[FB] Tier List Discussion

[brett_]

What makes Deathscythe as high as it is?

He got a variety of buffs, but the major one imo is his Assist, which moves faster and reloads now. Allowing his game plan to be about using Assists when he wants to, and stalling or hunting with jammer while they're on reload.

Rather than "Well, you get 3(6) of these. Better use them well." It made it a very difficult judgement call on when to use an assist when you only have 3 per life, which generally meant a lot of conservative usage of it.

Jammer CD got improved also, making it something you can use more often

[Mightfo]

He got a variety of buffs, but the major one imo is his Assist, which moves faster and reloads now. Allowing his game plan to be about using Assists when he wants to, and stalling or hunting with jammer while they're on reload.

Rather than "Well, you get 3(6) of these. Better use them well." It made it a very difficult judgement call on when to use an assist when you only have 3 per life, which generally meant a lot of conservative usage of it.

Jammer CD got improved also, making it something you can use more often

Brett, what sorts of partners do you feel like go best with DSH? That may also partially explain his rise.

Why is providence in A tier when units like Quebeleys are in B tier? I like providence and all but seriously,he has no moves besides funnels, BR, and unreliable stun net.

Edit: BTW if anyone could explain to me why Zeong is so high up I'd appreciate it.

"No moves besides funnels and stun net" is a bit strange to say. That's like "rx-78-2 has no moves besides bazooka, BR, 6b and guntank." His funnels are a pretty great tool for controlling enemy movement like most funnels, his csA is great, BC is probably better than you think, (Even if it doesnt hit, it creates an "artificial corner" of sorts, and it is useful to throw out even when you're max screen from the enemy.), and 5ac can be quite nice at close range and for ensuring punishes. His melee attacks are also exceptionally large, for some reason, especially cc8b. His funnels are also somewhat more flexible than qubeley's, since he has direction+AC, the ability to send out single funnels or several and to stagger as he pleases, and his csA can be nice for confirming off funnels.

Also, keep in mind: The tier "list" is just based on win %s at tournaments in sportsland and kansai. It is not a matter of someone's opinion of why providence is A+ and qubeley is B, it is just a matter of win %s. Not that long ago, providence was B+ for quite a while, not much better than qubeley. It is quite possible that the tier rankings are heavily affected by individual players, or perhaps by what sort of teams players end up with in an area depending on player demographics.

Qubeley does have advantages over him, but again, cost and compatibility/roles, as brett mentioned. All of the 2k funnel users are A+ or S.(Providence, Zeong, Rozen, Kshatriya). However, most funnel 3ks and all funnel 2.5ks are lower than that, so it may be possible that funnels are not quite as valuable of a tool for 3ks/2.5ks as for 2ks.

Qubeley's damage projection for a 2500 is honestly mediocre. It doesn't have any ranged attacks that force a down, its funnels are unreliable with their impact stun, they don't really reload fast, and their damage is fairly low combined with the fact that aside from BR>neutral funnels> BR, it can't put out damage very quickly. Additionally, the startup and range of pressure was nerfed on FB's launch so it can't serve as an effective, huge AoE reliably anymore.

In MkII's case its long-range game is unspectacular with sluggish, low damage funnels compounded with the typical long reload of 1000s. Compare it to, say, Ez8, which has the long-range punch of the cannon and ranged assists with the ability to switch modes.

Your negativity regarding the qubeleys is rather strange. Your disadvantage descriptions seem rather irrelevant/unconvincing, considering what seems to make other mechs strong and considering that we're talking about providence. Damage and forcing downs is far from everything- vanilla unicorn had absurd A damage and easy knockdowns but was not high tier, and similar goes for several current B/B+ tier mechs. Not sure why you consider the lack of being able to quickly force a down to be such a glaring weakness, it rarely comes down to that.(Plus, she has AC and A-5AB-A as you noted) Funnels are about creating situations(since they're like BR shots that are separate from you that you send off in advance, so you work in tandem with them to help punish enemies), not about pumping out raw damage.

More to the point, providence lacks funnel damage as well unless you get to combo funnels into csA i suppose, and he has worse ammo issues on his A *and* he has even less options for knocking down quickly than qubeley. And of course, qubeley has several other advantages over providence- her funnels dont vernier, using AB for fastfalls, mashymere shield, BC, better movement, flight mode, etc...

Also, it is true that qubeley funnels are only particularly useful as 2-3 funnels instead of 1-2 for providence, but she also reloads her funnels much faster(2s vs 3s), and she has csA to regulate funnel ammo. Also, If you hit with 1 funnel shot out of 3 for qubeley, that was probably just pure luckiness. The fact that you need 2 hits with funnels to cause hitstun just sort of matches up with what you would routinely get off of a funnel shot. The situations where you'd land only one funnel shot off an AB are not really important IMO, although it would help a bit for punishing boost hops.

Was her BC nerfed? I can't find anything on the FB wiki about that, and testing indicates her BC is the same size and only slightly slower(if that, my testing may be off) than the O's. Not to mention she *starts* with BC ammo, unlike the O, and has had her melee damage buffed a ton since vanilla.

I also wonder why you consider qubeley mk-ii's funnels to be "sluggish." They are poor at close range due to the strange formation they try to get at close range, but otherwise they are pretty nice in combination with her long redlock range and high damage A. Also, her AB and A both reload in 2.5s now, which is quite fast, etc etc fastfalls, 1k with a shield assist etc etc. If you are having crippling ammo problems on funnels with either qubeley, you are probably not playing quite right.

Edited February 14, 2014 by Mightfo

[Sabator]

That's fine I'm just saying like....up to a certain point that logic works, it's just irresponsible telling people to only pick S tier suits for the numerical advantage and then they find out their play style doesn't mesh with any of them and they wonder why they lose.

The S tier contains suits in pretty much every playstyle though. the 4 S tier 3ks cover a wide range of playstyles, you have Banshee for your aggressive yami uchi back play, kshatriya/zeong for players who like to play a passive back, delta plus for people who like a versatile suit. If someone can't do well with at least one of the S tiers then they have issues with their fundamentals.

For context's sake, I main Impulse but I do switch it up to Banshee when I'm having a hard time and I DO notice an improvement in winrate, despite having less playtime with Banshee and not really enjoying its style of play as much. If I was going to a serious tournament for this game I would probably spend a month beforehand grinding Banshee. Although it looks like that Luna Impulse is gonna fly straight into the top tier so I might not have to.

[brett_]

Brett, what sorts of partners do you feel like go best with DSH? That may also partially explain his rise.

The same one's as Vanilla - his main improvements as I listed are pretty straight forward. I also forgot to mention the CSa buff that many have reported to be a big deal.

Was her BC nerfed? I can't find anything on the FB wiki about that, and testing indicates her BC is the same size and only slightly slower(if that, my testing may be off) than the O's. Not to mention she *starts* with BC ammo, unlike the O, and has had her melee damage buffed a ton since vanilla.

Her BC is definitely feels slower in this version, at least when I played her. Perhaps I am mistakenly recalling her Vanilla BC being faster, but all I know is that when I first touched Qubeley in EXVSFB, all my pressure timings were completely wrong.

[Skillkill107]

The S tier contains suits in pretty much every playstyle though. the 4 S tier 3ks cover a wide range of playstyles, you have Banshee for your aggressive yami uchi back play, kshatriya/zeong for players who like to play a passive back, delta plus for people who like a versatile suit. If someone can't do well with at least one of the S tiers then they have issues with their fundamentals.

For context's sake, I main Impulse but I do switch it up to Banshee when I'm having a hard time and I DO notice an improvement in winrate, despite having less playtime with Banshee and not really enjoying its style of play as much. If I was going to a serious tournament for this game I would probably spend a month beforehand grinding Banshee. Although it looks like that Luna Impulse is gonna fly straight into the top tier so I might not have to.

Forgive me I just don't know what yami uchi means so if you could explain that'd be great. Beyond that I feel like it's just not a good thing to be blaming your tools. Speaking from experience if you were having problems against someone in an S rank suit in most situations, all things equal your problems didn't come from your suit, they came from how you were playing and while lower tier suits don't have their problems. I can go days where I get long win streaks with Exia or Sinanju then go on a dry spell with the Delta plus or UC because of bad partners or players simply outplaying me. At the end of the day most of my matches tend to pan out in a way where, my overall skill was more important than my suit selection was in determining how I won a match. We can talk about how WZTV has a very slow firing pattern in comparison to most units, QanT's ranged options are still fairly lacking overall, how Reborn/UC lose immense amounts of firepower without form changing. These are all very real factors that could turn people off these suits and turn them to lower tier units with different handling that fits how they prefer to play the game. It's not one size fits all, these suits are competitively relevant because they fit a powerful niche and they play it better than anyone else in their cost range and that's fine. I'm simply saying that there's no direct correlation with individuals and their play-style and how they'll handle S-tiers.

If I were doing a serious tournament for this game, that was a hold tourney I would not get fussy over tiers or what my partner picked so much as making sure my team mate and I had good synergy and cooperated well together, and with a shuffle I'd just try to make sure I knew what I was doing and didn't pick something that could screw me. As for Luna Impulse....not really, she's got QZTV syndrome with her ammo from what I hear, the S tiers aren't shifting for her any time soon.

[brett_]

Forgive me I just don't know what yami uchi means s

It means sneak attack, the idea of hitting someone in their blindspot

[WindmanV3]

I really tend not to bother with tiers and the like. I just tend to use suits I like or know how to play.

Looking back on today, I tried out Luna Impulse and found myself not doing so good because I did not know when to use certain modes and what can be used where, so of course, I lost.

But when I play a suit like RX-78, I tend to do a tad better. Not the greatest, but it's because I can use the suit to a certain degree that helps me out.

Tiers sure play an important role in anything, and I think Gundam is no exception. But it just feels like there's a lot more to it than "Oh, suit X can do so much more than suit Y and that's why suit X is top tier and suit Y isn't."

Correct me if I am horribly wrong, but I think in the times I have played Gundam, that has become apparent.

I see people win with low tier suits while playing against top tier suits.

I can't help but wonder what tiers mean then. Just my two cents.

[Skillkill107]

Tiers exist because while a lot of suits have similar properties, in a lot of ways several suits have much better tools to help to their strength, and they're quantified using the Japanese tournament win rates according to Sabator. Thus they do have a meaning in terms of effectiveness and how they relate to individual unit performance over another for example:

Hi-Nu is considered less effective than Nu despite sharing most of the same tools and having superior melee due to the absence of Fin Funnel Barrier on Hi-Nu. Psychoframe resonance does not give enough firepower to compensate for that loss and Fin Funnel Barrier allows Nu to close in on situations and control most exchanges while it's up.

Despite having a ton of tools, they're not that good and the Kapool's extremely unstable health pool bumped it down to bottom tier.

Despite Epyon's melee prowess, it's in the same boat for being a 3k without the ability to maintain the necessary presence to effectively front because of it's lack of ranged options.

While we can go into arguments on other suits, and make comparisons of why higher tier suits with similar functions are superior or why certain performance quirks make a suit less viable, the tier lists are not the end all be all of the world when an actual match comes round. Team composition is a very important part of how the game works and a team with better synergy will win regardless of tier, all other thing equal. The tier list however exists the way it does because several of the existing top tier units do their jobs very well and fit into a wide range of teams as mentioned above by Sabator so it's an issue of is this suit more effective in general essentially.

[ShinsoBEAM]

B tier suits I feel alot of them feel like wrong cost for what they do if that makes sense, like they arn't bad they just have metagame issues. Correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like Susanoo suffers from this, on a 2500/3000 team, getting his transam out twice is like pulling teeth. When I felt in EXVS when he was 2000 it was a lot easier to get it. It's either that or they are just lack luster and it's I feel like you can just point to another suit and say why am I not playing this instead.

[Skillkill107]

Susanoo isn't really built for 3k/2.5k composition, he's a much better in 1k, 2.5k or double 2.5k teams. Honestly that assessment isn't entirely inaccurate though... A lot of B rank suits are like that and only remain relevant through their unique handling quirks.

[Sabator]

It's also worth mentioning that while I stand by my earlier point on tiers, the tiers in FB are REALLY compressed. In most fighting game tierlists, generally everyone down to lower A/high B tier is considered competitively viable. This is a pretty far cry from games like kof or 3s where the tierlist goes down all the way to like E and F tier with completely unplayable garbage characters. So when you roll into a tournament with Gold Sumo, its kinda like picking Makoto in 3s. You're perfectly capable of winning everything, it's just going to take you a lot more effort and skill than it takes for the guy using chun.

[Gorkzilla]

I was hoping that Berga Giros would have been a little higher. Oh well. Guess I'll just have to play smarter. 

[MISTER_BUSH1D0]

In my opinion tallgeese 3 looks and plays alot beter if you master sv it could be super useful

[GARBLAR]

In my opinion tallgeese 3 looks and plays alot beter if you master sv it could be super useful

I like that you say this with Treize as your avatar. I'm a Treize fanboy for life ^^;

 

Anyhow, I do agree. I saw a tier list somewhere that put the Goose III near the top in Maxi but I just found another that kept him in the B range so I don't really know what to believe. His ballerina step improvement is also neat. It's just easy to waste boost if you're inexperienced at the super vernier 

[MISTER_BUSH1D0]

I like that you say this with Treize as your avatar. I'm a Treize fanboy for life ^^;

Anyhow, I do agree. I saw a tier list somewhere that put the Goose III near the top in Maxi but I just found another that kept him in the B range so I don't really know what to believe. His ballerina step improvement is also neat. It's just easy to waste boost if you're inexperienced at the super vernier

Thats true me neither but ill master the super vernier its evasive movement and speed are the fastest of all suits with this suit man ascends even god treize fanboy aswell xd gundam wing for life [emoji41]

[HeavensLance]

http://jbbs.shitaraba.net/bbs/read.cgi/game/54170/1410828436/596

 

EXVSFB 2014/10/05 Translated List:

 

3000

S Wing TV, Banshee Norn > Unicorn, Reborns > Quanta

A Turn A > Master, Sazabi, Double X, Xi > 00 Raiser, Full Cloth, Wing EW, nu, Ex-S, Destiny, Turn X, Hi-v

B Strike Freedom, V2 > Epyon

 

2500

S Banshee

A The O > Strike Noir, God, Deathscythe, Extreme Xenon, Impulse > Virsago, Altron

B X Divider, Gundam X, ZZ, Susanoo, Extreme Eclipse , GP-02, WZ Quatre, Infinite Justice, Raphael, Tallgeese III > Gold Frame Mina, Extreme Aios, Sinanju , Freedom, Cherudim, Qubeley, X1, X3, GP-03, Gottrlartan > Zeta, Arche

 

2000

S Zeong > Kshatriya

A Hambrabi, Rozen Zulu, Delta > Gyan, Mk-II, Gunner Zaku, Forbidden, Blue Frame, Messala > Dynames, Providence, Blue Destiny, Gold Frame

B Char Gelgoog, F91, Hyaku Shiki, Strike Rouge, Gerbera Tetra , Acguy, X2, Speigel, Exia, Dragon, , GP-01, Gold Sumo, Silver Sumo, , Red Frame, Rx-78> Gato Gelgoog, Andrew Gaia, Luna Impulse, Heavyarms, Strike, Stargazer, Roux Zeta, Ridden Zaku, Gaia

C Kapool

 

1000

S Re-gz

A Ez8 > Zaku II Kai, Ground Gundam > Zudah, Dog, Tank

B V Hexa, Gouf, Acguy, Jinx Three > Lacus Justice, Kamille RX-78, Doan Zaku, GUN EZ, Elle MK-II,  Alex Gundam, Berga Giros, Arios > Duel, Qebeley

C Zeta Zaku, Zaku 3