From my experience, low-tiers often have the “suprise factor” going for them. For example, I play Amingo/Storm/Sonson in MvC2 at FFA, and often beat Sentinels/Magnetos with Amingo, because he has tactics against them that are unknown to almost everyone (I don’t feel like going into detail, but if you wanna know em for some reason, hit me up on AIM). They’re good tactics, but not so good that they should be dominating as much as they do, it’s just that people don’t see the shit coming. Sonson plays in a similar fashion, using unorthadox suprise tactics to beat the top-tiers.
I usually play Hugo in 3s and he’s considered low tier. Thing is, even though im not brilliant i can quite easilly beat the so called higher tiers like chun and ken. Tiers, imo, are irrelivant.
As a hugo player, the hardest fight I’ve online is against Q… Mainly because Q can charge up his defense really easily since Hugo has a hard time countering him out of it w/his slow foot speed. Q on the other hand can just do charge f+P when Hugo tries to taunt. That guy was beating me 19 to 1 or 2 with Q, whereas I was around 50-50 against him with other characters. And he picked ‘high tier’ characters like Chun Li and Makoto too. Even though Q is generally low tier, I would say on his personal tier list, Q is quite high…
Also, I think the only reason Hugo and Q are considered low tier is because people don’t charge up their defense level. if they do that they have two to three times as many chances as the other characters do to score damage.
One major thing low-tiered characters have over more popular choices is that most people have no idea what you can do or how to defend against it. You play against a billion Kens in 3s, so you have set tactics in mind when you go into the match. If he does particular moves, your head will reveral them on auto-pilot. But against characters you haven’t played against in a while, you don’t have preset stuff to do. You have to really pay attention to the match, and it might even take a few to get settled.
Personally, I get bored as shit playing most of the top tier characters. Sometimes I lie awake at night and cry, because if I put as much effort into playing Yun or Chun as I do Necro and Twelve, I’d probably place a lot higher. But I can’t do it, so I have to be a mediocre player who gets noticed because he plays shitty characters.
N - And scrubby videos of shit people already know, which of course goes without saying.
I believe tiers are just there as a sort of quick reference. Some charecters are just easier to play than others. Of course if you take the time to learn properlly any charecter can be deadly.
Out of curiosity, were the top 4-5 in Third Strike the initial big dogs of the game when it first came out?
I was just asking because usually something monumental about a character isnt found out about until months later. Cervantes in Calibur 2 and Kuma from Tekken 4 specifically come to mind.
I say mid-tiers own for the simple fact that I use them and no one bitches about them. I can play the damn game and enjoy it, without an overwhelming advantage or disadvantage. Plus, it seems like any character I take a liking to becomes dead center. It wasn’t a part to be taken seriously.
And I said 3S to avoid people mentioning 3S. I’m fully aware of the tiers, with Yun-top/Sean-bottom since they pop up in more discussions than I care to count. But compare the tiers of those two to say… the Marvel Versus series?
One factor is collectively due to sites like this, information travels faster, and game knowledge has gotten higher, so it’s a lot easier to spot tiering then it was in say, the HF days.
Game developer skill has gone down a bit also (AM2 is the exception, but they don’t concern themselves with the US market, with good reason), which is not a good combination for the future.
Our best hope is that SNK stumbles onto something good for a future game. KOF98, MOTW, and SS2 all came so close to being that game. (If they had gotten rid of Iori’s back+B and/or scum gale, it would have been)
I don’t think tiers matter in #R until u get to that tournament high level play, and then it’s really just Eddie and Slayer that seem overpowering. Everyone thinks May and other lower tiers in GG have no chance, but this is because most people do not play them because they don’t see others playing them. Therefore these characters don’t get any exposure for what they can do. Any character in GG can win if played smart, especially at casual level play. Lower tier characters may require a bit more patience and more complicated execution to make some of their more damaging combos happen. One of the best players here in Jax plays May. U think she doesn’t have mixups or something? Wait until u start getting rushed down by jump installed dolphin FRCs->airdash hs crossups, among many other overlooked factors she has.
skill with low tiers does not make tiers non-existant.
if i played s-kyosuke against my friend playing cvs2 for the first time using a-blanka, i’d beast him. that doesn’t mean tiers don’t exist.
as for #reload, there are only a couple overpowered people (namely slayer, eddie was toned down a bit, and maybe robo-ky). there rest is more or less even, except for zappa because he is too random and unreliable.
tiers don’t exist? look at fuckin marvel and SVC: Chaos and tell me they don’t.
I think people just avoid Anji for some reason, even though he’s a damn fun character. He’s got some cool options, and some moves that while at first seem worthless actually work pretty well. At least what I’ve played of him.
