DevilTron, Kurasa. I can confidently say your wrong about T. Blade. He is at the very least, the top 3 characters in this game. He would be top 1 if it wasn’t for his horrible assist. He can 0-death an opponent without an assist. Hardly any characters can do that. Here is some proof of this. Proof > Theory. =P
[media=youtube]LXkZoVUL5Fk[/media]
From 2:20 - 2:45.
Admit it, I’m right and you guys are wrong.
You’re using a 20% baroque combo that ends in a level three as your argument? What game have you been playing for the last 3 months? Just about EVERYONE can kill Ryu with 20% red life. I have a 20% baroque combo with Doronjo that does 53KB damage and you don’t see me saying that she is top 3 in game based on a strong combo. You know why? Because I can dish out the same damage with Polimar, Cashern, Ryu, Jun, Ippatsuman, Zero, Joe the Condor, Frank West, Megaman, Morrigan, Soki, Tekkaman, Batsu, Alex, and Yatter-1. I really hope your last post was in jest (fuckin trolls :P).
Half the cast just kills characters with that much red life. Being able to do so doesn’t make someone top, it only makes them competitive.
I don’t know if you’re joking or not, but in true e-scrub fashion you use videos of other people playing rather than first hand experience to try to prove a point. The fact of the matter is that Blade is widely unsafe and lacks mixup options outside of gimmicks. All you posted was a video of a simple combo using bbq and a lvl3 super. By that we could prove that roll is top tier because she has a high damage combo using as much meter and bbq as possible. Doesn’t mean jack shit.
There’s possible reasons for blade being really good, however you gave the weakest example possible
Okay, just going to throw down a few basic concepts for people arguing about this or that character being top tier and why. Before I get too into it, I’m going to say now I won’t bother putting smaller or more specific mechanical considerations (e.g. megacrush, air throw) into my metagame analysis because most if not all of them are readily understood and can be applied to the broader analysis. In other words, you can figure out on your own how they play in with the rest of what I’ll have written here.
Anyways…
The absolute most valuable trait for any character is speed. Speed alone cannot make a character good, but it is the most important quality when considered “in a vacuum.” Speed works both offensively and defensively, as speed can allow you to both break in easier as well as punish easier. It allows you to chase your opponent down, or keep distance from them. It allows you to perform the next step of your strategy that much sooner and makes it that much less likely to be foreseen or punished. Because of this, speed affects virtually all other mechanics, if not all, in a significant way; influential enough in some cases to “make or break” a character based on how other mechanics are implemented.
The other two major traits are health and damage. These I rank below speed in terms of importance because they are more “dependent” mechanics. Health is a purely defensive mechanic that determines how much damage you can take. Damage is a purely offensive mechanic that determines how effectively you can reduce your opponent’s health. In isolation, health and damage are much less influential than is typically supposed. This is due to the fact speed plays such a large role in determining how effectively a character can leverage its health and damage. There isn’t much of an advantage to be gained from high damage if all of your moves come out slowly; likewise, high health won’t give you any edge over your opponent if you aren’t capable of fighting on your own terms.
Examples of how this works in actual game play will better highlight what I have described above. Let’s take a few characters and apply this metagame analysis to them and their supposed position on the speculative tier-lists.
Tekkaman Blade is one character a lot of people seem to over-value. He can be a strong character, no doubt, but S-tier and “top 3” predictions and the like are exaggerated. People point out his high damage, relatively high health and long combos as evidence, but do these really prove anything? The simple answer is “no.” In addition to high damage and long combos, he also has a lot of start-up frames on his moves. Once he gets going he may be dangerous, but the odds of him actually breaking in and getting off his moves are much smaller than a character whose moves lack start-up frames. His quicker moves lack range and power, so his ability to start combos relies on being up-close, but being up-close would make his more powerful moves much riskier.
Roll is a character that I often see under-valued, and a lot of people are arguing that she is low-tier because her damage and health are low. Her health and damage may be low, but she also has quick moves, a lot of combo potential and a million ways to use meter effectively, whether it be to regain health, extend combos or chain supers. She also is a very small character, thus much harder to hit depending on the opposing character. Since she’s much more likely to land and counter moves, her raw damage and health become much less of liabilities.
Abrupt finish.
Great post. I agree with this 100%.
Firstly, here’s a quick explanation of Blade’s mixup for those who don’t know. As the opponent, you need to watch for 2 things. If you see Blade’s Falchion start up (without an assist), you can generally mash 2A and get a free combo. If you see an assist come in, then you need to watch extra closely for Falchion, because one of two things can happen:
(a) earlier Falchion: Blade crosses you up before the assist hits. Loses to throws, or gives you frame advantage if you block everything (not enough to punish if it’s A-Falchion, afaik…).
(b) later Falchion: Blade crosses you up after the assist hits. May lose to throws after you block the assist, or you can block everything for frame advantage.
After some thought, I think Blade isn’t quite as linear as Kurasa makes him sound.
First of all, to block this mixup requires *solid *anticipation and concentration (and being offline 
). You have to see and know the timing for the assist’s attack so that you can know whether Blade is going to cross you up before or after the assist hits. When case (a) happens, you have to react quickly and without hesitation to block it / throw it. I’ve seen someone block this mixup consistently in training mode after some practice, but in a real match, Blade might call the assist / go for the cross-up earlier, or not do Falchion at all, or do something really weird (5A 2A 4C wtf?) to break your anticipation and hit you with the mixup. Tournament pressure might affect you, too.
Now, even if the opponent can block the mixup almost perfectly, consider that the reward for Blade successfully landing a mixup is a lot higher than the risk of being thrown or at frame disadvantage (assuming he can’t be punished after A-Falchion is blocked…), and consider the options he has with Baroque. For instance, he could fake case (a) by Baroqueing the Falchion at the last moment. Maybe do an early Falchion, quickly Baroque it, and do another one, making it harder to tell whether case (a) or (b) is coming. Maybe Baroque, jump, and do an ambiguous j.C cross-up after they block the assist. Etc. I might agree that he’s linear without Baroque, but with it I still think he has some very legitimate mixup options.
I still don’t think he’s top-tier, though.
Isn’t awesome how much debate there is over the tier list? This game is pretty well balanced for the most part.
As long as T. Blade can baroque and use his assist he is top tier. Baroque gives his laggy moves cancels and certain assist’s can cover up his laggy whiff attack. He can crash interlude his normals if he knows he will be punished. His range makes up for his lack of ground speed. Most of T. Blade’s weaknesses can be substituted into something else.
Kurasa: It looked like 10% baroque to me not 20%. T. Blade has an easier time 0-death someone because of his high damage output, and because he can use his level 3 super and level 1 crash interlude in the air to increase damage of the air combo and he can do this WITHOUT an assist. The other characters you mentioned rely on an assist to do this much damage, except for maybe a few like Alex, Polimar, Frank West infinite, Ryu and Tekkaman. So you are right when you say T. Blade isn’t the only one that can do this. It’s why Alex, Ryu, and Tekkaman are so good as well. Frank West and Polimar are mediocre in my opinion, because of their obvious weaknesses, not a bad thing though, since no real certain characters totally dominate the tournaments yet. Thanks for calling me a troll.
Will you always be able to baroque out of a bad move? What move would you do after you cancel? Would you block? What would you do to get out of the block string? How will you compensate for using extra meter on cancels? What will you do if you don’t have meter?
Like I said, I can see Blade being high tier, but up there with Zero, Y1, etc.? I doubt it. When it comes down to it, they’re still that much better because they don’t need to use extra baroque or cancel moves just to have safe moves, because they just have safer moves.
@CaliberChamp
First off, I was only giving you shit with the Troll remark, so please don’t take any offense to that (I was hoping that the 
would give it away).
Secondly, all of the characters that I listed can deal that much damage without assists and 20% red life. I purposely left off characters that require an assist to break 45KB with 20%.
Polimar has his bird symbols to tag on the extra damage or you can save them and wall bounce your opp into a lvl 3.
Jun can loop you for huge damage in the corner (there are vids of her doing 100% with 10%)
Ippatsuman has his loop which does hellas when in BBQ mode and can end the combo with a reset grab.
Condor can also loop you with feathers and relaunch (he can kill with 10% and probably without BBQ at all)
Megaman has weapon change relaunch combos and combo into and after his lvl 3 (Trag’s vids should illustrate his strengths perfectly)
Soki can activate Oni mode to loop people in the corner (there are vids of this too where he kills with 10%)
Morrigan has an infinite and can combo into her lvl 3
Batsu can loop you anywhere on the screen and end his combos with a lvl 3
Yatter-1 has relaunch combos that can end in fire breath (this might be the only one that can’t hit 50KB easily but he definitely gets 45KB with 20%)
^ So basically all the characters you mentioned in your post are all top contenders. T. Blade may do worse in tournaments over time, but I haven’t seen it happen yet, and I doubt I will, unless a certain team counters T. Blade. The characters that have an easier combo set up (aka combo starter) will pull off big combo’s more consistently and I believe T. Blade is one of those characters along with Zero and Ryu.
Fatally Yours: One of the other important attributes you forgot to mention was range, which T. Blade has plenty of. His range of most of his attacks can keep him safe, just like quick start up and cooldown attacks are safe. That’s why I said earlier that range can be substituted for attack speed because both attributes provide safety.
tbh Caliber, you’re an online warrior. You can’t really make concrete points about characters you don’t play at a high level, especially not offline. If you want to make a solid point about Blade’s potential you gotta head out to a tourney and go to town on some high-level players.
I know you probably didn’t intend to make it sound like it, but that’s a kinda dickish thing to say. So because Caliber plays mostly online due to location/lack of travel money etc, he has no credit as a player and can’t discuss what he thinks of Blade?
Dickish or not, yeah, thats pretty much correct. Online play in TvC isnt even close to good enough to call it the same game as offline TvC.
HAHA Virally Yours! Tekkaman Blade is good but doesn’t mean he does not have problems with characters. I will just say that.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t say he can’t dicuss it. I’m just saying he can’t expect his point(s) to hold much water because his evidence is based on video footage of other people playing and his experience playing online, which is a much different game compared to offline. The only reason I make this point is because he’s clashing arguments againist someone who has played in high-level tournaments offline. A player like that would be more in-depth about the matchups and tiers then someone who hasn’t.
I’m in the same boat as well. I only play mid-level, and the only people I played againist are online. That’s why I didn’t make a tier list. If I did, all the characters capable of abusing the lag and/or the wiimote option would be at the top of my list:
T.Blade, Zero, Ken, Karas, Saki, etc.
Characters that don’t do so well in the online evironment would be at the bottom:
Frank, Polimar, Doronjo, Roll, etc.
That wouldn’t be an accurate tier list.
That’s what my point more or less was. He’s good but not S-tier or top 3. He has problems too. Not a ton, but just enough to keep him beneath Zero and Y1 in my opinion.
And generally speaking, I think team tier lists are better, considering how the game is played. Tekkaman alone is kind of bleh if your zoning game isn’t perfect, as a partner he’s arguably the best in the game because of his assist.
This is why I think more of you should try considering characters from a “metagame” perspective rather than a directly experiential one (if you don’t play good competition offline, that is).
Virally Yours: I was joking about your name. Your opinion is respectable though. You may be right with certain match ups and I may be right about other match ups versus T. Blade, so therefore I say we are both correct.
M.D. I know, but I’m not able to spill money on tournaments right now, other players do that instead in offline tournaments, so I use them as an example, it’s better then theory crafting with no proof. That youtube video I linked with that huge T. Blade combo can easily happen offline, it was kind of miraculous to see it done online, so I suppose the connection was really good. I myself play offline and online about the same. Offline mostly training mode, online mostly making up a strategy to see if it works.
Taurus: That’s unfortunately how it is to some people, this is a forum though, so people are obviously going to give their opinion. People that always play in tournaments aren’t always correct, like how J. Wong wanted to ban the giants, he is a credible player, but he is wrong, and no one should believe everything he say’s.
My view on it is that while yes, TvC’s online isn’t exactly the most credible place to get tier list data, it shouldn’t be automatically scoffed at. I’m not gonna sit here and say T.Blade is top tier when my only evidence is some laggy ass match where I got trapped in a falchion loop that was unblockable due to lag. I’ve had really good connections with quite a few T.Blade users who are at my level of skill, and I usually have a bitch of a fight on my hands even with my Zero.
Blade has a lot going for him. He has range, power, great speed in the air, can combo with horrifying damage, has good supers, and if played right can become one big mind-fuck to an opponent. All he really lacks is a decent approach and ground speed. I don’t know how much that will hurt him down the line but so far it doesn’t look like it’s being that hurtful to his overall character.
if you rank alex high you should rank TB high as well.