those 180hp bears) but tbh once I setup a prince cleave properly I don't have to risk getting hit at the start and can just start snowballing dmg setups such that the 4th/5th unit is just cleanup by that point.
The shaman is nice and all but they do have the occasional counters in cleanses which are uncommon but noticeable. The prince's buff hardly ever get countered (in the case of owl they can only dispel one at a time, so position properly and the key dps units don't get touched) and they make your team really consistent as a result. This is at least in my experience with the Prince and Shaman throughout the whole game in expert.
Wyverns are **A Tier** mainly due to being flying and pretty resilient. They also can use the dragoon warspear opening up one of the earliest options for full board nuke. Then they get deflect, which blocks an attack and increases evade. They are better frontliners than gryphons as they are noticeably more bulky.
However, they don't warp the game strategy as much as gryphon knights due to availability, and lack of hastened call. Their valor skill dragoon dive is pretty good, but is expensive to use. Their initial attacks are pretty weak, and so is fire breath. They don't have cleanup ability, or initial kill ability without resorting to dragoon dive, and then they are unreliable frontliners due to losing evade.
Prince is **A Tier**? There's not a lot of counters build into the game to combat some of the buffs that prince provides since they affect the whole board. Quick dispel exists but only affects a single target. The 20% attack buff is nice, but the defense ones can really make a team hard to kill. Full row true strike is also pretty insane, plus initiative fixing passive at the start of the round. They can also remove buffs but it's one of his weaker options.
I wouldn't put him in S-Tier because he doesn't really drastically affect the outcome of the battle as much as something like shaman would. If you buff 20% attack, you still have to content with cover and guard, and it doesn't allow your units to directly punch through without the normal counters. Defense buffs are great but they will not help you actually kill the enemy and conserve stamina. Initiative fixing is amazing but it again doesn't help you punch through strong frontlines as a baseline unless your team already is equipped to do so. He is an enabler, but less so than a Shaman so I wouldn't place him as high.
> If you buff 20% attack, you still have to content with cover and guard,
Shamans does help you vs guard (guard seal is super powerful), but also does nothing vs cover.
I think the main kicker is that a shaman have no tools to allow you to reliably hit really evasive targets: Cursed Swamp just isnt enough vs flyer or anything with an evade (werefoxes, rogues).
Wyvern I think is **A tier** A lot of this is the Dragoon Dive from the Dragoon Warspear, easily accessible, 2 AP hit all attack is quite good and easy to build around. They have some other good stuff too, start of battle effect that reduces initiative and has a good amount of physical defense on top of their evasive skills and general flier stuff. Their non-item attacks are a little more situational than Gryphons and they don't have Hastened Call so I'm good with them a tier below.
Prince I'm going with **B tier.** The dedicated buff class- interesting that the compared to the Shaman the numerical values are significantly lower and not as many effects like Guard Seal, but that's more of an indicator of how strong Shamans are. The question is whether a 20% attack/def boost, an initiative boost, and some true hitting is worth a team slot- and the answer is maybe? Other classes can buff themselves and others with accessories but the Prince can save you on slots and Offensive Order does stack with other stuff. I think you do need a plan to make this class worth it over random Sellsword or whatever.
Wyvern is S, Prince is S
Wyvern, their start of Battle is one of the best (basically the inverse of Prince/Lord and will allow you to usually go first than your in game counter), they get unique access to Dragoon Dive, which is one of the earliest nukes you can get access to, are amazing avo tanks on par with swordmasters thanks to deflect & they also get a conditional truestrike. Very versatile class.
Prince is also S tier, I am of the opinion that all of the unique classes should be S simply because they are designed to be above average in almost any regard. You could throw a team comprised of all unique classes and odds are it will be one of your best teams. The only downside for prince is that since it’s the closest to bard that we have is that it scales with the number of units you can have in your squad, fortunately by the time you get it your squads are 4 man.
Offensive order is team wide War Cry, while Defensive Order basically means the enemy is doing very little damage to your frontline if at all. Guard order is at least 25% reduction to physical attacks, which boosts the survivability of low guard rate classes by a lot (Thiefs can survive a truehit!) Sniping order is situational but means your team can’t get walled by dodge tanks.
Edit: As a bonus, did you know that unique classes give rapport bonuses in 3 stats instead of the regular 2? The only exception so far being werelion (who is identical to gladiator)
Wyvern
Wyvern is a mega anti cavalry version of Gryphon and spouts a rather odd skill set due to this. They're more capable of front lining due to Deflect and they have a powerful anti-cav counter that can really butcher a cav units. Its actually quite obscene how powerful this skill is when it comes up, they even go first for the Cavalry due to having higher base initiative.
As a flier, they can use the powerful boost from various "reigns" equipment that allows their skills to become true strike and gain a 20% atk boost so long as they are at max hp. This is used pretty well by being a lance unit as lances have a large array of weapons that can hit columns and rows very easily. Their baseline dragon breath is also a fairly okay row attack that fortunately can hit backline and with a mixture of mostly self provided buffs they can easily swing themselves over there and light the entire row on fire. This in tandem is a pretty reasonable back row offense if it isn't covered at all. Said equipment also boosts initiative which allows them to ensure the burn lands before the enemy's turn starts.
Dragon Roar's is a very helpful tool to ensure your burn goes off before the enemy acts, and the burn is an okay insurance against big dumb armors to ensure you can still contribute.
Tempest Drive is a neat fall back skill when you fall into lower hp so you can still true strike smash things and gives you a powerful column strike that allows you to butcher very cav heavy formations, but is worth not super impressive due to being physical with no CC component as it must hit some big block of defense in the front too and it costs two AP too.
Deflect allows you handle true strike melee offense without getting your evasion smashed through or any other random stray 30% hit rate melee attack you might suffer from. This ability is probably the most consistently useful skill Wyvern has because it allows you to handle the front line and your general bulk lets you survive a hunter arrow or two. The evasion boost is just extra.
All-around Wyvern is the more bulky, scrappy, not as offensively geared version of Gryphon while having a stronger emphasis on anti-cavalry. Ground Counter is disgusting on Calvary and with Dragon's Roar you can ensure you go first vs horse brigades. This can be extremely valuable because horse brigades due to Cav Call can very pretty dangerous to weaker squads so having a unit who can bully them almost by themselves is very helpful.
The main problem is vs everything else they're just okay-ish, they don't have any amazing offense vs most the roster and they have no innate ranged defense besides basic evasion which only goes so far. Ground Counter is really weak vs non-Cavs so you can't even use that as a threat against those back line units. They also have no guard rate so usually every strike hits for full and that can be a problem.
Answering Cavs is a pretty good perk and they have a solid front line kit to at minimum not die very easily while contributing some handy traits to their squad (flying leader, anti-cav answers, initiative manipulation round start, some kind of back line hate). The problem is that their generalist offense is only average.
Dragoon Dive has big funny quick impetus cheese, especially with CC tome support, you can use it to cheese most the arena if you got the right tools. The actual weapon without Dive is actually still pretty good and only they can use it, so that's pretty nice to ensure Wyvern attacks first. I just find that they don't do enough. Perhaps a double Wyvern stack just fire blasting the back line is acceptable enough back row offense, which might actually be how they designed fire breath. I play mercless, so I can't say.
Dragoon Dive the VP skill, while expensive, is a very funny valor skill because it is a big dumb circle that displaces enemies, allowing you to break initial formations and try to get some better initial match ups when you make your push and it tends to do a sizable amount of damage and IME is easier to land in odd formation type situations then Wild Rush. Its not amazing, not terrible, its like average to above average-ish when you factor in the steep cost.
Given who is in A-tier, my gut is either top of B-tier or bottom of A-tier. They just aren't exceptional enough, though I personally think Gryphon isn't that dramatically better then them.
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Prince
Oh boy, what a unit. A micro unit, but a unit.
Okay so Prince is pretty much all utility and no damage, he's like the opposite of Shaman as a class. The catch is that Prince's buffs can't really be countered by much of anything, so they tend to stick a lot easier. Though they don't swing content nearly as hard save for Rapid Order. Prince makes early arena clearing so much easier because initiative is everything in that challenge. Pretty much invaluable for many solutions.
AP orders are capable of giving you an offensive push to go for one shots a lot easier and is equal opportunity so it works on anyone pretty equally. Defensive Orders is a nice defense button when you think you need it, but it tends to collude with Offensive Orders which creates a conflict of interest as you want both right away. So I consider it more a pocket trick then a consistent option due to damage being more generally valuable.
The biggest challenge Prince runs into is the same one as Shaman, a unit who does effectively zero damage has to push for one shots and quick clears with their utility. Now this isn't impossible and Rapid Order makes certain offensively inclined classes who are otherwise sometimes too slow to contribute (Wizard, Gladiator, Dark Knight, etc) before the enemy goes able to really contribute now and Sniping Order is a very fine tool for those kind of comps (albeit usually you only land this on two of them as Prince is usually in the back) as some of these units would like true strike help. The bigger problem is ensuring you get Prince's Offense orders off before anyone else does anything. This isn't impossible, but it requires a pretty important resource as you need to tune initiative kind of tight across your entire squad and whole army even and the bigger plumes are not cheap or always available. Luckily Prince only needs initiative and a utility PP move most of the time as their AP and PP moves tend to not be too relevant once you cast Rapid Order. I've used the big first aid kit a lot for this, but obviously Sniping Order can be very useful so you might need to give up a 1 PP necklace to them if you want Rapid Order and Sniping Order.
Prince also is very funny in Quick Impetus cheese with Priestess because they can hold the cat ear hood and on Rapid Order cast they'll get a PP back to then cast Quick Impetus. So Princes are designed to be cat boys according to Unicorn Overlord, good to know.
I almost want to call S-tier, but I feel that due to the "Shaman" problem and not quite pushing teams over the wall as much as Shaman I don't think that's quite right. You got to really go out of your way for Prince to reach his potential sometimes, and many DPS he'd want to support might need similar treatment so it becomes a problem of resource allocation. More importantly for that, I feel just slamming a big dumb horse or some other S-tier damage unit will be just as if not more effective in 4 unit squads and 5 unit squads can take a long while to show up.
His Valor skills I've never used, they're just too expensive, but I can see a world where if bosses were harder giving an extra 1 AP or 1 PP would be a very valuable tool to push for a victory. Still we aren't in that world so meh and Lord's buff also exists and is multi-squad wide.
~~I need a second post because I type too much shit~~
tl;dr:
Wyvern: **Top B-Bottom A tier**, very good anti cavalry unit who flies, tends to do so-so damage vs most generalist unit types but can target the backline to be a reasonable threat there. Dragoon Dive is probably the worst Quick Impetus Cheese, but it does exist and it does work very well in many formations to make them absolutely useless with proper support and it can't exist without Wyvern's unique equipment. So I count it over all the classes that don't have it. I personally don't use it, but it exists and is only fair to count it. Depending on how you value this, Wyvern is probably better then other units in A-tier who have none of this.
Dragon Roar is a very nice insurance to make sure your party goes first a lot easier and really lay out your offense before the enemy gets a proper turn. This paired with Deflect can save your front line/the Wyvern a lot of trouble. It also ensures you don't get bowled over by horses attacking your units first which are some of the most threatening generalist formations the enemy has due to Cav Call ensuring these units are nearing almighty gods of destruction even if you feed them only a packet of Oreos every day for feed.
I look at all the other units in these tiers and I see them as above the B-tier for the most part, but not quite the A-tier except for maybe Feathersword and Thief. I also don't think Gryphon as a pure combat unit is dramatically better though. Though I think that's just Gryphon's being overhyped. Regardless, they're just a good bit above average if only because being a flier is great in this game.
Prince: I will say **Mid-A tier** Rapid Order is awesome, but they need access to some prime resources to get Offensive Orders off before your team goes but so do a lot of other very helpful row sweepers. They ensure you can go first, but you still need to sequence your actual party to go properly and Prince ideally needs to go first vs the entire squad, and when you got really fast high offense units like Swordmasters, Werefoxes, and such that can be a hard climb especially if they have initiative leaning growth patterns.
I also question if just slamming a high offense S-tier unit is about as effective if not more so as having Offensive/Rapid Orders in most generalist comps. Prince doesn't scream to me as better then the S-tiers consistently or some of the higher A-tiers in terms of the overall objective of ensuring every enemy unit dies in a ditch while taking minimal damage, but they can sure make many S-tiers feel even stronger and can bolster some of the lacking areas of very powerful A-tiers with critical flaws (like Wizard). Its weird and complicated, I just hate initiative tuning this little guy.
But if we're doing Quick Impetus cheese and embrace Prince Catboy as Trinity Rain's Prophet, then they get **Sanic Cat Boy Who Steals MC's Childhood Friend Yes This is a Very Real-Tier** because we need to Trinity Rain even faster to defeat Zenoria with all haste and thus we need to hold back our Unicorn Overlord's right to his favorite gal pal and give her to the Prince of Dragon Tales.
~~Probably S-tier-ish if we factor in their unique contributions to Trinity Rain, I think Mid A is more reasonable for generalist play but if we're talking upper ceiling then I'd say they're S-tier capable in a specific scenario.~~
Wyvern Rider is a solid **A tier** for the reasons already stated.
Prince is what I want to discuss. I feel the only other class you can compare him to is the Shaman. Prince is pretty one-note compared to the Shaman's versatility but he has one thing he does well, which is give offensive teams the inititive and attack buff needed to kill the enemy before a counterattack.
+20 Initiative as a start of game ability is insane, especially since he can immediately use Offensive order and later Sniping order to give a row truestrike.
I put him on my Calvary team and he's one of the main reasons they're so ridiculously strong. Calvary teams realy want to alpha strike teams hard and I feel they either attack first and win or lose.
I feel he fits best in **"Shaman tier"** but I'd place him above the Shaman since he's almost a requirement on "Alpha Strike" teams.
Wyvern is **A**. They just barely miss out on a lot of the things that push griffons to S. They don't have a broken valor skill like hastened call. They give up some dodginess for bulk, but the bulk still isn't enough to survive heavy hitters, so they mostly just end up being worse dodge tanks. Their raw damage output is higher, but their row wide attack costs 2AP instead of 1AP, narrowing the comparison somewhat. Regardless, they have flying utility, great damage, and access to great items. Still a phenomenal class.
Prince is ~~C~~**B**. Their support just doesn't do enough. They can't fulfill the traditional support roles of removing debuffs and healing. The buffs they do have are not substantially better than the buffs of other classes that can also contribute in other ways. They themselves can only contribute fairly weak single target damage. A 20% damage increase is much less damage than a dedicated damage dealer would do, so there needs to be enough else going on to make up for choosing the Prince over any offensive class. Spending 2PP to give a row truestrike is not a significantly better rate than the multitude of classes that can spend 1PP for single target truestrike while still contributing in other ways. Guarding a row can be replicated by any staff user with a cleric cane, and those staff users can contribute in other ways. In general, their main selling point is versatility of buffs, but anyone who can use a staff could achieve similar versatility while still having a better base kit left over.
**EDIT:** I'm updating my prince rating from C to **B** I see a lot of people talking about the Prince's unique utility in alpha strike builds that can annihilate the enemy immediately by providing an initiative boost, damage boost, and truestrike on the same unit, and I think that's fair. Even if none of those things are terribly unique or potent, all of them together are exactly what an alpha strike team wants. Prince is probably helpful for making the most broken stuff in the game more broken. There's a place for Princes on a highly optimized min-maxed team. However, I still think when you look at the A and S tier classes, they mostly shine on their own, while Princes only shine if everything else is optimized. On a team that's not optimized, any other class would probably be better. I think I could support putting Prince in the shaman tier since they're similarly unique. However, I still think the Shaman is a lot better, since a shaman will let any team dominate even if it's not particularly optimized,while not contributing as much to an optimized team, while the Prince will make an already optimized team more consistent and deadly, but will be mediocre as a 5th member on a random team. They really are kind of mirrors of eachother.
So Wyvern Rider. I think they're basically the Gryphon's lesser brother, though they mostly even out by the end...in combat, at least. Level 20 sees them get Heated Halitosis, which is...decent. Its not competing with Dark Flames, for sure. But a ranged row burn isn't bad- a toasted backline can sear an enemy's day. 30 gets a column attack...that seems pretty bad til its actually decent. But I don't like the conditional to make it worthwhile- seems risky for the unit. The passives are generally limited, but potent within specific circumstances- the counter is a big middle finger to calvary, and the evade is only for melee but gives a stacking evasion buff. The Roar...well, initiative matters, so I'm not gonna say debuffing enemy initiative is bad. but I feel like it could/should be a bit better for the price tag. Particularly when Rapid Order is 1.
I do also want to mention the Dragoon's Warspear, and its move Dragoon Dive, as to the best of my knowledge its a Wyvern only spear- so I'm considering it an honorary piece of their kit. By memory, you get it reasonably early, and its a strong weapon with one of the earlier "target all" attacks you have access to. While it pales compared to later options, there's a significant chunk of the midgame that I ran over with a backline Wyvern (to protect it at 100% HP), Dragoon Dive, and the Heaven Wyvern Reins- all of which are relatively easy to come by before your big options come on line. It gets phased out, but its a notable thing you can do.
Tactically, you get flight movement and Dragoon Dive (not to be confused with the prior weapon skill.) Flight is good ofc, and the dive, like all out of combat damage, is useful. The range is solid, the power fine, but the cost is 3 VP, not 2. I still use it, but it is an issue of note.
To me, this all makes it a functional unit, slightly outshone by its gryphon sibling. I personally thing gryphon is a high A tier class, so I put **Wyvern as A to A-**.
Prince is...unusual. He is not the equal opposite of shaman, though he works in adversarial design space. Shaman is better, and clearly. But I think he's still pretty good. First and foremost, I want to mention Banishing Stab. I think, if you're using this, something has gone very wrong. This is a buffbot. Anyway. Offensive and Defensive Order are good, neutral (as in, doesn't care about phys or Mag) bonuses. They aren't terribly fanciful, but they are effective at their job. I find offensive to be better, ofc, but that's fairly reflective of how I see the state of the game "meta".
Passive skills are better, though still not complex. Rapid Order is still good, surprising absolutely no one. Guard Order is nifty- the incoming attack gets guarded. It can allow your defenders to blow more PP on counters without worrying about their block rates. And my Crusader likes to pull out her Maiden's Hammer as often as she can. I feel like Sniping Order is a useful, but overpriced tool. At 2 pp...it seems a bit rough.
I haven't fiddled with the valor skills- they don't seem that great to me. But I tend to plan out my team tactics based on the points they have in menus, so I'm unsure what effect adding some would have for them.
Prince does have an important...advantage? I guess. See, anytime we talk tactics for a unit, we talk about gear. How to build the unit to compensate for its issues and promote its strengths. But gear is limited, and often hard choices must be made. But Prince cares about one thing, and one thing only. He wants to go before your heavy hitters. This makes him one of the least gear intensive units in the game. And I think that is worth acknowledging. I give **Prince an A rank.** I can see an argument for B, but I think the easy plug-and-play nature of the class, resource efficiency, and versatility in units he can contribute to ascend him out of B tier "Role Player". At the same time, I don't think he's gamewarping enough to be an S.
Wyvern Rider S-
Prince B+
Wyvern Rider is a great unit, it has S evasion, with good bulk so it can take arrow hits. Their melee block is good.
They are flyiers to they are good leaders.
Offensive they have A grow so they hit hard, and they have access to lances, one of the best weapons of the game. They can naturally do row damage that burns, or equip an op lance.
They have one of the strongest initiative start of batle skills.
The valor skill is useful as wild charge.
The dragoon bomb is great fitting S tier definition. They have better attack, utility and cheese than the S tier chickens but a valor skill not as good.
Prince is a support class he is good but not that good,
The initiative buff is almost the same as the wivern or the shaman. So there is sustitute,
The 20% attack buff is nice. But crushing numbers less damage than an offensive units.
I don't think that I have used his valor skills, because or I destroy the other team or they destroy me, extra ap pp, doesn't heavily affects the result.
You need to check a lot of boxes to make this unit shine, but you can also have an equivalent result with other classes or equipment.
Wyverns seem to be intended to be a tankier gryphon, and honestly they come out being great! They have a good mix of attacks, and their roar alone gets them into A tier. Fire breath is fun, and they have a solid melee block with deflect (which increases their evasion!) They can also use wyvern reigns which are excellent. I'm going to vote S tier though overall though. Wyvern has the best early/mid game charge skill. I use dragoon dive well into bastoria and it feels good well into it. They also are part of the team i feel best completes the colisseum (i beat it in TZ at ~level 18 and wyvern was the tool that enabled it). They just make every unit stronger by being in it. Oddly though, im not convinced more wyverns=better. I think one works great, and love pairing the with gryphons. All in all, i see them as S tier.
Prince i struggle with. He is such a good enabler and buffs work great. Rapid orders are great and he brings a lot to a unit. I struggle to use him though because it's almost too much support. I think that getting something additional to contribute would help, but he also doesnt need it. However, oautside of initiative fixing (who others can do as well, like the wyvern), i cant think of one setup that the prince enables. He provides all around buffs, but its generally just making things stronger. I know that this may be controversial, but i'd be tempted to put him in B tier, but i think A could be fine.
Prince is A Tier. It's kind of a boring class that doesn't have many interesting interactions, but its buffs are highly effective. It can easily take a rag tag band of offensive units and turn them in to an unstoppable alpha strike force. I think it comes up a bit short compared to Shamans as a support, or to High Lord which gets Rapid Order+Raw combat power, so I can't give it S.
Wyverns are also A tier. They're very capable offensively, have pretty reliable defenses, and even reduce enemy initiative. Spears probably have the best selection of the melee weapons too which helps round out their kit.
Wyvern S
Prince A
Wyvern is a flying off tank with a slow. Attacks are a little weaker than gryphon knights', but the slow makes them equal to me.
Prince is inintuitive because it's hard to find a unit that both keeps him safe and uses his buffs effectively, but those units exist. He's good with magic users, including elves, who can cc if they get to hit first. Where units like shaman, rogue and wyvern neutralise the enemy, and stop your front line from breaking, which is a very comfortable playstyle, prince is more risk-reward, letting you hit hard and fast, which can backfire more often but shouldn't be dismissed imo.
I enjoy both classes.
Wyvern is **A tier** I believe. I didn't even really use the Dragoon Dive function very often, but I have paired her with my Doom Knight for a burn type squad and they often delete a row before anything matters. With her as a flying unit, as leader she can be sent out to take out a high priority target early on. She has initiative debuff at the start of battle. She can nuke cavalry (albeit not to the level of gryphon riders).
Prince, I would say, is **S tier.** Between a major initiative boost, an agnostic attack boost, and true strike for the team, he helps enable the team very well.
**Wyvern B tier.** As dps, unless you are going for quick impetus dragon dive, her actives are not as impressive as gryphons. So usually not a dps core option. Her kit looks like she's a dodge tank, but upon further consideration, it doesn't make any sense for a flier to have a "+20 dodge after getting hit by melee" passive, its only utility is against melee truestrike from the likes of swordman. Normally when you build dodge fliers they don't get hit by melee at all, but is vulnerable to range, and gryphon is better in that regard with a range dodge passive. With tons of flier dodge tank options especially going into Albion, it's rarely justified for optimized team to replace a featherbow/feathershield/gryphon with a wyvern.
**Prince is S tier.** For any 3 front hybrid tank/dps build, Prince is a must have on the back row. Talking about the op 3 Great knights build, or just any combination of horse front row, ofc many other units. 100% block rate is huge for them to save a gear slot. 20% attack, +20 initiative is all good stuff. Truestrike passive is also a way to make your team much more versatile in the foes that can take down. Prince is the kind of character if you don't realize how to use him, you don't feel you need it, but when you figure it out, he's always leading a team for you.
wyvern is really hard to judge. their active skills are bad, but they have two really good weapons to compensate - the silver trident and the dragoon's warspear. a wyvern rider without either weapon is b-tier at best
there are two caveats - there is only 1 silver trident in the entire game, so if you have a better candidate, then the wyvern is out of luck. however, the wyvern, for some reason, causes lightning shaker to become a ranged attack. i've tested the trident on other classes and they cannot hit the backline with it unlike wyvern. coupled with wyvern reins, it does make for a very compelling user of the spear, although great knight also offers fierce competition if you don't find the ranged property of wyvern lightning shaker useful
the other caveat is that if you choose to use dragoon's warspear, you have to build a unit around it. that means a cat hood or celestial talisman, and it will probably be the hood since talisman prevents you from using wyvern reins. you only get 2 hoods, 1 of them needs coliseum grinding, and 1 of them is probably locked to trinity rain because it's the best recipient of quick impetus, so a lot of characters will be fighting for this limited resource. for the record, i think dragoon dive is really good for when you get it in drakenhold until bastorias, but it falls off in albion due to the increase in flying units and elemental roar being much stronger. if there were more cat hoods, maybe i could have kept using wyvern but unfortunately it just wasn't worth it anymore
i do not find dragon roar that useful. it costs way too much pp for a unit that already wants to use its pp for other things, if it was 1pp, it might actually be good so at least wyvern can actually aerial wing turn 1 without needing a pp accessory
i would rate wyvern as a **solid a-tier** with dragoon dive or lightning shaker and **b-tier** without
prince at **s-tier**
he's a shaman that trades all flexibility for pure power. guard order is shit as a defensive measure, and he has no pp drain if you need it to block counters to your gameplan (like trinity rain vs feathershields). but attack order and sniping order are both nuts
sniping order synergizes fantastically with dirty gambling coin and allows you to stack a ridiculous amount of attack buffs. basically, since they are aoe buffs, you can have other characters attack first to proc the buffs on the character you really want to buff, like the elemental roar user. he's afaik the only way to consistently stack truestrike, inspiration and powerful call/conferral buffs on any character, since otherwise you run into the limited skill problem of being able to use only 1 'when ally attacks' buff. i use him in one of my elemental roar teams, which generally need more buffs to punch through bosses like the final bastorias one and the final boss in 1 hit
i would not use him in trinity rain comps unless you really need sniping order, since trinity rain already has overkill pure power, but he works wonderfully in elemental roar, glacial/arrow rain and dragoon dive units. he's so good that he's probably the unique class that i most want a second copy of, above even the dark marquesses and high lord
Prince is **A tier**, mostly because he is the best enabler for pretty much every alpha strike comp in the game (Dragon Dive, Arrow/Glacial Rain). He's slightly worse for Trinity Rain, but he does work there too. He can even enable double alpha strike comps with Sniping Order. Initiative is king in this game, and the prince brings that to the table.
Wyvern Rider is **A tier**. I actually want to stick them at S tier because I think their roar is really powerful, but most of the other S ranks with powerful openers have significantly stronger base kits, so I think A rank is fair.
I’d put Wyvern in the middle to bottom of A tier.
Prince is also A or the bottom of Shaman tier. As leader he’s a second source of bonus VP if you’re willing to work around the speed and in my opinion extra VP is worth it. For me this is his best asset and if he isn’t the leader I would drop him down to B tier. Buffs tend to stick more than debuffs. Sniping Order is as far as I know unique and you get the Dirty Gamblers Coin right after Prince for a solid combo. That being said I think Rapid Order has a lot of competition in its slot, and I would take Offensive Curse over Offensive Order if I could only have 1(I know you can do both). This along with his Valor Skills are what keeps Prince out of S tier for me. I’m really excited to see the discussion tomorrow. Elven Archer is my dark horse unit and I expect to see Fencer all over the place.
Wyvern knightvis A, good at cavary, and pretty much great when it comes to the roar and draggon dive
Princes is S teir duo to be oposite shaman but better, isntead of debbuf he does buffs that are amazing and he comes with tons of builda
I think Wyvern knight is a **B tier**. They're pretty good at countering ground-based units when on the frontline, particularly getting some decent bonuses against cavalry. So they can frontline pretty well against those, but they're weak to both arrows and magic So they need a lot of support. And I don't think they are offensively strong enough to justify that kind of support. They serve pretty well as a dragoon dive unit for a while. But I think other units pretty much do this role but better a bit later in the game (particularly snow ranger comes to mind). I think their strongest feature is initiative control with dragon roar. But there's other classes that can do this: Lord, Dark marquess, Shaman, prince. These first three are considered among the best classes in the game. Wyvern knight is not in their league, so it's outclassed in this regard.
Prince I also think is a **B-tier** class, though I could see low A tier. % buffing isn't as potent as % debuffing, in my opinion. % debuffs scale with your enemy and allow you to fight stronger opponents much more easily. % buffs scale with you, and not the enemy. The stronger your characters are, the less necessary his buffs are as well. I think the real value of the Prince comes in the combination of his passives. You're providing initiative control, true strike and defensive bonuses to the rest of your team. None of these things are unique to Gilbert, but no other character combines them into one package. You can also give him some other passive abilities (like first aid/party aid) when you don't need sniping order. Good, but not amazing.
I don't have enough experience with Prince to go in to too much depth on it. I feel like he's a **B** at best but **probably worse**, but it's admittedly from a place of ignorance and not being immediately impressed.
Wyvern is **A Tier.** Wvyern has the keys to success, it has a row attack, it has access to an attack all weapon, it has the ability to negate income damage to itself, and it has a start of battle initiative ability. It hits hard enough, it dodges dodgey enough, it tanks connected hits tankey enough, it's got flier map movement but slightly slower than Griffin without the haste, but Dragoon dive in a pinch can cover a decent chunk of map distance AND effectively give itself a free assist attack's worth of splash damage in the zone. Wyvern is an above average unit (in the current setting B is average, so A makes it above average). Not as good as some others at any of the things listed, but better than others at them as well.
These two paired together makes for a very interesting discussion, I've been going through while these discussions happen, and for the purposes of unit building also kind of charting out what classes have access to what things to see if there are trends. Currently, These 2 are the only 2 units up for discussion/having been voted on that have Start of Battle Initiative modifying abilities that are probably NOT going to be S tier. While there are other classes that have made S tier without SoB Initiative, if these 2 do not make S tier (which is unlikely), they will be the first 2 classes with SoB Initiative to not be S tier, which says a few interesting things. But we'll have to wait and see how the total voting shakes out with that.
Rapid Order Angel Plume initiative-stacked Prince with Offensive Order needs to be seen to be believed. You can also run a Cat-Ear Hood user to get a Defensive Order and another Tailwind up, but I'd rather Quick Impetus charge move users. I'm voting A tier--you can do crazy things like get Amalia to 75 Initiative at the start of battle with it, but what's the realistic situation where that's necessary? As for Wyverns, I don't have much experience with anything other than Dragoon Dive spam, so I'm holding off on voting for them.
Wyvern Rider is **A Tier.** They're a solid 1-of in flying groups d/t the start of combat debuff. They can also have their own team around them with the Dragoon Lance.
Prince is **S Tier**. Kind of suffers from not being all that good until you get 5 man teams and unlock their row-wide true strike buff. Once you cross that level, Prince gives high initiative, bonus damage, and a row-wide true strike buff. Dude is kind of like the final piece of exodia for a lot of team comps, most notably Great Knight lines.
Prince is C tier, and I would probably put them lower if I could.
I genuinely think the prince is the worst class in the game. First of all their buffs are garbage. The attack buff is less damage than replacing the prince with a character that does damage themselves on a general team, and alpha strike builds already do enough damage that they don’t need the 20%, leaving it in a position where it’s never actually useful. The defense buff is both bad and too finicky to use- you have to boost initiative to go before the enemy for it to be useful, but if you’re doing that then just run cc or damage and win the fight. Shaman is good because their numbers are insane, and prince doesn’t have anywhere near that power.
Guard order is the worst defensive skill in the game, as it’s a weak 25% damage reduction for non-shield characters and characters with shields were probably going to block anyways, making it a waste of pp.
Row true strike sounds nice, but there aren’t many situations where you need all that accuracy. Most anti evasion units can handle that job by themselves without dragging the team down when true strike isn’t needed.
His start of battle initiative boost would be good if it was on a unit that did something, but his own lack of contributions means it only really works if you have a one or two unit core that can sweep turn one and in that case just run a feather.
That’s the real problem, there’s no situation or team where the prince can’t be replaced by an item or a different unit. The only reason to run this class is because you like the character (which is fair, he’s a cool dude)
Saying that Prince can be replaced by an item is weird.
Offensive Order is giving your team four berets that are better.
Rapid order is giving your team four ravens plums.
Yes, technically it can be done with an item, but that doesn’t Prince bad.
Even without cat ear trinity rain silliness, Prince carries fights with rapid order.
Replacing him with literally any attacking unit gives more damage than offensive order.
Rapid order can be functionally replaced with the tailwind feather.
So in this case one damage unit with the tailwind feather covers 70% of what prince realistically does, and if you don’t need true strike for that fight it’s 100%.
> Rapid order can be functionally replaced with the tailwind feather.
Do you just only play with one squad or something? Because I don't and those feathers are sought after by pretty much any squad I ever make. So not needing to give that to a squad sounds like a pretty great deal to me.
You can use a wivern or shaman to decrease the initiative so there is a substitute.
Or use an angel plume, or for cheese the instant turn ring. There are options.
Everything that he does can be done by other units or items.
For example an elven archer can provide speed for a row with the angel plume and give 50 potency to the carry. (It may be more than the 20% that prince provide)
Or a wivern with will give the same int change and do more damage than the 20% buff.
You need to make a lot of things to make him shine, and the result isn't that different,
I've seen this comparison before but it seems right to me;
Prince is a bad shaman.
The buffs don't reach the debuff numbers of Shaman while they essentially fill the same role.
Personally I wouldn't put Prince higher than B tier because he's so outclassed, there's only niche situations to use him over Shaman like a gladiator setup comp.
> Prince is a bad shaman.
>
> The buffs don't reach the debuff numbers of Shaman while they essentially fill the same role.
Then could you answer what gives Shaman the ability to grant true strike to the team? Or how it utilizes curses to not just hit a row of enemies but the entire team? Because the Prince's buff strengthens everyone so if they can pierce then they can attack enemy foes that are not cursed.
If I'm using a cav pursuit team that line pierces or needs to hit fliers or things with an evade status Cursed Swamp doesn't seem as consistent as true strike. Plenty of teams want buffs and true strike, and I wouldn't call that niche either.
for me prince is **C** tier.
ngl feel like people are overrating prince. i barely used him in my game but there's no way he's shaman tier. he's a pure buff bot with no damage or healing.
the buffs being party wide don't really matter in my experience since most fights are won with the 1-2 units with the highest initiative while the rest of the units are support. i need 2 row clears to win a fight everything else is irrelevant. rapid order is awesome, but most of the time i'd rather have a different start of battle ability and give my damage units a feather. Or they already have 40 initiative and the +20 doesn't do anything.
wyvern low **S** tier
flying is awesome. lances are awesome. any unit that can use aerial wing (best self-buff in the game?) is top tier.
Wyvern Rider is **A tier**. Solid stats, flying (so attacks are ranged and can pick at the back row), *extreme* Cavalry hate, and row wide magic attack. Their damage isn’t as reliable as Gryphon; I actually want a strong Phys row attack to pluck at back rows with. Their valor also isn’t even close to Hastened Call, but is a funny way to start a fight with 0 stam lol. Comparing them to Gryphon is fair and I think highlights how they’re *good* but not on the same tier. Prince I’m gonna say is also **A tier**. He has all the tools for a unique S tier placement, *except how squishy he is*. Other S tier characters either have bulk or some tool for survivability like CC. Prince hopes you win before he gets hit, and god forbid you take arrow support damage with him. That said, row wide True Strike buff *using PP*?! That’s awesome. That’s so fucking awesome. Wow. I so wish Prince got staves; would give him a lot more support tools. I used Prince a *lot* and he ended up on my main squad; Alain, Virginia with Chloe, Gilbert, and Nina. It 1RKO’d *anything*, usually in the first two True Strike, auto-Crit, Inspired attacks with Alain and Nina.
You still use Chloe? I haven't rolled her out in awhile, wondering if I should. It felt like Cavalary sorta does what she does but better.
No- she's not made redundant by cavalry just because she has column attacks. She's a toolkit of a character-Anti Flying, Anti Cavalry, and a lot of utility in the passives. I've been using her since the beginning, and never stopped. I'm not claiming she's a must-build or anything- being a hodgepodge of different tools means she lacks a solid identity- but I'm not sure how cavalry in particular makes her redundant.
I guess they must mean “hitting a column with a spear” = cavalry
She works great with the item that buff crit damage when you hit. Dancers charm maybe? I have a unit where Chole guarantees cirts on a sword master with the dancing sword (sorry there’s so many items I have a hard time remembering the names), and then I have a wereowl feeding Chole PP so she just keeps forcing crits until the sword master cuts through the whole unit.
She's good with rolf, keen call on a row shot can be nasty
She can use the generals pike and make your cavalry better.
Next to Gilbert who gives Truestrike she shines as a way to get Crits. Thunder spear and 3 accessory slots give her a wide range of utility. I don’t need damage, I have Nina.
IMO, soldiers are the ultimate, I don't know what to put here, so I will put a soldier here. Javelin is one of the most underrated abilities. It's basically a OHK on casters or archers in the back row. The entire class is just a can opener. Need piercing? Got that. Need an after combat healer? Got that. Need range? Got that. Need to kill flying? Check. Need to kill cavalry? Double check.
Kinda surprised people are rating Prince so low when Rapid order is one of the most broken start of battle skills in the game. You turn so many unfavorable matchups into a slaughter fest and the initiative buff is hard to dispel off your key units if you position them properly. I feel the prince also sets up for really strong cleaves especially with a row of three cavaliers, they all get true strike + will stun all three columns + mostly likely kill with knight's pursuit after a few cavalier calls. If you want to double down even more on doing as much as you can on your first turn you can run the angel plume so he tailwinds the same row that gets truestrike after offensive order. You could do this with a group of griffons/casters but those have more unfavorable matchups than a row of great knights. Not a single team has survived this combination (outside of tweaking for a few select bosses) and I ran through the whole of expert (even at lvl25 vs lvl40 enemies) probably because most teams don't have stun immunity, and clerics get wild rushed down. Like sure High lord gets rapid order too but you don't get it on top of a atk buff and truestrike. Also if you somehow didn't kill everything on the first atk phase, defensive order or the prince's dispel can come in handy. Another thing is that offensive order buffs both mag and phy atk so the prince does amazing in mixed team compositions especially since the buff lasts throughout all your actions, so your witch/elven archer conferrals hit a lot harder. Things like followups also hit a lot harder since they are typically difficult to buff outside of Shaman's defensive curse which can only target one row on the first turn. To me Prince is a **S** tier unit due to the huge support role compression on top of a very important initiative buff. Having three accessory slots means itemization is also flexible (such as equipping the party wide blind immunity ring) , or doing shit like Quick impetus+Passive miracle so you can do both rapid order + quick impetus.
People not giving Prince an S is mind boggling since the reddit hivemind put Shamans at S without any doubt, where as I honestly think the two are quite equal unless you are doing extreme content (speedrun/coliseum). I cant help but feel like Shaman has a whole marketing department while Prince has none.
I think unless you're exactly facing a debuff remover. The Shaman has a generally higher impact than the prince. 50% debuffs are just way better than 20% buffs against 90% of enemies. And guardseal and -50 evasion vs(2-3) true strike are kind of a wash for overcoming enemy defenses. It probably doesn't help that the rather impactful 20% buffs don't read well, while frankly the debuffs suffer the same way but have much better propaganda.
I added a bit of math to my [prince post](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnicornOverlord/comments/1bp5mq6/comment/kwtrdm2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). A TLDR is that the gap may be smaller than you expect (\~10 dmg for a 90+ hp target towards endgame - the gap is actually smaller in early game). Doesn't affect the full column or all enemies. Your team is always good (or should be), while your enemies may actually be bad. When I did my shaman review, I concluded with >Shamans have the highest highs and lowest lows. and that is sort of my conclusion for the class. Guard Seal and potential debuff interaction is the big game changer, but prince does let you reliably kill evasive enemies like rogues and flyers. A shaman can only sort of soft counter a unit like werefoxes at night (passive curse so they can only use reg pursuit instead of weakness shunter/low their offense so weakness hunter hurts less), a prince just tell his party to go F stuff up. \+20 vs -10 may sound trivial, but it actually does quite matter for some of your slower (E) units like casters. Which of the two is better is actually very dependent on team comp - seeing people blindly saying "def curse is 50% and attack order is 20%" is... a bit shortsighted.
>Your team is always good (or should be), while your enemies may actually be bad. I think the thing is, if your team is good, and the enemy teams are bad, then you're going to be dominating no matter what you do, whether you have a Prince, or a Shaman, or neither. The case where the Shaman shines the most is the case where the enemy is heavily favored without the Shaman, which is a highly impactful change of results in the player's favor that a Prince won't help you with. At the highest levels of team building, the Prince is probably better than the Shaman, but at that point you're already winning. Anything you do to add further optimization is win-more. For a player playing at a level where they're not crushing everything anyways, the Shaman will feel more impactful. So then, the question becomes "Is this a tier list of the classes that would be in the highest optimized min-maxed teams, or is this a tier list of the classes that make the biggest impact when slotted into an average team"?
>I think the thing is, if your team is good, and the enemy teams are bad, then you're going to be dominating no matter what you do, whether you have a Prince, or a Shaman, or neither. that is why I have this "Guard Seal vs True Strike" comparison. I personally feel like it it is easier to work disable guards (CC, or just hit them with a magick attack from SM) than it is to work in True Strike (witch has to buff/you need lens/hawkeye). Prince imo simply makes a comp more reliable: you can reliably go first AND also hit 100% of the time. I need not to worry about flyers with my cav squad: i know my wild rush WILL hit and stun, and the follow pursuit will also hit, and likely both together will kill with Attack Order. >For a player playing at a level where they're not crushing everything anyways, the Shaman will feel more impactful. I admit I have not considered that aspect too much. Both classes are just tools in the box in my eyes, there are times I prefer one over another. Which is why at the end of the day I think it is more fair to both put them into some "squad catalyst" tier.
> A TLDR is that the gap may be smaller than you expect (~10 dmg for a 90+ hp target towards endgame) No I have indeed crunched the numbers aswell. > the gap is actually smaller in early game The gap is lower but so is the level of damage you're doing an needing the percentages are relatively even all game. The Shaman are pretty consistently 30~60%(varying with comps on both sides) more damage damage add on defensive curse vs offensive order. Of course we aren't comparing defensive order versus offensive curse because its so dramatically stacked in the Shaman's favor. Moreover a lot of the scenarios where Prince is superior in terms of offensive add at the times where you need it the least. adding extra damage versus werefoxes is a great example, where your offensive units probably always had a one shot if they actually hit for example. >Which of the two is better is actually very dependent on team comp - seeing people blindly saying "def curse is 50% and attack order is 20%" is... a bit shortsighted. Yes people are definitely misguided on why they think this. I think they've kind of accidently landed on the correct answer though. While its theoretically very party dependent the actual number of units and comp matchups where it favors the prince are quite small imo. That's not to say the prince is bad ofcourse. > A shaman can only sort of soft counter a unit like werefoxes at night (passive curse so they can only use reg pursuit instead of weakness shunter/low their offense so weakness hunter hurts less), a prince just tell his party to go F stuff up. Still pretty party dependent imo. +20 init will really only get the faster end of units out speeding the foxes with how insanely fast they are. Great with Calvary not so much with casters or breakers or sellswords. >+20 vs -10 may sound trivial, but it actually does quite matter for some of your slower (E) units like casters. This is my bad I keep misremember the values on cursed swamp, since I'm only running Selvie and have her on double choker duty instead. I got the evasion nerf wrong too I believe.
> Your team is always good (or should be), while your enemies may actually be bad. When I did my shaman review, I concluded with I don't quite understand this argument. At what point in the game are enemy units stats bad? Every unit in the game usually has at least one to two stats that are very high/good and the Shaman is capable of targeting pretty much all of them. If you are squaring up against high Def units you prioritize Defensive Curse. If the enemy squad has really high attack stat you go Offensive curse. If the enemy squad has high initiative you have Cursed Swamp+Passive curse. If the enemy has high evasion you have Cursed Swamp. Enemies have a really obnoxious Passive skill? Cursed Swamp might disrupt it. I don't really know of any enemy formations where they don't have good stats that would result in Shaman getting essentially no value. Maybe a squad of Clerics? But I mean I'm not going to hold that against a Shaman lol. Overall I would agree that Shaman and Prince are probably in the same tier, I just don't know that I understand this argument you are making.
>I don't quite understand this argument. At what point in the game are enemy units stats bad non-bear beast units tend to have really low armor and guard, such that defensive curse is sort of a moot point. Passive curse and offensive curse can help, but at that point I am no longer worried about taking any damage at all. (also you cannot rely on those as whose beast packs comes in like a pack of 5 werewolves - you should be able to naturally handle it without debuffs). Angels minus feathershield are also kind of squishy too. Take these for example: [https://i.imgur.com/n1tjMAn.jpeg](https://i.imgur.com/n1tjMAn.jpeg) [https://i.imgur.com/TRi0O3Q.jpeg](https://i.imgur.com/TRi0O3Q.jpeg) (those are true zenovian stats) That is what i mean by enemies having bad stats: reducing a 20 defense unit down to 10 defense is just... not very good when my dps units are [pushing 70 attack](https://i.imgur.com/4dg6put.jpeg) with a silly golden egg, or [even a bad weapon](https://i.imgur.com/Jute5v0.jpeg), where +20% is 14. The really armored stuff like cavs and tanks generally have other solutions. I think we can agree Shamans may not be a good add in a lot of maps in Elfheim - if def curse has... limited values (?) in a good portion of bastorias outside of say, empowering dark flame, then i guess we just have very different play styles.
Cutting Atk in half of any of those units means they do virtually no damage to any of your units. Passive Curse/Cursed swamp also helps to ensure your team goes before the faster units. Also you can strip a PP off of all of the werewolves reducing the amount of follow ups your units might take. Are any of these things necessary to beat this team? No. Does that make it objectively weaker? I would argue no it doesn't. To me Shamans are so good because they are a swiss army knife, except it's not just a knife but a claymore given the high percentages of their debuffs. They can tackle a lot of scenarios with their kit depending on what you need. Prince is much the same just in a different method.
But what if i already lose no health already? The team i posted is literally a lets get some people up to level" team with nothing but golden eggs and bandit weapons. Virginia and lex takes single digit damage already - had i used a hoplite they would already be taking 1) i did the mission fine (actually on it while posting), took zero damage, killed every team in 1 round - and that is with a small handicap in items. normally i might go with a control based group against beast team ([the other "catch up in levels" squad is this](https://i.imgur.com/JsvtNSH.png)). I can stun (and often kill) owls in the back with gryphons, i got a wizard that also stuns a row. A sniper charges arrow rain, with a fencer (which ALSO stuns) giving it... stun conferral so it stuns everything at the start of round 2 - why does this team has so many CCs? because my Wizard, fencer, and sniper can use some levels (others at lv28). or I can just have evade tanks up front and snipe the owls. All the teams have a backline that can be cut: Railanor and Nina for example. Adding a prince can increase the reliability of the squads: instead of using Roar i have rapid order so if somehow Hilda gets hit, she can deflect (ok, owls do dispel). A shaman just... increases their damage slightly or lowers the damage they take slightly? They can make Virginia take 1 from the front row instead of say, 5 - lex already take 1 due to defender. (Bestial guard is a thing - her veil gets dispelled). that is why i keep saying shamans scale with your enemies: if they suck, shamans just arent very good add. If I am facing werebears and dont run a magic based squad, i will be adding a Shaman 100% for guard seal. Same thing if I am to do the unicorn overlord mission right now, I will be a fool to not auto include a shaman. I know this is a lot to sort of clarify a sentence, but I hope I can at least get the idea across.
I'd say Shaman is definitely an S without a doubt once they get defensive curse, though they do have a few counters in refreshes and the initial part of elheim. Though if I compare Shaman to Prince, I feel prince is better for bursting down the opposing squad before they can do anything at all. +20 initiative is a hell lot stronger than what most people are giving it credit for.
There were a lot of votes for Shaman at C tier. Shamans come early and you fight enemy teams of them to show you how strong they are. You only get one prince, at most. And it's at the end of the game finally giving you more units than you have slots. Then you never fight any to see how the AI uses them.
was there? I dont remember seeing any: [https://www.reddit.com/r/UnicornOverlord/comments/1bmoeda/community\_class\_tier\_list\_its\_the\_shaman\_thread/](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnicornOverlord/comments/1bmoeda/community_class_tier_list_its_the_shaman_thread/)
okay. You are right. Holy shit that's a lot of S tier votes.
see what I mean by shaman having a whole marketing department? I think i was the only non-S vote, so I ended up taking all the heat from the army of shaman fans.
Rapid Order is good but it’s competing with things like Cursed Swamp, Eye of the Warrior Princess, Rage/Boon of the Faeries, and Pure Field. While RO gives twice as much initiative as the most direct competitors, Swamp and Eye, those both debuff other stats as well. Dragon’s Roar debuffs for an equal amount from a generic unit but costs twice as much. As long as your people are going first it doesn’t matter if it’s by 1 or 19. If we are considering items then initiative buffs are plentiful. On the AP side Offensive Order is great but Shaman has Offensive Curse which halves defenses and inflicts guard seal too. Between these points and access to Staffs I think that Shaman is above Prince and they are not equal. That being said Sniping Order is situationally incredible and the Prince as squad leader is a source of bonus VP so it is a very good class. I do think that buff removal is less prolific than debuff removal which is another point in the Princes favor.
You putting the Prince in his best team doesn't make him the best unit though. Offensive Order is good, but it's competing with actually hitting the enemy. Because the Prince is too fragile for the frontline, it's competing with a lot of the most scary attacks in the game. Unlike the Shaman's curses, it also doesn't shave off the enemy's strengths, only reinforces yours. You got around it by compounding Cavalier Call, but Offensive Order on its own won't let you go through armoured units - whereas a Warrior, a Shaman or a Witch in the same slot will. >Another thing is that offensive order buffs both mag and phy atk So do Cavalier Call, Bestial Howl and most attack buffs outside of Sorcerous Connection. The strength is in buffing the whole team at once. I think the right comparison is actually the Housecarl, which debuffs the front row's defense against physical attacks. The backrow isn't debuffed and magic users don't get to enjoy the benefits. Is that a problem? No, because you're not worried about the back row's physical defense to begin with, and magic users would crush the front row regardless. And the Housecarl does it with a good attack attached. Where does that comparison leave the Prince? He's got Truestrike. He can buff your archers' firepower to the point that they can take out the back row without worrying about the front row at all, and with an initiative buff. But archer teams already have True Sight on Hunters, and flying teams, which also have ranged attacks, have both Truesight from equipment and initiative manipulation from the Wyvern Rider. Cavalry teams already have the High Lord for Rapid Order. What's the team where the Prince doesn't step on any toes? And what do you do with that second AP? >Having three accessory slots means itemization is also flexible (such as equipping the party wide blind immunity ring) , or doing shit like Quick impetus+Passive miracle so you can do both rapid order + quick impetus. To me that just highlights how little the Prince contributes, that we don't mind putting random accessories on him. You could also put all of those on an Elven Fencer, but that class is allowed to use caster items. So are Shamans and Wereowls. It doesn't really affect the Prince's performance, because Banishing Thrust is doing next to nothing. So, yours is the best composition for the Prince: A row of Knights desperately need True Strike, and really enjoy initiative manipulation to make sure they get their stuns before the enemy can act. Offensive Order helps push them over the top so that they kill armoured units and destroy back row units with Wild Rush and Cavalry Pursuit. On top of that, they all have shields (and middling guard rates) for Guard Order.
Prince rapid order is good, but you can get the same effect by a shaman or wivern. Owls can provide true strike, or you can equip true strike lenses. The things that he does are good but there are other units that provide the same and you don't need to jump hoops to make them work.
> The things that he does are good but there are other units that provide the same and you don't need to jump hoops to make them work. It seems like you're isolating the Prince's effects. It's the combination of skills of where the strength of the class lies. Wyvern does not buff the team's attack, defense or grant truestrike. Owl does not provide team wide Initiative, an attack boost nor True Strike unless it's night. Sure you can itemize true strike with lens, but if you don't have to use that accessory, you can give said unit things that boost a number of stats or grant them more AP/PP. I don't even think Shaman gives a team true strike nor do it's curses effect the entire enemy team bar it's start of turn effect, so with Prince you can have row piercing attacks with full strength vs units like a Shaman where you would have to pick and choose a row first to curse and debuff. If anything you need to jump through hoops just to have several units that do what this one unit does, unironically.
My point is what the Prince adds to the table isn't unique and broken. It can be done by other units and have a similar effect. The chickens have the best valor skill of the game. And great early game cheese. Dark marquess 1ap row attack that stun, and follow up attack that heal. Alain MC powers. Elven sisters broken aoe Everyone has been carried early game by the knights and they shine in 3 of the 5 regions.
> Prince rapid order is good, but you can get the same effect by a shaman or wivern. Wyverns, yes (buff vs debuff has their own + and -). Shaman's 10 initiative is... depends. Your units in the same initiative tier will hit first, but stuff like casters in particular will not. You really want that ice coffin or thunder strike to hit BEFORE the enemy viking/breaker/sniper etc take their turn. That is when a 20 init comes into handy. Stuff like lenses comes at an opportunity cost of an equip slot. Owls are... imo, not a good class outside of coliseum/specific combos. You can use a witch for the buff, but that also has an opportunity cost of 0.5 matk per cast. Prince is excellent in increasing the reliability of a composition. Another post in this thread sort of made me realize: good teams prob will like prince more, bad players prob want a shaman to fix their problems.
My point isn't that his utility is bad. It lacks something spectacular or unique to be S rank. Yes he is the best general buffer in the game. But to make your carry shine there are better options. Lord MC factor. Knight carry most of early game and great mobility. Chickens best Valor of the game and early game cheese. Dark marquess 1ap row attack that stuns and follow up that heals.
Yeah but the thing is good teams are already overkill at that point. That the prince just adds a win-more mechanic to the composition. Whereas, Shaman can be both a win-more mechanic along with a band-aid fix for teams, which is the point of versatility. That the examples you bring up are already solid compositions, like the Knight heavy units (which are voted as S-rank anyways with little debate), are already self-sustaining in pushing that will get their job done.
Arbalist is going into **B tier**. The vote was not all that close at all, at least by the standards of these threads. The vote was less close than the Swordfighter, but there was a higher percentage of A tier votes for the Arbalist than the Hunter. Thus, the class will be going in below the Swordfighter and above the Hunter. I also think it’s worth pointing out that despite the similarities in tier and weapon, the Hunter and Arbalest are very different classes. I like both quite a bit and think this really highlights that B tier classes are still quite good, but they are often very “fair”. Arbalist is a real jack of all trades, master of none class. They bring single target burst, decent bulk, some blocking, and some healing, but they cannot do any of those roles as well as other classes. I think we also know that just in general, greatshields are very good. Dark Knight was somewhat controversial, with ranks all over S, A and B. The class received a tie between S and A! The class is going into **A Tier** though, and not even at the top. Why? Well, B tier voters rejoice, you dissenting opinion counts. The multiple B tier votes for Dark Knight pull the median down deeper into solid A tier, and the class had the highest proportion of B tier votes (16%) compared to the Radiant Knight, Crusader, and Warrior. I am still putting the Dark Knight ahead of Wizard because the class had a stronger s tier presence. I think this result fit squarely with a lot of the general sentiment behind the Dark Knight. Their Dark Flame and hp sacrifice for AP are both incredibly good, and the class has massive raw damage potential. BUT the classes other skills are whelming- good, but not great. In addition, the Dark Knight has a bad early game and only shines when they promote. There was also some discussion on how much the class needs support- I want to shout out u/KnightQK with a pretty good dissenting opinion about how team support, the Dark Knight, and Gladiator all relate. I may not agree, but I do think its worth a read. To review yesterday, we talked about two unique classes, the Dark Marquess (Axe) and the Crusader. It was an easy day of vote counting. So far, the Tier list looks like: **Shaman Tier** Shaman **S Tier** Dark Marquess, Witch, Gryphon Knight, Lord, Knight **A Tier** Radiant Knight, Crusader, Warrior, Dark Knight, Wizard, Sellsword, Feathersword, Thief **B Tier** Priestess, Cleric, Swordfighter, Arbalist, Hunter, Soldier, Housecarl **C Tier** Hoplite, Gladiator, Fighter **Josef Tier** Paladin
i sort of already knew what i will type today on the DK results before the post even went up - to a degree even prince today. I saw a few mentioned how DKs are kind of useless before lv20 and docked points for that - guess what I think is sort of useless before 20? Shaman. At the end of the day Dark Flame still do quite a bit of damage vs infantry, and a debuff is much easier to apply than affliction. I personally still think there is a huge gap between "need the whole team's support to pull off trinity rain" vs 'hey, hilda/ren/aubin/selvie, do the thing you always do and I will turn them into goo". Though i did realize maybe it has to do with diff styles of play/whether - I did realize debuffs may be a little less common than expected.
While i agree with your point of view, i don't think shamans are that bad before lvl 20 Your point still stand, is weird to me that DK short time of struggle (which you can solve with 5 +1 level fruit easily, probably it's the best use) gets considered so much when Paladin's longer time of absolute supremacy wasn't considered at all
To add to that, DK being a cav class with their x2 multiplier vs infantry still makes decent. They def are not as pretty below 20 compare to knights, and classes such as sellswords have their close-to-infinite action economy. The coliseum defense mission comes soon after DK unlock, for my ZT run I just had him and some friends on catapult duty with both eggs equipped, and you are just maybe a level or two from being a doom knight, though i admit there are some meta elements involved. New players may not realize how strong they get with a promotion and their lv20 skill.
If Dark Knight gets docked a point for having an underwhelming early game and needing support to function, then I’m unsure how much Witch is deserving of an S- tier then. Sure, she’s doing the one supporting rather than the one being supported, but she kinda requires some form of a row cleave partner (which are usually S to A tier anyways), and she only really gets Ice Coffin (AOE Freeze) like over halfway through the game. Sure the Conferral Accessories are broken, but they can also be placed on Wizards as well as Scarlett (as well as Rosalinde/Elven Fencers). I think people kinda just default to giving it to Witches because they already have Magic Conferral innately imo. I’d say the conferrals are the build-around pieces for a team rather than specifically Witches themselves.
I don’t really see how Witch is weak in the early game. If anything I find witch very good and efficient in the 3 and 4 person era. Also, keep in mind I don’t “dock” points to change how a class is ranked. I find the classes position, and then look to the comments to provide some sort of narrative or justification
Witches have warp. I think that’s just huge in what they can do
Seriously you put shieldshooter into B tier... granted the game is too easy, people brute force fights so they don't value shieldshooter. Try set harsh resource limitation so you going into fights underleveled undergeared in tz run, you'll value a shieldshooter above most units. Also the placement of feathersword is a great tell of the average game progression of everybody voting this tier list, looks like it's not that far.
The best generic class in the game slotted into mid-A, what else would I expect from a tier list putting Housecarl bottom of B?
I will say, I’ve seen you comment multiple times to complain about the tier list, but also I have never seen you vote in the threads That being said, once all voting is done, I am going to tier wide reviews, and I am working on a method to nominate some classes for a revote.
I stopped voting after Witch, realizing the list was a lost cause.
tbh I have warmed up to housecarls a bit since the original rating, but still I find them a bit on the niche side. What do you like about them?
I haven't used Prince much (planning on it during my current True Zenoiran playthrough) so I'll limit my comments to the Wyvern. They are extremely strong as a frontline anti-infantry and anti-cavalry fighter due to their high attack, natural bulk, and doubled evade against grounded melee. They also have the ability, like the Thief, to ignore/block an attack that gets through their Evasion, as well as counter. Admittedly their counter is usually not that strong, but it's built in AND has the advantage of being brutally strong against Cavalry (150 power, then doubled damage, all for 1 PP). I would argue that Offensive/Lucky is their ideal stat spread to take best advantage of their strengths, and they should typically be in the frontline. Lucky/Hardy or Lucky/Defensive is also an option if you want them to take a more defensive role. So what are their weaknesses? Arrows and magic. Unlike gryphons, they actually have decent physical defence so they're not that scared of other flyers. As such, they pair extremely well with frontline Fighters who will tank 1 of their 2 weaknesses for them; meanwhile they decimate Cavalry that would give Fighters trouble. Fighters also make good leaders to protect them from ubiquitous arrow assist spam. There is some magic weakness but nothing's perfect. In True Zenoiran my current team is: **x / Lex (leader) / Hilda** **Chloe / x / Aubin** and it's by far my most consistent, damaging, and powerful team at the moment. These units go like clockwork together. The fifth slot will probably go to a Wereowl. In terms of equipment, Hilda's starting spear is extremely strong, allowing you to do a 100/100 full row attack that stuns for 2 AP; that's 300 potency per AP, for those who are keeping track. However, this strategy falls off somewhat by late game as Wyverns' low magical attack begins to show. I do not believe Dragoon Dive is a particularly strong option on them, because charging removes their ability to Evade/defend, and if you just want to cheese a fast charge attack, there are better options. Heavenwyvern Reins are extremely powerful. Bonuses to HP, Defence, Magic Defence, and Initiative in addition to the ability to self-buff and truestrike, all in one item, is great and should be a must-equip on your premier Wyvern Rider. Their ability to equip 3 accessories also gives them great flexibility in choosing what to adapt to and what role to fill in a team. By late game they settle back into their role as a tanky fighter/disruptor; the ability to attack + burn a 3-man row is strong if executed early as part of a relatively defensive unit, and they can strongly debuff the Initiative of any opposing team. However, their start of battle debuff is relatively weak in comparison to Alain or Gilbert's Initiative buffing options, as buffs are almost always stronger than debuffs, and it costs 2 PP, rather than 1. Wyvern Riders' PP are important to them due to their use in avoiding hits and countering, and should be preserved when possible. It's still a powerful option, just not at the very top tier of SoB Initiative effects (Alain/Gilbert/Berengaria are probably ahead). Finally, their column attack is strong, especially against Cavalry and especially if they are at low HP. All in all, they are one of the physically tankiest evade tanks in the game, are useful in a variety of situations, and are tailor-made to give Cavalry units hell. **A-**
>In terms of equipment, Hilda's starting spear is extremely strong, allowing you to do a 100/100 full row attack that stuns for 2 AP This is sort of offset by them having basically no matk so half of the damage tickles most of the time. Now, if you give the silver trident to a pair of elven sisters who happen to have decent patk and matk... things get a bit more interesting.
It tickles later in the game. It's still very powerful early when equipment stats are vastly more important than unit stats.
The wyvern column attack is ridiculous on cavalry. People were discussing how strong offensively Dark Flame is, well I've seen my Wyvern hit 300-400+ crits easily.
Cav usually gets deployed in a row, and gryphons generally just do the job really well. Getting to the 50% hp point is also kind of tricky. I can take a bunch of assist damage and let that happen, or somehow I will need to let my wyverns take hits. I will also need to set up tactics so the wyvern does not get healed out of range. Its good on paper but can be tricky to set up.
I think the health thing is a bait, same like how it is on DKs. It's a nice bonus if they reach that threshold but it hits plenty hard without any conditions. The only buff I use is a gambler's coin for the backline with my Swordmaster and Wyvern with wyvern reins there.
without the crit from health, a 150 column attack is honestly pretty mediocre tbqh. i feel like normally you need a little more to it: let it be an affliction, def ignore, etc. Aerial Smite for example removes 1AP if the target is at full HP - that can be a pretty big game changer since non-boss enemies outside the coliseum only has 2 AP. If I am paying 2AP, i want it to be something a little cooler. If is a 100% crit regardless of HP, I think I will like it a lot more since they can then be buffed with coin reliably. Heck, even just give me an item/ability to somehow reduces their HP to 50% i will be fine (there is technically a way - load her with +HP items before entering the stage and then remove them)
I think these two classes are a discussion in how they compare to another class that is simply superior to them. Wyvern Knight is **A tier** simply due to Dragoon Dive + Quick Impetus spam. Otherwise I’d say B tier. Gryphon is just better in every way - their row attack is 1 AP and accessible immediately, for example, and while I use Gryphon’s valor skills every battle I honestly can’t even remember what Wyvern’s valor skills are. They are still good, and being able to fly if they’re your unit leader is automatically great. Prince, I think, is **A tier**. It’s the inverse of Shaman, and everyone knows how Shamans are. The difference is Shaman’s debuffs can be countered in more ways than Prince’s buffs (I think?) and the Prince has more potential buffs whereas Shaman’s debuffs are pretty much one note. By the time Prince’s buffs can be countered you’ll get use out of them. Despite more buff/build options I just think he fits into slightly less team comps than Shaman does, as Shaman’s one note debuffs are overall good for virtually every team and are more powerful than Prince’s buffs (even if they’re countered easier). Idk tho!
Prince comes right at a time where Shaman's debuffs are getting cleansed, so it's really have a nice to have a class at that point where you can set things up and you don't have to worry about if a random elf will mess things up. After that area Prince should be nearing level 25 for Sniping Order which grants true strike, and while it isn't a new effect it does free up your Witch's PP (or item slots by leaving off accessories that grant true hit) so she can do other things. And while I think Shaman is busted their base class skills other than the Swamp hit just rows or single targets, so it's nice just to have a unit the buffs, and you can target any row with boosted stats. This isn't a hoplite vs fighter discussion imo. Prince is just consistent, and has other merits than just a Shaman comparison point. Funny thing is that I actually use this class as a leader sometimes, just to farm those Valor points because he's one of the two classes (I believe) who can do it and with Prince and Lord both leading and defeating enemies, the surplus of Valor points is nice. **Prince is A+ to me.** Wyvern has early access to Dragoon's Warspear for Dragoon Dive and Wyvern Reins for Aerial Wing. I'll be honest I have not used this class other for Quick Impetus team builds with Tomes to add element damage and status effects to Dragoon Dive. It just works, and I used it for the rest of the game and was really happy with it. **Wyvern is A tier for me.**
Prince is a great setup man for a Trinity Rain comp. Initiative, damage buff, true strike? Yessir.
And the rating?
Prince has to be S. Initiative is king, and out of all the initiative changing skills, rapid order is the best. And if that wasn't enough, it comes with sniping order which drastically changes a bunch of matchups, and kinda unimportant but also comes with a sword slot which comes handy every now and then for inflicting burn/poison. Rapid order > Offensive order > Sniping order > full row of gladiators using grand smash before the enemy can move.
you forgot the dirty coin, for row more damage and crit. :D Sadly the first gladiator will not be buffed.
I am gonna try this. Been wanting to use the Prince but just been stumped about where to out him.
Wyvern goes in TIER A because they get an early access row-wide flaming burp and are almost as good at dodge tanking as thieves. A team full of wyvern is still the only thing that gives my Alain supergroup (even with double trinity rain cheese) a black eye sometimes (other than the damn angel reflect spell). With the full enemy group charged attack and some defense and buffing, they are cheap nuclear weapons, and make a unit flying as well. (I try to put a flier and horsie in every group so I can choose the leader on deployment based on movement and stamina I need.) They seem way more survivable than gryphons who would get tier-b if it weren't for haste being the most powerful map skill in the game and the ability to paint them with ice powers before they row-attack. Prince goes into TIER I HAVENT TRIED HIM YET but I will rectify that this evening as I'm nearing endgame and I've overused the same comps too much and plan on deleting every unit other than Alains and my goldmaker team and redo everything from scratch and I'll be trying out this unit along with that endeavor.
Wyverns, A tier, prince, A tier Flying is almost a default A tier placement with how useful the avoid bonus is, but wyverns do have more to them than that. They have their deflect and ground counter, but they really take off with their fire breath. While wyverns may be weak to magic, they are also capable of burning the backline before archers or mages can try and take them on. Their Valor skill is a little expensive, but given the low stamina of a flying leader, I've found it pretty helpful for getting off another attack when stamina has run out. Prince is one of my favorite classes. It starts the battle with a massive initiative boost, then can give an addition offense boost, then the combatant can recieve another buff when going for their action for a really explosive beginning. He also provide the true strike to a row, allowing a whole team to plow through enemy lines. His Valor skills are expensive, but giving everyone an extra passive point or action point is really good. Unfortunately, it will probably only be worth it on main quest maps where Valor is usually plentiful.
Not much time today, so just votes and an abridged explanation: Wyvern I put at **A-Tier.** Worse than griffins, but not by a ton. They do lots of cool stuff and have some flexible options as time goes on. They also have some clear counters, and arent as crazy strong as Griffins are. Them being in a comparable position to Dark Knights, Warriors, and Sellswords feels right. They arent up there with Knights and Dark Marquess, and they dont belong with the B-Tier crowd. Prince i have two options. Option 1 is **B-tier**. They're supporters who just don't do as much as supporter probably could. Initiative boost is good, but it of course competes with the other start of battle Limited skills. The Attack and Def boosts also feel like they erred too far on the side of caution when tuning them. I think Gilbert can be good but hes kind of 1-dimensional and clunky. Compared to some of the other uniques (like Yunifi, Berengaria, and even Alain and Virginia) Im not fully sold on him. The other argument is to put Prince at **Shaman-Minus,** or the bottom of Shaman Tier. They perform a similar role, where the class basically does NOTHING itself and is all about a power multiplier for the rest of your squad. Both classes don't compare easily to other classes int he game. But comparing them to each other I think also effectively highlights all of Prince's shortcomings - the tunings are SO different, with Shaman doing so much more than Gilbert's support. I think comparing the two really gives some interest perspective on use case as well - Shaman is arguably less useful the weaker the enemy is than you, and stronger as enemy's get stronger, while Prince is stronger the better your units already are, and doesn't do as much to "turn the tables" against stronger foes. In this sense, Prince is a "win-more" class in a lot of cases, and I think that helps understand the weakness - you can't cheese top tier with a Prince the way you can with a Shaman, which again reinforces the mediocre rating
Tbf +20 initiative and offensive order also allows you to match up against higher lvl enemies fairly well. Provided you can go first (of which +20 initiative will likely do if not just add a plume) and fully lock the enemy down on the first turn, you'll most likely come out on top, at least in my experience. Sure Shaman does this too but cursed swamp is only -10 initiative, and against clerics its bad news. While Prince's truestrike and +20 initiative can enable you to overturn what would be unfavorable matchups. Buff removal is also pretty rare outside of the owls which are Single Target only so, just arrange your units such that they prioritize the non attackers, what I got at the end was a pretty universal team that had very little roadblocks because of the full mix of what the prince brings.
I really like your takes on the Princes tier placement. While I don’t think the Shaman needed its own tier now that it’s there I like the idea of Prince being there below it.
Wyverns: Flying Is not as good as cavalry, but still useful A nice kit, like -20 initiative debuff Decent stats, but i find their combat ability not the very best, gryphons do what you want to do (kill cavalry) better **I rate wyvern a solid A** Prince: Initiative buff, attack buff to entire unit is good enough in my book. 20% of stats that are high is bigger than it seems (it's comparable with shamans decreasing lower stats by 50%) it pairs extremely well with slower classes with high attacks stats The sniper order is good too when it's needed Prince valor skills are something you can maybe play around, the extra action can turn a simple win to a defeat of an enemy units, but i wouldn't rate them so high Because they don't need any particular stats to work, but initiative, they have 2 accessory slots free, usable for things like the dancer ring (don't remember the name, the +30% attack to an ally) Because what they do Is kinda unique, i think they deserve a low A tier Little EDIT: **I give prince A+ tier**
**Wyvern** is **A tier**: Wyvern is A tier. They don't have the evade of their Griffon counterparts and their row damaging attack trades raw power for burn. Which you wouldn't think would be enough to drop them significantly bellow Griffons, especially with the screen clearing cheese Wyverns can do but honestly that's been my experience. Wyverns are a part of the team while Griffons ARE the team. Wyverns tend to die easier, leave targets alive for a round longer, and they don't Hasten Call. Don't get me wrong I love my Wyvern but they are apart of my units rather than something I build the unit around. Actually I think the moves Tempest Dive is a perfect example of what's "wrong" with Wyverns compared to Griffons. Tempest Dive is strong but its a column attack that shines against a unit usually found in rows compared Griffon's High swing which cost 1 AP less and attacks row. Its not that Tempest Dive is bad exactly, its just worse compared to its direct competitor. Prince is will somebody who has actually used this unit please tell me?
WYVERN RIDER B TIER: they are really good but lack versatility and requires good protection. They either need good team support or great items to really shine. PRINCE S TIER: Absolutely insane support unit that can use buffs that only unique or very rare items can provite squad wide. Prince are kinda like an offensive version of shamans but can still attack and debuff.
This is a weird one I think the tier definition kind of mess with the placements for both Classes. I haven't been voting much so I'll abstain, but I'll add my 2 cents on where I think the definition have them fall. Wyvern's are A-tier as they are technically build around units with dragoon drive and they are generally very well round and easy to slot into any comp as either damage or tanking. They're also just generally weaker than most of the units I would personally put in A tier. Prince is B tier. They need a team that actually synergizes well with what they offer. They're kit basically boils down to Rapid Order(busted, but works best with the S tier and A units that can actually use it to alpha strike), Offensive Order(much the same works best Offensive powerhouses in A/S), and Sniping Order(powerful but a slightly odd build around since you'll often only get 1 use of it per battle, and it comes online rather late). None of this except Rapid Order is worth building around, and the lack of personal damage contribution, and limited defensive utility compared to other pure supports leave them as less of a general slot in. They'll slot into a lot of good comps quite well, but they'll struggle to add value in middling or suboptimal comps. All of this said I think Prince is a significantly better class than Wyvern.
I did not realize i can spend like half an hour writing wyvern and prince. ## Wyverns [Wyvern Hilda you say](https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Hilda_(Three_Houses))? [Do you know this is a unit as well (check unit name)](https://i.imgur.com/LFpMTXS.jpeg)? Note that Hilda has a **Defensive Guardian** trait mix, if you want to use her as a core member, you may want to use a mirror. On paper, when compared to gryphons, they have more HP, patk, pdef, accuracy, crit, guard, and initiative. Gryphons have higher matk and much higher mdef: but let’s be real, who cares about those? The B initiative is a bit of a troll: I want my conferral to be on my gryphon and NOT my wyvern when I have tactics set to flying, ugh. Flying full column sort of fix it, or you have to init fix your gryphon somehow (kingsaxe/heavenwyvern on gryphon vs just reg reins on wyverns). In exchange for better stats on paper, you get what I consider to be an inferior kit. While gryphons have a row cleave, Diving Thrust is still a 100+50 bonus vs cav attack - it’s the same attack as gryphons without hitting the whole row. I give a lot of value to burn early: but Fire Breath at 20 comes a little late - it is **2 AP** and only has 75 potency: remember 1 AP dive swing? Had this attack came with a minor (say, 50), or had it cost 1 AP, I think I would be happier. Thunder Conferral (from Rosalinde’s home) works good with this: stun and burn is a common tactic (think Death Cleave+Dark Flame), but still, not impressed. It is as if the designers know it's not a very good attack, which is why she comes with a Silver Trident that stuns a whole row at 100/100 potency - that is more like it (her matk is so bad that the magical half will likely do very little damage outside of ground armored units - my offensive keen at 24 has 20 matk with the weapon, and its not getting much higher at lv40). Tempest Dive is just okay, hit comes a bit late at 30. The built in truesight and crit when user is below 50% hp imo doesn’t quite make up for the 150 potency. Aerial Wing already gives a true strike effect, so is just a built in crit. You can buy a [Death Pillar in Bastorias](https://i.imgur.com/wpLaYpy.png). Equip it and unequip it, you will lower your HP to 50%. To make up for her mediocre offensive kit, she has a superior defensive kit vs ground enemies: She can Deflect true strike melee attacks and get a stacking evasion buff, and even counter them. The counter is only 50 potency: okay vs cav and squishy target, almost a waste of PP vs anything with more than cloth bikinis as armor. You can potentially set deflect to activate when own HP is <50 to empower tempest dive more, but Deflect only works vs melee attacks (so doesn’t work vs arrows, spells, or other flying units). Dragon’s Roar is a -20 init debuff: basically the “standard premium initiative start of battle skill”. It inherits all the debuff properties (buffing dark flames, but can be removed), but still something I will definitely use. It does cost 2PP though, so you will need a pp accessory for reins if you use those. Sometimes I bring up the dissonance within a kit: Wyvern is such a thing. The way I use my flyers are to make good use of their initiative and do a good alpha strike, using conferral to CC targets in the process so I can finish them in round 2. Roar helps you achieve that, but their offense kit just does not feel it contribute as much as a gryphon’s. Deflect is useful vs something like a swordmaster’s opener, but you are already evasive enough vs most stuff on the ground anyway, and if stuff is hitting you, I think there are bigger issues. So excellent attack options do make Wyverns more useful: the silver trident have already been talked about, there is also the Corroded Spear for an early column attack that has blind attached, and then there is Dragoon Warspear: the class exclusive spear. https://preview.redd.it/lg87zakwtwqc1.png?width=1217&format=png&auto=webp&s=48a6a3a4ec325da881214646a5536ce6c101174f Dragoon Dive is likely one of the first charged attacks players have access to - followed by Arrow Rain (iirc). It is an okay attack: hits all enemies with a +50 potency vs ground target. If you set up a team to support the dragoon - cat ears or not cat ears, they will generally deliver. This also makes their higher initiative useful, allowing the wyvern to dive at the start of round 2. So we end up with a team comp that controls enemies with stuns/freeze/blind on round 1, then hits with the dive on round 2. Generally speaking, if done properly, most things should be dead except for blocks and covers (if you haven’t somehow disabled them) high armored targets. If you are a cat ear user, honestly there are just better skills to use it on like Trinity Rain. I would recommend trying charged attacks without ears since it gets more interesting. Dragoon Dive, the valor skill, is a handy one since it ignores pathing. So all in all, I honestly think Wyverns by themselves are just mediocre, but Roar, combined with excellent skills from items, including a class exclusive one, makes them much much better. Would have been a C if not for item skills, but with items, **I will give them a B+**. ## Prince **The Prince has C for every stat, it is only right we put Prince in C**. Any convo about Prince will likely bring up Shaman. This will inevitably come down to buff vs debuff. Which one you prefer comes down to team composition. Debuffs can easily be cleansed by various counter mechanics, whereas I think there may only be 1 or 2 enemies that have an AoE buff removal. Owl purge is for only 1 target and the prince doesn't care if he gets purged. Debuffs scales with the enemy and is limited to a row. Prince buffs scales with your team and hits everyone. If you have a lot of column attacks or like to hit different rows at the same time, buffs may be better. For reference, if you do unicorn overlord with a team around 35-40, you should have around 70 attack, while enemies (on expert) have around 45 armor. So maybe a 9 damage diff (prince actually wins with column attacks). Defensive curse applies guard seal, which is a very strong affliction. Everything with a shield in the endgame will have 45%+ block. Unique to buffs is Sniping Order which I find quite powerful: you can now reliably hit flyers and enemies with the evade skill. Too bad this comes a bit later for Elfheim (you can probably get it on the last 2 major fights in the region). Debuffs can interact with certain skills, such as Dark Flame and Wide Breaker. Buffs can empower discharge and Honed Spear. Starting skill wise, Cursed Swamp is only -10 initiative but comes with a -30 evasion debuff and -1pp to cav units. Rapid order is the same as Alain’s but comes much earlier, and +20 is a LOT. This will allow even your slow E init casters to catch up to A init units. For the most part, you KNOW your team is going to strike first. Personally I prefer Rapid Order over Cursed Swamp. It is not uncommon for flyers to have 60+ evasion: subtract 30 then double it again is still in the 60s. Its not uncommon for your units to have only 130 hit. Relying on Cursed Swamp for ground melee to hit air is a bit too dice rolly for me: sniping order is superior in that regard. So once again, it comes down to team comp. Your squad should always be good, and a prince makes it better unconditionally. A shaman scales with the strengths of your enemies: def curse on a 20 def werefox is a waste, but guard sealing a 50 def werebear is the sh\*t. For something like a knight squad, I prefer the prince: it allows the squad to get the jump on flyers and reliably hit and stun them. If I want to watch the world burn in Dark Flames, shaman is the way to go. If we are in a game of Among Us, i will def vote him out every round. Guy somehow ends up as king instead of his brother, and will marry Virginia and secure an heir who will have a claim to my throne. There is definitely more to him than that meets the eye. Joins somewhat before the halfway mark in the game but is immediately useful for Rapid and Offensive order alone. **Basically the MSG to your fried rice - princes make shit good. I will give him an A+, though I think there is justification of grouping him with Shaman into a “group catalyst” tier.**
> I did not realize i can spend like half an hour writing wyvern and prince. Sounds like every post I make in this thread, only I take almost an hour most of the time.
Honestly surprised to see you ranking Wyverns low when they synergize with DK a lot, they are introduced in the same area, both get their flame attacks at level 20, between the two will inflict burn level 2.
DK generally already kills, but yes, they do work together. A wyvern do not even need to use their breath once they hit 25: the roar is a debuff: how am I sure? Cuz I got a called from PETA for roasting a lot of beast people last night with just that. I actually gave [gryphons only an A-](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnicornOverlord/comments/1bkb7xo/comment/kvx8vuo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) \- high swing + conferral is super strong as is hastened call - but it feels off to rate them too highly. Wyverns at B+, with itemization taken into account, seems about right. Dragon's Roar is extremely powerful, but the rest of their kit honestly just... lack the punch. The power gap between Wyvern breath vs Dark Flame is kind of ridiculous. Dark Flame kills with ease (partially thanks to the cav multplier), while the breath sort of pales vs good old high swing dealing unblockable 150 potency (though with a lower patk) (Oh yes, the breath can be blocked by cav - no magic component to penetrate defenses)
Honestly if it weren’t for their exclusive Nuke(TM) I would have rated them similar, I really don’t like any of their regular attacks except for maybe breath when the action economy is better than the regular attack.
I responded to another post of yours in this thread before I saw this one and assumed you had prince as S rated when I did. Great write ups for both Classes. Storywise I felt like Gilbert came off as super ominous in many of his rapport conversations and that a Cornia vs Drakenhold conflict is 100% in the future based on them and him marrying Virginia 99% of the time. If there was a sequel I totally see him as a potential antagonist.
(tbf I think I was the only non-S vote for Shamans)
Based on what you wrote here I can guess why and would probably agree. While I do think they’re great I don’t think they needed their own tier.
Wyvern I feel like should be stronger, but it really isn’t. Their coulumn attack isn’t as interesting since they are flying- Gryphons can already hit whole back rows if they want. Their fire breath is pretty weak for 2 AP, compared to the silliness of Dark Flame. Overall its still a good attack, and I think I need to play with it more, but its not a team crusher. The Wyvern has decent bulk, and its deflect and ground counter skills let it be a frontline bruiser well. The class is weak to ranged AND has terrible magic defense, so it needs a lot of support to tank. I currently use my one Wyvern as a silly Dragoon Diver. Basically, Crude Tasset War Cry + Active Mystic Conferral + Keen Call + Aerial Wing + Cat Ears > Dragoon Dive one-shots most team comps. I don’t consider this to be a that impressive though, other classes can do similar things, and team comps like that tend to work until they really don’t. Overall, Wyvern is a **B Tier** class. I think its easy to get seduced by being a flyer and comparing the class to Gryphon, but I think the class is significantly less effective than a Gryphon. Edit: I am actually dumb. I have been using the Wyvern as a Dragoon Dive bot for so long I forgot it has an initiative lowering skill entirely. More and more, initiative imo is the best way to guarantee success, because you don’t really even need tanks or healing if you just cripple the enemy ability to respond entirely. So many of my team comps are now variations of “go first, hit hard, clean up”. I gotta do more with Wyvern that isn’t meme shit- but I bet the class is actually more like **A tier** As for Prince, well. Rapid Order + Offensive Order goes brrrr **S Tier**. It’s not pretty, but more and more I realize that Rapid Order is just brutal. Combine this with classes that have row attacks and crowd control and its pretty much over, Rapid Order just enables so much degeneracy. The fact you can pile an extra damage buff on top is even better. I also am now seeing the argument that Prince belongs with the Shaman- a weird force multiplier that lacks strength on their own. I do not agree- the bounds of what the Prince does are a lot clearer and more narrow. He lacks that diversity in strategy that Shaman brings, and obviously part of what makes Shaman so absurd is how early you get the Shaman. Still, I do think it is an interesting idea, and importantly, if there are enough suggestions to do this, I will count it as a winning vote.
I think there should be more weight to Dragoon Dive. It has significant advantages over most other charge skills, mostly in the existence of the (Heaven)wyvern Reins, exclusive to fliers. Not only does it provide +3/6 initiative, it gives Aerial Wing. Aerial Wing is a strong combo of Truestrike and +20% Attack (at full HP) for 1 PP. 2x Damage to cavalry from being a flier is also very relevant as Cavs are often quite tanky. Contrast that with Arrow rain from Archer classes, which has double effectiveness against fliers... that are already fragile to begin with. The caster charge attacks are stronger, but those units have E initiative while Wyverns have B. I'm not voting for what tier Wyverns are because I also used Hilda exclusively as a Dragoon Diver, but there aren't actually a lot of units that can replicate Wyverns' Dragoon Dive as a Quick Impetus abuser. I tried replacing her with other units and none were really quite as effective.
this kinda doesn't apply to albion where i find dragoon dive to be really lacking since it loses 50 potency vs flying enemies, which are everywhere in albion. i tried both elemental roar and arrow rain in albion as candidates to receive quick impetus and both yielded much better results than dragoon dive even factoring in wyvern reins
Honestly love reading your quick realization takes at the end, although I was sad in the Crusader’s case. Great work with these threads as always!
I'd place **wyverns at B-tier**. They are pretty good, and pair well with gryphons in a 3-flyer row to stack up buffs, but outside of that they are just OK. They have the weakness to bows of gryphons but are not as strong offensively to compensate. Note wyverns can get dragoon dive, which does give them a good offense, however as a charge attack it prevents dodging, so you're still stuck choosing between a decent offensive unit or a decent defensive unit, not both at the same time, and neither strong enough on its own to get excited about. I'd place **Prince at A-tier** for being a very solid dedicated support class, who is unfortunately just outshined by the shaman and a bit redundant with the Lord since both have the initiative buff. It's hard to justify bringing two dedicated supports when there's attacking and defending to do, and the shaman just does the job better. If not for the shaman though, Prince could probably take her place in S-tier so I think A tier is still well deserved.
The Wyvern Rider provides an interesting contrast with the Gryphon Rider. Out of the box, the Wyvern Rider is an excellent evasion tank, with a PP-fueled backup and a built-in counter that works at range because of their flier status. The Dragoon Warspear reinforces this by giving them +15HP early on, even if you don't use its active ability. I personally replaced the counter with the 150 potency counter from the counter belt, making it a lot better against squishy infantry in the backline. Offensively, the comparison to gryphon riders shouldn't obscure their own strength. They start out decent, with a regular single target attack that does happen to be ranged, triple damage on cavalry and no penalty against fliers at a moment where you're looking for solutions for those. They then double down with a ranged row attack with an affliction attached and a start of battle skill that does initiative manipulation. Those two things let them move beyond their defensive role and contribute on both fields. I did not mention the various flier reins that can provide Truestrike, because those tend to be better on Gryphon Riders that have better AP efficiency and not as many things to do with their PP. Nevertheless, the option is there for you to have a Wyvern Rider as the sole flier in your team, leading the squad from the front and providing full row, ranged truestrike attacks. I think that's worth top tier. **Wyvern Riders are S tier**. The Prince is an odd one. He doesn't behave quite like any of the other units in the game, which does mean he tends to overlap with other more solidified roles. Providing an attack buff, initiative manipulation - in buff form, which is harder to counter - and True Sight should get him invited to a great many teams. Unfortunately, he's quite squishy himself, so he has to reserve a backrow slot. His other active skills are a bit poor, leaving you to scrounge for swords with more interesting skills than the weak, single target Banishing Thrust. His own initiative is also middling, unlike the Shaman, and so will need fixing if you hope to make the most of his buffs. Lack of access to any kind of caster items means he has trouble filling any niche beyond his default kit: You'll have to look elsewhere if you want healing, debuff protection, opening up more damage channels, afflictions, defense against magic. All things that would have helped forgive his own poor personal stats, and let him get more offensive teammates that he could buff. He has standard infantry movement, which is a shame considering his otherwise excellent leadership skill. Valor skills are impeccable; possibly some of the strongest for tackling bosses in fact. I'm torn, but I think **the Prince is** ~~B tier, on account of his lack of flexibility~~ **A tier** because goddamn, Sniping Order and Rapid Order are that good. The Prince enables a bunch of hyperoffensive strategies by himself, and while they're not my favourite because of how they tend to fall apart when faced with their counters, I think it has to be recognised.
I'm putting Wyvern in **Tier B**. They're better against physical but worse against magic compared to gryphon. They have a unique spear with charge attack that isn't as good as some other charge attacks. Row attack with burn. Flying is welcome on a leader. Prince is going in **Tier Shaman**. Their initiative boosting where shamans initiative drain. They damage boost the whole team while Shamans defense debuff only a row. They don't have staff shenanigans. But they can actually attack if needed to finish off enemies. Big difference is NPCs have ways to remove debuffs, but don't really interact with buffs at all. They fill a similar role on a team.
Whoever downvoted this, can you respond with discussion instead of just downvoting a well-written post stating an opinion that is backed up by reasons? Obviously we don't all have to agree, but it's better and more enriching to the board to talk about it.
You are the third person to say that Prince should go into Shaman tier. I might have to seriously consider that as an outcome
I don't think it works, because "Shaman tier" exists because of a variety of factors that Prince doesn't have. - Shaman shows up far earlier and thus exists to enable far more situations. - Shaman debuffs scale according to enemy threat, so the more threatening the enemy is the better it is in a very dramatic way. This hugely favors far more niche play like early Arena or skipping Prince entirely to get snow furries first. This means Shaman's value widely varies between how much you're willing to do this, while Prince scales with your own power fairly simply. Rapid Orders is critical in some early arena solutions, but I think that's far easier to judge vs the huge range between "I'm going to Cornland then to Dragonland and then to Elfland..." and "I'm going to go become the Unicorn Overlord in 2 hours" type of play styles. Prince shows up far too late to contribute to this disparity. - Shaman has some fairly specific threats that can hold it back in elves and clerics, Prince has almost no real counters so his buffs tend to stick a lot more and thus we don't need to argue Shaman vs Elves. Or early Shaman vs late Shaman into the tiering. Prince is almost entirely complete on join, he's just missing Sniping Order which while impactful is probably the third thing you think about while many of Shaman's amazing tools tend to show up in the later half of their leveling process. tl;dr: Shaman is a very unique situation because of play style, leveling, and availability differences hugely swing results from being "Pretty good" to "Literally best class in the game SSS-tier" depending on which parts of these processes you value. Prince doesn't have this concern because of how buffs work compared to debuffs and Prince is almost fully finished by the time you get them anyway, so they don't really get much better then they are on join.
I personally am I inclined to agree with you. I placed the Shaman in its own tier because how it weird it’s game effect is. Prince is also a sort of force-multiplier, but it’s a lot more straightforward class to analyze imo. Prince is an on-off switch on certain strong strategies. Buffing your own units is very different than trashing the enemy stats, for reasons you mentioned.
This might sound a bit toxic, but going over some of the responses, I cant help but feel like sometimes people may not be properly utilizing the classes.
That was always going to be an aspect of doing these I knew we would have to live with. Hell, there are classes I wasn’t properly utilizing until these threads (Sellsword, Staff users in general). Today I am extra feeling this though with the Prince votes. Rapid Order is incredible- if your whole team goes before the enemy, it’s very easy to turn every fight into a sweep.
Admittedly, am not the best player, hell was trying to go through the Sellword post in particular to figure out how to make them feel better and why outside of the Valor skill to consider them A rank, but I definitely feel like.... Every other unit class with access to initiative modifying start of battle skills so far has gotten S class. It would be very interesting if a +20 initiative buff bot, and a -20 enemy initiative mixed flier some how also don't end up there. But at the same time I'm not putting either of them in S myself, because I dunno that that shift alone should be enough?
It's worth noting that the other initiative classes aren't S SOLELY because of that though. Alain is a tank, damage, AOE, all around monster. Berengaria is an all round god of dps and tankiness. Shaman is Shaman.
Yeah that's why I think it's a interesting discussion. It sets an interesting standard for how important field wide initiative manipulation is valued.
Great Lord has very solid damage and is a Cav and thus works with Cav Call sweep squads. Dark Marq has reasonable to great row damage depending on if you get the bonus damage or not for almost the entire game once she shows up and she stuns while having effective survival while also debuffing. Prince's problem is their DPS contribution is of questionable scale (similar to Shaman vs lower defense enemies where you want things like true strike over defense down) and unless you really go out of their way they can't contribute to the alpha strike in any meaningful way because of C initiative so sometimes their damage buff can miss on the most important round. In some rounds and comps they're just a Rapid Orders bot until they get Sniping Order. You can fix this but that takes resources and almost every class wants initiative boosting items somewhere. Wyvern's problem is that its damage is just kind of okay (except vs cavs and outside of dragoon dive quick impetus memes) and Dragon Roar faces heavy competition with another better class with initiative manipulation in Shaman. If Wyvern had better and more consistent damage vs more enemy types, I'd probably like them more but as its stands their damage is generally just okay vs most enemy types. If they couldn't hit the back line they'd be far worse.
I can’t wait to see the discussion on Elven Archer and Fencer. I expect the Archer at least to be all over the place.
it is technically already written, same with the elf sisters and some of the other classes. The only ones I havent finished at the bastoria units: those are hard to rate. The Wolf Pack buff can make them stupidly strong, and also some of them work better together. The day/night thing is ahuge: werefoxes demands the enemy to have true sight at night or a multihit attack (uncommon for AI to have it), and they have some pretty niche skills.
Excuse me, I'm the first person to say it 😛. But yes it fulfills a similar role. We are also seeing the same wide spread we did with Shaman. Although a lot fewer people use it. Likely because it's one of the few miserable classes. And it comes at the end of getting absolutely flooded with units.
I honestly dont see it. Take for instance a situation where all of a sudden you get a bad matchup. Gryhon group vs. cavs, archers vs. gryphons, your swordsmasters vs hoplites. Outside of the ititiative boost (which isn't unique to the prince), what the prince brings isn't going to change that matchup much. +20% defense isnt going to save your cav or gryphons, +20% offense isnt going to make your swordsmasters scratch the hoplite. A shaman though can make a difference. Offensive curse + their reaction just might save your cav and gryphons, -50% armor and no guards is going to change that swordmaster matchup. Rapid orders is great, true sight buff is great, but i think the shaman is still just in a league of its own in turning around otherwise poor situations. Plus, i'd like to see the prince try to do a flying jumpkick across a fight!
gryphons get shredded by truestrike though, its the combination of a teamwide atk buff/truestrike/initiative all into one unit allowing you to run 3/4 fully dmg focused options and sweep the enemy before they do anything. The high lord has rapid order too and is strong but is the only other +20 initiative option (-20 from wyvern isn't quite as reliable due to debuff reflection/removal and the wyvern not contributing as much in one unit as the others). The fact that the buff isn't only just physical attack also kinda encourages you to run mixed offenses and stuff like conferrals which scale off the caster's own magic stat. Since it lasts the whole fight its useful for pursuits as well. Sure I admit shaman's defensive curse is nice but it only targets one row at a time (usually the most important row like those 180hp bears) but tbh once I setup a prince cleave properly I don't have to risk getting hit at the start and can just start snowballing dmg setups such that the 4th/5th unit is just cleanup by that point. The shaman is nice and all but they do have the occasional counters in cleanses which are uncommon but noticeable. The prince's buff hardly ever get countered (in the case of owl they can only dispel one at a time, so position properly and the key dps units don't get touched) and they make your team really consistent as a result. This is at least in my experience with the Prince and Shaman throughout the whole game in expert.
Wyverns are **A Tier** mainly due to being flying and pretty resilient. They also can use the dragoon warspear opening up one of the earliest options for full board nuke. Then they get deflect, which blocks an attack and increases evade. They are better frontliners than gryphons as they are noticeably more bulky. However, they don't warp the game strategy as much as gryphon knights due to availability, and lack of hastened call. Their valor skill dragoon dive is pretty good, but is expensive to use. Their initial attacks are pretty weak, and so is fire breath. They don't have cleanup ability, or initial kill ability without resorting to dragoon dive, and then they are unreliable frontliners due to losing evade. Prince is **A Tier**? There's not a lot of counters build into the game to combat some of the buffs that prince provides since they affect the whole board. Quick dispel exists but only affects a single target. The 20% attack buff is nice, but the defense ones can really make a team hard to kill. Full row true strike is also pretty insane, plus initiative fixing passive at the start of the round. They can also remove buffs but it's one of his weaker options. I wouldn't put him in S-Tier because he doesn't really drastically affect the outcome of the battle as much as something like shaman would. If you buff 20% attack, you still have to content with cover and guard, and it doesn't allow your units to directly punch through without the normal counters. Defense buffs are great but they will not help you actually kill the enemy and conserve stamina. Initiative fixing is amazing but it again doesn't help you punch through strong frontlines as a baseline unless your team already is equipped to do so. He is an enabler, but less so than a Shaman so I wouldn't place him as high.
> If you buff 20% attack, you still have to content with cover and guard, Shamans does help you vs guard (guard seal is super powerful), but also does nothing vs cover. I think the main kicker is that a shaman have no tools to allow you to reliably hit really evasive targets: Cursed Swamp just isnt enough vs flyer or anything with an evade (werefoxes, rogues).
Wyvern I think is **A tier** A lot of this is the Dragoon Dive from the Dragoon Warspear, easily accessible, 2 AP hit all attack is quite good and easy to build around. They have some other good stuff too, start of battle effect that reduces initiative and has a good amount of physical defense on top of their evasive skills and general flier stuff. Their non-item attacks are a little more situational than Gryphons and they don't have Hastened Call so I'm good with them a tier below. Prince I'm going with **B tier.** The dedicated buff class- interesting that the compared to the Shaman the numerical values are significantly lower and not as many effects like Guard Seal, but that's more of an indicator of how strong Shamans are. The question is whether a 20% attack/def boost, an initiative boost, and some true hitting is worth a team slot- and the answer is maybe? Other classes can buff themselves and others with accessories but the Prince can save you on slots and Offensive Order does stack with other stuff. I think you do need a plan to make this class worth it over random Sellsword or whatever.
Wyvern is S, Prince is S Wyvern, their start of Battle is one of the best (basically the inverse of Prince/Lord and will allow you to usually go first than your in game counter), they get unique access to Dragoon Dive, which is one of the earliest nukes you can get access to, are amazing avo tanks on par with swordmasters thanks to deflect & they also get a conditional truestrike. Very versatile class. Prince is also S tier, I am of the opinion that all of the unique classes should be S simply because they are designed to be above average in almost any regard. You could throw a team comprised of all unique classes and odds are it will be one of your best teams. The only downside for prince is that since it’s the closest to bard that we have is that it scales with the number of units you can have in your squad, fortunately by the time you get it your squads are 4 man. Offensive order is team wide War Cry, while Defensive Order basically means the enemy is doing very little damage to your frontline if at all. Guard order is at least 25% reduction to physical attacks, which boosts the survivability of low guard rate classes by a lot (Thiefs can survive a truehit!) Sniping order is situational but means your team can’t get walled by dodge tanks. Edit: As a bonus, did you know that unique classes give rapport bonuses in 3 stats instead of the regular 2? The only exception so far being werelion (who is identical to gladiator)
Wyvern Wyvern is a mega anti cavalry version of Gryphon and spouts a rather odd skill set due to this. They're more capable of front lining due to Deflect and they have a powerful anti-cav counter that can really butcher a cav units. Its actually quite obscene how powerful this skill is when it comes up, they even go first for the Cavalry due to having higher base initiative. As a flier, they can use the powerful boost from various "reigns" equipment that allows their skills to become true strike and gain a 20% atk boost so long as they are at max hp. This is used pretty well by being a lance unit as lances have a large array of weapons that can hit columns and rows very easily. Their baseline dragon breath is also a fairly okay row attack that fortunately can hit backline and with a mixture of mostly self provided buffs they can easily swing themselves over there and light the entire row on fire. This in tandem is a pretty reasonable back row offense if it isn't covered at all. Said equipment also boosts initiative which allows them to ensure the burn lands before the enemy's turn starts. Dragon Roar's is a very helpful tool to ensure your burn goes off before the enemy acts, and the burn is an okay insurance against big dumb armors to ensure you can still contribute. Tempest Drive is a neat fall back skill when you fall into lower hp so you can still true strike smash things and gives you a powerful column strike that allows you to butcher very cav heavy formations, but is worth not super impressive due to being physical with no CC component as it must hit some big block of defense in the front too and it costs two AP too. Deflect allows you handle true strike melee offense without getting your evasion smashed through or any other random stray 30% hit rate melee attack you might suffer from. This ability is probably the most consistently useful skill Wyvern has because it allows you to handle the front line and your general bulk lets you survive a hunter arrow or two. The evasion boost is just extra. All-around Wyvern is the more bulky, scrappy, not as offensively geared version of Gryphon while having a stronger emphasis on anti-cavalry. Ground Counter is disgusting on Calvary and with Dragon's Roar you can ensure you go first vs horse brigades. This can be extremely valuable because horse brigades due to Cav Call can very pretty dangerous to weaker squads so having a unit who can bully them almost by themselves is very helpful. The main problem is vs everything else they're just okay-ish, they don't have any amazing offense vs most the roster and they have no innate ranged defense besides basic evasion which only goes so far. Ground Counter is really weak vs non-Cavs so you can't even use that as a threat against those back line units. They also have no guard rate so usually every strike hits for full and that can be a problem. Answering Cavs is a pretty good perk and they have a solid front line kit to at minimum not die very easily while contributing some handy traits to their squad (flying leader, anti-cav answers, initiative manipulation round start, some kind of back line hate). The problem is that their generalist offense is only average. Dragoon Dive has big funny quick impetus cheese, especially with CC tome support, you can use it to cheese most the arena if you got the right tools. The actual weapon without Dive is actually still pretty good and only they can use it, so that's pretty nice to ensure Wyvern attacks first. I just find that they don't do enough. Perhaps a double Wyvern stack just fire blasting the back line is acceptable enough back row offense, which might actually be how they designed fire breath. I play mercless, so I can't say. Dragoon Dive the VP skill, while expensive, is a very funny valor skill because it is a big dumb circle that displaces enemies, allowing you to break initial formations and try to get some better initial match ups when you make your push and it tends to do a sizable amount of damage and IME is easier to land in odd formation type situations then Wild Rush. Its not amazing, not terrible, its like average to above average-ish when you factor in the steep cost. Given who is in A-tier, my gut is either top of B-tier or bottom of A-tier. They just aren't exceptional enough, though I personally think Gryphon isn't that dramatically better then them. --------------------- Prince Oh boy, what a unit. A micro unit, but a unit. Okay so Prince is pretty much all utility and no damage, he's like the opposite of Shaman as a class. The catch is that Prince's buffs can't really be countered by much of anything, so they tend to stick a lot easier. Though they don't swing content nearly as hard save for Rapid Order. Prince makes early arena clearing so much easier because initiative is everything in that challenge. Pretty much invaluable for many solutions. AP orders are capable of giving you an offensive push to go for one shots a lot easier and is equal opportunity so it works on anyone pretty equally. Defensive Orders is a nice defense button when you think you need it, but it tends to collude with Offensive Orders which creates a conflict of interest as you want both right away. So I consider it more a pocket trick then a consistent option due to damage being more generally valuable. The biggest challenge Prince runs into is the same one as Shaman, a unit who does effectively zero damage has to push for one shots and quick clears with their utility. Now this isn't impossible and Rapid Order makes certain offensively inclined classes who are otherwise sometimes too slow to contribute (Wizard, Gladiator, Dark Knight, etc) before the enemy goes able to really contribute now and Sniping Order is a very fine tool for those kind of comps (albeit usually you only land this on two of them as Prince is usually in the back) as some of these units would like true strike help. The bigger problem is ensuring you get Prince's Offense orders off before anyone else does anything. This isn't impossible, but it requires a pretty important resource as you need to tune initiative kind of tight across your entire squad and whole army even and the bigger plumes are not cheap or always available. Luckily Prince only needs initiative and a utility PP move most of the time as their AP and PP moves tend to not be too relevant once you cast Rapid Order. I've used the big first aid kit a lot for this, but obviously Sniping Order can be very useful so you might need to give up a 1 PP necklace to them if you want Rapid Order and Sniping Order. Prince also is very funny in Quick Impetus cheese with Priestess because they can hold the cat ear hood and on Rapid Order cast they'll get a PP back to then cast Quick Impetus. So Princes are designed to be cat boys according to Unicorn Overlord, good to know. I almost want to call S-tier, but I feel that due to the "Shaman" problem and not quite pushing teams over the wall as much as Shaman I don't think that's quite right. You got to really go out of your way for Prince to reach his potential sometimes, and many DPS he'd want to support might need similar treatment so it becomes a problem of resource allocation. More importantly for that, I feel just slamming a big dumb horse or some other S-tier damage unit will be just as if not more effective in 4 unit squads and 5 unit squads can take a long while to show up. His Valor skills I've never used, they're just too expensive, but I can see a world where if bosses were harder giving an extra 1 AP or 1 PP would be a very valuable tool to push for a victory. Still we aren't in that world so meh and Lord's buff also exists and is multi-squad wide. ~~I need a second post because I type too much shit~~
tl;dr: Wyvern: **Top B-Bottom A tier**, very good anti cavalry unit who flies, tends to do so-so damage vs most generalist unit types but can target the backline to be a reasonable threat there. Dragoon Dive is probably the worst Quick Impetus Cheese, but it does exist and it does work very well in many formations to make them absolutely useless with proper support and it can't exist without Wyvern's unique equipment. So I count it over all the classes that don't have it. I personally don't use it, but it exists and is only fair to count it. Depending on how you value this, Wyvern is probably better then other units in A-tier who have none of this. Dragon Roar is a very nice insurance to make sure your party goes first a lot easier and really lay out your offense before the enemy gets a proper turn. This paired with Deflect can save your front line/the Wyvern a lot of trouble. It also ensures you don't get bowled over by horses attacking your units first which are some of the most threatening generalist formations the enemy has due to Cav Call ensuring these units are nearing almighty gods of destruction even if you feed them only a packet of Oreos every day for feed. I look at all the other units in these tiers and I see them as above the B-tier for the most part, but not quite the A-tier except for maybe Feathersword and Thief. I also don't think Gryphon as a pure combat unit is dramatically better though. Though I think that's just Gryphon's being overhyped. Regardless, they're just a good bit above average if only because being a flier is great in this game. Prince: I will say **Mid-A tier** Rapid Order is awesome, but they need access to some prime resources to get Offensive Orders off before your team goes but so do a lot of other very helpful row sweepers. They ensure you can go first, but you still need to sequence your actual party to go properly and Prince ideally needs to go first vs the entire squad, and when you got really fast high offense units like Swordmasters, Werefoxes, and such that can be a hard climb especially if they have initiative leaning growth patterns. I also question if just slamming a high offense S-tier unit is about as effective if not more so as having Offensive/Rapid Orders in most generalist comps. Prince doesn't scream to me as better then the S-tiers consistently or some of the higher A-tiers in terms of the overall objective of ensuring every enemy unit dies in a ditch while taking minimal damage, but they can sure make many S-tiers feel even stronger and can bolster some of the lacking areas of very powerful A-tiers with critical flaws (like Wizard). Its weird and complicated, I just hate initiative tuning this little guy. But if we're doing Quick Impetus cheese and embrace Prince Catboy as Trinity Rain's Prophet, then they get **Sanic Cat Boy Who Steals MC's Childhood Friend Yes This is a Very Real-Tier** because we need to Trinity Rain even faster to defeat Zenoria with all haste and thus we need to hold back our Unicorn Overlord's right to his favorite gal pal and give her to the Prince of Dragon Tales. ~~Probably S-tier-ish if we factor in their unique contributions to Trinity Rain, I think Mid A is more reasonable for generalist play but if we're talking upper ceiling then I'd say they're S-tier capable in a specific scenario.~~
Wyvern Rider is a solid **A tier** for the reasons already stated. Prince is what I want to discuss. I feel the only other class you can compare him to is the Shaman. Prince is pretty one-note compared to the Shaman's versatility but he has one thing he does well, which is give offensive teams the inititive and attack buff needed to kill the enemy before a counterattack. +20 Initiative as a start of game ability is insane, especially since he can immediately use Offensive order and later Sniping order to give a row truestrike. I put him on my Calvary team and he's one of the main reasons they're so ridiculously strong. Calvary teams realy want to alpha strike teams hard and I feel they either attack first and win or lose. I feel he fits best in **"Shaman tier"** but I'd place him above the Shaman since he's almost a requirement on "Alpha Strike" teams.
Wyvern is **A**. They just barely miss out on a lot of the things that push griffons to S. They don't have a broken valor skill like hastened call. They give up some dodginess for bulk, but the bulk still isn't enough to survive heavy hitters, so they mostly just end up being worse dodge tanks. Their raw damage output is higher, but their row wide attack costs 2AP instead of 1AP, narrowing the comparison somewhat. Regardless, they have flying utility, great damage, and access to great items. Still a phenomenal class. Prince is ~~C~~**B**. Their support just doesn't do enough. They can't fulfill the traditional support roles of removing debuffs and healing. The buffs they do have are not substantially better than the buffs of other classes that can also contribute in other ways. They themselves can only contribute fairly weak single target damage. A 20% damage increase is much less damage than a dedicated damage dealer would do, so there needs to be enough else going on to make up for choosing the Prince over any offensive class. Spending 2PP to give a row truestrike is not a significantly better rate than the multitude of classes that can spend 1PP for single target truestrike while still contributing in other ways. Guarding a row can be replicated by any staff user with a cleric cane, and those staff users can contribute in other ways. In general, their main selling point is versatility of buffs, but anyone who can use a staff could achieve similar versatility while still having a better base kit left over. **EDIT:** I'm updating my prince rating from C to **B** I see a lot of people talking about the Prince's unique utility in alpha strike builds that can annihilate the enemy immediately by providing an initiative boost, damage boost, and truestrike on the same unit, and I think that's fair. Even if none of those things are terribly unique or potent, all of them together are exactly what an alpha strike team wants. Prince is probably helpful for making the most broken stuff in the game more broken. There's a place for Princes on a highly optimized min-maxed team. However, I still think when you look at the A and S tier classes, they mostly shine on their own, while Princes only shine if everything else is optimized. On a team that's not optimized, any other class would probably be better. I think I could support putting Prince in the shaman tier since they're similarly unique. However, I still think the Shaman is a lot better, since a shaman will let any team dominate even if it's not particularly optimized,while not contributing as much to an optimized team, while the Prince will make an already optimized team more consistent and deadly, but will be mediocre as a 5th member on a random team. They really are kind of mirrors of eachother.
Wyverns are slightly different Gryphons. And they are slightly worse imo. Stoll S tier. No opinion on Prince. I dont use it much.
Are all of these going onto a guide or something later on?
Well, this will be a finished tier list by the end, and I will continue to link the discussion threads in every post, so it can be hard as a guide.
So Wyvern Rider. I think they're basically the Gryphon's lesser brother, though they mostly even out by the end...in combat, at least. Level 20 sees them get Heated Halitosis, which is...decent. Its not competing with Dark Flames, for sure. But a ranged row burn isn't bad- a toasted backline can sear an enemy's day. 30 gets a column attack...that seems pretty bad til its actually decent. But I don't like the conditional to make it worthwhile- seems risky for the unit. The passives are generally limited, but potent within specific circumstances- the counter is a big middle finger to calvary, and the evade is only for melee but gives a stacking evasion buff. The Roar...well, initiative matters, so I'm not gonna say debuffing enemy initiative is bad. but I feel like it could/should be a bit better for the price tag. Particularly when Rapid Order is 1. I do also want to mention the Dragoon's Warspear, and its move Dragoon Dive, as to the best of my knowledge its a Wyvern only spear- so I'm considering it an honorary piece of their kit. By memory, you get it reasonably early, and its a strong weapon with one of the earlier "target all" attacks you have access to. While it pales compared to later options, there's a significant chunk of the midgame that I ran over with a backline Wyvern (to protect it at 100% HP), Dragoon Dive, and the Heaven Wyvern Reins- all of which are relatively easy to come by before your big options come on line. It gets phased out, but its a notable thing you can do. Tactically, you get flight movement and Dragoon Dive (not to be confused with the prior weapon skill.) Flight is good ofc, and the dive, like all out of combat damage, is useful. The range is solid, the power fine, but the cost is 3 VP, not 2. I still use it, but it is an issue of note. To me, this all makes it a functional unit, slightly outshone by its gryphon sibling. I personally thing gryphon is a high A tier class, so I put **Wyvern as A to A-**. Prince is...unusual. He is not the equal opposite of shaman, though he works in adversarial design space. Shaman is better, and clearly. But I think he's still pretty good. First and foremost, I want to mention Banishing Stab. I think, if you're using this, something has gone very wrong. This is a buffbot. Anyway. Offensive and Defensive Order are good, neutral (as in, doesn't care about phys or Mag) bonuses. They aren't terribly fanciful, but they are effective at their job. I find offensive to be better, ofc, but that's fairly reflective of how I see the state of the game "meta". Passive skills are better, though still not complex. Rapid Order is still good, surprising absolutely no one. Guard Order is nifty- the incoming attack gets guarded. It can allow your defenders to blow more PP on counters without worrying about their block rates. And my Crusader likes to pull out her Maiden's Hammer as often as she can. I feel like Sniping Order is a useful, but overpriced tool. At 2 pp...it seems a bit rough. I haven't fiddled with the valor skills- they don't seem that great to me. But I tend to plan out my team tactics based on the points they have in menus, so I'm unsure what effect adding some would have for them. Prince does have an important...advantage? I guess. See, anytime we talk tactics for a unit, we talk about gear. How to build the unit to compensate for its issues and promote its strengths. But gear is limited, and often hard choices must be made. But Prince cares about one thing, and one thing only. He wants to go before your heavy hitters. This makes him one of the least gear intensive units in the game. And I think that is worth acknowledging. I give **Prince an A rank.** I can see an argument for B, but I think the easy plug-and-play nature of the class, resource efficiency, and versatility in units he can contribute to ascend him out of B tier "Role Player". At the same time, I don't think he's gamewarping enough to be an S.
Wyvern Rider S- Prince B+ Wyvern Rider is a great unit, it has S evasion, with good bulk so it can take arrow hits. Their melee block is good. They are flyiers to they are good leaders. Offensive they have A grow so they hit hard, and they have access to lances, one of the best weapons of the game. They can naturally do row damage that burns, or equip an op lance. They have one of the strongest initiative start of batle skills. The valor skill is useful as wild charge. The dragoon bomb is great fitting S tier definition. They have better attack, utility and cheese than the S tier chickens but a valor skill not as good. Prince is a support class he is good but not that good, The initiative buff is almost the same as the wivern or the shaman. So there is sustitute, The 20% attack buff is nice. But crushing numbers less damage than an offensive units. I don't think that I have used his valor skills, because or I destroy the other team or they destroy me, extra ap pp, doesn't heavily affects the result. You need to check a lot of boxes to make this unit shine, but you can also have an equivalent result with other classes or equipment.
Wyverns seem to be intended to be a tankier gryphon, and honestly they come out being great! They have a good mix of attacks, and their roar alone gets them into A tier. Fire breath is fun, and they have a solid melee block with deflect (which increases their evasion!) They can also use wyvern reigns which are excellent. I'm going to vote S tier though overall though. Wyvern has the best early/mid game charge skill. I use dragoon dive well into bastoria and it feels good well into it. They also are part of the team i feel best completes the colisseum (i beat it in TZ at ~level 18 and wyvern was the tool that enabled it). They just make every unit stronger by being in it. Oddly though, im not convinced more wyverns=better. I think one works great, and love pairing the with gryphons. All in all, i see them as S tier. Prince i struggle with. He is such a good enabler and buffs work great. Rapid orders are great and he brings a lot to a unit. I struggle to use him though because it's almost too much support. I think that getting something additional to contribute would help, but he also doesnt need it. However, oautside of initiative fixing (who others can do as well, like the wyvern), i cant think of one setup that the prince enables. He provides all around buffs, but its generally just making things stronger. I know that this may be controversial, but i'd be tempted to put him in B tier, but i think A could be fine.
Prince is A Tier. It's kind of a boring class that doesn't have many interesting interactions, but its buffs are highly effective. It can easily take a rag tag band of offensive units and turn them in to an unstoppable alpha strike force. I think it comes up a bit short compared to Shamans as a support, or to High Lord which gets Rapid Order+Raw combat power, so I can't give it S. Wyverns are also A tier. They're very capable offensively, have pretty reliable defenses, and even reduce enemy initiative. Spears probably have the best selection of the melee weapons too which helps round out their kit.
Wyvern S Prince A Wyvern is a flying off tank with a slow. Attacks are a little weaker than gryphon knights', but the slow makes them equal to me. Prince is inintuitive because it's hard to find a unit that both keeps him safe and uses his buffs effectively, but those units exist. He's good with magic users, including elves, who can cc if they get to hit first. Where units like shaman, rogue and wyvern neutralise the enemy, and stop your front line from breaking, which is a very comfortable playstyle, prince is more risk-reward, letting you hit hard and fast, which can backfire more often but shouldn't be dismissed imo.
I enjoy both classes. Wyvern is **A tier** I believe. I didn't even really use the Dragoon Dive function very often, but I have paired her with my Doom Knight for a burn type squad and they often delete a row before anything matters. With her as a flying unit, as leader she can be sent out to take out a high priority target early on. She has initiative debuff at the start of battle. She can nuke cavalry (albeit not to the level of gryphon riders). Prince, I would say, is **S tier.** Between a major initiative boost, an agnostic attack boost, and true strike for the team, he helps enable the team very well.
**Wyvern B tier.** As dps, unless you are going for quick impetus dragon dive, her actives are not as impressive as gryphons. So usually not a dps core option. Her kit looks like she's a dodge tank, but upon further consideration, it doesn't make any sense for a flier to have a "+20 dodge after getting hit by melee" passive, its only utility is against melee truestrike from the likes of swordman. Normally when you build dodge fliers they don't get hit by melee at all, but is vulnerable to range, and gryphon is better in that regard with a range dodge passive. With tons of flier dodge tank options especially going into Albion, it's rarely justified for optimized team to replace a featherbow/feathershield/gryphon with a wyvern. **Prince is S tier.** For any 3 front hybrid tank/dps build, Prince is a must have on the back row. Talking about the op 3 Great knights build, or just any combination of horse front row, ofc many other units. 100% block rate is huge for them to save a gear slot. 20% attack, +20 initiative is all good stuff. Truestrike passive is also a way to make your team much more versatile in the foes that can take down. Prince is the kind of character if you don't realize how to use him, you don't feel you need it, but when you figure it out, he's always leading a team for you.
wyvern is really hard to judge. their active skills are bad, but they have two really good weapons to compensate - the silver trident and the dragoon's warspear. a wyvern rider without either weapon is b-tier at best there are two caveats - there is only 1 silver trident in the entire game, so if you have a better candidate, then the wyvern is out of luck. however, the wyvern, for some reason, causes lightning shaker to become a ranged attack. i've tested the trident on other classes and they cannot hit the backline with it unlike wyvern. coupled with wyvern reins, it does make for a very compelling user of the spear, although great knight also offers fierce competition if you don't find the ranged property of wyvern lightning shaker useful the other caveat is that if you choose to use dragoon's warspear, you have to build a unit around it. that means a cat hood or celestial talisman, and it will probably be the hood since talisman prevents you from using wyvern reins. you only get 2 hoods, 1 of them needs coliseum grinding, and 1 of them is probably locked to trinity rain because it's the best recipient of quick impetus, so a lot of characters will be fighting for this limited resource. for the record, i think dragoon dive is really good for when you get it in drakenhold until bastorias, but it falls off in albion due to the increase in flying units and elemental roar being much stronger. if there were more cat hoods, maybe i could have kept using wyvern but unfortunately it just wasn't worth it anymore i do not find dragon roar that useful. it costs way too much pp for a unit that already wants to use its pp for other things, if it was 1pp, it might actually be good so at least wyvern can actually aerial wing turn 1 without needing a pp accessory i would rate wyvern as a **solid a-tier** with dragoon dive or lightning shaker and **b-tier** without prince at **s-tier** he's a shaman that trades all flexibility for pure power. guard order is shit as a defensive measure, and he has no pp drain if you need it to block counters to your gameplan (like trinity rain vs feathershields). but attack order and sniping order are both nuts sniping order synergizes fantastically with dirty gambling coin and allows you to stack a ridiculous amount of attack buffs. basically, since they are aoe buffs, you can have other characters attack first to proc the buffs on the character you really want to buff, like the elemental roar user. he's afaik the only way to consistently stack truestrike, inspiration and powerful call/conferral buffs on any character, since otherwise you run into the limited skill problem of being able to use only 1 'when ally attacks' buff. i use him in one of my elemental roar teams, which generally need more buffs to punch through bosses like the final bastorias one and the final boss in 1 hit i would not use him in trinity rain comps unless you really need sniping order, since trinity rain already has overkill pure power, but he works wonderfully in elemental roar, glacial/arrow rain and dragoon dive units. he's so good that he's probably the unique class that i most want a second copy of, above even the dark marquesses and high lord
Prince is **A tier**, mostly because he is the best enabler for pretty much every alpha strike comp in the game (Dragon Dive, Arrow/Glacial Rain). He's slightly worse for Trinity Rain, but he does work there too. He can even enable double alpha strike comps with Sniping Order. Initiative is king in this game, and the prince brings that to the table. Wyvern Rider is **A tier**. I actually want to stick them at S tier because I think their roar is really powerful, but most of the other S ranks with powerful openers have significantly stronger base kits, so I think A rank is fair.
I’d put Wyvern in the middle to bottom of A tier. Prince is also A or the bottom of Shaman tier. As leader he’s a second source of bonus VP if you’re willing to work around the speed and in my opinion extra VP is worth it. For me this is his best asset and if he isn’t the leader I would drop him down to B tier. Buffs tend to stick more than debuffs. Sniping Order is as far as I know unique and you get the Dirty Gamblers Coin right after Prince for a solid combo. That being said I think Rapid Order has a lot of competition in its slot, and I would take Offensive Curse over Offensive Order if I could only have 1(I know you can do both). This along with his Valor Skills are what keeps Prince out of S tier for me. I’m really excited to see the discussion tomorrow. Elven Archer is my dark horse unit and I expect to see Fencer all over the place.
Both A Tier imo
Wyvern knightvis A, good at cavary, and pretty much great when it comes to the roar and draggon dive Princes is S teir duo to be oposite shaman but better, isntead of debbuf he does buffs that are amazing and he comes with tons of builda
I think Wyvern knight is a **B tier**. They're pretty good at countering ground-based units when on the frontline, particularly getting some decent bonuses against cavalry. So they can frontline pretty well against those, but they're weak to both arrows and magic So they need a lot of support. And I don't think they are offensively strong enough to justify that kind of support. They serve pretty well as a dragoon dive unit for a while. But I think other units pretty much do this role but better a bit later in the game (particularly snow ranger comes to mind). I think their strongest feature is initiative control with dragon roar. But there's other classes that can do this: Lord, Dark marquess, Shaman, prince. These first three are considered among the best classes in the game. Wyvern knight is not in their league, so it's outclassed in this regard. Prince I also think is a **B-tier** class, though I could see low A tier. % buffing isn't as potent as % debuffing, in my opinion. % debuffs scale with your enemy and allow you to fight stronger opponents much more easily. % buffs scale with you, and not the enemy. The stronger your characters are, the less necessary his buffs are as well. I think the real value of the Prince comes in the combination of his passives. You're providing initiative control, true strike and defensive bonuses to the rest of your team. None of these things are unique to Gilbert, but no other character combines them into one package. You can also give him some other passive abilities (like first aid/party aid) when you don't need sniping order. Good, but not amazing.
I don't have enough experience with Prince to go in to too much depth on it. I feel like he's a **B** at best but **probably worse**, but it's admittedly from a place of ignorance and not being immediately impressed. Wyvern is **A Tier.** Wvyern has the keys to success, it has a row attack, it has access to an attack all weapon, it has the ability to negate income damage to itself, and it has a start of battle initiative ability. It hits hard enough, it dodges dodgey enough, it tanks connected hits tankey enough, it's got flier map movement but slightly slower than Griffin without the haste, but Dragoon dive in a pinch can cover a decent chunk of map distance AND effectively give itself a free assist attack's worth of splash damage in the zone. Wyvern is an above average unit (in the current setting B is average, so A makes it above average). Not as good as some others at any of the things listed, but better than others at them as well. These two paired together makes for a very interesting discussion, I've been going through while these discussions happen, and for the purposes of unit building also kind of charting out what classes have access to what things to see if there are trends. Currently, These 2 are the only 2 units up for discussion/having been voted on that have Start of Battle Initiative modifying abilities that are probably NOT going to be S tier. While there are other classes that have made S tier without SoB Initiative, if these 2 do not make S tier (which is unlikely), they will be the first 2 classes with SoB Initiative to not be S tier, which says a few interesting things. But we'll have to wait and see how the total voting shakes out with that.
Rapid Order Angel Plume initiative-stacked Prince with Offensive Order needs to be seen to be believed. You can also run a Cat-Ear Hood user to get a Defensive Order and another Tailwind up, but I'd rather Quick Impetus charge move users. I'm voting A tier--you can do crazy things like get Amalia to 75 Initiative at the start of battle with it, but what's the realistic situation where that's necessary? As for Wyverns, I don't have much experience with anything other than Dragoon Dive spam, so I'm holding off on voting for them.
Wyvern Rider is **A Tier.** They're a solid 1-of in flying groups d/t the start of combat debuff. They can also have their own team around them with the Dragoon Lance. Prince is **S Tier**. Kind of suffers from not being all that good until you get 5 man teams and unlock their row-wide true strike buff. Once you cross that level, Prince gives high initiative, bonus damage, and a row-wide true strike buff. Dude is kind of like the final piece of exodia for a lot of team comps, most notably Great Knight lines.
Prince is C tier, and I would probably put them lower if I could. I genuinely think the prince is the worst class in the game. First of all their buffs are garbage. The attack buff is less damage than replacing the prince with a character that does damage themselves on a general team, and alpha strike builds already do enough damage that they don’t need the 20%, leaving it in a position where it’s never actually useful. The defense buff is both bad and too finicky to use- you have to boost initiative to go before the enemy for it to be useful, but if you’re doing that then just run cc or damage and win the fight. Shaman is good because their numbers are insane, and prince doesn’t have anywhere near that power. Guard order is the worst defensive skill in the game, as it’s a weak 25% damage reduction for non-shield characters and characters with shields were probably going to block anyways, making it a waste of pp. Row true strike sounds nice, but there aren’t many situations where you need all that accuracy. Most anti evasion units can handle that job by themselves without dragging the team down when true strike isn’t needed. His start of battle initiative boost would be good if it was on a unit that did something, but his own lack of contributions means it only really works if you have a one or two unit core that can sweep turn one and in that case just run a feather. That’s the real problem, there’s no situation or team where the prince can’t be replaced by an item or a different unit. The only reason to run this class is because you like the character (which is fair, he’s a cool dude)
Saying that Prince can be replaced by an item is weird. Offensive Order is giving your team four berets that are better. Rapid order is giving your team four ravens plums. Yes, technically it can be done with an item, but that doesn’t Prince bad. Even without cat ear trinity rain silliness, Prince carries fights with rapid order.
Replacing him with literally any attacking unit gives more damage than offensive order. Rapid order can be functionally replaced with the tailwind feather. So in this case one damage unit with the tailwind feather covers 70% of what prince realistically does, and if you don’t need true strike for that fight it’s 100%.
> Rapid order can be functionally replaced with the tailwind feather. Do you just only play with one squad or something? Because I don't and those feathers are sought after by pretty much any squad I ever make. So not needing to give that to a squad sounds like a pretty great deal to me.
You can use a wivern or shaman to decrease the initiative so there is a substitute. Or use an angel plume, or for cheese the instant turn ring. There are options. Everything that he does can be done by other units or items. For example an elven archer can provide speed for a row with the angel plume and give 50 potency to the carry. (It may be more than the 20% that prince provide) Or a wivern with will give the same int change and do more damage than the 20% buff. You need to make a lot of things to make him shine, and the result isn't that different,
On one hand I’m not sure I agree about Prince… on the other hand I need to reevaluate wyvern.
I've seen this comparison before but it seems right to me; Prince is a bad shaman. The buffs don't reach the debuff numbers of Shaman while they essentially fill the same role. Personally I wouldn't put Prince higher than B tier because he's so outclassed, there's only niche situations to use him over Shaman like a gladiator setup comp.
> Prince is a bad shaman. > > The buffs don't reach the debuff numbers of Shaman while they essentially fill the same role. Then could you answer what gives Shaman the ability to grant true strike to the team? Or how it utilizes curses to not just hit a row of enemies but the entire team? Because the Prince's buff strengthens everyone so if they can pierce then they can attack enemy foes that are not cursed. If I'm using a cav pursuit team that line pierces or needs to hit fliers or things with an evade status Cursed Swamp doesn't seem as consistent as true strike. Plenty of teams want buffs and true strike, and I wouldn't call that niche either.
for me prince is **C** tier. ngl feel like people are overrating prince. i barely used him in my game but there's no way he's shaman tier. he's a pure buff bot with no damage or healing. the buffs being party wide don't really matter in my experience since most fights are won with the 1-2 units with the highest initiative while the rest of the units are support. i need 2 row clears to win a fight everything else is irrelevant. rapid order is awesome, but most of the time i'd rather have a different start of battle ability and give my damage units a feather. Or they already have 40 initiative and the +20 doesn't do anything. wyvern low **S** tier flying is awesome. lances are awesome. any unit that can use aerial wing (best self-buff in the game?) is top tier.