Struesdell's Tier Lists [11/3/12]

This is a tierlist based on forum user's struesdell's modeling. The tier list below is balanced around typical quests or tower events, and aims to show which units are going to be the most useful or high-performance -- arena-type events (such as the colosseum or key of goetia) and boss battles value different things, and so the usefulness of units in those events will look differently. I will work on a tierlist for that sometime as well.

THIS IS ALSO ALL OPINION. It's possible to use different values and achieve different ratings. This is not meant to be used as any kind of price/etc guide. The following tier lists also don't really account for actual demand/supply within the game. At the same time, if the logic behind this tierlist makes sense to people, there is nothing wrong in holding out for that "better" unit instead of a poorer one. (;

Before we get started, I'll briefly mention how this works:

• Max land, air, and sea attack are accounted for, but weighted differently (1.1/1/0.7 weighting respectively).
  
• Speed is weighted -- the faster the better, obviously, though the differences are not always that great. Note that there are different levels of speed even within letter grades, and there is some wonky stuff going on with animation landing & how fast a unit attacks afterwards, so this is not completely worked out yet.
  
• Range is similarly accounted for -- the higher the range, the more times a unit can get an attack in = more damage, more usefulness.
  
• Skills are also weighted slightly -- slow and knockback are considered more useful than area attack or poison.

Units within tiers should be considered roughly comparable to other units within the same tier -- a unit that is listed earlier or later is not necessarily much better or worse.

★★★★★★
Tier 1: Octavia, Nina, Minerva, Georgios, Monica, Ellen
Tier 2: Vlad, Anastasia, Nine-Tailed Fox, Petra, Cecilia, Saki, Belethi
Tier 3: Agrippina, Abel, Vine, Reve, Gloria, Succubus, Dorothea, Reinhard, Faith
Tier 4: Cornelia, Alexander, Beatrix, Charles

Belethi is a melee knockback C-speeed unit with almost 100k attack but not great air/sea stats. Still, those stats are good enough to put him in tier 2. Vine is a magic unit with 79575 / 86110 / 56598 stats (for a total of 222k, which is definitely higher than Belethi and pretty high overall), but she suffers from being D-speed and a poison unit (which is typically not that useful in events). If you want, though, you can consider her like a slightly better Dorothea. I also want to note that at this point, I've pushed Agrippina, Abel, and Vine "down" a tier -- they're still good cards, but there are quite a few cards that are overall a bit better than them. Check below for how they rank within each type-category.

Reve is 79,505 / 79,505 / 53,225 (total: 212,235) --- a D area attack missile. Her stats aren't awful but she pales in comparison to other units, especially since we don't value area attack that much. For arena though, she's about middle of the pack.


People were curious about how each unit does within each type category (ie melee, missile, magic) so here they are filtered:
Melee: Georgios, Ellen, Vlad, Belethi Cecilia, Agrippina, Reinhard, Charles

Spoiler:

Missile: Oktavia, Nina, Minerva, Anastasia, Saki, Abel, Reve, Alexander

Spoiler:

Magic: Monica, Nine-Tailed Fox, Petra, Vine, PK Gloria, Succubus (Hero), Dorothea, Faith (Hero), Cornelia, Beatrix

Spoiler:

★★★★★
Tier 1: Sheryl, Joachim, Heidimarie, Rose, Edgar, Laura, Meg
Tier 2: Franziska, Victoria, Sophie, Bernhard, Aleister, Erhard, Sogno, Mihiro, Yuki, Ignat, Stefan, Kiki, Seraphina
Tier 3: Camille, Rem, Sonia, Plautia, Sitri, Margarite, Lucrezia, Vivienne, Kyo, Sarah, Julia, Gremory
Tier 4: Hrwm, Caecilia, Hildegarde, Thrain, Elena, Emma, Adolph, Gerhard, Fiona

Aleister is a Laura substitute, with 5k less air attack. Sitri is a new magic area attack card that is slower than Sonia but with higher stats than Lucrezia or Sarah (the next-in-line area attack units). And Gremory? Well, she's a magic poison unit -- better than Adolph or Fiona (durr) but with just super slightly worse stats than Julia, so feel free to consider her 3rd/4th tier as needed. (But she's hotter than all of them!)

Sogno... oh Sogno. 37.7k attack in land/air/sea, and she's a missile with 130 range and "D" speed. Her 30 deploy cost makes her poor for arena, but these aren't arena rankings. The range is what knocks her down, as well as her weird attack. (Which is awesome, unless you're fighting bosses -- if you have no idea what I'm talking about, make sure you deploy her and watch her in action!) All in all she is a good unit with a few issues that leave her in tier 2.

Rem is a melee poison unit. She's better than other poison alternatives (Julia, Gremory, Thrain, Elena, etc) but there are better units than her. Hrwm is basically a worse-version than Lucrezia (who has 8k more land attack) and other comparable area attack cards.

Melee: Victoria, Sofia, Bernhard, Ignat, Camille, Rem, Sonia, Kyo, Thrain, Gerhard

Spoiler:

Missile: Sheryl, Joachim, Heidemarie, Rose, Edgar, Meg, Sogno, Franziska, Kiki, Seraphina, Marguerite, Sarah, Hildegarde

Spoiler:

Magic: Laura, Erhard, Aleister, Stefan, Yuki, Mihiro, Plautia, Sitri, Lucrezia, Vivienne, Julia, Gremory, Hrwm, Caecilia, Elena, Emma, Adolph, Fiona

Spoiler:

★★★★
Tier 1: Samantha, Remika, Furfur, Ayaha, Oneiro, Yuriya, Scarlet, Katherine, Chris, Georgine, Dhimitrios, Agnes
Tier 2: Livia, Blad, Anton, Gloria, Gleb, Caym, Miriam, Django, Partenope, Traum, Walpurgis, Tullia, Lieselotte, Felicia
Tier 3: Vilhelm, Mermaid, Paige, Ruya, Achillea, Zenobia, Maia, Angela, Estlin, Sergei, Mylene, Luce, Drea, Dorothy
Tier 4: Robert, Charl, Fredrike, Alfonso, Christof, Stray Cat, Biance, Avril, Alex, Helmut, Gunnel, Benedetta

Oneiro is a melee C knockback with 32.5k/16k/16k stats. Being that fast, with those stats, & knockback skill puts her in top tier. Note that for arena, her 30 deploy cost may be restrictive. Traum is a decent poison unit, along with other units like Walpurgis and Felicia. Ruya is an all right slow unit, but she pales in comparison to better ones like Samantha, Partenope, Caym, etc. Drea is a not-so-great poison unit that fits with other not-so-great poison units like Luce and Dorothy.

★★★
Tier 1: Hans, Prudence, Piper, Maxim, Harvine, Wolf, Fernando, Simon
Tier 2: Heinz, Geronimo, Hector, Harpy, Carl, Sabrina, Phoebe, Elvira, Kinderik, Katherine, Marlow, Albert, Hikaru
Tier 3: Auguste, Julian, Niel, Leevi, Matvei, Gustav
Tier 4: Evert, Julietta, Johann, Percival, Theresa

Eh.

★★
Tier 1: Kirill, Alicia, Jane, Pernilla, Iwan, Willie
Tier 2: Adelaide, Damien, Elmer, Anna, Kyra, Bjorn
Tier 3: Orlando, Yakov, Enrique, Igor, Dominic, Solveig
Tier 4: Veronica, Claudio

★
Tier 1: William
Tier 2: Nils, Kevin, Gordon, Ada, Emily
Tier 3: Ian, Miranda, Markku, Clair, Badouin, Dain
Tier 4: Dennis, Jonathan, Carol, Natalie

Thanks for the updated list Clocks and Struesdell

Some good news --

I have some preliminary colosseum-event rankings as well, but they're reliant on struesdell's formula for arena attacks working. I'll be checking it myself when the event starts. If not, then I guess I don't have rankings. :p

It seem Petra is actually a little ahead of Nine-tail in terms of total stats. I got this from Japan.

Both units similar in terms of attack range 150 and speed D

Petra: At lv 120 Land 86 075 Air 54 210 Sea 86 075 Total power 226 360
9Tails: At LV120 Land 86 040 Air 59 830 Sea 79 470 Total power 225 340

Personally I would bump Petra ahead Nine-tails because 1k difference + the skill % bonus would give an edge in the long run. But then factor in power cost and we now have a stalemate :3

Amazing list nonetheless

Quote :

also included the Nine-Tailed Fox and Petra, which are virtually identical

Quote :

Units within tiers should be considered roughly comparable to other units within the same tier -- a unit that is listed earlier or later is not necessarily much better or worse.

They are pretty much super similar.

Why is Sarah lagging badly for 90001 atk, 10 cost and Area Atteck 5?

koneko wrote:

It seem Petra is actually a little ahead of Nine-tail in terms of total stats. I got this from Japan.

Both units similar in terms of attack range 150 and speed D

Petra: At lv 120 Land 86 075 Air 54 210 Sea 86 075 Total power 226 360
9Tails: At LV120 Land 86 040 Air 59 830 Sea 79 470 Total power 225 340

Personally I would bump Petra ahead Nine-tails because 1k difference + the skill % bonus would give an edge in the long run. But then factor in power cost and we now have a stalemate :3

Amazing list nonetheless

9 Tails is hands down better than Petra. 9 tails is a high D attack speed, Petra is a mid-low D attack speed. Overall 9 tails will do more damage than Petra easily.

Same with Succubus v. Doro, Succubus is a faster attacker.

Also I believe for missile due to varying ranges on attack speed in a letter grade, Minerva quite probably out damages Oktavia overall due to her being a faster attacker than both Oktavia and Nina. So it would be Minerva > Oktavia > Nina.

Considering the new data that came from the attack speed thread (Chinese site/game apparently lists numerical values instead of letters) strusdell's formula needs to be tweaked a bit in order to more accurately represent the raw number values / DPS of units.

Those attack numbers still make no sense to me and haven't been explained. They give you attack delay, but then you have to factor in animation finishing as well, so the overall speed remains up in the air. I have yet to see anyone calculate those numbers. If anyone ever comes up with a solid speed ranking that takes into account both attack delay and animation finishing times, obviously this would be tweaked.

By the way, in a different thread, a user expressed the idea that there are no mathematical ratings behind this and it's based on "personal analysis." Not quite so. This is what the current formula for ratings looks like:

Code:

=ROUND([@[Manual Adjust]]*(((SUM([@[max.Land]]*LandValue,[@[max.Air]]*AirValue,[@[max.Sea]]*SeaValue)*INDIRECT("Speed"&[@Speed]&"Value"))*(INDIRECT("Range"&[@Range]&"Value"))*INDIRECT([@Type]&"Value")*INDIRECT([@Skill]&"Value"))),0)

Believe me that a lot of work went into this. You may not agree with the weightings or the numbers, but that doesn't mean they weren't thought about from our side. What is meant by "this is all opinion" is that this isn't some kind of set-in-stone these-are-the-absolute-best-units tierlist.

Quote :

Why is Sarah lagging badly for 90001 atk, 10 cost and Area Atteck 5?

Sarah's actual stats are:
Sarah: Missile
Area Attack 5
33700 / 23900 / 29100 [Total: 86700]
She's D-speed, 150 range.

She has lower stats than Lucrezia, and sort of comparable stats to Kiki who has higher range (and more concentration in air, etc as opposed to sea). Area attack is good in colosseum but this is rankings overall, and she lags there. There are better missile units than her, and there are better area attack units than her -- definitely not really worthy of the top tiers.

Good news though -- for colosseum rankings, assuming weighted deploy costs, she is actually a really great unit, because of her area attack & 10 deploy cost. If not weighted for deploy cost then she falls to the middle of the pack.

clocksprocket wrote:

Those attack numbers still make no sense to me and haven't been explained. They give you attack delay, but then you have to factor in animation finishing as well, so the overall speed remains up in the air. I have yet to see anyone calculate those numbers. If anyone ever comes up with a solid speed ranking that takes into account both attack delay and animation finishing times, obviously this would be tweaked.

By the way, in a different thread, a user expressed the idea that there are no mathematical ratings behind this and it's based on "personal analysis." Not quite so. This is what the current formula for ratings looks like:

Code:

=ROUND([@[Manual Adjust]]*(((SUM([@[max.Land]]*LandValue,[@[max.Air]]*AirValue,[@[max.Sea]]*SeaValue)*INDIRECT("Speed"&[@Speed]&"Value"))*(INDIRECT("Range"&[@Range]&"Value"))*INDIRECT([@Type]&"Value")*INDIRECT([@Skill]&"Value"))),0)

Believe me that a lot of work went into this. You may not agree with the weightings or the numbers, but that doesn't mean they weren't thought about from our side. What is meant by "this is all opinion" is that this isn't some kind of set-in-stone these-are-the-absolute-best-units tierlist.

Quote :

Why is Sarah lagging badly for 90001 atk, 10 cost and Area Atteck 5?

Sarah's actual stats are:
Sarah: Missile
Area Attack 5
33700 / 23900 / 29100 [Total: 86700]
She's D-speed, 150 range.

She has lower stats than Lucrezia, and sort of comparable stats to Kiki who has higher range (and more concentration in air, etc as opposed to sea). Area attack is good in colosseum but this is rankings overall, and she lags there. There are better missile units than her, and there are better area attack units than her -- definitely not really worthy of the top tiers.

Good news though -- for colosseum rankings, assuming weighted deploy costs, she is actually a really great unit, because of her area attack & 10 deploy cost. If not weighted for deploy cost then she falls to the middle of the pack.

True, as I stated in the AS thread, missile speed has to be calculated also otherwise you would never get actual DPS numbers.

Atm, the only way to get significant values from missile speed + animation + Attack speed you would have to test the units in the field and calculate it with a stop watch essentially.

At that point you would not need a formula really since you would have gotten the actual DPS by hand. Though prob from the data provided from that experiment you could retroactively concote a mathematical formula which takes those factors into account and save yourself the grunt work later on down the line.

Just as a note, the event units have been added.

thanks for constantly updating this at such a quick pace. Appreciate it.

Clocks, did you ever finish your Colosseum ranking?

Instead of watching the units on a field, wouldn't it be better to screen capture the animation that way you can count the frames? You can easily convert frames into 1/60th of a second if you desired to do so.

If someone is willing to do that (not necessarily for this tierlist, but just in general) then... well, sure. I have no idea how to capture any internal footage on my iphone or how to manipulate that footage afterwards.

Wheatmidge -- I do have colosseum rankings, but they're based on a formula for arena damage that's slightly... "off." Not sure how to fix it. It's close enough, though -- for example instead of doing 70k predicted damage, a unit does 67k. Or instead of 110k, 114k.

Close is better than nothing, I'm just always curious about mechanics and numbers.

And interesting question about the formula, someone ingame said the damage was highestdamage+2/3*middledamage+1/3*low damage.

Does that formula work better?

I checked it out and no, it seems to be even more off.

Found a screen capture alteration for the android, but since my ssd on my desktop has little to no space, I'll have to hold off on doing so until I stop being lazy on the RMA for one of my other ones

Nice list, I would rework the ground/Air/Sea weight, There are 29 4* and below ground monsters while there are only 6 air and 4 sea for this reason a strong ground attack has a substantial advantage overall. I would also give a penalty to units that have an air attack of zero who are useless against air monsters (especially since there is nearly an equal split in ground/air "boss" monsters).

That's already factored in.

In the actual data does Beatrix come in lower than Alex? I have been working on a similar system and continuously get lower scores for Beatrix no matter how I tweak the data, but when I put the two in 24-6 Beatrix does better. Do you suggest giving a larger penalty for Alex speed? I think that's part of the problem, because I've assigned a value to the letter score for speed and maybe I should use the Chinese speed calculations...

I checked, and she comes in lower than Alexander in ratings. She has lower stats and lower range, though Alexander has a ridiculously low speed. What do you mean by "does" better in 24-6? Could partially be due to the fact that there are different monsters, etc. and she's a magic type -- but the current model doesn't have any weights put in for melee/missile/magic atm.

e: regardless, they should both be considered lower tier.

And why is this not a sticky? This is beyond useful!

If I'd had seen this earlier, I wouldn't have wasted my time levelling low-tier 4 s o_o

edit: not that i'm ranting or anything, if in case I come across as such

snappycow wrote:

And why is this not a sticky? This is beyond useful!

If I'd had seen this earlier, I wouldn't have wasted my time levelling low-tier 4 s o_o

edit: not that i'm ranting or anything, if in case I come across as such

These tier lists are not set in stone and are debated regularly, Also if you are selling your 4*s maxed to try and get up to a 5* which card it is seems to make little to no difference.