Ooh a tier list podcast! If only I could've been there to talk with you guys too. A few things I should mention, regarding the characters I know: Terra definitely has the worst mana income, especially against melee characters, but that does give melee characters a fighting chance against her where she would just win by stall otherwise. I also don't really think she does that much damage, but is instead able to do enough stuff to explore options to get damage in consistently... especially when the top brass just gets 40+ damage just by kicking up dust from the floor with no set up needed Regarding Wyrm Break, I switched out because I literally never fought against that deck before and in the context of a chance to win I can't just learn by trial and error to figure out a way. We never did that MU again after that, so I see it more as unsolved than unwinnable (lockdown nerfs may've killed the strategy tho). Also my performace was completely dead by week 4 of esl. IMO Terra really doesn't have an MU that shuts her down besides specifically Wyrm and maybe Hazel (but it's more that it's better to learn how to counter the player instead of trying to handle what the character does innately); I thought Queen was up there too, but a bit of rewiring the brain made that not so distant... and the same can be said for Saff and Gunner too. Also helps to say that worst case scenario she always has the opportunity to punish intentions, since reach is not of concern; everyone has habits, and my mistakes will fuel conditioning that I can use to punish people later. I tend to rate her higher than others due to this; she'll never have 90-10s if she has sufficient game sense to try every trick in the book Terra suffers against Break way more than she is good at piloting it. Chi easily runs it better and it's not even close. I don't really see it as awful MU as much as it is just stamina check; sure she gets positionally compromised, but it's not forever and Break decks are inescapably archetypal faceroll. Should also note that this Terra opinion is largely revolving around Terra Inverse (what I use), and other strategies has lots of deckbuilding problems that don't make it past the gimmick threshold Shiso I feel is nigh unplayable without Jackhammer, without it you have to be a god to do anything to people. Against summons I think he's actually fine, as long as it's not amp and/or beam crystal Flame Shiso also enables gun -> blaze salad, center mass -> magnaflare, and gun -> magnaflare, and it has me feeling like running step auto on him is actually not efficient enough for his bullets. Which is messed up to say, when considering that gun -> step slash is true. I remember JP community thinking highly of him. Though imo it's just gonna take a random pubstomper coming down from training in the mountains to make everyone think he's broken, otherwise he's fine where he is (and a lot of fun in all his good and bad aspects). Also don't build around his Pistol Whip, only really worth using (not building around) it when the opponent can't stop summoning Is Reva playable competitively? She's only better than Vio because of W2 having invincibility on it and W1 being a projectile, otherwise she ceases to exist (but on the other hand vio can actually have a good neutral presence...). If you just respect her spacing she ain't doing anything to you, and you can just shimmy her out of hiding at that point due to her having no initiative Gunner's Charge Beam is the same frame data regardless of the charge now. Just goes to show how little presence he has to mistakenly think that the frame data was different (changed to be the same pre-release). Also Cherry Bomb walk Thunder doesn't work, and I now use Snowfall instead of Paragon because it just does the same role more cleanly. However... I don't actually have a good deck for him atm. The Primed Gunner series met the damage quota for sure, but respecting the distance just makes it virtually unplayable; for perspective, I only landed 1 snowfall within 3+ games just because the opponent knew better than to be at the front, and that was a tiny slice of the whole cake. Gunner does have good summon clear, but is always behind for it due to his recoil, hurting mana and making him positionally vulnerable. The Beam Crystal thing I would refer to what I said regarding ESL week 4 and not having a good deck atm from earlier in this post, it really shouldn't have been so easy. About the traps... he's just screwed tbh, I don't see how he can do anything about it, especially if you intend to specialize around his weapons because it's a deck on Gunner and not any other character Hot take: Gunner's the hardest character to play in terms of motor skills. There's so much tech he can do: vivisection mixups and extensions, X-away extensions with a flame burning their asses in the meantime, Blink and Auto Slash gap 1 combo lines, and many more, but it's at a caliber where I question if it's humanly possible to do it fluently enough to not be handwaved as a collection of gimmicks. Perilla wouldn't be so high if the damn Snatch bug got fixed :T. She doesn't have off-angle, and her invade reaches are doubtlessly telegraphed... but god the Snatch is agony. The Snatch bug being fixed will gut her real hard, I assure you, but W1 is probably fine despite doing half a dozen things on its own. Remember: she has no off-angle weapon. She does do an insane amount of damage... but I think that has a lot to do with the spells, rather than Perilla herself Harissa is definitely priviliged af... but I do sometime question whether it's simply just Schulminha and Yukishizuku being so insanely goated because others are not that scary. Primer is the bane of all melees for sure (aka best mana income), and Retracer... I am definitely way too used to just getting 2-touch'd on the regular, huh. But I do feel like W2 + Spells is reasonable to fight through? I would comment something about Terrable, but I dislike her enough where I don't really have anything to say about her besides wanting the loadout axed. It doesn't even matter if Comet spam is bad, it's extremely degenerate and so unfun to fight against This all has me thinking I have the best position to share strategies around the world to other people. I should do that more... but I got a long, long job 6 days a week, and it means a lot more to me than I could've thought a few months ago. Hopefully I can squeeze time to find y'all over time... though I should say in advance that my interests regarding the game has narrowed by quite a lot over s2's happenings Edit: from what I've seen of Neeras, transmute's ass, spear wave just makes it too easy to be a low effort chump by spamming spikes and spear wave all day, Perforate and Air Rifle being part of her combo line now with scat spear at 1 mana 2 Spear gets her to proc frost dmg often, which is great for auto slash and sacrifire extensions. The thing that really stops her from getting above A is that her combo lines are quite... "stubborn"; she has fairly high anchor on-angle lines, so trying to handle Selicy and the like can be agonizing. And dfecter is definitely the best Neera as of the current moment and congrats to him on getting 65+. She still feels like she's got plenty of possibilities in many expressive ways, and who knows where we go from there?
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Ooh a tier list podcast! If only I could've been there to talk with you guys too.
A few things I should mention, regarding the characters I know:
Terra definitely has the worst mana income, especially against melee characters, but that does give melee characters a fighting chance against her where she would just win by stall otherwise. I also don't really think she does that much damage, but is instead able to do enough stuff to explore options to get damage in consistently... especially when the top brass just gets 40+ damage just by kicking up dust from the floor with no set up needed
Regarding Wyrm Break, I switched out because I literally never fought against that deck before and in the context of a chance to win I can't just learn by trial and error to figure out a way. We never did that MU again after that, so I see it more as unsolved than unwinnable (lockdown nerfs may've killed the strategy tho). Also my performace was completely dead by week 4 of esl. IMO Terra really doesn't have an MU that shuts her down besides specifically Wyrm and maybe Hazel (but it's more that it's better to learn how to counter the player instead of trying to handle what the character does innately); I thought Queen was up there too, but a bit of rewiring the brain made that not so distant... and the same can be said for Saff and Gunner too. Also helps to say that worst case scenario she always has the opportunity to punish intentions, since reach is not of concern; everyone has habits, and my mistakes will fuel conditioning that I can use to punish people later. I tend to rate her higher than others due to this; she'll never have 90-10s if she has sufficient game sense to try every trick in the book
Terra suffers against Break way more than she is good at piloting it. Chi easily runs it better and it's not even close. I don't really see it as awful MU as much as it is just stamina check; sure she gets positionally compromised, but it's not forever and Break decks are inescapably archetypal faceroll.
Should also note that this Terra opinion is largely revolving around Terra Inverse (what I use), and other strategies has lots of deckbuilding problems that don't make it past the gimmick threshold
Shiso I feel is nigh unplayable without Jackhammer, without it you have to be a god to do anything to people. Against summons I think he's actually fine, as long as it's not amp and/or beam crystal
Flame Shiso also enables gun -> blaze salad, center mass -> magnaflare, and gun -> magnaflare, and it has me feeling like running step auto on him is actually not efficient enough for his bullets. Which is messed up to say, when considering that gun -> step slash is true.
I remember JP community thinking highly of him. Though imo it's just gonna take a random pubstomper coming down from training in the mountains to make everyone think he's broken, otherwise he's fine where he is (and a lot of fun in all his good and bad aspects). Also don't build around his Pistol Whip, only really worth using (not building around) it when the opponent can't stop summoning
Is Reva playable competitively? She's only better than Vio because of W2 having invincibility on it and W1 being a projectile, otherwise she ceases to exist (but on the other hand vio can actually have a good neutral presence...). If you just respect her spacing she ain't doing anything to you, and you can just shimmy her out of hiding at that point due to her having no initiative
Gunner's Charge Beam is the same frame data regardless of the charge now. Just goes to show how little presence he has to mistakenly think that the frame data was different (changed to be the same pre-release). Also Cherry Bomb walk Thunder doesn't work, and I now use Snowfall instead of Paragon because it just does the same role more cleanly. However...
I don't actually have a good deck for him atm. The Primed Gunner series met the damage quota for sure, but respecting the distance just makes it virtually unplayable; for perspective, I only landed 1 snowfall within 3+ games just because the opponent knew better than to be at the front, and that was a tiny slice of the whole cake.
Gunner does have good summon clear, but is always behind for it due to his recoil, hurting mana and making him positionally vulnerable. The Beam Crystal thing I would refer to what I said regarding ESL week 4 and not having a good deck atm from earlier in this post, it really shouldn't have been so easy. About the traps... he's just screwed tbh, I don't see how he can do anything about it, especially if you intend to specialize around his weapons because it's a deck on Gunner and not any other character
Hot take: Gunner's the hardest character to play in terms of motor skills. There's so much tech he can do: vivisection mixups and extensions, X-away extensions with a flame burning their asses in the meantime, Blink and Auto Slash gap 1 combo lines, and many more, but it's at a caliber where I question if it's humanly possible to do it fluently enough to not be handwaved as a collection of gimmicks.
Perilla wouldn't be so high if the damn Snatch bug got fixed :T. She doesn't have off-angle, and her invade reaches are doubtlessly telegraphed... but god the Snatch is agony. The Snatch bug being fixed will gut her real hard, I assure you, but W1 is probably fine despite doing half a dozen things on its own. Remember: she has no off-angle weapon. She does do an insane amount of damage... but I think that has a lot to do with the spells, rather than Perilla herself
Harissa is definitely priviliged af... but I do sometime question whether it's simply just Schulminha and Yukishizuku being so insanely goated because others are not that scary. Primer is the bane of all melees for sure (aka best mana income), and Retracer... I am definitely way too used to just getting 2-touch'd on the regular, huh. But I do feel like W2 + Spells is reasonable to fight through?
I would comment something about Terrable, but I dislike her enough where I don't really have anything to say about her besides wanting the loadout axed. It doesn't even matter if Comet spam is bad, it's extremely degenerate and so unfun to fight against
This all has me thinking I have the best position to share strategies around the world to other people. I should do that more... but I got a long, long job 6 days a week, and it means a lot more to me than I could've thought a few months ago. Hopefully I can squeeze time to find y'all over time... though I should say in advance that my interests regarding the game has narrowed by quite a lot over s2's happenings
Edit: from what I've seen of Neeras, transmute's ass, spear wave just makes it too easy to be a low effort chump by spamming spikes and spear wave all day, Perforate and Air Rifle being part of her combo line now with scat spear at 1 mana 2 Spear gets her to proc frost dmg often, which is great for auto slash and sacrifire extensions. The thing that really stops her from getting above A is that her combo lines are quite... "stubborn"; she has fairly high anchor on-angle lines, so trying to handle Selicy and the like can be agonizing.
And dfecter is definitely the best Neera as of the current moment and congrats to him on getting 65+. She still feels like she's got plenty of possibilities in many expressive ways, and who knows where we go from there?