What exactly determines a characters rank on a tier list? Is it the number of people who are good with the character? Or is it the characters overall potential?
Character’s overall potential against every other character
basically their matchup ratios played to their potential.
this has been posted a billion times… use search next time.
What exactly is tier? Do you say it like TEE-er?
The characters overall match-ups.
Tear as in…Bloody Tears!
“Tier” rhymes with “beer.”
Top tier is made of characters with either no or very minor bad match-ups. For instance, Sagat in CvS2 or Chun in 3S.
Mid tier is characters who are generally solid but have some deficiencies that prevent them from being really good. For instance, Ryu in CvS2 or Urien in 3S.
Low tier is characters who pretty much have an uphill battle in most or all of their fights. For instance, Kyosuke in CvS2 or Sean in 3S.
Also other factors like damage potential, speed, space control and agression come into it a lot. Yun for example is fast, deals a lot of damage and is the most agressive character because of Genei-Jin. Chun-Li is fast, controls a lot of space with her c.mk and also deals a lot of damage. Then there’s Ken, who controls space beautifully and while he doesn’t deal as much damage as the others, is incredibly fast and agressive too.
On the flip side you have characters like Hugo, Q, Twelve and Sean. While some can deal a lot of damage, they are either too slow or have terrible normals to make use of the space around them. It makes the top tiers the dominating factor as these are things they simply can’t do. It doesn’t mean you can’t win with bottom tiers, but it’s makes it extremely difficult.
HIGH FIVES FOR CASTLEVANIA REFERENCE 
high five
:wgrin: