Tier list!

[Cynric]

snip

Currently there are plenty of times where burst will not be the answer. The flow of the feast is a back and forth between the two teams unless a team is sweeped from the start. There are times where you will need to defend your current medals in order to win instead of attempting to burst down the final player/players to win the match via a sweep. Times like this are where lots of utility and crowd control comes in handy.

Coordinating CC and utility to mitigate damage is just as important as doing the same to deal it. Especially with the way they've designed the heavy medal system, and the quick charging/spawning adrenaline rush.

There are times where you will be forced to play defensively where burst may or may not help. In the situation you described involving shielding, Yes if that was at the start of the match you could not engage them, however there's nothing preventing them from engaging you, nor does that particular shielding utility need to happen only once and only at the start. If they were up in medals even by a small amount like 50, and they produced enough utility to halt your burst in the last minute, you basically only have the option to LB at that point, and depending on the rest of the teams defensive utility/healing utility/CC/LB they have left it could still be a loss.

It's not that burst isn't important. Amazing burst can outright destroy an unprepared team. It's that burst isn't the only way to win, and there are times where utility will win the match.



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@ zuzu and others interested in the list: Maybe.. a separate list by role under the current one? Any feedback or ideas are definitely welcome.

[Cidel]

I'm a fan of the tier list charts that have been gaining ground lately in fighting games, so I slapped this together rather quickly for anyone who feels knowledgeable/gutsy enough (and can work MS Paint for Cut/Pastes) to put together something a little more visual.



(Yes, there's an "SS" tier... can ignore the letters altogether and just worry about the relative placement, if you wish)

Personally, I don't feel qualified enough to place melee/tanks anywhere, though I have a general idea of where I'd put the healers and ranged...

I'm curious to see if this'll go anywhere though/ anyone will find it useful.

[Cynric]

snip.



(Yes, there's an "SS" tier... can ignore the letters altogether and just worry about the relative placement, if you wish)

Personally, I don't feel qualified enough to place melee/tanks anywhere, though I have a general idea of where I'd put the healers and ranged...

I'm curious to see if this'll go anywhere though/ anyone will find it useful.

Yeah I've seen this format in UMVC3 before and a couple of other fighters as well. Maybe i'll mess around with it later. I just never liked them. They become a huge mess the more characters there are.

Off topic note: IN Blazblue there was an SSS Tier character.

[zuzu-bq]

Amazing burst can outright destroy an unprepared team. It's that burst isn't the only way to win, and there are times where utility will win the match.

Good bursting destroy bad healers. I'm looking at you Aspected Benefic only Astros!

[Petite]

Bored at school so made a quick mock up tier list for the moment

B- Tier jobs have hard counters that can shut down their play but their counters can be overcome by exceptional play. They however lack aspects such as powerful burst, Crowd Control, or utility, to make them extremely competitive with A and S tier jobs.

B-Tier
Bard, Machinist

BRD and MCH lacking powerful burst and crowd control? What are their "hard" counters? You shouldn't have posted this list if it was hastily put together..

[Chevronone]

[QUOTE=Cynric;3640908
B- Tier jobs have hard counters that can shut down their play but their counters can be overcome by exceptional play. They however lack aspects such as powerful burst, Crowd Control, or utility, to make them extremely competitive with A and S tier jobs [/QUOTE]

BRD and MCH lack powerful bursts? Trolololol...they currently have THE most powerful bursts.

[Isala]

BRD and MCH lack powerful bursts? Trolololol...they currently have THE most powerful bursts.

Those are words nobody wants to hear around here. They want to pretend that there's no use for a BRD in the Feast. At least since the SMN nerfs, they don't look at me when I walk in and go "We got a BRD. GG."

[Cynric]

BRD Crowd Control - Shadowbind 40 s CD, Blunt Arrow 30s CD, Blast Shot 150s CD. A bind, silence, and knockback, all on relatively long CD's aside from the silence compared to what the other jobs are capable of. That's hardly any Crowd Control, it's there it's just not much.

BRD Utility - Mana Song, Mages Ballad(lowers damage dealt but restores MP), Foe Requiem(Unusable in 4v4) Mana Draw(Useless) Wardens Paean(the only really useful utility they have, however very RNG related with which detrimental effects will be stopped or broken)

BRD has powerful burst yes but they meet the criteria of having no real CC or utility to speak of while also having their burst stopped by purify. If you leave a bard alone they can kill you. But why would you leave a bard alone? They lack CC resistance so it's also easy to sleep them/stun lock them during their burst window and halting it, or even binding them and getting out of their range.

MCH - Crowd Control 40% Heavy / 12 s bind that while good are sharing CD timers, You can use one or the other but not both and you're likely going to be using the bind more often, Stun /Silence on a shared recast timer. Stun Gun AoE Stun, this is good but its not always best the build up DR in an AoE fashion like this. Knockback that requires close range(can be good can be bad, its a coin flip due to the range required)

Machinist actually comes out ahead of bard in terms of CC in one way, and then not in another due to the fact that a lot their CC tools are on a shared timer with each other or require close range for some awful reason.

Utility - Hypercharge(requires careful use as it can overwrite fullswing but otherwise good), Promotion(you'll probably never use this), Rend mind /dismantle(5% isn't anything to really write home about),Report(actually a decent tool like mana song)

The problem is mch suffers from the same thing bard does, they're very susceptible to CC, they require their own CC to be on the target to do their highest damage, which only requires a cleanse to be dealt with. Their utility isn't that great. But they do at least have a decent range of CC where as bard does not.


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Basically they have powerful burst, but they also have a number of problems involving their burst like requiring the target to be CC'd or without purify, they themselves have no tool aside from purify to help deal with CC making their bursts easier to deal with despite being ranged classes. I feel Machinist has a bit more to make it competitive than bard though, they're still both good jobs they're just not the greatest in terms of what they bring aside from their burst.

[Isala]

Cynric, I respect you as a MNK. You do a very good job, and it's nice to see how much effort you put into it. I know you said you "play" bard. But do you main it? Do you go in there, as BRD, and work your skills to their utmost, or are most of your observations based on what you've seen? Because I'm flat out telling you, we're fine. Even despite our CC disadvantage, you're missing the one advantage we do have, over any other class except MCH. We are the ultimate chasers. Yes, there's a damage penalty involved, but we can drop WM at the touch of a button, and run down whatever happens to be trying to get away. A large portion of my kills are from gunning someone down as they run for their lives, and we are VERY good at that. When you use a BRDs spike damage to insta-gib a healer, and then turn your focus to another target? You often have two kills immediately after each other.

No, we don't have CC, or defensive CDs, or... The list goes on. But what we do, which is kill things, we do VERY well, even outside of our burst window.

[RiceisNice]

We are the ultimate chasers. Yes, there's a damage penalty involved, but we can drop WM at the touch of a button, and run down whatever happens to be trying to get away. A large portion of my kills are from gunning someone down as they run for their lives, and we are VERY good at that. When you use a BRDs spike damage to insta-gib a healer, and then turn your focus to another target? You often have two kills immediately after each other.

The moment you drop WM/GB, your damage plummets and starts to fluctuate big time. At this point (especially when we don't have damage penalty when attacking closer than 15 yards), you're better off just using feint while chasing down. But that's hardly exclusive to BRD since even SMN and BLM can do that too through dots or lethargy+procs (considering the enemy heals isn't present if you really are chasing them down).

Yes they can kill things outside of burst, better than MCH and probably SMN in some cases, but BLM can do much better outside of bursts (at the trade off that they don't particularly have fast bursts to begin with).

And lastly, don't take it this way, no one is saying that BRD isn't fine. But relative comparison, I wouldn't say it's as good as a BLM when considering potential and high play. The only job that truly needs to be tuned around to perform better is dork knight honestly, and some adjustments to BLM/WHM if they want to keep catering to cast times.