The Real Definitive Tier List.

[SaN]

I've finished all my tests and simulations and so I can share the Real Definitive Tier List.

This list is a global list including all parameters of the games when its played with normal rules and the most efficiently possible.

I dont recommend to newcomers to read this topic because discovering this answers by yourself is a lot more interesting for you.

The purpose of this list is for players who thinks they have good knowledge about this question to check the real quality of the knowledge they have and to try to understand why this tier list is the real one.

Tier S:
1 - Alfyn

Tier A:
2 - Ophilia
3 - Tressa
4 - Therion
5 - Cyrus
6 - Olberic

Tier B:
7 - Haanit
8 - Primrose

[Crystal]

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

I've finished all my tests and simulations and so I can share the Real Definitive Tier List.

This list is a global list including all parameters of the games when its played with normal rules and the most efficiently possible.

I dont recommend to newcomers to read this topic because discovering this answers by yourself is a lot more interesting for you.

The purpose of this list is for players who thinks they have good knowledge about this question to check the real quality of the knowledge they have and to try to understand why this tier list is the real one.

Tier S:
1 - Alfyn

Tier A:
2 - Ophilia
3 - Tressa
4 - Therion
5 - Cyrus
6 - Olberic

Tier B:
7 - Haanit
8 - Primrose

I agree with the Tier S. Concoct allows you to curb stomp bosses, it's not even funny. Whether a fight goes fast or slow depends on whether Alfyn is around in team. Those BPs... way too good. He can also hit any elemental weakness, cure any debuffs, heal more than cleric and revive everyone with full hp. Last Stand is the single most damaging skill in game.

I will put Cyrus and Olberic above Orphilia.... cleric can easily be sub as secondary job. The only thing you want from cleric is the Divine Skill, which is amazing. Cyrus's passives (evasive maneuvers, analyze foes) is just way more useful than cleric, and he is absolutely needed to build up team in early stage of adventure. Olberic too is ranked higher than Orphillia because his Path Action (challenge) is irreplaceable and way too good. He is also needed to protect squishy team from early to mid game.

Agree that Therion & Tressa is Tier A. I personally put them in my main team. It's the ultimate greedy team :D You want to collect as much money & loot, and steal as much stuff as possible. I can't imagine a team without merchant & thief.

Lastly, agree that Hannit and Primrose is bottom tier. This may come as a surprise. I do like their stories and personalities. They are likeable. But. Their Path Actions are just awful to begin with (not comparable to knight's Challenge and cleric's Guide), and both Hunter and Dancer class can be easily sub as secondary jobs without losing much. Dancer is slightly better since her Divine Skill is waaaaaay more powerful than hunter's.

[SaN]

Here I show what is the best possible team of 4 and this is very important to understand the Tier List: https://steamcommunity.com/app/921570/discussions/0/5283252978681160617/

Ophilia is above all characters except Alfyn because of a lot of parameters, first its because having 2 supports, 1 main Pdmg Dealer and 1 main Mdmg Dealer is by far the best strategy.
Then having her is the only possible way to have 2 Cleric DS in your team and this tactic is the best of the game before Divine Jobs.
The followers can be insanely powerful, mostly for Inhibit Defenses at start a skill that can reduce all defs on all foes for 3 turns.(Mother a level 1 woman in Flamegrace's church have it) Then(after Divine Jobs) for Hearty Encouragement(Patk/Pdef/Matk/Mdef on all allies) this skill allow to free a support skill slot on damage dealers.
Ophilia have a very bad speed and that is very bad for supporting but there is some ways to totally ignore this big weakness. The thing is Alfyn have a very bad speed too so a single item with speed in it(Knowledge Staff is a very good one for her) is enough to put Cleric DS on Alfyn almost all the times. When its not enough we can loose a turn with defend to have her act first or if better we only have to use Concoct to make her act first next turn(Curious Balm).

Ophilia is even above Tressa mostly because having her makes the team stronger than removing Tressa for another excellent Runelord/Magic damage dealer like Cyrus.

Reveal weaknessess is indeed very strong but thanks to Alfyn we can have tons of BP and then use Runerlord DS and Warmaster DS to reveal all weaknesses(and also doing good damage) in one turn. This is why Cyrus is number 5.

Therion is 4 because of his great usefulness(he is the best nowhere but he is very good everywhere), because he can open purple chests and because the only thing that the top 3 characters dont have when they are together is great speed.

Olberic is 6th mainly because we only need one main Physical Damage Dealer and this is the only thing that Olberic can do better than all of them except Alfyn.

Alfyn is by far the best possible Physical Damage Dealer.
First making him the main Physical Damage Dealer is the best way to totaly ignore his only weakness, his very bad speed.
Then Alfyn Concoct is so usefull and also permits to save actions(it can save a lot of entire turns in long battles) and only 1 action saved on only Alfyn is already stronger than what we get from Olberic better stats and from challenging all people for quests.
Also the most efficient way to challenge people for quest rewards is later so there is no hurry to challenge people.
Bolster Defense + Donate BP is one of the strongest combos for ruining Physical Attackers but Alfyn again makes the team a lot more stronger than having that skill.

[Crystal]

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

Reveal weaknessess is indeed very strong but thanks to Alfyn we can have tons of BP and then use Runerlord DS and Warmaster DS to reveal all weaknesses(and also good damage) in one turn. This is why Cyrus is number 5.

This is the line I've been waiting to read. Thanks for sharing the strategy.

Always wanted to know how to rushdown foes without knowing weakness.

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

Alfyn is by far the best possible Physical Damage Dealer.
Alfyn Concoct is so usefull and also permits to save actions(it can save a lot of entire turns in long battles) and only 1 action saved on only Alfyn is already stronger than what we get from Olberic better stats and from challenging people.

You literally need Challenge to progress the game and kill important NPCs.

You don't need concoct outside from fights.

In terms of stats, Olberic and Hannit have highest ATK naturally, so it's not stats that put Alfyn ahead. It's his concoct utiity. Isn't it better for him to give BP to the dps, instead of him being the dps? Isn't it faster to have Alfyn & 1 hp Olberic together in a team? Just saying.

It boils down to playstyle. I like my dps to attack every turn, and my support to support. But yeah,,, I've been using warrior Alfyn or apothecary Olberic, so these 2 guys are interchangeable. I sometimes put them together for the ♥♥♥♥ n giggles.

But for boss fights, Alfyn is a MUST.

[SaN]

Even if getting nuts the faster possible is the most efficient way to benefit from nuts, challenge people is not a hurry because delaying the nuts we can earn challenging people is less stronger than having Alfyn in a team without Olberic and Haanit.

Let me explain it: Alfyn have almost 10% less Patk than Olberic and Haanit, this is an acceptable loss because Alfyn is the best character by far and when you play him as main Patker his very bad speed is not a big weakness anymore so this way you benefit the most of the best character of the game.

Then, because of the combat system of Octopath Traveler damage is not the most important thing the most important thing is too make the most possible damage while ennemies are breaked and thats why Alfyn is the best, with him in a team, we can have a lot more of this moments.

As I explained before thanks to Concoct we can earn actions and even entire turns, +10%Pakt +some Nuts sooner +some more Crits is a lot weaker than only a single action saved on only Alfyn.

If we want to make a slot for Olberic we wont be able to have Ophilia + Tressa + Therion and this will 100% make the team weaker, thats why:

Loosing Ophilia is not an option because that means loosing the insanely strong followers of this game. Then Therion is the hardest character to remove of a team so this not an option too. Finally if we want to remove Tressa, well Ophilia is indeed strong as Scholar or Merchant, the thing is if Ophilia is damage dealer you cant fully use Cleric DS with her. So that means Therion or Alfyn have to become your Magic damage dealer and that is weaker than having Tressa as Magic Damage Dealer or dealing damage with her mercenaries.

If we want to make a slot for Olberic and play Alfyn as a support its even worse. Because we will have to deal with Alfyn very bad speed and thats harder to do than deal with Ophilia bad speed mainly because Olberic have a good speed stat. Then again Tressa will be the character to remove. So Therion will become the magic damage dealer and even if he is good as Scholar or Runelord, Tressa again is a lot better at this mostly thanks to her Mercenaries and the skill named Sidestep used with Rune Transfer.

[Crystal]

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

Even if getting nuts the faster possible is the most efficient way to benefit from nuts, challenge people is not a hurry because delaying the nuts we can earn challenging people is less stronger than having Alfyn in a team without Olberic and Haanit.

If you don't challenge ppl, how do u get Golden Axe? How do you get Captain's Sword? How do you get all those cool strong early game weapons? Huh? How do you even complete quests, reveal treasures guarded by NPCs and make progress? Challenge is every bit as important as steal or buy item. It's something you need to do in order to literally progress in the game, it is "not optional", and must be done as soon as possible.

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

Loosing Ophilia is not an option because that means loosing the insanely strong followers of this game.

I think you're very biased towards Orphillia. Primrose can have followers as well, it's not a big deal. As mentioned, others can have cleric as sub job. The only thing you want is the Divine Skill, which is cast on the dps for double damage.

I remove Orphillia from team often, when I want to train someone else.

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

So that means Therion or Alfyn have to become your Magic damage dealer and that is weaker than having Tressa as Magic Damage Dealer or dealing damage with her mercenaries.

I gotta disagree here. Therion can be just as strong a sorcerer as Tressa, or even stronger in post-game, when everyone already have max stats. Therion can make full use of Harald's Sword and even Tradewind Spear, to boost spells.

Tressa should always be a Runelord, so the sorcerer is not ideal job for her.

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

If we want to make a slot for Olberic and play Alfyn as a support its even worse. Because we will have to deal with Alfyn very bad speed and thats harder to do than deal with Ophilia bad speed mainly because Olberic have a good speed stat.

Again, I gotta disagree here. Alfyn is already super slow, so he will be 1 turn behind the main dps usually. He can be the secondary dps, no doubt, and finish off things that is not finished by the primary dps. Most times I just use him to boost BP of team and when boss shield is broken, he can help do damage. But the main dps must be attacking every turn. And this person can't be Alfyn. Since Alfyn is slow and boosting team BP every turn, it makes it hard for him to deal damage consistently every turn.

Not everything has to be so rigid and boxed in, when it comes to playstyle. Be flexible. There are lots of great players out there and they have so many different strategies and team lineup which work. There is no 1 way of being OP.

Having said that, I think your Tier list is sound and reflects a truly experienced player perspective. While I mostly agree with your analysis, I believe that everyone has a right to experiment and come up with the playstyle that works best for them.

[SaN]

Facts are rigid and boxed in, not me.

This Tier List is the true one only when we play the most efficiently possible, when I play I often prefer to follow another ways to experiment new things.

I think if I explain exaclty how to maximise damage you will understand better why Ophilia is so high in the list.

Before Divine Jobs we need:
-A follower with Inhibit Defense to reduce Physical and Magical Def on all foes.
-Abide or Lion Dance and Peacock Strut to buff Physical and Magical Atk easily and quickly.
-Amputation(Apothecary Skill)for best Physical Dmg.
-Mercenaries for best Dmg.
-Scholar 2hits spells for best Magical Dmg.(Bifelgan's Bounty(Merchant DS) is not compatible with Cleric DS)
-2x Cleric DS(Only possible with Ophilia) and 2x Mercenaries(Only possible with Tressa).

Removing Therion is unefficient because we will have to revisit sometimes cleared dungeons for open purple chests and the time to do it one time we can do around half a new dungeon.

Its possible to have all what we need when we remove Alfyn(thats why I was playing without him before) but Alfyn is stronger than anyone. So he is a must have when we want to make the perfect team.

As I said before Challenging people is not an hurry just because having Alfyn is stronger than being able to Challenge people sooner.

Captain Blade is not needed because there is a better sword in the Flamegrace's Church(Heavy Blade+85Patkt).

For the Golden axe the thing is the woman guarding the House in Clearbrook is very easy to defeat anyway. So there is no need to have Haanit in the team to defeat her.

[Shyguymask]

What is this tier list based on? Overall usefulness through the whole game? Boss fights? Endgame team? The final boss? Because it's strange to see both Olberic and Cyrus that low considering their tremendous usefulness through the first 2/3 of the game or so. Apothecary Olberic for example has insane max HP while also being just as good at keeping teammates alive, from apothecary skills to Bolster Defense. Cyrus's great damage output especially against random foes, access to several magic elements for boss fights and Study Foe makes him invaluable in the earlier portion of the game.

[SaN]

It's based on how each of them can make the team stronger.

I have already explained why Cyrus is 5th and Olberic 6th.

[Crystal]

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

Facts are rigid and boxed in, not me.

No tier list in this world can be passed off as absolute facts.

Tier list originates from fighting games like Street Fighter and KOF.

At its crudest form, it is an estimation of a character's power level based on their ultimate move (or DSM) and passives (speed, damage, etc).

However, expert players often challenge and debunk tier list by using so-called "low tier" characters and kicking everyone's A$$ to win major tournaments. You will always find pro-gamers blatantly ignoring tier list and still beating the living daylights out of their opponents.

This is because any "tier list" will have a certain level of subjectivity depending on player. You are not taking into account the human factor of skill, experience, decision making, strategy, personality and playstyle. These are waaaay more important factors that predict outcome of a game, rather than a "tier list." In fact, every different pro-gamer will come up with their own tier list based on their own ability and understanding of what works for them.

So no tier list is absolute. It may be just a general estimation of something.
I

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

Before Divine Jobs we need:
-A follower with Inhibit Defense to reduce Physical and Magical Def on all foes.
-Abide or Lion Dance and Peacock Strut to buff Physical and Magical Atk easily and quickly.
-Amputation(Apothecary Skill)for best Physical Dmg.
-Mercenaries for best Dmg.
-Scholar 2hits spells for best Magical Dmg.(Bifelgan's Bounty(Merchant DS) is not compatible with Cleric DS)
-2x Cleric DS(Only possible with Ophilia) and 2x Mercenaries(Only possible with Tressa).

This is an example of good strategy for speedrun, but again, not a hard and fast rule.
You don't need Amputation and 2x clerics to be able to kill stuffs. You can just identify foe weakness and punch them in the face until they die.

Not spending 30k to hire thugs to beat up boss is not a crime.

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

As I said before Challenging people is not an hurry just because having Alfyn is stronger than being able to Challenge people sooner.

Captain Blade is not needed because there is a better sword in the Flamegrace's Church(Heavy Blade+85Patkt).

Using this logic, then having Golden Axe is not necessary because there is a better axe the Death Cleaver in Wispermill. Having Wizard's Rod is not necessary because we have Knowledge Staff in some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ chest. Having Forbidden Blade is not necessary because we have Battle-Tested Sword later.

I mean, what is this logic? There is always something better, something more OP as you progress in the game. It doesn't invalidate the fact that you can collect strong gears which give you advantage very early on in the game.

Having Alfyn doesn't invalidate the usefulness of knight's Challenge path action.

Having Concoct doesn't invalidate the usefulness of scholar's Analyze Foe passive.

Stop seeing the game as a set of formula or mathematical equations.

There is always the bigger picture of how every character fits into the game.

[SaN]

The player is not a set of formula or mathematical equations but the game is.

For the Golden axe we can estimate its real cost like this:

It cost 2k to restore reputation in Clearbrook, we can fail 5 times before having to restore reputation. So fail cost is 400.
We have 3% steal chance. So that means an estimation of 33 fails. 30 fails cost 60k.

Golden axe cost is around 60k more the time to steal it. In Victors Hollow there is a Bear Cleaver +181Patk for only 29 450 this axe is by far enough damage early game to wait for better axes which are all better and all better cost effective than Golden axe.

Thats why Golden axe is not an efficient weapon to get. Same for Captain Blade, we can have Heavy blade faster than Captain Blade and Heavy Blade is more powerful so there is no reason to get the Captain Blade in Cobbleston when we play the game efficiently.

As I said before this Tier List is with normal rules, speedrun isn't normal rules so its definitly not a speedrun Tiest List.

Its not always necessary to use mercenaries or cost effective but the combo between Mercenaries and Inhibit Defence and Cleric DS is the best damage combo before Divine Jobs. So a team with this combo is stronger than a team without and a team able to do this combo 2 time in a single turn is the strongest team possible to have before Divine Jobs.

[Melodia]

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

It cost 2k to restore reputation in Clearbrook, we can fail 5 times before having to restore reputation. So fail cost is 400.
We have 3% steal chance. So that means an estimation of 33 fails. 30 fails cost 60k.

Or you could save and reset, and never pay the 2k.

[SaN]

Originally posted by Melodia:

Or you could save and reset, and never pay the 2k.

Yes we can but, this is obviously cheating...

[Melodia]

Originally posted by SaN playing Hades:

Yes we can but, this is obviously cheating...

Except it's not. You might like to do it, but the game allows it within the confines of the rules of how it's programmed. In fact there's a 100% chance the devs knew people would do it.
You're free to not like it, but it's an "objective fact" (as you seem to bring up) that one can always get the axe without paying money, should they wish to spend the time and effort (or alternatively, take a few minutes to run to Marsalem Catacombs and grind money running in and out there. 60K would take about 6-7 minutes, IIRC).
This is why your tier lists just aren't The Truth, because they cater to your specific playstyle. What you do isn't what others do. Espeically when you consider people have been playing this game for two and a half years and know the game far better than you do (and no I don't claim to be one of those).
Putting Cyrus fifth on the list is insane. You want efficiancy? Killing with AoE magic IS the most efficiant way of killing things outside of Hired Help vets, and Cyrus comes with it as well as has the highest base magic stat. Tressa makes money by existing and can simply buy all the best stuff -- even if not 'early' you can get a Sorc Robe in Noblecourt, a Wizard's Rod in Goldshore and and Elemental Augmentor in Stonegaurd....which will make Cyrus hit things hard. So yes, for 'efficiancy' Cyrus and Tressa are the clear winners.
Sure concoct is great but considering how much it takes to get ingredients that aren't Noxroot or Essense of Grape, it's hardly a game breaker until the late in the game IF you've saved everything up.
I could go on,....

[SaN]

As obsviously all characters can equip the items they can equip, having items sooner by cheating or cheesing, or getting them later by playing fair obsviouly dont change anything to what the real tier list is.

What you said about cheating is totally stupid and dont deserve any answers. So I will let you believe what you want to believe.

[Shyguymask]

All I'm gonna say is that every single time I've seen people argue using "math" to prove the viability of units in a game for a tier list, they were always wrong and didn't see the bigger picture.