Doom with assists is clearly better than Doom without assists, but his potential is there. Same thing goes for all of the really top tier characters. Wolverine with Berzerker Charge + XF is STILL a nightmare to block. He’s good with a HOST of assists, not just Akuma. (Drones, Arrows, etc)
Vanilla Phoenix was powerful in her own right. Akuma was one of the best anchors in the game with meter. No assists required.
EVERY character is more powerful with assists, but how they stand on their own should be taken into account.
I agree that it should be taken into account, but if a character is being tiered based SOLELY on his perfect pairing of assists, then that tells me the character is not that powerful.
Agreed about Strider + Doom, but aren’t you just furthering my point? He was a solid character made infinitely better by the assist. He wasn’t the same with other assists. Does that not get taken into account.
Wesker is the magic man. You put him on any team and it’s better. Doom…better. Strider with Vajra…better.
If we want to tier duos or teams, that makes sense, but I think taking to account how a character fairs on the their own, usage of X-factor, etc…etc…should be taken into account.
Well, if the correct pairing makes that otherwise average character shit on the rest of the cast, then I would say that character is S tier. Even if he’s shit without it… once again, look at Vanilla Wolverine. He really wasn’t that scary without any of his best friends.
I have to respectfully disagree. In fact, for a team based game, I feel exactly the opposite of this. Unless the point is to rank anchors, I think a character’s viability solo is nearly irrelevant, aside from being “icing on the cake” and “good anchor ability” as elements to consider for their rank. If X character is completely broken with Y assist, X character should be ranked S even if otherwise garbage. The obvious example is vanilla Wolverine. Was he decent solo? Sure. Was he over the top cheap with Tatsu/Jam/Drones. Youbeddabelievit.
I will also add my “who knows, this is total conjecture” disclaimer.
Your S Tier: I agree that Viper, Zero and Dante all still look to have it in this game. I don’t see a reason yet to differentiate some sort of S+ vs S though. Viper may have some tough match-ups in the styles of the new characters like Firebrand which is yet to be seen.
Your Potential S: I agree with Vergil and maybe Wesker. The rest I think will most likely fall down into a solid A Tier status or below. Characters like Nova, Firebrand, Strider, RR, Spencer and Frank West require other characters or other conditions (X-Factor, meter or setup) to excel, which means they’re either calling assists often (risk) or can be deconstructed or worn out in some situations.
**Your A Tier: **I’d probably bump Magnus down to B. He’s way easier to both block and throw-tech now, and his assist isn’t as hot as it used to be. Storm may need to go down to B as well. She’s still a great character but I feel like Firebrand does what she did better. He has great movement, better normals, similar damage. Her DHC is better, but he’s a better character overall. Losing the DHC glitch probably hurt her the most of all characters.
Your Potential A Tier: This game may be too meter hungry to really enjoy X-23’s biggest perk, which is Dirt Nap kills. When meter flowed like wine in Vanilla you could often get one or even two Dirt Naps in a round. Now it’s hard to spare one. I’d probably push her, Spiderman, Ryu and Captain America down to B tier. Spiderman’s a point character with bad match-ups against other point characters. Ryu likes to come in late with meter but his assists are only average in the meantime. Captain America is much better in this game, but I don’t see him being on the same level as the people you already mentioned in A / Potential A.
The Big B Tier: This is gonna be a big bucket for a while. So many characters seem viable with a few issues that can be worked around with team comp/setup. I still think characters in B tier are playable competitively provided you aren’t throwing 3 of them on a team without consideration to their weaknesses or bad match-ups.
However, ultimately I don’t think Nemesis or Ghost Rider will be in it. Their gameplans are too one dimensional and both of them struggle against teleports (hey, look at all those top tier contenders with teleports…). I can’t see either of them playing outside of point either because of their weak mix-up/chase-you games.
I also think Chris, Hulk, She-Hulk, Hsien Ko and Iron Fist will probably be C or worse. They’re either too one dimensional, have big liabilities or just aren’t impressive enough.
And lastly I’d say that Frank West and Phoenix Wright are probably going to prove to be too needy or not impressive enough for the limitations they add to a team. I could gun for a specific combo (they all seem to take 1-2 meters, X-Factors or dice roll TACs) that cheats Frank West in at level 3, 4 or 5, or I could have just killed your character and had a better setup waiting for your next one using a character that has better mix-ups on incoming characters than Frank West. They may be A or B tier quality characters (like Ultimate Phoenix), but there’s a lot of variance there as well which hurts.
Awesome response, I don’t really have alot to add, but those are all very good points.
I still feel that Viper is head and shoulders above the rest of the cast. She does everything, and she does it better than everyone else, she was the most broken among broken characters in Vanilla… In Ultimate, she’s the only of those characters that got stronger, even Zero as neat as his buffs are and as GDLK as he is, he is weaker then he was in Vanilla.
Ghost Rider’s gameplan is one-dimensional because it works so darn good. I see alot of characters in the B-tier and potential A-tier that Ghosty will poop on solo even. Plus he is an assist killing machine, which hurts ones that are effective but take a while to startup (Hidden Missiles, Sentinel Force, Eye of Agamatto etc.)
I have to disagree about Nemesis. (Though I hate saying this because I don’t want people to play him)
He has a ton of tools and can be very effective even at a distance with Rocket + Deadly Reach. His L Command throw comes out fast enough to be very useful. His L Clothesline Rocket is only -2 on block. I think he will be a slightly lesser version of Vanilla She-Hulk and will be a solid B Tier character. I do agree that he is best on point, but his assists do have some usefulness and warrant him being played in second position with the right tandem.
I’m not going to say whether he’s better or worse than Viper just yet because it’s too early but it’s also blatantly obvious that Zero is better than he was in vanilla. He didn’t lose any tools, hard knockdown on buster goes completely unnoticed by the vast majority of Zero teams, he got more health (notice how all the high-end bnb’s right now do 800k damage and conveniently that doesn’t kill him anymore), he gained ridiculous mobility tools, and if that wasn’t enough we already have combos after 1 week that do more damage than every combo he had in vanilla.
I’ll be honest, I can’t tell if he’s going to be really good or bad yet. I’m playing him on my team, but every round I feel like I’m one wrong decision away from a blow-up even when I’m dominating.
He’s not quite as hard as MODOK to play or combo with, but deciding when to stick his little normals out there feels similar and is scary as hell.
You know more about Zero than I do, so I will defer to your judgement. I also, didn’t mention that alot of the new assists (Vajra in particular) make laming with Zero harder.
True, in my opinion he has both really good, and really bad matchups, which is why people keep saying counterpick tier. However, I don’t think a counterpick character can be considered A or above.
Magneto can still open people up for free just as long as they’re not in the air. His tri dash A is too godlike to go unnoticed as it’s a quick 50/50 everytime he hops off the ground.
I think Ryu is going to be around high A tier in the end as well. He’s really good at opening people up with his overhead which leads into pretty rediculous damage. Denjin mode pretty much almost builds it’s own meter, like C.Viper. He’s only a meter whore when he wants to punish stuff.
Nemesis does have his problems but will probably be B or above due to him placing high at tournaments. Either that or his amazing Aerial “I’m a hitbox that may OS grab you” Heavy will put him there.
I don’t think Dante is S tier. A at least for sure, but S is a big stretch if you ask me. He lost a few very dominant tools like startup invincible hammer, S.L and easy hit confirms and damage. He still has all the tools and the ability to do BIG damage and build truckloads of meter but the execution requirement is much higher now. Still won’t ever drop below A though, too good of a character with a too good set of assists.
And I agree with Avarice, the Zero buffs are insane. He’s certainly different from Vanilla, but definitely not weaker. Buster cancel is too good, corner mixup got better with crossup raikousen, and assist extensions got buffed. Only thing I find harder is hitconfirming and having to work around the HSD timer.
Also, about firebrand:
[media=youtube]yr4JcH1sjTQ[/media]
About Magneto, he feels really clunky and really slow. What was really dangerous about Magneto in Vanilla was that any hit would lead to death, followed by an almost unblockable high/low/throw mix up which would lead to death, ad infinitum.
Now, he has a harder time hit confirming, his combos sometimes drop for no reason, his tridash is slower, and his throws aren’t even scary at all, making his mixup that much weaker.
I just dont see ghost being above B-tier he loses SO badly to real keep away he literally has 0 options besides tagging in another character. Great counter pick against a lot of the cast sure. But a A-tier character…not happening.
What is this non-sense about Magneto not still being stupid?
This is my feeling on it exactly. He feels like an old man compared to Vanilla. No Magnus, your new repulsion move isn’t going to get us off your lawn. You just need to calm down and take your Vitamin Btier Pill.
What’s one dimensional if you can execute it well? Half the S tiers in Vanilla were either completely one dimensional or played without exploiting their other dimensions (IMO the reason people like Flocker did so well towards the end, they actually started looking at a character’s other options ) and still dominated because of how effective that one dimension is.
Does he really though? I’ve faced off against the lamest possible Doom/Dormammu teams, and I just sat back and negated their projectiles, built meter and punished every assist call with ease. Can’t jump over my head or j.h will get ya.
Maybe my definition of “true keepaway” is faulty but from experience I don’t see it.
I almost want to run my team as Strider/Firebrand/Viper now since both of them get dry tag madness in combos, Strider and Firebrand can both break 900K when with Viper. --;
