Character Tiers: Difference between revisions

{{quote|Po Yi sat down to play Talisman with his generals. He said: ''At this moment, each of us has an equal chance of winning. When we choose our character cards, then we will no longer have equal chances.''|[http://www.chimeramag.com/features/tenpoints.html General Tso: The Ten Points]}}

...That's right. It's time to get on the Internet and argue about which characters are the best.

Depending on the game, tiers may not be as pivotal as they seem or are portrayed to be (indeed, some games are closely balanced enough that the tiers are only rated as a formality, ''[[Street Fighter IV (Video Game)|Street Fighter IV]]'' being one such example); most often, they exist, but are generally less important than than the skill/advantages of a particular playstyle or adaptive player. Which, of course, leads to discussion for which playstyle is best.

{{examples}}

* In ''[[Tatsunokovs Capcom (Video Game)|Tatsunokovs 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 setup -- partially because the game is so well-balanced that tiers rarely affect a match significantly, but unusual in that the top tier consisted of only ONE character -- Eddie. Mainly because of his ability to destroy you on wake-up due to unblockables. Eddie was crippled somewhat in ''Slash'', but he recovered in ''Accent Core'' (with a triple unblockable sequence) and now shares his spot with Testament. The catch? All of the characters have a ''steep'' learning curve, and it can take several months (or even ''years'') of practice to use them effectively in [[Tournament Play]].

** In contrast, in ''[[Blaz Blue]]: Continuum Shift'', the top 3 in ''CS'' are now Bang Shishigami, Litchi Faye-Ling, and Ragna the Bloodedge - all of whom are combo-oriented characters instead of zoning characters. Litchi has numerous combos which can lead into resets. During one of her combos, she will inevitably (and it WILL always happen) get enough heat to end her combo with a knockdown and follow with her Great Wheel super, which is used to trick the opponent when they get up, repeating the process. If played correctly, she can trap you in a corner and shred you to pieces. Bang went from bottom tier to top due to several of his hitboxes being altered, and many of his moves come out much faster. His basic combos can also deal around 4000-5000 damage. Ragna is like Litchi and Bang combined: he has a large amount of reset opportunities with his new Belial Edge and oki game, but utilizing this takes the simplicity of using Bang.

** 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.

* [[Radiata Stories (Video Game)|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.

** The game actually gets slammed by those who play only the early sections of the game for this, as many of the early characters are outright useless except as decoys. One very early character, a [[Farm Boy]] cleric, even outright says he has no skills at all (his only attack is very slow and unwieldy), but he's still better than some characters, which have no attacks at all, and their only support ability is to remove [[Standard Status Effects|status ailments]]. The win-the-fight-single-handedly good characters, however, are almost invariably the [[Authority Equals Asskicking|leaders of certain sub-factions]], and require you to collect every one of their subordinates before they can be added into your group. This means you have to do things like drag that annoying, useless brat mage around until he gains 10 levels to recruit his father just so you can recruit that father's boss. Oh, and if we're speaking power levels, the humans have much better character choices than the non-human faction does.

* In ''[[Advance Wars]]'', although ''any'' character can become a potential [[Game Breaker]] if used properly, message boards have still agreed on a definite tier system, with Grit, Colin, and Hachi (and often Sensei and Kanbei) rooted firmly at the top, thanks purely to the pure ease with which these characters snap the game in half. And god help you if you play Sturm or his big brother Caulder, the intentionally gamebreaking final bosses, who are universally regarded as not of this world.

** The devs seem to be aware of this practice, at least as far as [[Purposefully Overpowered]] final bosses go: Caulder/Stolos can't be selected for wifi matches in ''Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict''.

== Tabletop Games ==

* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]''

** More in-depth: [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|Joke Characters]], plus [[Tier Induced Scrappy|the samurai.]] And then there's [[Broke the Rating Scale|Truenamer]], which is like Tier 7 in uselessness, and Planar Shepard, a [[Prestige Class]] that's referred to as being "Tier 0".

** 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 Truenamer breaks the tier system by dint of its mechanics not being properly thought out, getting worse by every level, until level 19 when it will just spam Gate Celestial Angels.

** 3.5e successor [[Pathfinder (Tabletop Game)|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.

[[Category:Tabletop Games]]

[[Category:Character Tiers]]