Character Tiers: Difference between revisions
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...That's right. It's time to get on the Internet and argue about which characters are the best.
It seems inevitable when you've got a game with [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]: the time will come when the only thing left is to try and figure out whether [[Fire Emblem|Lowen's]] early joining time and superior supports make up for his crappy strength growth. It can be a polite discussion or a [[Flame War]]; a debate of logic and reason or a contest to see who can stick their fingers in their ears the longest. It usually gives birth to legions of [[Scrub
The characters are usually divided into rough levels of ability or "tiers", from which the trope takes its name. Those tiers frequently look something like this:
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* '''Mid Tier''': The "[[The Red Mage|average]]" guys. They are usually here because they have an advantage over at least one Top or God tier character, but have too many flaws to be used effectively elsewhere.
* '''Low Tier''': You probably don't want to choose these. They could theoretically be useful, but choosing such a character is a suboptimal choice; take only if you need to fill space. Sometimes, these characters find a niche for their shock value, or because they work well against unprepared or surprised opponents. This sort of usage stops working once your opponents get wise, at which point you should return to a higher tier.
* '''Bottom Tier''': [[Joke Character
Sometimes the tiers get shaken up due to [[Metagame]] shifts, and characters that were once below-average can become more useful. However, the chances of this phenomenon occurring diminish if no new content is added to the game.
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* ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 2]]'' has 56 characters, and therefore tiers are inevitable. The unique thing is that the current god tier <ref>listed on the quote on the top of the page</ref> isn't banned, but are actually favoured for tournament play simply because all the options and tactics available to them mean that they're also the most interesting characters to play in the game. There's also the fact that the game is less dependent on individual characters and more on team synergy. Some good teams aren't totally dependent on the god tiers, but instead team them with lower tiered characters who have really good assists that make the overall team stronger.
* In ''[[Tatsunoko vs. Capcom]]'', the Japanese developed a different tier list for the characters (partially because unlike in the United States, the players didn't stop thinking that [[Karas]] was a broken character), using two tier lists - one for the overall character performance being the point (combat) character and another for the character's assist. Roll isn't considered the lowest tier (she's mid), and her assist is ranked high in the tier list, upping her rank as a [[Joke Character]] to [[Lethal Joke Character]].
* [[Guilty Gear]] XX had a very unusual tier
* ''[[
** In contrast, in ''[[
** The Continuum Shift II update is considered to be very well balanced. On the top we have Makoto and Noel, and on the bottom Tager. Most characters are viable, and tournaments top 8 generally have few overlapping characters. In fact a Hakumen and a Tsubaki, both low tier, won national tournaments in US and Japan.
** Continuum Shift Extend is also considered to be very well balanced. Thanks to the damage nerf, characters that can produce high damage like Ragna, Valkenhayn and Hakumen tend to be high in tier list.
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== Driving Game ==
Many [[Driving Game
* Although the ''[[Gran Turismo]]'' games don't explicitly use Car Tiers, their cars can be pretty much divided into snail-slow subcompacts, slow sedans, medium sports cars, fast supercars, super-fast JGTC racing cars, lightning-fast Le Mans racers, and the [[Title Drop|Polyphony Formula Gran Turismo]].
** The arcade mode in the first two games had an explicit series of tiers. ''Gran Tusimo 2'', for example, has Class C compact sedans, Class B high-power sedans, Class A sports cars, and [[Rank Inflation|Class S]] supercars.
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** First off is the Uber tier. This tier can be seen as a ban list, as Pokemon in it are only in there so that the rest of the metagame doesn't suffer. Pokemon in it are either too powerful (Mewtwo), too versatile (Mew), or too broken (Wobbuffet). Pokemon in this tier can not be used in any competitive battle unless the rules specifically allow it, or the players agree to use them. This tier is a metagame in itself, since the overpowered nature of all the Pokémon used creates balance.
** Second is the [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Over Used]] (OU) tier. This tier is composed of the Pokemon that have been used the most, typically around 50 at a time, based on data gathered by Smogon's battling simulator <s>Shoddy Battle</s> Pokemon Online and updated every month. These are basically the best Pokemon in terms of their stats, abilities, typing, and/or movepool (not counting Uber Pokemon, of course). In OU tier battles, only Pokemon from the OU tier and below are allowed.
** The second "real" tier is the [[Needs More Love|Under Used]] (UU) tier. This tier is composed of Pokemon that are occasionally used. The Pokemon in this tier usually have a problem or two that prevents them from being used easily, or have Pokemon in the upper tiers that fulfill the same purpose, but do it better
** In between OU and UU is the Borderline (BL) tier, composed of Pokemon that are too strong for UU but not actually used enough to be OU. BL, like Ubers, is a ban tier (but for UU instead of OU). Since OU tier is based on actual use and ''not'' on actual stats, it also frequently chnges. BL battles are not common, but most Pokemon in the tier are good enough to see use on OU teams.
** The third "real" tier is the Rarely Used (RU) tier. Added in the fifth generation to account for the [[Loads and Loads of Characters|ever-increasing cast list]], this tier often features Pokemon that can be used competitively but have notable flaws
** Fourth is the Never Used (NU) tier. This tier isn't actually composed of Pokemon that are never used, but the Pokemon in this tier are simply seldom used due to a variety of different reasons, from stat problems (for instance, [[Glass Cannon|Pikachu can dish out serious hurt, but it just can't take a hit]]), to actually being useless (Unown). As such, you'll find that many Pokemon in this tier serve purposes that Pokemon in higher tiers can do better. In NU tier battles, only Pokemon in the NU tier can be used.
** The tier system is designed to allow any Pokemon to be used competitively by sifting Pokémon into a collection of similarly powered groups. Removing this would force everyone into using Ubers and OUs.
** As a final note, it's worth noting that tiers are constantly changing as data is collected from <s>Shoddy Battle</s> Pokemon Online and as new games are released. A good example is Charizard.
** It is also worth noting that other than banlist tiers (Uber and Borderline), the placement of a Pokemon is determined exclusively by their frequency of usage, and thus a high tier Pokemon is simply one that is frequently used in a high tier environment, even if they would not unbalance a lower tier
** In addition to the standard tier set (which organizes Pokemon on the assumption that anything you can do without hacking is legal) there's Little Cup, where Pokemon must be level 5, must be able to evolve, and must not evolve from anything. Little Cup has its own list of Ubers, OU, and UU, and other modified rules. And the up-and-coming "Middle Cup" allows only level 50 Pokemon that both evolve from and evolve into something. Both of these are a great way to be able to use your favorite not-fully-evolved Pokemon and still do well (the standard tiers allow NFEs, but not all of them are viable choices).
** Everything above applies only to single battling. Double-battling tiers are only in their proto-stage (due to official tournaments being in the double battle format), and triple-battling and rotation-battling are far too new and hardly played competitively. Enough is known, however, that different traits are of importance in different formats, meaning any Pokémon tier list can only apply to one format. For instance, the Ice-type is defensively bad (weak to four types and resistant only to itself) but offensively good (can hit four other types for super-effective damage). Playing defense is key in single battles while offense is more important in double battles, so Ice-types like Glaceon and Vanilluxe struggle in single battles but thrive in double battles.
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== Role Playing Games ==
* A big thing in the ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' fandom, where the participants don't stop simply at unit performance. They also take into account joining time, joining requirements, joining level, starting stats, stat growths, weapon options, support options, elemental affinity, promotion requirements, and other, additional abilities in their quest to accurately rank the characters. Due to [[Cap|the way]] [[Random Number God|the system works]] in ''[[Fire Emblem]]'', the vast majority of characters are at least usable (and most of the ones that aren't are because they join super-late in the game) if you really want to play them, and so the tier lists are mostly arranged by merit of which characters are most helpful for Ranked or low-turn playthroughs. The ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' community's mantra in these debates is "personal experience means nothing"; just because a character worked out for you does not make that character good; you may have simply gotten lucky with the [[Random Number God
* ''[[Chrono Cross]]'', despite being an RPG, has over 40 characters to choose from, so tiers were bound to arise, especially since some characters are worse than others.
* [[Radiata Stories]] proudly boasts over 150 characters you can collect and use in battle, and the quests to obtain them have a wide range of difficulty which doesn't always correspond to each character's strength. There are characters you'd have to be crazy not to go into the final battle with, characters that are only there for the lulz, and inevitably you'll find a character that you just plain like. They're all pretty interesting.
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** And Goro and Xiao just get ridiculously outclassed due to their slow attack speeds rendering them vulnerable to attack and their weapons can be hideously inaccurate. Goro especially, since he can only attack enemies in front of him and even then, he can still miss because a lot of enemies don't hold still.
** The sequel ''[[Dark Cloud|Dark Cloud 2]]'' is infinitely better at this - although the only character tier that exists is Monster Transformation, which is generally seen as worthless or unnecessary due to it never being needed for important boss battles in the future. The Ridepod is, however, seen as very useful due to it being the only way to beat several boss battles.
* [[Final Fantasy VI]] is a complicated case, best illustrated through example. Cyan is normally low-tier, since his most powerful attack takes an inconveniently long time to charge. Teach him the (quite hard-to-learn) Quick spell, and the charge time will cease to be relevant, but Quick is tied for highest MP cost, so he'll primarily be a boss-killer. Give him an Economizer (an artifact that [[Randomly Drops]] from one of the most dangerous monsters in the game), and he'll be able to cast Quick for 1 MP, allowing him to reliably do 16k damage per turn in a game where the normal cap is 9999. Or you could ignore all that, and just abuse an exploit that allows him to attack endlessly until every foe onscreen is dead. Depending on how many exploits you're willing to use, and how much time you're willing to put in, this could make him low-tier, high-tier, or god-
* The ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' games, in which both mecha and individual pilots are ranked.
** Notable on the God tier are [[GaoGaiGar]], Zeorymer {{spoiler|taken further by Great Zeorymer in J}} and the Aussenseiter (Daitrombe) as well as its pilot <s>Elzam</s> Ratsel in every game they're in. The Black Selena HM in all games Nadesico is in except W. The Vaisaga also makes a good case for this in OG at least, but on the GBA version of OG 2 you can only get it on your second playthrough and it's kinda hard to get. You can get it your first time through in the [[PlayStation 2]] version though. Also, strangely, the Gundam X Divider can be deadly without many upgrades in Alpha Gaiden, as well as Kamille and his Zeta Gundam, which Kamille is God tier (Better stats than ALMOST every other pilot in all the games I've seen, even more than Char and Amuro), and the Zeta is Top to High most the time. If it's not the best MS in the game, you can just switch him.
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* ''[[Disgaea]]'' has some degree of tiers; other then the in-game tiers (unlocked by levelling up their "lower tier" units), some classes have definite advantages over other; until you realise that [[Game Breaker|Divine Majins]] beat ''everything'' except ''maybe'' Flonne in a ''single'' stat. They are very time-consuming, though.
** Later games balanced this out a little, to the point where in Disgaea 3, Majins are considered the worst class in the game.
* ''[[Monster Girl Quest Paradox]]'':
** The more races a character has, the more abilities they can learn and the more versatile they can become. Hence characters like Alice (six races) and Alicetroemeria (seven races) are in the top tiers while single-race characters tend to be in the lower tiers.
** Some races are simply better than the others due to having high stats, elemental resistances and status resistances (Apoptosis being a major offender). On the other end of the scale, Human characters were initially low tier, because the Human race has low stats and, when the game was first released, couldn't advance to higher races. Playing with an all-human party (and not using exceptions to the rule, like Luka, the King of San Ilia or the Worm Summoners) effectively meant playing on a higher difficulty level. This was fixed with the release of the second chapter, which has sidequests that allow Humans to advance in race and also gain access to the Vampire race.
** All characters have a unique trait that differentiates them from other characters. Traits can range from weak and/or only useful in specific circumstances to being extremely powerful.
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Dungeons
** In 3rd edition, versatility (how many problems a character can contribute to solving) is at least as important as power (how powerful the character's abilities are for problems) in tiering. The top tier is characters who, with the right spells prepared, can solve nearly anything the GM can come up with as a standard action. Lesser tiers either have [[Crippling Overspecialization|less versatility]] or [[Master of None|less power]]. In general, while a character of any tier can be a [[Game Breaker]] with the right factors, only a high-tier character can be a [[Story-Breaker Power|Story Breaker]] - imagine how ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' would have turned out if Gandalf could teleport any distance, read minds, identify any item instantly, and make anyone [[
** More in-depth: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130818110005/http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293 The generally agreed list] is six tiers. Tier 1 is for characters like wizards, clerics, and druids, who learn loads of powerful spells and abilities and learn even more with every new book. Tier 2 is for characters like sorcerers, psions, and favored souls, who learn powerful spells and abilities, albeit more restrictively (the creator compared it to the difference between a nation with a thousand nukes and one with ten). Tier 3 is for characters like bards, factotums, and duskblades, who can either do one thing pretty well and still be useful, or do everything appreciably. Tier 4 is for characters like rogues, barbarians, and rangers, who can do one thing pretty well and only that thing, or can do a lot of things without ever really shining. Tier 5 is for characters like fighters, monks, and paladins, who can do only one thing (and not all that well), or can only ever achieve [[Master of None]] level. Tier 6 is for [[Joke Character
** Tiers themselves are based on "As Written" comparisons based on how effectively the class can deal with different situations. The original author pointed out that optimized fighters can still be a low tier but capable of taking down the [[Physical God|Tarrasque]] in a single turn. In the hands of the right munchkin many classes can be equal to higher tiers.<ref>except for the Complete Warrior Samurai</ref>
** The 4th edition of D&D sought to remove this by making all the classes follow the same progression, so ''everyone'' is [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards|linear]]. Predictably, this nevertheless didn't result in a uniform power level, and discussions about which classes are higher-tier than which others are common. For example, "iconic" classes like the fighter and wizard have ''many'' more spells, feats, and abilities printed than "what on earth is that" classes like the Battlemind or the Seeker..
** 3.5e successor [[Pathfinder]] strives to make all characters much more balanced. All classes received upgrades, but low tier 3.5 classes received more extensive rewrites while powerful 3.5 classes only received minor enhancements to make them more fun to play. A good example is that the Wizard, a top tier character, received new abilities which are hardly worth a mention and had many metamagic feats nerfed, while the Paladin, a tier 5, had its trademark Smite Evil and Lay on Hands abilities boosted to undreamed of levels. The overall effect is to make the more worthless classes more enjoyable to play, though competent casters can still break the universe in half.
** D&D Minis had informal tiers based on the perceived usefulness of a particular miniature. Unlike the RPG, spellcasters were rarely in the top tier due to [[Squishy Wizard]] Syndrome, among other things. Also, very few of the most powerful monsters from the RPG were top tier as minis, due to poor playtesting by the Devs.
* While it is generally agreed that tabletop wargames ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' and ''[[Warhammer
** It's a joke among the 40k fandom that you're not allowed to bitch that GWS hates/ignores your army... unless you play Dark Eldar (who have not gotten a codex update in ''twelve years'').<ref>This is no longer true</ref>
** You can still bitch about Necrons, though. It is a fact universally acknowledged that Necrons suck.
** Generally speaking, armies are all about the same power level, it's the ease with which you can use the army that really divides the board.
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** Low: Ashenzari, Cheibrados, Fedhas Madash, Jiyva, Nemelex Xobeh, Xom, and Zin.
*** Actually, the race/class combos are tiered right when the player starts a new game. Upon selecting a race, the class options are either lighted (recommended) or not (not recommended). After picking a qualifying combo, starting weapon type or starting god are ranked in similar way.
* Non-gaming example: [https://web.archive.org/web/20140122053030/http://memegenerator.net/tier/god Meme Generator], [[Captain Obvious|which is a website for]] [[Memetic Mutation|generating memes]], ranks the available 'characters' by popularity/ubiquity as God Tier, Demigod Tier, Legendary Tier, Top Tier, Fascinating Tier, Meh Tier, Lame Tier and Fail Tier.
* The ''[[Geneforge]]'' series uses a [[Point Build System]], with skills divided into three categories (Combat, Magic, and Shaping) and the cost of buying skill ranks dependent on class affinity. Character classes each had one strong skill category, one average, and one weak. General fan consensus on class viability usually goes
** '''God Tier''': Sorceress (Strong Magic/Avg. Shaping/Weak Combat). Added in the final game, and it's pretty obvious why it was never in any of the previous ones. Average shaping skills are sufficient to make powerful creations, and strong magic is far handier than strong combat if you've got a meatshield or two handy.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:YMMV Trope]]
[[Category:Videogame Culture]]
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