It could be that the wording is unintuitive and contradictory and for that I apologize. In my mind, the system BB is based around heavily favors rushdown and aggressive play in general. We can see this in the design choices made around the number of high pressure block strings, negative penalties and all the defensive options built in, barrier guarding, burst, easy counter strikes when properly timed, large throw tech windows, etc. Note how most of that is assuming short-range combat.
Then we have characters that are heavily focused around keeping the opponent at range and the ability to deal heavy damage without ever fighting up-close. Meanwhile if the opponent tries to get into an offensive stance that isn’t perfectly set-up, they’ll likely get jacked up covering the distance. A lot of characters simply don’t have the tools (or at least a notable amount of them) to deal with a very good zoning game. They end up running into a bunch of swords trying to get within the distance of any attack they’ve got or having to try and not die to bee stings.
So I guess you could say the game system favors these type of characters, but then you have Jin. Jin has reasonable matches (possibly even a favorable one vs. Nu) against the top tier. When he gets up close, he can do a lot of damage to the opp and immediately go into pressure / mix-up strings. Meanwhile at midrange, he also has projectiles, ice car and his sword has decent range on it’s own as well. I’m no expert in the match so I can’t give details. Basically though when the rushdown characters can get close, they have a huge advantage, but not all of them can get there to do anything about it. Tao has that insane speed and some nutty attack patterns, but she usually can’t get in enough times to win the match vs. Rachel or Arakune.
Now compare it to like SF4, SF4 you don’t want to necessarily be striking all the time, just controlling space is good enough. In fact for a number of characters, the best thing to do after gaining a life-lead is sitting back and simply responding to what the opponent is doing. The system in SF4 is much more suited to zoning and turtling. Weak throws, slower gameplay, easier to break pressure strings, some downright stupid DP mechanics, ultras, etc. Rushdown can still succeed in the game, but it certainly isn’t the centerpiece of the game or even most characters. That’s what people mean when they say BB’s system is favoring the rushdown, a ton of design choices in the game are an explicit attempt to encourage direct combat and favor the attacker. The issue I see is that most characters simply don’t have a strong enough tool to breakthrough the strong zoning games of the top 3, maybe as the game evolves this will change, but that’s how it is atm.
In this case it seems like more people are talking about tiers when they have the opportunity to be practicing or just playing.
It makes sense to talk about possible tiers based on the highest level gameplay videos, but trying to apply those tiers to yourself(not you, but everyone here) when you aren’t even remotely good at the game, doesn’t make sense.
Just play and learn…choose whoever you want for whatever reason but even in the highest level of play, the players that used the most disadvantages characters find a way to pull out impressive wins with reasonable consistency. And while those guys are practicing and playing to improve, people here just complain about tiers.
I don’t think Taokaka has enough representation. I’m still convinced Tao has to have the advantage on v13 at high level as a lot of her drives just bypass Nu’s swords and on counterhit with the B cancel can lead to like 70% and leave her cornered afterwards … just dumb.
Really i expect top 6 when this game settles to look like
v13
arakune
jin
Rachel
Taokaka
Carl
After that i don’t think it will really matter though some awesome litchi’s will probably show up, but the game is pretty balanced except for arakune and v13, but they both have even or disadvantageous matchups so it’s not like we are talking Yun/Chun tier here. v13 is just OP vs characters that can’t move well Hakumen her will end up as an 8-2, but any character that can move around can potentially get some pressure on her, bait the backdash and hurt her. She isn’t Eddie.
Exactly. Spend less time trying to say what would fix the game and just play it, practice and learn until the tier list is nothing more than a bunch of probables. Even at high levels, the character usage is very diverse.
i agree with pretty much everything you said here, however i personally as an ara player would put it something like this:
Nu
Rachel
Arakune
Carl
Jin
Taokaka
my explanation is:
arakune loses to both rachel and nu pretty badly so its somewhat counterinuitive to put him above either, even if they are his only bad matchups
carl has that loop of cheese that can flat out kill a character if he so much as lands a 2a on you from near any position on screen.
however his ablility to do just that versus arakune Nu or rachel doesnt seem all that high which is why i put him below them.
i dont know what jin can do to not get looped… if jin can easily get out of the loop or can easily stop it from starting in the first place i would put jin ahead of him.
and tao has some of the most promise in the game at least on paper… but as of yet i havent seen a tao really be able to fulfill it to its fullest extent… it may not even be possible or it may just take more time.
however her ability to corner any opponent from a combo is strong, if she can find more crossups and blocking mixups into these combos then i expect her to go up.
i also believe that her double super may have some real untapped power… ala genei jin… but who knows at this point.
This pretty much sums it up really. The tiers in actuality are probably only 10% correct, just due to the newness of the game. I remember Carl being moved up in the ranks due to his loop, coming out of low tier. There is still so many things we’ve yet to discover, i’m sure of it. So let’s just keep playing praying for a Bang loop/glitch :lol:
Edit: My only thought on this topic, stuff like what Geezer above me posts is ridiculous. This game is NOT new. It has been out in Japan for what, 8 months? If you live in Cali, Texas, NYC (I think) or a few other locations, you’ve had access to it for 3-4 months at least. We’re the US. Now that the game is out on console, we’ll approach the game from a different angle, and find out some new stuff of our own. But to completely disregard everything that’s out there as “10% complete” is nothing short of arrogance.
Exactly, I remember people used to absolutely trash Carl because they claimed he sucked so bad, of course, that’s before people found his clap loop
:rolleyes:
Regarding the tiers, aside from the Top 3 vs. Hakumen/Tager, I feel that the game is quite balanced, especially for a “1st” game. Mind you, Hakumen and Tager are actually decent characters in their own right. If only they had better ways to get in on the zoners (or if zoning was nerfed a little), than they’d be pretty good.
^^imho bang and taokaka have the most untapped potential/ promise in the game… but it will take many hours of training mode for them to come into fruition… if its even humanly possible to consistently play these characters as fast as they can be played, which is the real question.
case in point here are some videos of crazy bang shit courtesy of 10 stars on dustloop:
I think the problems with Nu, Arakune, and Rachel to an extent have more to do with those character designs, and the relative character designs of Tager and Hakumen. There’s just something deeply problematic about having characters who both control the screen and are the most mobile in the game combined with characters who can only act by getting in and have severe movement disabilities. Tager’s magnetism and maybe Hakumen’s star recharging are supposed to fix this, but Tager’s magnetism obviously doesn’t cut it right now, and Hakumen doesn’t even really seem to have any coherent design to deal with these things.
anybody bitching about anybody in this game except for probably nu can stfu seriously. Every character has some retarded shit and if you can take advantage of yours better than the other person you win. Case in point Tager. He’s low tier right? Well it takes all of about a combo and a half to win with him. he has beast ass grab range and his sledge goes through some utterly retarded stuff. I was surprised as hell that he could flat out grab Noel out of her 3C…which leads to like 3500 damage alone. plus he has the Buster which is 50%+ off everyone. Being the worst in this game doesn’t really mean much since everyone has some ridiculous mechanic. Now Nu’s is by far the most ridiculous, that is why she is the best.
Is it balanced? Well somewhat, I think Nu is just head and shoulders above everyone. I also think Haku is worse than Tager. Top 3 should is pretty defined but after that its a crapshoot. You can win with anyone it this game imo though, it just might take more work though. For a first iteration of a fighter though, I think they did a very good job on balancing.
What could improve it though is…
Nu doesn’t gain heat from swords, lower damage a bit
Kune, can’t recurse, lower damage
Haku, have his 234A be his normal dash and give it projectile invincibility
Carl, take out the loop, give him more health, a few better combos…
Bang, even though he has mixup and Oki for days, a better poke
Ragna, recover slightly more health from D attacks
everyone else seems fine to me
learn to abuse the stupid shit your character can do, everyone has some shenanigans to play with
I personally don’t like the balance of the game. Why do you have a character that let’s people mash A (jab) and successfully link, yet Hakumen actually requires timing. Why the hell does Litchi not have a 2nd SRK option to tsubame (note that Jin has 4) that won’t throw away her stick in case you don’t want to risk missing / getting blocked. If tsubame fails, she has NO reversal moves, a short jab, and a backdash thats s complete trash for your defensive options (not to mention most block strings won’t even allow you to backstep / jump) . And don’t even think about recalling the stick while getting pressured…
Then you have Tager who has tools, but they in no way equal out arakune’s and nu’s distance game… At least in guilty gear, Potemkin had a ground slam to trip up distanced fighters.
You have Arakune who can run away from you and not get a negative penalty because his projectiles may hit, and if you avoid them, you end up getting the negative penalty. So you now have to chase him around with lower defense.
Hakumen has one way to deal with pressure, a counter that’s complete guesswork. Yet Noel has 2D to avoid lows in strings, a situational 4D to prevent people from coming back in after pressure, and a flash kick to save you if someone jumps over your missed drive attack.
Its not that I think Blazblue is bad (I still play it), but giving a character 4 SRKs while another has one that disables future use of an SRK is pretty rediculous. (And all SRks can link to combos so that doesn’t justify tsubame gaeshi either. I think that if they (for the next BB) keep people like Ragna, noel, Arakune, and others the same (don’t weaken them) and give people like Hakumen more options like the rest of the cast, this game would be much better. Its really enjoyable but the distribution of tools given to some characters is a bit lop-sided.
Litchi has a godlike SRK that combos into all kinds of shit and can straight up destroy pressure against you
Jin on the other hand does not, you can’t combo off of his even on counter unless in corner, and 3/4 of his have vicuous lag.
I agree though, that they should give the lowers more tools and keep the highers largely the same, taking shit away wasn’t really implemented in GG I doubt it happens here.
Speed is never enough. If speed was THAT important in a game then Chipp, Vega, El, Sonic, Falcon, ZSS, and of course Tao and Bang would be top tier. Which sucks because I really like the fast characters
IDK, I feel tager is good enough. He has tools to get close. If he gets near you 2-3 a round you lose, simple as that. Giving him more tools to get to you like 5-6 times would make him way too good. seriously if he catches you twice you lose. think about that. giving him even more options to get to you would make shit stupid. all you have to do is mess your spacing up one time now and you get a good chunk of your life taken off of simple shit.
