I didn’t cherry pick I showed a consistent set of examples of lower to low health characters built around balancing their tools with reduced health being among the top tiers. And in these examples they often make up about half or more of the considered to be best characters.
Yun in SF3 is 2nd only to Akuma in heath. Chun/Ken are average.
SFxT? Chun/Nina/Alisa all top tier and lower than average health. Law/Hwo/Kaz average health. It’s somewhat rare to find top tier characters balanced via having MORE health and being weaker tool wise than characters having LESS health and better tools.
Magneto, Spiral, Storm, Strider, Psylocke all below average to bottom tier health in Marvel 2. Cable and CapCom were average and of course Sentinel as the highest. Though I suppose what is more important is the point character than the assists like Psylocke being low health.
CvS2 two of the best characters are low health characters with Sakura/Vega. Bison is average, Blanka/Sagat above normal. Some of this is due to an exploit not intended by the developers. RCs drastically change how tools work and I bet the tiers would look VERY different without RCs.
Guilty Gear as a whole series has Eddie/Zato-1 CONSISTENTLY top tier and also low to lowest in health rankings via guts/defense systems. Venom and Dizzy too are generally quite good and low health.
Smash Melee? Fox is one of the lighest characters in the game. heighest weight top tier you’ll find is sheik at average weight. Falco also light, marth lightish closer to mid. Brawl? Meta knight was supposed to be balanced by being one of the lighest characters in the game. You’ll find Game and Watch and Falco among top tiers and light. SMBB is actually one of the examples of a couple heavy chars being top tier, and likely that is because brawl was so floaty it helped offset their weight. Smash 4? Diddy, Rosalina, Pikachu, Ness, ZSS, Marth all light characters and considered among the best last I checked. Among the heavier chars I think Shulk is the only one and he isn’t even THAT heavy he is closer to average IIRC.
Ever heard of the Grappler Syndrome? Where a slow grappler is offset by high health and people think they are top tier in the beginning but then people find the holes in their tools and they drop down to low tier.
Most of the time you’ll find at least half of the top tier characters in a competitive fighting game is a glass cannon character designed around “I have lower than normal health to offset my great tools.”
Rarely (it does happen) will you find a high health / slow character with weaker tools in that top tier. It’s either low health or average with amazing tools.
Here is the problem with balancing via health: it requires you to make a mistake and get hit. Having weaker tools affects the entire match, having lower health only affects you if you get hit which happened if you made a mistake or got outplayed. You ARE going to get hit, but the fact of the matter is that stronger tools are consistently more useful than slightly more health. The only time health REALLY affects balance in any significant way is if the difference in health is VERY drastic while the tool difference is only slightly better.
Look at it this way; if your tools are really good you can keep from getting hit negating that downside. If your tools are weaker you’re going to get hit more negating that bonus.
And again, I never said health DOESN’T balance I said it’s the LEAST EFFECTIVE form of balance.
