I know you're a small channel rn but i love listening to your content especially the longer videos while I'm working.  Keep up the good work

also worth mentioning that Agnes is the only character in this game with a craft that can manipulate the Boost Gauge (her Holy Bloom skill, in addition to giving the party EP Regen, also restores two bars of the Boost Gauge at max craft level).

having that is such a blessing, and allows you to be much more frugal with S-Boosting different characters because Agnes can just keep the gauge topped up at all times.

with how pivotal the Boost Gauge is in the gameplay of the Calvard Arc, I'm surprised it took them that long to have a craft that let you manipulate it and let alone giving it to only ONE character.

in fact, I think even Falcom realized that, because in Kai no Kiseki/Trails beyong the Horizon they give Boost Gauge manipulating crafts to a few other characters as well.

So. full discloser, while I liked him better in Daybreak 2, at least in tearms of character and story, Swin will always live in my heart by the name, 'Shitty Joshua.'

Rare to see Trails gameplay related tierlists so this was very fun to watch! I do have some points i want to make tho .so i played this Game a lot on nightmare and even made some mods to increase the difficulty.  a few things u missed is considering Hit counts, Orbments and effectiveness in the context of the Game(overall difficulty and early-lategame). First of all arts are definetly not stronger than physical attacks, they actually complement each other extremely well. while the dps over many turns is really high because of the low delay of arts, craft deal way more dmg, making arts usually more effective to build the high hitcounts and then following up with your strong craft users. especially early game arts are kinda useless till you get the Time/mirage dual art. Playing like this allows you to kill every boss before they are even getting a turn(even on nightmmare) at round about the halfway point. Considering Hit count also makes swin much better than almost every character you put in C Tier. Agnes for example kinda suffers from the game being quite easy and but if the game is harder or you are just less experienced with the game, i definetly think shes the best character. Judiths shadow accel is just insane because every move in grimcats does double stun damage and the damage itself can reach above 100k dealing quite a bit more than even her scraft, but shes extremely cp reliant. Celis is easily one of the worst characters ever because of her terrible orbment and the game pushing her towards str but her scraft scaling with ats making her completely useless. Renne also should have the highest Ats looking at the code it's probably like you said EOM or stat boost items which made the difference. Renne has by far the best Arts orbment giving her relatively easy access to both arc feather and cataract gain so she gets infinite mana.
My personal List would be:
S: Shizuna, Van, Judith, Renne
A: Agnes, Risette, Kincaid
B: Feri, Fie, Swin, Aaron, Elaine
C: Nadia, Quatre
F: Rion, Zin, Celis

These discussions feel incomplete without also discussing their slots and lines. Like...to further bolster the argument about how all around solid Judith is, she can pretty easily activate all the desirable skills in the game too. Other characters have more restrictive options by comparison. Doesn't matter if you want to build her as an attacker or caster...she can easily activate it all. At the same time even.

Yeah Bonding events and employee of the month can certainly skew stats. Zin actually has more Strength than Shizuna by default for example.

Actually I think this is a really good tier list! I might move some of the rankings if this were my personal list, but I think your 1 and 2 are spot on.  Agnes is just such a powerful caster, only only able to recover you from your whole team basically being dead if something went wrong, but just so powerful with Arts attacks.

And Van is such a great tank, not just because he can taunt and take a pounding (but those are certainly important) but just the way he can, with a few exceptions, just completely control the field of battle so his allies can maximize their damage, while doing a tone of damage himself, just always felt so satisfying to me.

Its rare to see videos on this series that isnt about plot or lore (probably because thats the best part). The gameplay is lowk underrated, even if its sometimes a bit too easy

Honestly i think Renne should be at least one point higher for her tea party craft. The ability to actually raise your core stats and not just give Dmg or Admg amps, is something that only she can do, and ive found it extremely helpful in a lot of fights. Double buster cannon also hits like a train and can trigger Ex follow ups at a distance which is really helpful too.

I wont deny Agnes is better overall, but having her and Renne on the same team with Van tanking and Shizuna striking was my go to combo for everything endgame and it was unstoppable XD

This is the content I was looking for, I absolutely devoured daybreak 1 and 2, so this was an absolute pleasure. I have had Agnés in my active party since she was introduced and only removed her when the game made me, she's just too valuable.
You have a new subscriber, and I'm very excited to see your upcoming content with Trails in the Sky FC and Horizon coming!

the way Agnes is as fast as Aaron somehow

Yes, I love Trails tierlists! I will definitely keep this in mind when I move into Daybreak 1+2
Also have you considered doing this for the other trails games? Cuz ur analysis was fairly balanced, and I agree that these games are Balanced !

Laplace Code is still my GOAT
A thing to note that I'd argue Renne has over Agnes as a Caster is 16 Orbment slots instead of 15, which when I was optimizing stuff in my Daybreak 2 file, I found myself struggling to figure out what goes where, so I'm not sure what I would've done with Agnes there

I have one word for you, WHALE.
Great list my dood. Also one thing that doesn't change too much but is still a decent point is that Aaron does have a SS+ s-craft so he can do semi decent damage with that, the back kick craft is also deceptively high damage.

After a whole year of stuff keeping me from playing daybreak 2, it’s really funny to see that swim is still dogwater, even in a game where he can actually hit multiple enemies for good damage, and isn’t competing with like 52 other characters

renne has an adicional boon to her caster role: mirage slot. you can easly get ark feather and judgement feather with her, which is the BnB of caster in this arc. her offensive crafts are mixed, but a damage reduction line with high arts dmg is useful, and if you are feeling the need to gamble you can cheese for deathblow, as both of her deathblow crafts seem to have consistent chance to land it(or im getting lucky, i did kill a boss with death blow in the garden)

I played the game in Nightmare and used Swin until Nemeth Island because narrative, but he was very strong. I builded him with Heidrun (x2 crit damage) and like 70% or 80% crit change, with the most basic craft he was capable of 7 or 8k damage. For impede is enough use the quartzs.

An aspect of Aaron that you severely underappreciated I think is the fact that he's one of only 3 characters that gets an A+ damage Craft that costs only 50 CP in Phoenix Barrage (the other two being Feri, who is too weak to make great use of it and Zin, who's post-game only and is way too slow). It also has a positional boost on it, meaning it does 30% extra damage on top of that if used correctly, which brings it to almost S-craft levels of power, and as a cherry on top it has a very useful Seal chance (and a Burn chance, but no one cares). This makes Aaron incredibly comfortable to use - he barely has to worry about CP management and can just constantly spam incredibly powerful crafts all day long while Van takes the aggro. Most other characters top out at A damage Crafts that cost 60-70 CP, so this is a pretty massive advantage that Aaron has.

I admittedly didn't really dive into testing out characters - this was the last game in a 7 month long Trails marathon and I was pretty tired of the combat at that point, so I played on Normal (rather than Hard, which I've been on since Cold Steel 1) and only ever really used Arkride Solutions characters (because it wasn't clear to me anyone else would stick around permanently and so I didn't want to spend the time tweaking their builds) - but Aaron very much carried my run as a fast and very hard-hitting nuker. I spent pretty much the whole game with Van, Agnes and Aaron in my party when I could, with the fourth slot rotating mid-battle between Risette to spam Cobalt Curtains, Judith to cleanse enemy buffs with her S-Craft and Feri to Flaming Prayer (and then leave ASAP so she doesn't get squished).

I'm gonna defend Fie with one thing - Mirage Raid. Two turns of stealth, which in this game doesn't get removed on landing a hit, and a speed boost on a pretty decent attack craft is a niche no one else can fill. If you give her any kind of CP sustaining option she can stay completely invincible for the entire battle, with a free 50 percent crit boost to boot. She can solo even the postgame final boss like that, since none of it's moves can pierce stealth. There are other ways to gain stealth of course, but none of those are consistent, and they only last for one turn each.

Does this fix her relatively poor stats and terrible availability? Not really, but it at least means she can always be a team anchor that can solo any post-game fight...with enough time.

It's funny how she somehow can retain her niche of someone who can't get hit by anything, even if it's by different means and is arguably less useful

Heck yeah