Editor’s note: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the writer, and do not reflect Shoryuken.com as a whole.
Time to start controversy! no order within tiers. based on just my opinion. pic.twitter.com/TlneSXkjvO
— slippingbug (@slippingbug) August 25, 2016
I don’t need to tell you that information travels fast on Twitter. I also don’t need to tell that to Absolute Battle 7 Champion Slippingbug: he found out for himself!
Tier-making is a common exercise in the FGC, and Slippingbug was hardly the first to put together a tier list for Pokkén Tournament. However, he couldn’t have expected the flood of Japanese players re-tweeting and championing his list, including Evo champion Tono-sama. During our interview after Absolute Battle 7 we discussed his list, which seems to be one of the more generally agreed-upon lists at the moment.
The graphic is a little deceptive: there’s actually only two tiers, A and B. Slippingbug went on to explain why he organized it like this:
Slippingbug: Basically there’s two tiers. The gaps are really small between the pluses and minuses.
First, he broke down the A+ monsters, Sceptile and Braixen.
SB: He doesn’t have to play Rock-Paper-Scissors, really. Say he’s attacking your counter frames, he can Command Jump on reaction. That shuts down most wake up options in the game. He has a full screen mixup tool with Giga Drain. He has a ton of corner pressure with bullet seed and leech seed. He just has everything except, well, his defense is not that great. Detect is pretty easy to punish because of its end-lag. Leaf Blade is only real at long range. Frame data is not the best, he doesn’t have a i9. Everything else is really strong.
SB: With Braixen, you can cancel anything into a Counter Pierce support. She has top tier mobility. She has the best anti-zoning tool, and she has good zoning. She has boomerang! It’s i17, and it can pop counters. Her counter attack is great. Her damage output is great. She definitely has everything. I can’t think of a weakness. I actually think she needs to be nerfed in some way. If the Braixen plays perfectly, what do you do? You can’t really have defense if she’s just constantly getting support.
Crow_Spaceboy: What’s funny is, she got nerfed in the last patch.
SB: Yeah, her super doesn’t shield break anymore. But her shield damage is still insane. She does really insane chip damage in burst, too. The way I would nerf her is to find some way to make the charge times shorter. That’s what’s really ridiculous about her. She can get like seven Emolgas in a round. Come on.
He gave a small, snarky laugh before resuming.
SB: Something they could do is put a hard limit on support usage in a round. You know how Cresselia can only be used once a round? Do a hard limit, like, 3 stocks for all the others. I think the optimal way to play her right now is amp until you have your support, then do stuff. On reaction to counters, cancel to support. It’s how a lot of Braixens play right now.
CS: You mentioned one time that “A buff to supports is a buff to Braixen,” too. That’s another challenge of balancing her.
SB: Yeah, pretty much. You saw Yveltal get buffed, and now, if you counter vs. an attacking Braixen, you don’t get to burst. It’s crazy.
SB: The rest of A tier is really solid characters with no bad matchups, or almost none. They, at worst, lose slightly to the ones above them (Braixen and Sceptile, primarily).
SB: He has arguably the best counter attack in the game. You can use it like a dragon punch because of how fast the second hit is, but you don’t have to commit to it thanks to CADC. Even after the nerf, j.Y is great. It makes it tough to get in OR zone versus him. Good damage. Good oki. He probably has the best anti-airs in the game. He has good results both here and Japan. He has a lot of health…
CS: I always thought it was really silly that this option heavy, super well rounded, high damage zoner also had so much health.
SB: Yeah, pretty much, haha. He plays really well at every range, and the effort-to-reward ratio is pretty good for him. Compared to, like, Gengar.
SB: Pikachu doesn’t lose to anyone except Blaziken, randomly. That’s just because Pika’s anti-airs don’t work well vs. him. That said, even though he doesn’t really have results here, I still placed him high because he has everything option wise, and he has a fast burst build. I think fast burst is incredibly valuable in this game. Let’s see… he has 5X poke, the lightning bolt. That’s great.
CS: I almost played that character just because of that move. That’s such an obviously good footsie tool.
SB: Yeah. If you land it near the wall you get 250+. His wall carry is really good. Really safe. Top 3 counter attacks. Top 3 counter attacks are Suicune, Braixen, and Pikachu. His dash is really fast. I don’t think anyone in the US has used him effectively, like in Japan. You definitely never see anyone use Thunder properly. That tool can punish a ton of stuff with the right timing–Overheat, Umbreon, Psystrike.
CS: Yeah, you almost never see Thunder used carefully like that.
SB: It’s good, and if you see they didn’t commit, you can cancel Thunder. I think Lucario and Pikachu are kind of similar in how they are really well balanced, without anything super broken to put them higher. They are as good as the player. Pikachu + Jirachi is insane, though. Nuzzle > Super in the corner is 270 damage off a grab. His oki is really good. If you space 5X oki right, 5X cancelled into Nuzzle beats counters on reaction. You can also cancel into Iron Tail. 5X cancel options tend to shut down most wake up stuff.
SB: Lucario has the best burst in the game, outside of Charizard and Gengar. Burst throw does so much damage. He’s super well rounded, and he beats Gengar/Chandelure/Gardevoir pretty much for free. He does well in a lot of match ups and doesn’t lose much. His wall damage is absurd. His only real problem is his field phase options are kind of unsafe. You have to commit. But he has Bone Rush! And duel phase options are so good they make up for his bad field phase. 2Y is so good.
SB: Mewtwo has great tournament results, a strong mixup game, and amazing oki. He has a oki vortex because of barrier, basically. You can’t counter versus him on wakeup, and all his options give him big rewards. He has great health too. He’s just really solid.
SB: Weavile, I used to think he was bad, then people got really good with him. His oki is really good since charged 5X counter pierces, and he’s so mobile. He’s really hard to hit. Great time out character. Pretty much impossible to catch him if you’re slowed down, or he has Togekiss.
SB: Libre, I think, could be higher. The only reason I put her lower is because I think her field phase is lacking, and everyone else above her has better field phase options.
SB: I think Shadow Mewtwo has fallen off a lot. He has tons of great tools but he dies too easily. He requires a player to play him perfectly. Everyone knows he’s a glass cannon but he’s more glass right now. Shadow Mewtwo may have gotten nerfed too much. They gave him some buffs but they weren’t meaningful to his play. The addition of the j.Y lag in field really hurt.
SB: Charizard could be lower, but I put him here because he has lots of long range attacks. He can threaten you from some odd ranges. His field phase is surprisingly good, lots of good projectiles. He has a fast burst and Mega Charizard is really, really scary. His key match ups versus, like, Suicune, Sceptile and Braixen are really bad, though. That knocks him down.
SB: The next tier, I think, these characters have lots of really bad matchups.
SB: Chandelure loses really badly to Garchomp, Suicune… as well as Lucario, I think. She has really low health and she just struggles so much with things other characters don’t. So, like, she’s good, but she has lots of flaws. There’s better zoners.
SB: Machamp has a really good punish tool in Cross Chop. Sylveon combined with his health pool means he lives a long time, but he has so many bad matchups versus zoners in duel phase that it kind of doesn’t matter. You work so much more with this character.
SB: Garchomp honestly has a lot of the same flaws as Machamp. They lose key matchups versus these top tier zoners and are overly reliant on this grapple style that isn’t that effective in Pokkén.
SB: I can see anyone B and above winning a tournament. I’m not sure I can see B- characters winning a major tournament.
SB: Gengar is really hard to use for little reward. His damage is meh. His neutral isn’t great. He’s slow. Then all of that changes when he bursts. But his burst is slow! Gengar is just burst mode, and it’s not enough.
SB: Blaziken could possibly be higher, but he has auto loss match-ups. Libre, Sceptile. The character seems so good until you really find out how exploitable his counter attack is. Once you know his gimmicks, it’s hard for him to do anything. As Sceptile, if you Blaze Kick his shield, he can Izuna Drop you anytime during the kicks. Against Libre, I can just throw out 8Y and it beats the majority of his move list, which is mostly highs. He struggles versus every zoner. The thing he has going for him is his high damage output. When you’re in the corner versus him it’s hard to get out. It’s similar to what Weavile does to you, but Weavile’s counter isn’t garbage. And Blaziken hurts himself.
SB: Gardevoir is the worst character in the game. She has no mid-range. In Mid-Range, she has one move that she can use, and it’s -16. Unless she has Stored Power, but Stored Power is react-able. If they buff Gardevoir, though, I would like them to get rid of her unblockables. I just don’t think those should be a thing. Maybe, if you tech the grab, the future sight doesn’t go off. I mean, that’s why they nerfed Diglett, yeah? I’d rather her be a real character.
The whole tier chat was the second half of a nearly 45 minute chat with Slippingbug. You can read the first half here! He admitted to me that tier lists, to him, are liquid: something he’s always adjusting and rethinking as he’s encountering new information. A “living” tier list that has this amount of detail and consideration seems, to me, the best way to tackle such an easily debatable topic. Especially in the age of patching.
What do you think about Slippingbug’s tier list?
