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Oh gosh... I have a lot to say about Mages/Sages/Mage Knights

Best: Levin-fathered-Arthur.Is there for the entirety of the second generation and rapes everything in it to Hell and back with Holsety. Really, perfect availability and a legendary weapon? What were they thinking in terms of balance to that game? And add Wrath and Continue on top of that (and the Pursuit Ring if you're willing and want even more overkill)? And horse utility in the one game where that matters most? The guy's a deity. I don't consider it part of the best distributions of pairings, but that isn't part of the equation for evaluating this edition of that unit himself.

Worst: Miranda from FE5. Worst availability of the unpromoted offensive magic units in the game without the stats to make up for it, horrendous durability, doesn't even get staff utility upon promotion should you bother to go through the trouble of using her enough to promote at that point. She makes virtually every other Est-type character look decent by comparison, and that's saying something. She gets Wrath, but using Wrath in that game requires you get attacked first, and with 19 HP and 1 Def that late in the game, she'll get destroyed by virtually everything so she may as well not have it.

There were a lot of people I considered for best and worst, though.

For best, I also considered Sety, Pent, Lugh, Lute, and Soren. Sety is awesome in both FE4 and 5, and makes an excellent Holsety user also, but he doesn't have Arthur's availability or much availability at all in FE5. Pent is fantastic, too, coming with A's in both Anima AND Staves, EXCELLENT base stats and growths that make his averages BETTER than Erk's, decent availability, not costing a promotion item, etc... Lugh, Lute, and Soren are all the best Mages in their respective games, but they just don't have some of the advantages or selling points some of the people they're competing with do.

For worst, I was looking at Ewan and Nino. There are plenty of mediocre Mages around, but those two have the most problems. For Ewan, I ignored the possibility of skirmishing, ruining, or towering because quite frankly, FE8 is so easy they're not even needed. And with that in mind, Ewan has all the problems Nino does, with some more severe and some less than her: shitty start with not much time left. And since there's not much time left, even if you go through the effort of catching them up with everyone else when you could instead be making an already capable army even better, there isn't very much time left in the game for them to capitalize on that. I don't care if you can become awesome for a short period of time. Where were you for the rest of the damn game while your competition was being useful?

Best: This is a hard one to pick because there are so many good Mages/Sages/Magic Knights out there, and I use and abuse those units. But overall, my favorite magic user out of these categories is Nino. Yes, I know she's hard to train if you don't baby her, and she comes at such a low level so late in the game, but it is entirely worth it to level her up, and really, it isn't that hard to do so. She is one of my favorite Mages because once she gets a few levels under her belt, I no longer have to worry her; she can potentially kill Sonia; she can eliminate several of the bosses in the final level without too much trouble. Her stats are not bad at all, and she normally turns out better than Erk and Pent for me. Thus my vote goes to Nino.

Worst: Honestly, I have to say Tormod--kind of odd, considered who I voted for as the best. He's in a similar situation as Nino--at a low level later on in the story once others have already begun to class up. They level you get him in is not exactly conducive to babying him enough to get him to a decent level and be able to hold his own. Besides that, at this point you already have Soren and Ilyana, who can hold their own and rend whatever dares to get in their movement range. By that point in FE 9 I pretty much have my team set, and to add a weaker unit such as Tormod is too much trouble.

For Best, I also considered Soren and Lute, but ultimately decided to go with the mage who was most useful to me overall, and while I will always use Soren, Nino, and Lute, Nino just works the best for me.

For Worst, I also considered Nino because of the level issue, Erk, and Pent. Erk is good enough until Nino comes into play, and then she just outstrips him easily; Erk is even more pathetic than Pent, a prepromote who breaks the mold of prepromote = bad unit/do not use. Pent also comes with As in anima and staves, but again, he's outstripped by Nino enough that I only want to use him for supports; and speaking of supports, Pent gives you limited options, and you cannot get a A with Pent unless you are Louise, and even that, that's in the last chapter only.

I do mean the DS version, it's just that whenever I try and use Linda/promote her, she gets KO'd more often than not and I'd just rather use Merric who already wipes the floor with enemies from the getgo.

Agreed.

Edit: Hold up, the general opinion here is that Pent is better than Erk...how is this possible? I can't imagine not using Erk in any runthrough to his fullest because of his sheer usefulness. Pent, on the other hand, didn't match up to him from my experiences...are my growths messing with me?

They are. I'm not going to show the averages since Lolwut saved me the effort, but it seems you're suffering from what I call Preemptive-Anti-Prepromote Syndrome (PAPS) - the assumption that prepromotes suck because they're prepromotes, which isn't actually the case.

Pent is the perfect example of this. Not only do his bases generally come out superior to Erk's (Erk might be winning Spd, but it hardly matters since neither of them have trouble doubling anything), his weapon ranks allow him to use virtually anything (good luck seeing Erk or Nino use Physic), AND he allows you to promote someone else and still use him thanks to not requiring a Guiding Ring. Pent can't get RNG screwed, either, thanks to his high bases, while both Nino and Erk can be. He doesn't have Erk's availability, but he requires virtually no investments to be highly valuable (and if we consider availability, Nino's ********).

Other prepromotes you might be preemptively judging include: Harken, Vaida, Tanith, Seth, Percival, Largo, Karel, and many others.

PAPS is a treatable condition. If you think you're suffering from PAPS, consider consulting a tier list, using various prepromotes yourself, or examining the averages of units in question.

Give him another try? Did you strongly favor Erk (like give him stat boosters favor him)? And you can always use them both simultaneously. They even have supports.

Best- LUUUUUUUUTE! LUTELUTELUTELUTELUUUUUUTE!!! OH MY GOSH! LUTE IS A TANK! >W< (FE:8 )

Worst- Uh......................................................................OH! Like the one time I decided to reclass people in FE SD into Mages. Does that count? biggrin Hm. Probably not. But I do recall Edwan be terrible..... So Edwan, he is the worst!

Best: Mmmmmm... Pent.

Worst: Tormod- worthless unit in both games he's in.

Also, yeah, saying that Erk is better than Pent is like one of the biggest FE untruths ever. I did a spit-take at your comments to him being worst.