So, shoutouts to Xie’s BBCS:EX tier list discussion thread from back in the day, because I’m gonna bite that format for this.
Basically what I’d like this thread to be is a collection of each player’s take on the strength of their character in various aspects of the game. I think it’ll keep the thread as clean as possible to have a predetermined format for these posts, being a list of parameters, followed by a letter ranking ranging from C- to S+, and then a short text blurb justifying your ranking, based on personal experience and the objective qualities of the character. The parameters are:
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Reward: Reward essentially covers whatever you get when you do something correctly with your character, i.e. successfully mixing up the opponent, whiff punishing, applying pressure. This covers obvious things such as damage and shadow meter, as well as things like future mixup opportunities and denying the opponent’s resources. If a character can create a large advantage in any of those categories based on few good decisions, they’ll be ranked high here.
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Neutral: Neutral is exactly what it says on the tin. This is an assessment of how successful your character is when they’re outside pressure range with no frame advantage. Strong normals, safe advancing specials, projectiles, and good mobility contribute to a character having strong neutral. If a character can turn a situation with no advantages to one where they have an advantage easily, they’ll be ranked high here.
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Offense: Offense covers the full spectrum of pressure, mixups, okizeme, and safety on all of the above. Offense is a measure of how your character can turn an advantaged situation into damage or other reward. If a character can easily open the opponent up or is difficult to take your turn back from, they’ll be ranked high here.
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Defense: Defense is, in essence, your character’s ability to nullify an opponent’s offensive advantage. Reversals, defensive pokes, low and high profile moves, a good backdash, and the ability to make any of those options safe all contribute to strong defense. If a character feels difficult to pressure or mix up due to their available options, they’ll be ranked high here.
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Breakability: Due to the unique nature of KI I feel it’s necessary to have this as a separate parameter from offense. Breakability covers three things primarily: the difficulty of breaking a character’s combos, their ability to reset while in combo, and their ability to get damage without exposing themselves too much to the breaker game. If a character has strong tools to extend their offense without an ender once they’ve opened the opponent up, they’ll be ranked high here.
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Instinct: This simply ranks how strong a character’s instinct is, and how it enhances the other aspects of the character. In this section you should note how instinct changes the letter ranking of their other parameters. A character who sees a large overall increase in power, either spread over several parameters or as a sharp increase in one, will rank high here.
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Versatility: This won’t be a letter ranking, but one of the following: Very specialized / Specialized / Versatile / Very versatile. This essentially covers your character’s breadth of options and ability to alter their gameplan based on the matchup. This isn’t necessarily a measure of a character’s strength, as a highly specialized character may excel so strongly in their area that they’re still dominant.
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Comeback Factor: Again, not necessarily a measure of a character’s strength, as some characters will have poor comeback ability but will be good at avoiding being put in situations where they’ll need to make comebacks. This covers a character’s ability to reverse a losing situation, i.e. being in danger when your opponent has just lost their first life bar.
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Overall: The total strength of the character based on parameters of reward, neutral, offense, defense, breakability, and instinct. Characters that are strong in all of these areas or exceptional in several of them will rank high here.
To maintain clarity in the discussion I would also ask that if you’re going to respond to another user’s post you do so starting with a quote of exactly what you’re responding to, followed by whether you agree/disagree/have questions/have answers, then the rest of your post.
I think it would be beneficial for community knowledge for strong players like @STORM179 with hisako, @F3Sleep with arbiter/gargos, etc to respond with their take on how each of their characters’ strengths rank, which is sort of the main reason I’m making this thread. Do keep in mind: this isn’t an attempt to build a tier list, as that’s based on matchups; rather, the goal is assessing each character individually.
As an example, I’ll start with my rankings for my main:
[details=Climax’s fulgore rankings]
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Reward: B- Fulgore’s damage/shadow enders are pretty good, but his combo trait is not useful for adding damage to combos, and due to his unique meter design he will have shadow available to juice up lockouts less often than other characters. In addition, his doubles and linkers both do lower-than-normal damage. As far as building a meter advantage, fulgore’s best pressure and neutral tools all hinder his ability to generate meter. However, once he’s built up the resources for it hype beam is a highly damaging option, and he has a strong one-chance combo from his shadow laser opener with full meter.
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Neutral: S- Fulgore’s neutral is among the best in the game. His normals, while strictly worse than a good handful of other characters, are still great, and he has a good approach in both blade dash and axis slash. With resources, his zoning game is smothering, being able to trap the opponent in situations where no option seems like a good one. His mobility is also good with excellent dashes and increased mobility as he builds resources, and with full bar essentially any whiff is unsafe against him due to the incredible power of hype beam. He also has an invincible AA he can cancel into from zoning tools, making jumps very weak vs him. However, his strongest neutral tools cost him resources, either pips or reactor speed, which are precious to him.
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Offense: A+ If he’s willing to spend resources, fulgore can do as many as 3 tight frame traps in a row, making it very difficult to know when you can take your turn back from him. In addition his okizeme is among the best in the game with truly unreactable mixups that lead to full combos off almost any knockdown. He also has a cancellable overhead, which can seemingly come out of nowhere in his pressure despite its short range. His pressure is also some of the hardest in the game to shadow counter. Like his neutral game, though, fulgore’s best offensive tools drain his resources and slow his reactor speed.
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Defense: S- Fulgore’s DP is likely the second best reversal in the game next to Jago’s DP, and situationally can be better than Jago’s. He also has a strong backdash with or without meter buffs to get him out of bad situations. However, his access to shadow counters is more limited than the rest of the cast, making him more susceptible to specific kinds of offense.
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Breakability: B- Fulgore has no special options to make his combos harder to break, but he can manual anything he wants from his laser opener and both teleport and overhead are cheeky options he can bring out during a combo to reset damage scaling. Notably, his lack of flipout means his mixup on launcher ender is somewhat weak as his best options come from heavy moves.
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Instinct: A- Fulgore’s instinct rapidly builds meter for him, but perhaps even more importantly it prevents his energy system moves from dropping his reactor speed, enhancing his neutral (S+) and offense (S-) and possibly increasing his reward (B) depending on how much meter he starts with and how much he spends on neutral/offense. However, his instinct does not make any of those things really any stronger, it just allows him to use them without their normal limits.
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Versatility: Versatile. Fulgore is a hybrid zoner/rushdown character, but to play him properly you need to have mastery of both.
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Comeback factor: B- While hype beam is an incredibly powerful momentum-reversing tool, he will often not have access to it, and his otherwise low damage output means that his comebacks often depend on him maintaining a streak of momentum for an extended period of time.
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Overall: S Fulgore excels in essentially every area except damage, with the only thing holding him back from running away with the game being his unique meter system. Overall he’s an extremely powerful character, but he requires some level of discipline and planning to play effectively without ending up high and dry with no meter the whole match.[/details]
