I went to the arcades recently and as always, I go to play Tekken after awhile. I pick Hwoarang of course, my favorite character. This guy stepped up to me and said that Hwoarang was a lower tier character. After that, he put in a token and played me, and picked Law. He won the first round because I got stuck in a move. After that, I got pissed and started to actually try to beat him because I underestimated him. I perfected him the first round then the second was a normal win, with me with still 75% life bar left. I kind of pissed off the dude because after he lost he just walked away -_-. I didn’t know what he was talking about when he said tier list, because I thought the game was fairly balanced. Can someone give me a tier list which shows that Hwo is low tier? I looked online and I couldn’t find anything that said Hwo is low tier.
The game is fairly balanced, of the 38 (different) characters, all except bears are tournament viable and even bears are strong when you sink enough time into them (you’ll usually see them in 3v3s where a wild card character can pick up a few matches). There is no universal tier list, but they all usually follow the same trends. Bears, Yoshi, Zafina, and Raven at the bottom, everyone else in the middle, then usually Lars, Steve, and Bryan at the top.
The lowest tier characters are overly punishable, have weak tools, poor punishers, and usually lower than average damage potential. From there you have mid-tier characters where the options become much stronger, characters start to be less punishable, have stronger pressure tools, much better punishers, and have average damage potential. So just because your character is “lower tier character” doesn’t mean you’re going to lose, instead it’s as long as you don’t play as Bears, Yoshi, Zafina, or Raven, you won’t have to work extra hard to win.
What’s interesting is that because those characters are regarded as “lowest tier”, they’re often shrugged off when practicing BUT they’re also the trickiest characters in the game. Therefore they are more difficult to use because they often don’t play like the rest of the cast. So when a player masters a tricky character, you’ll often see things you’ll have never seen before (or even thought of).
It’s similar to Super Turbo where T.Hawk was disregarded for what, 15 years? Then as the game overly matures and tech is found decades later, he suddenly becomes incredibly strong. So what changed? Simply put, time. Character potential for “top tier” characters is often exhausted within the first few years because there are so many people playing top tier characters. The number of “man hours” devoted to a top tier character far exceeds that of a low tier and whatever tech is yet to be discovered soon is. Using a more modern example, look at MvC3/UMvC3 Wesker. He was arguably a top 3 character for well into UMvC3’s life, but simply because soooo many people were playing as him, whatever undiscovered tricks were left to be found were far less than that compared to a character such as Zero. As people learn to play against a Wesker, as his potential is reached, and as his weaknesses are discovered, he begins to fall down the tier list. Now Wesker isn’t a top 3 or even a top 5, but is now arguably a top 10 as characters with much greater potential of undiscovered tech take his spot.
In that sense low and low-mid characters will have an advantage against players who don’t put the time in to learn them, and that’s the beauty with Tekken. Because so much of the cast is tournament viable, the player who puts in the time to learn a little about everyone will have an advantage against someone who doesn’t. The last thing you want to do is prepare against top tier characters and go two-and-out against a Hwoarang and Raven simply because they’re “low tier”.
Tell that to that Law player the next time you see him.
Wow, this is great info, I’ll sure tell him that! But by tech, what do you mean?
“Tech” referring to tricks, set ups, traps, maximizing character damage potential, and overall information that isn’t available immediately.
Using my T.Hawk example, tech would refer to the neg-edge, option select in the corner after scoring a knockdown. IIRC against almost all (if not the all) the cast if T.Hawk knocksdown the opponent in the corner, the match is theoretically over (assuming the player has perfect execution). Damdai had a great explanation of this tech and other general information shenanigans on YouTube. The video below might be the one I’m thinking of, but it’s too long for me to check right now.
Edit: Yes, this is the video I’m thinking of, it starts @ ~2:30
[media=youtube]ZBxyBXMZqbA[/media]
Bears are totally viable WTH tyler2k you should know better. They are better than I would say a majority of the cast.
I never post on SRK, but given “Zero” in the name and posting in NY threads, I’d have to guess that’s ZTS talking.
Not 100% saying Bears aren’t tournament viable as much as the amount of time required to excel with them far exceeds that of mid-tier characters.