Suikoden III Character Tiers

[eldrasidar]

you don't actually get limited to 3 actions a turn. You get limited to 3 chosen actions a turn. Many characters will simply attack automatically if no orders are explicitly given to them. It is worth noting though that not every character will do this. Some will stay back and guard their partner while they use a rune.

[ninjaluc79]

So I only need 3 rune users (magicians or mage knights) and pair each one of them with either DDs or Tanks?

[Punkaiser]

It's just to say, better to use 3 rune users at max while there's no problem for not using any rune caster at all.
You may also have to consider mounted pairs and unite attack team as they are required to be paired together.

What I find to be off, that is S3 characters probably offer the highest damage potential among all entries, yet the final boss seem to be the weakest.

[ninjaluc79]

And I thought Zerase and Richard were overpowered because of S5's inflated stats, with a max stat of 999. Tactics has a max stat of 99, the rest of the series have a max stat of 255.

I used this argument for people saying that Zerase was more powerful than Luc, but let's reserve that for another topic, because we're getting really left-field here.

[Punkaiser]

S5 has a lot of chance based mechanics so in a burst of moment it may cause people to think the game is so broken but in average IMO it hardly could exceed the damage dealt in S3. A very clear exemple that is, in most suiko games, multistrike works as chance based <50% and usually averaged at 2 hits, but in S3 the swing system which somehow represents multihit works 100% of the time and there're characters who can swing 6-8 times, then those swings also count in unite attacks and command rune attacks(up to another 3x damage)...wait, the alien Jongleur rune hasn't even been mentionned yet.

[KFCrispy]

It's just to say, better to use 3 rune users at max while there's no problem for not using any rune caster at all.
You may also have to consider mounted pairs and unite attack team as they are required to be paired together.

What I find to be off, that is S3 characters probably offer the highest damage potential among all entries, yet the final boss seem to be the weakest.

this happens because while the potential is there, Konami never wanted to force players to do too much character optimization. it's hard if you never bothered with skills and just stuck with the standard armor + weapon upgrades... you'd probably be spamming recovery items every round! without the proper skill development (or none at all) in this game, players will easily find this game as one of the hardest entries in the series because most characters will only do 1 hit and would barely make use of magic runes.

[highwind44029]

My personal tier list, obviously based on my opinion (albeit trying to be as objective as possible)

Cheesecake Tier:
Geddoe, Hugo, Luc, Sarah, Yuber

Tier 1:
Augustine, Ayame, Chris, Emily, Estella, Fubar, Joker, Juan, Lilly, Mel, Nash, Nei, Sasarai, Sergeant Joe, Shabon, Watari, Yuiri

Tier 2:
Ace, Aila, Bright, Borus, Cecile, Duke, Franz, Fred, Futch, Hallec, Jacques, Landis, Lucia, Queen, Rhett, Ruby, Rody, Roland, Salome, Sanae Y, Twaikin, Wan Fu, Viki, Viki, Yumi

Tier 3:
Alanis, Bazba, Beecham, Belle, Dupa, Edge, Elaine, Gau, Jimba, Kenji, Leo, Lulu, Melville, Mua, Nicolas, Percival, Piccolo, Reed, Rico, Samus, Sharon, Shiba, Thomas, Toppo, Wilder

Tier 4:
Connie, Gadget Z, Kogoro, Koichi, Koroku, Kosanji


Cheesecake Tier - too broken
Tier 1 - overpowered characters when set up correctly
Tier 2 - strong characters but have noticeable limitations; balanced for the most part
Tier 3 - decent for their purpose but characters on a higher tier can do what they do so much better
Tier 4 - horrendous beyond imagination


Feel free to make comments. I might have underestimated some characters, like for example, I originally had Ayame and Landis at Tier 2 and Tier 3 respectively, but after considering their Condemnation Coop Attack, I moved them up a tier.

[eldrasidar]

lucia is definitely one you underestimate. She has 3 free rune slots, which in and of itself is enough to make her very powerful. She also has solid physical and super solid magic stats, along with good skills. She's definitely a step above several of the characters you have in your tier 1.

[Punkaiser]

Can't really give any constructive comment until highwind states his criteria to evaluate.

[highwind44029]

I originally had Lucia at Tier 1, but don't feel like she's quite there. She has good physical and magical capabilities, but even with three rune slots her potential is still somewhat limited. For one, she doesn't have the Heavy Damage skill, so you can't really stack crit on her as effectively as you could on Lilly, Nash, or Sergeant Joe, even though those three only have two rune slots (Killer/Double-strike/Battle Oath for Berserk during boss fights.) She only gets three swings, which is nothing compared to Emily's 8, or Shabon's 6, or Nei's 5. She has no unique rune, nor can she equip a weapon rune like Lion for the fist-users. As for her magic, her best affinity is Fire, which isn't very good for long-term fights when your group starts getting near your enemies and the lack of precision skill is dangerous because of the harm it can bring to your party. Besides, Estella and Joker (and potentially Hugo) are miles above as Fire casters. She's basically a stronger version of Elaine: a good hybrid mage fighter, but does not highly excel on either fronts. She's definitely on the high-end of Tier 2 though, along with Twaikin, but not quite Tier 1.

Modified the list, moved Sharon down to Tier 3. Characters like her and Percival are where they are because of limited skill slots.

Considering moving Melville up to Tier 2, but goddamn, his base stats are horribly abysmal. -.-

[Punkaiser]

I still don't understand how you define someone as broken, overpowered or horrible...
If you are making a ranking based on how well everyone do as an all rounder, then I have no idea.
But if it's about the amount of damage dealt then the tiers aren't accurate:

1.Fighters are superior than mages in dealing damage even without jongleur effect.

2.Among fighters, i can't see how Chris, Nash or Fubar could deal more damage than Rhett or Melville,franz,futch,fred,Sharon.etc. when those guys perform their unite attacks.
You knew to boost Ayame+Landis a rank due to their strong co-op attack, why ignore that for the other guys? I'm not sure how well your broken characters can do, but boys attack and girls attack deal 9999 as a norm at level 60s. Even Child attack could rival Condemnation for 7k damage. Then Kenji, the one you put in tier 4 can out damage tier 1 Chris at same level.

3. If you still insist on mixing both fighters and mages in one chart then it'd be better to do some real calculations like these guys did with S2 as they take damage per turn score that characters can do to evaluate: http://suikosource.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4761.
Otherwise, just separate them away, compare fighters with fighters, mages vs mages.

[highwind44029]

It's not just pure damage, but stats, skills, runes, survivability, consistency, basically how they do on an average basis when fully geared. Even character accessibility is something to be considered. As far as I'm concerned, only Yuiri and Sasarai are late-game characters that are placed to Tier 1 and they're excellent and deserving of their place.

Chris, Nash, and Fubar can easily outdamage those people you listed because of their Heavy Damage (Fubar doesn't have it, but has the capability of being paired to someone who does.) Rhett has four swings, a strong weapon and an average STR stat, but his accuracy is too low. He misses one of those swings (and he will do this a lot) and he's done attacking due to lack of continual attack skill, and some occasions this could hurt him as well when counter-attacked. Melville, as mentioned, has horrible scaling in his stats. Sharon is extraordinary, being the only character that has BOTH Parry and Shield Protect, but her limited skill slots prevent you from maximizing her potential as a counter-tank (which Fred and Twaikin are excellent at.) Franz and Futch normally fall under the "average/generic" (Tier 3) category, but being able to be part of a mounted pair moves them up. To be honest, I was quite unaware about what their unite attack did with Fred was capable of as I rarely used them without their mount. It's certainly something to be taken in consideration.

As for Chris vs. Kenji, I highly doubt Kenji can outdamage her. He only gets one more swing, but Chris has about 60-80 ATK on him at end game. Not only that, but Chris has better overall stats: better unique rune, better Damage skill (Chris's A = 20% vs. Kenji's B = 10%) the ability to equip heavy armor with a B+ in Armor Protect, high magic resistance (Kenji doesn't even reach 100 MDF at Level 60 lol) and the Heavy Damage skill, which I consider a major factor in my list. Plus, I just don't like Kenji. He has the highest SKL stat in S3. That makes him the Clive of this installment. Like wtf? How dare Konami....

Like I said, the list is entirely based on my opinion, from my findings of optimizing every character in hours upon hours of gameplay. From my assessment, characters with critical rate are, for the most part, better than just pure damage characters, and magic-users aren't really all that weak. It's just that there aren't a lot of them around. All four 07-MAG growth characters are Tier 1 after all, even though my basis of placing Yuiri there is because of her physical damage. I think it's also the fact that outside of Lightning and Fire Magic, the latter of which even posing harm to your party members, the other elemental runes just don't have damage at all. Earth Magic is only redeemed through Sasarai, and Wind Magic was nerfed pretty hard compared to previous installments. Sword of Magic, while an awesome concept, was not designed for a single character in the game, except maybe Chris, but even then you can only make use of it for a limited time.

Also, recognize that just because certain characters are in the same tier doesn't mean they are equally as good as each other. It's more of an approximation of which ones are above the others on a group per group basis.

[Punkaiser]

Chris, Nash, and Fubar can easily outdamage those people you listed because of their Heavy Damage.

Do they deal heavy damage at 100%? No, so you should take their average score, and by average score, Chris sucks, Nash is good but still far from the top list. In case you think i'm just talking with nothing to backup:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... Rb1E#gid=0
There I calculated pure damage potential of character at level 67 with supposed to be best setup they could use, Chris stays mediocre even at level 99. (already gave bonus in ranking to all characters who have heavydamage/sharpshoot skill)

As for Chris vs. Kenji, I highly doubt Kenji can outdamage her. He only gets one more swing, but Chris has about 60-80 ATK on him at end game. Not only that, but Chris has better overall stats: better unique rune, better Damage skill (Chris's A = 20% vs. Kenji's B = 10%) the ability to equip heavy armor with a B+ in Armor Protect, high magic resistance (Kenji doesn't even reach 100 MDF at Level 60 lol) and the Heavy Damage skill, which I consider a major factor in my list. Plus, I just don't like Kenji. He has the highest SKL stat in S3. That makes him the Clive of this installment. Like wtf? How dare Konami....

Wrong, with the right setup, Kenji can reach 5 swings compare to Chris' 3. He can equip double strike to double damage while the girlie can't. And heavy damage is meaningless if you use the rune since rune attack can't crit hit so dont count them as 2 stackable advantages, Chris's optiosn are to either normal attack with 1x damage and hope to crit hit or use the rune for 2x with no chance to crit at all. By the law of average the latter gets her higher score as you read in the doc(Chris lv99, Kenji lv67), and still is more pathetic than Kenji's performance with his rune

Like I said, the list is entirely based on my opinion, from my findings of optimizing every character in hours upon hours of gameplay. From my assessment, characters with critical rate are, for the most part, better than just pure damage characters, and magic-users aren't really all that weak..

It's my bad habit to be too serious whenever we talk about ranking and stuff because i can't take it that people usually put their favorite factor in this work. I can see that you like crit hit, well, I like it too, but how exactly does it affect the performance? Do you really think a character with crit hit of 20% given from Heavy Damage.e.g is better than a character who usually does pure damage but with 2x or 3x multiplier at 100%? In a moment may be, but on the long run as their score get averaged, no way it'd happen.
Let's use numbers to talk from now on or personal feelings will overwrite facts.

[highwind44029]

But I don't use raw numbers for my list. Your argument stems merely from pure damage output. Mine factors in not just that but defense and utility. Chris gets a locked slot for parts of the game but she actually gets to use her free slot for a significant part of the game. Kenji's rune only does 1.5x damage and throws him off balance, while she can do 3x damage crits which still puts her ahead. True Water is also not completely wasted on her. She provides utility being a tank that can heal AND do damage, allowing you to put more damage-dealers in your party. And I've never seen Kenji with a 5th swing even with the Level 99 trick. His SPD stat is too abysmal for it.

From the looks of things, Franz and Futch definitely deserve a second look. Warrior/Double-strike and using their Coop with Fred to proc Berserk is a pretty good tactic for long-term fights. Only problem with Futch is his skill slot limitation, which was only mitigated by pairing up with Bright.

[Punkaiser]

Kenji's rune only does 1.5x damage and throws him off balance, while she can do 3x damage crits which still puts her ahead. True Water is also not completely wasted on her. She provides utility being a tank that can heal AND do damage, allowing you to put more damage-dealers in your party. And I've never seen Kenji with a 5th swing even with the Level 99 trick. His SPD stat is too abysmal for it.

You don't have any intention to deal with the numbers, do you?
"She can do 3x" makes it sound like she does that all the time, heh. Have you ever done anything with average score? You wanna use Chris with her normal attacks eh?. Here we go:

Chris:
As I record at level 99, her total power would be 391 (after equipments) with some multiplier from 3 swings=> regarded as 2.2x multiplier,
with her max A Dmg skill + Emperor title + Horned helm=> 1.5x multiplier from S Damage skill
She has about 20% crit rate that made of roughly 15% double damage, 5% triple damage=>80% of other times she deals 1x which makes her average damage modifier = 1*0.8 + 2*0.15 + 3*0.05= 1.25x
In total: Chris has total power of 391 and total damage modifier of 2.2*1.5*1.25= 4.125

Kenji:
I recorded his total power at level 67 as 290.
With the default stats and skills at level 60, he's stuck with 4 swings. But Chris can recruit him at lv99, now for your advantage, I'd just consider his stats at level67.
B+ swing + Topcommander title=> A swing
115 SPD + ninja suit(+15)= 130SPD=> A rank in swing + 130SPD= 5swings. (if you care to manually reset or get him at level 99 to get his total SPD of 149 \*ninja suit & wind hat*/, Kenji will even reach 6 swings)
5 swings relatively give him a multiplier of 3.2x multiplier
The DMG skill gives him 1.1x multiplier
Double Strike rune rbings 2x to the table
His base crit is 10% for double damage => average damage modifier of 1.1x
If he use normal attacks, then his score would be made of 290 total power with a total damage modifier of 7.744
If he use Full moon rune, his score even gets another 1.5x multiplier (but exclude 1.1x from crit rate)
Now you tell me, which score is higher
total power of 391 and total damage modifier of 4.125
or 290 total power with a total damage modifier of 7.744

From the looks of things, Franz and Futch definitely deserve a second look. Warrior/Double-strike and using their Coop with Fred to proc Berserk is a pretty good tactic for long-term fights.

Funny mistake you make there because the unite is ususable just once per battle and they don't cause berserk status to you but to your target. So the setup for the boys must be Double Strike+Fury for optimization. And no battle can last long with them doing this even just once, 9999 is no joke.