How to: Tier Lists | Forums

[martnRULES]

Since For Honor is basically a fighting game, here's how a fighting game tier list is usually constructed.

NOTE: Tier lists are 100% the OPINION of the person constructing it. There is no "Official Tier List". There can be a Tier List that many players agree with, but that doesn't make it definitive. A character can be considered low tier in the early life of the game, but can rise to higher tiers with the emergence of new play styles and as the meta begins to settle.

• Characters are placed in tiers ranging from "S" (highest tier. immediately followed by A, B, C, etc..) through "E" (lowest tier).
• A characters placement in the tier list is settled via the amount of favorable vs unfavorable match-ups.
• Match-up favorability is determined by how affective a characters toolkit/playstyle is vs other characters.
  EX: Nobu/PK/Zerk might consider the Goki match-up as favorable because of their fast light attack chains. Fast LA chains may render Goki's offensive pressure useless, considering Goki heavily relies on Super Armor to get in or walk down his opponents. No Super Armor means all his slow LA/HA are prone to being interrupted.
• SKILL/KNOWLEDGE>TIER LIST. A more experienced/skilled player with extensive match-up knowledge can beat a less knowledgable player, no matter how unfavorable the match-up may be on paper.
• The most popular tier lists are typically put together by gathering the opinions of several high level/pro level players with in the community.

Hope that helps. I've seen a lot of "Tier Lists" pop up over that last week that were simply baffling. It's very difficult to come up with an accurate tier list when you don't know the caliber of player you're facing off against. Hopefully Ubi implements a decent ranked mode that pulls from the Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Diamond player tiering we've seen in games like Overwatch, SFV, and LoL.

[nf_Straydog]

Only problem is that not all games will have S through E tiers. Some games will have fewer than six tiers, and S tier is typically reserved for characters with no or almost no bad matchups, so not all games will have an S tier either.

[Zerlias]

Nothing is set in stone, in many tier lists you can just have three tiers : High, Mid, Low.

Depends mainly on how many characters there are. Having 10 characters in one tier is too vague, and creating many tiers only to have 2 characters in each is also a bad idea.

[nf_Straydog]

Nothing is set in stone, in many tier lists you can just have three tiers : High, Mid, Low.

Depends mainly on how many characters there are. Having 10 characters in one tier is too vague, and creating many tiers only to have 2 characters in each is also a bad idea.

Not really. Tiers should separate characters into echelons that say something about their relation to the rest of the cast and meaningfully provide information about that character's potential both overall and in the current meta. If 10 characters have roughly the same potential and same number of positive/negative/even matchups against meta characters then they should be all in the same tier. You can place them in a specific order if you want to distinguish small differences in overall power/potential/tournament results.

On the other hand if a game is dramatically imbalanced you will see tons of tiers, because it becomes necessary and practical to distinguish that characters in the higher tiers are substantially stronger than those in the lower tiers. Look at Super Smash Bros. Melee. The current iteration of the tier list has 9 tiers. The game is notorious for it's top tier cast completely invalidating characters of the low and bottom tiers between players of equal skill. Even the fact that virtually nobody plays characters below C tier resulting in a complete dearth of matchup knowledge against those characters is not enough of an advantage for them to reliably compete with competent players of the top tiers.

The number/size of the tiers is completely dependent on the balance of the game. A balanced game will have fewer tiers. A perfectly balanced game (hypothetically impossible?) would have one tier with every character having an even 5:5 matchup against every other character. A balanced game will nave no need for an S tier (or God Tier or whatever terminology you wish to use) or an F/G tier (or **** Tier.) In my personal opinion, based on tournament results and general analysis of how tools work in the meta, I believe this game has 4 tiers, one of which is a god tier. I think that at a high level, characters outside the god tier will be mostly closely matched with each other and will struggle moderately to substantially to compete with the tools of the god tier.

[YOGZULA]

Tier list

S: Shoguki, Warden, Warlord
A, B, C, D: Everyone except raider
F: Raider

[Zerlias]

Not really. Tiers should separate characters into echelons that say something about their relation to the rest of the cast and meaningfully provide information about that character's potential both overall and in the current meta. If 10 characters have roughly the same potential and same number of positive/negative/even matchups against meta characters then they should be all in the same tier. You can place them in a specific order if you want to distinguish small differences in overall power/potential/tournament results.

On the other hand if a game is dramatically imbalanced you will see tons of tiers, because it becomes necessary and practical to distinguish that characters in the higher tiers are substantially stronger than those in the lower tiers. Look at Super Smash Bros. Melee. The current iteration of the tier list has 9 tiers. The game is notorious for it's top tier cast completely invalidating characters of the low and bottom tiers between players of equal skill. Even the fact that virtually nobody plays characters below C tier resulting in a complete dearth of matchup knowledge against those characters is not enough of an advantage for them to reliably compete with competent players of the top tiers.

The number/size of the tiers is completely dependent on the balance of the game. A balanced game will have fewer tiers. A perfectly balanced game (hypothetically impossible?) would have one tier with every character having an even 5:5 matchup against every other character. A balanced game will nave no need for an S tier (or God Tier or whatever terminology you wish to use) or an F/G tier (or **** Tier.) In my personal opinion, based on tournament results and general analysis of how tools work in the meta, I believe this game has 4 tiers, one of which is a god tier. I think that at a high level, characters outside the god tier will be mostly closely matched with each other and will struggle moderately to substantially to compete with the tools of the god tier.

You're right.

About these tournaments, do you have somes links to share (stream, brackets...) ?