Who are the top tiers of VF 4 EVO?

I don't think the characters can be categorized neatly into uniform tiers.

It might be more beneficial and productive if individual matchups were taken into account. I know the SC2 Ranking Project, at the least the American one, broke down each character's matchups and how they fared.

It would be interesting to see how such a ranking project would play out for VF4:EVO.

In case anyone's curious, here's the American SC2 Ranking Project.

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/staff/reno/sc2/sciirankingv2_2.htm

In order for this to happen, it'll take a lot of input from the VF community. Sadly, I'm in no way qualified to provide that input.

 

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Allyourbase said:

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/staff/reno/sc2/sciirankingv2_2.htm


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I'm really interested in that. Can somone translate it into English.

 

This is the thread, taken directly from SC.com.
http://www.soulcalibur.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16100

It'll explain a lot. My apologies for not having the foresight to add this link.

 

Random, ff+k is indeed very good to take advantage of.

I'd rank Vane up as top-tier too now, after having witnessed some of her more devastating flows. Me and maddy traded tricks on her, and she's got some hella devilish rushes in OS.

 

ah, the tier-resistancy of vf4evo. honestly, i think there is a single character that is unbeatable, or that there is a character too weak to use.

if we are talking in terms of popularity, then yeah, akira, jacky, kage, and lau have definitely got an edge (at least here in japan). but then you have sarahs, brads, vanessas, and even shuns winning big tournaments. so if we are speaking of relative strength, it is all a matter of using what you have to beat the other guy.

for example, as a shun player, i rarely use the -> that he has (which swings back and hits double fist, knock down plus 3dp on hit). but last week at one of the final evolution qualifiers, SHU was using it against kage players to beat the and mix ups he has. and once they feared busting out those canned combos, hed run in and throw. rince and repeat.

as mentioned above, i think its just people bitching when they lose that gives way to tiers in this game.

 

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but then you have sarahs, brads, vanessas, and even shuns winning big tournaments

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Huh?

/KiwE

 

first of all, top sentence, i meant to say there is "no" single character who is unbeatable.

anyways, the source of much grumbling here at least is the ease at which so many people can pick up certain characters and have a high win-percentage/rank. i.e., god im playing like shit right now with my vanessa, i should pick up lau. (the assumption, of course, being that he is easier to use and exploit, and therefore a higher "tier" player.)

but like i tried to say, there is no sure-fire character or characters you can pick and have an unfair advantage over anyone else. most people agree that they themselves are weak against certain characters, which makes the tiers more related to oneself than to the game's characters.

 

You have a valid point, but I think some characters have innate tools that put them at (dis)advantage against other characters (e.g. speed, damage, safeness).

The point of the SC2 RP was to break down each individual matchups and analyse how each character's tools were more helpful/detrimental in that given matchup.

If we were to apply this thinking to VF4, it might be as productive. For example, let's compare Sarah v. Jeffrey and Sarah v. Akira. What allows Sarah to dominate Jeffrey may not necessarily apply against Akira.

 

Tier 1 : Dural
Tier 2 : Everyone Else
Tier 3 : Stick using Akira

 

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Vith_Dos said:
Tier 3 : Stick using Akira

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Sup /versus/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

 

you are confused with tiers and the game being broken.
Tier = Character has advantage over others.
Broken = Character is unbeatable.

It's common knowledge vf isn't a broken game, at this point you don't have to "think" to make that statement.

As far tier is considered, anyone who thinks there is none in evo is either, 1 hasn't had enough experience with the game, or 2 has blinded by their own infactuation. Every character can beat another, and every character could win a tournament. but a monkey can tell you it's harder to win with jeff/shun than it is with akira/jacky.

 

But the word "advantage" can be taken many ways.

Does the fact that you require a lot of dexterity to play as Akira make him 'worse' than Jacky, who is considered to be easier to play?

When I see Tiers, I immediately think that it means: a character that the game has (intentionally or unintentionally) made noticebly better than another character. Therefore in Street Fighter III, Ken is top tier, because he can dish out a ton of damage. Ibuki (my favorite character) is not top tier because even with some of her extensive combos, she can't do the same damage that Ken can do (more easily). Also, deception and 'fakes' (a big part of VF with Aoi), is not as prevelent in SF as it is in VF. Therefore her lack of advantages place her in a lower 'tier'. It's not that she can't ever beat anyone, but if two players of the same skill level with each character play eachother, Ken will win 9 times out of 10 because of the power difference.

As far as I know, there's no character in VF that is underpowered to the point where you could seperate them into a seperate teir. The only exception might be Shun, simply because of the difficulty of keeping and maintaining drinks, which allows him to dish out more damage. However, the 'deception' element in VF adds another layer to the game, where characters that might not be incredibly powerful might still have an edge in the 'trickery' department. Another possiblity is if a character might be too predictable. Although Jeff has a very high risk game, the rewards that he can get from his game make up for the risk, IMO.

 

There are still tiers in VF, of course. No fighting game is without them. What makes VF balanced is that the tiers are so close together that almost any character can feasibly win tournaments. (Using the existing example, you'll never see Ibuki or Q winning a major Third Strike tournament because it's more heavily tiered than VF.)

 

Now this statement I agree with 100 percent.
The tiers are very closely knit.
Any character can win at any time. Although there are bad match ups,
(i.e Aoi VS Pai, Akira VS Pai, Lion VS Vanessa, Kage VS Goh, etc...) it doesn't
play much of a factor in tournament results or casual play unless the individual
allows it to be imo. But with this said, they do set their teams up strategically
during beat tribe.

As far as my pick for top 5
1. Sarah 2. Kage 3. Jacky 4. Akira 5. Pai

Brad is a low class Jacky with sways and really sub par throws to boot.
But in the right hands even he can do his thing, with alot of help from God ofcourse.

P.S. MADDY RULES /versus/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

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ghetto-SHUN said:

P.S. MADDY RULES /versus/images/graemlins/wink.gif

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What's new, the best Gief player? /versus/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

Pardon me for asking, but why is Brad generally ranked so low? The subpar throwing I get, but what other tools is he lacking?

 

"Bet on the player - not the character always."

One of the things he will get in Final Tune that was showed in the flick; a "safe" way of going into ducking without being beaten by against all options. Other then that there has been threads that have discussed the matter.

Like this one.
Or this one.

/KiwE (P.S; they both are under Brads icon which you can click on the frontpage so would be quite easy to find - if you searched.)

 

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ghetto-SHUN said:

Although there are bad match ups,
(i.e Aoi VS Pai, Akira VS Pai, Lion VS Vanessa, Kage VS Goh, etc...)


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Which of the characters in the matchups are you saying is disadvantaged? I have always found Kage hard to beat with Goh, but I have never found Pai particularly easy to beat (or hard for that matter) with Aoi.

 

I think there ae REALLY small tiers because it's obvious that say Akira is better than Jeffry.
I don't think VF can be put in to 123 tiers because character is weak against others eg. Wolf is shit against Shun

 

Fact nro 1: Competitive knowledge between players remains incredibly thin outside Japan, which means that a LOT of players like to theorize things about characters they don´t know jack about. It happens a lot here too.

Fact nro 2: Even if VF 4 Evo was The Best Balanced Fighting Game On Earth Ever, it still may have it´s flaws. Jeffry/Brad can be very fun and interesting characters to use, in many ways a lot more rewarding than in your average brawler by any means. When and if there is some kind of disadvantage, it in most cases CAN be dealt with, but that "dealing" depend on the character one plays. I play Jeffry/Brad and I have had no problems at all in hosing down average competition. Obviously there are a lot of people who know something I don´t and (dare I say) vice versa.

Fact nro 3: Tiers may well serve a purpose of coming into the way of full and free enjoyment. In my opinion (which should be as legitimate as any, we are not making any science here, are we?) there still seems to be a lot of childish theories or more serious arguments about "tournament results" or "frame datas" used to back up people´s often very subjective and limited opinions. What in the monkeys a$$ it does matter if Japanese tetsujins have different tiers that we have? Not much. Players make this game, not some tiers somewhere in calculative heaven. Please, play the game and make your own mind. Then get your top Jeff on killer mood and go beat the crap out of every arcade and every opponent you can afford to. You know that it may be possible. After all, how many debates there has been about every individual character in this very site? Tóuche. VF is a gamers game.