I think talking about tiers is interesting, but right now I think it’s totally baseless. With most new games you can pretty quickly find a couple characters that you think will end up high or top tier and a couple you think will end up low or bottom tier, but that’s really not the case here. I’m being 100% honest when I say that I think every single character has a chance of being top tier with the exception of Fei Long and possibly Ken. If I traveled forward in time 5 years and dudes told me the top tier was Zangief, Cammy, and DeeJay, I’d believe it. If they told me it was Dhalsim, Akuma, Blanka, I’d believe it. If they told me Sagat, Guile, Hawk, Boxer, and Ryu were all top tier, sure, I’d believe it. I’m sure that a tier list will eventually make itself apparent, but right now, from a first impression of two days, man, I think it’s extremely well balanced.
Really the only exception is Fei, and potentially Ken. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Fei and Ken end up mid tier, but I think top tier is probably outside the realm of possibility for them. The rekkas may go farther, but the distance between the end of Fei’s fist and his vulnerable hitbox is the same, so he can be poked out of it by all the same stuff. And having short chicken wing go through fireballs is just not enough of a boost to compare with chicken wing being relatively crappy up close. And Ken, he obviously got a bit better at some things, but I don’t necessarily think his matchups got better. Unlike most characters who got new tools to deal with specific problems, it’s like, wherever Ken did X before, he now does X+1, except for his throw, which is now X-1. That doesn’t necessarily make for a more effective character overall, I mean Hawk was low tier in ST and he had an infinite against a lot of characters. Ken has problems in some matchups, and I don’t think he really got the tools to deal with them. Again, I think both Fei and Ken are better than their ST counterparts, but with virtually everyone else getting better in ways that make them more complete characters, I don’t think that really cuts it.
Higher-Jin, I don’t think Cammy is as bad as you think. I don’t think she’s gonna be anything above mid-tier, to be honest, but she’s… interseting now. The strange part is taht she has NO new tricks outside of Cannon Drills and Spin Knuckles. Everything else was a nerf. So yeah, if those two things don’t pan out enough, she will be in BIG trouble. I’m still not sure where I stand with her… how I feel about her. The Cannon Drills are really good. REALLY good. Multiple Short Cannon Drills in a row is pretty dang good. You don’t even need Low Forward anymore. And Forward and Roundhouse Cannon Drills to close the gap have been very helpful. Even poorly distanced Cannon Drills end up allowing you to block in time, just because few are expecting you to attack with them from so far away (as of now).
I strangely think Akuma sucks right now. I cannot land an Air Fireball against anyone to save my life. My Akuma must just suck.
UltraDavid, you really think Ken doesn’t have any potential? I think he’s really good. But maybe it’s because so few people are used to him right now. But I don’t see him as having less potential than anyone else.
I actually believe Zangief has very bad potential to be top tier. He’s good now, but in the end, I think he’ll end up dying in similar ways he’s always died, once everyone gets used to his new shenanigans.
Right now, my GUESSES for top tier (and these are total guesses, of course) would be, in no particular order, Blanka, Sagat, and Guile. Blanka is just too damned scary. Sagat is just buff. And Guile, well… he didn’t get any worse, and I just for some reason feel like he’s got just enough new things to make him a bit tougher. And he’ll be able to pull out a lot of random miracle wins from that Super.
I think Sirlin did a good job at balancing this game. I can see any and every character with the possibility of being high or top (depending on actual tier charts) countermatches are still gonna be there eventually (we’re gonna find something that breaks SOMEONE) but it’s nowhere near as unplausable as Guile vs Honda once was.
But if I had to say. just from seeing SRK players play
lol, play a good sim, dj, honda or rog and get back to me on that. Even good shoto’s are still uphill. It only takes one opening to get in and do big damage with blanka, but vs very good players it’s difficult to create the opening.
Getting hit after a blocked blanka ball wasn’t really the main problem vs many of his problem matchups anyway, well that’s not how i felt.
I think he’s been rebalanced nicely, not vs rog but everyone else seems less uphill. the 2 new blanka balls give your opponent something else to watch out for, loosening up their defence and thus allowing to advance in the fashion he normally does more easily. it was always possible to win with him before and its easier now. He’s good.
Top is still rog in my opinion, although guile seems pretty nifty with his new flashkick which punishes everything and sagat at just under half screen has me scared to do anything in case his tiger knee hits me in my fireball/move startup!!
There are no tiers in this game. It’s all about counter characters imo. Even more so than ST with the up grades and down grades of characters in hd remix. I think ryu is better than sagat. His tigershots are so slow now. I can jump kick him on reaction. Everyone is good imo. I haven’t played many t-hawks so I can’t judge him. Just play the game and not try to tier whore. I will say akuma seems like he sucks or maybe it’s the scrubs that are playing with him. :lol:
I agree with everything you said. I havent really played any other good Guile players yet (out of like 150 ranked games) but he has been my main so far and he is really solid in this game. Flashkicks pushing forward is really usefull, the new super input makes it a lot more reliable+usefull and his overhead forward+RH is great too. I think he used to be around mid-tier, and while I don’t think he’s top he definitely moved up
Good Gief players have been giving me a really hard time online he is actually quite good against Guile now where it used to be an unfair matchup. IMO Gief moved up in the tiers too
If I had to guess at characters in the top tier so far I would say Sagat for sure, probably Ryu and possibly Blanka and Akuma. Balrogs still solid but he got nerfed and can’t build super like he did before, he may still be up there but he isnt the best in the game anymore
Lol, the Blanka/Sim match is so retarded I can’t believe it, and not in the way you’re describing it. It takes SOOOOO much effort to keep the dirty rodent (as fatboy refers to him) out, and as soon as he gets in, its just j. lk spam into walkup throws and there’s really very little to do about it, especially online . Maybe if Sirlin hadn’t intentionally kept the reversal teleport bug in it would be a little more fair.
@ Ultradavid:
Amazing that we came to the same rationale and conclusion on Ken, despite a lot of people in the general thread posting outlandish notions of Ken>Ryu now
I think the cannon drill pressure is enough to get her out of the basement tier. They’re really really good now. But only time will tell. It’s still tooooo soon to tell, new stuff will be discovered in matchups across the board.
That’s really how I feel about it right now too. Every character seems good, actually. It’s just some have more bad matchups than others. I guess you could make a tier list based on how few bad matchups a character has haha.
Shinblanka is wrong of course there are tiers how the fuck can you deny that you blind? You even admitted some characters have more bad matchups then others which is exactly how tiers are decided:rofl:
Like I said before the one thing I’m sure of that no one can dispute is that sagat, vega, and balrog are still the best. I would include sim as well but I haven’t gotten a chance to see good sims in action yet.
erm, i would say akuma is still being explored. :china:
…he does take a bit of work to be successful, especially with hard hits taking chunks off of his life.
sim’s matchup advantages just slimmed down a bit; i’d include him amongst the top.
sagat is just too monstrous to not notice his dominance.
vega? erm, top-mid for sure…the fake wall dive isn’t as dominating as the knockdown from ST wall dives, that’s for sure
He’s definitely not dominating like HD sagat.
I’d have to partially agree with shinblanka; HD (and ST for that matter) has been a matchup-oriented game, except there are a lot of very apparent matchup issues. A general “tier list” isn’t necessarily a good description, but a matchup-oriented chart would be a tad more descriptive…like the ones on nohoho’s site.
when you describe “tiers”, it’s more like “how the matchups stack up against each other”, right?
every character could probably go up or down ALL tier levels. we will NEVER have an accurate tier list until we have a strong scene for HD remix with lots of top players, and even THEN the tier list will just consist of some top player’s opinions, and we saw how weird those were on nohoho’s matchup chart.
…although there were apparently distinct patterns on how a lot of the top Japanese players viewed certain matchups, both advantages and disadvantages. usually the experts of the character would view a differing opinion on the matchups, which is very interesting.
definitely, 9 times out of 10 if the guy picks Akuma it’s a free win