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Skullgirls Encore Edition Tiers and Matchups Discussion Thread: The Revengeance

Would definitely make me laugh if val had teleport and surrounding scapels special that were like strider orbs.

So what stops parasoul from being higher than where she is normally placed. My first thought is damage but she can control the screen pretty well. Any ideas?
 
Would definitely make me laugh if val had teleport and surrounding scapels special that were like strider orbs.

So what stops parasoul from being higher than where she is normally placed. My first thought is damage but she can control the screen pretty well. Any ideas?
Current tier list has her at number 6. That's pretty good.
 
I still feel trio is overall better because options > health and damage, but some duo combinations are just extremely bothersome to deal with just because of how much raw damage some characters can do (any duo with Peacock, Eliza, or Bella primarily).
 
I disagree. Options being > than health and damage mean nothing after I've hit you with my duo.
 
It's not like a character on a trio is going to die instantly in most cases. Even if one character on a trio dies, they still have an assist to aid in pressure/neutral/etc.
Duo Peacock is still the scourge of the Earth, however.
 
I disagree. Options being > than health and damage mean nothing after I've hit you with my duo.
What about safe DHCs? Those matter after you get hit.
 
What about safe DHCs? Those matter after you get hit.
AC 360 / Dynamo and DHC Fireball Super fine defensive options after getting hit.

Duo also has Undizzy as a defensive option.

Undizzy favors them far more than it favors a trio.
As a trio usually you can still kill a character in two touches while playing as a duo and Undizzy will not save them.
But Duo has a lot of health so eventually you'll have to start resetting every other string giving your opponent lots of time to play and do their own things. imo
 
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However at the cost of getting double snapped and fucked.

while trio deals 1.0 and duo dealing 1.3 to trios

So which one is favorable objectively? Or is it character specfic that you choose duo or trio?
 
What about safe DHCs? Those matter after you get hit.

My team doesn't have safe DHC's but I haven't lost since I started playing it. SonicFox's team has no safe DHC's either. They're really not that important imo
 
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My team doesn't have safe DHC's but I haven't lost since I started playing it. SonicFox's team has no safe DHC's either. They're really not that important imo
I mean my team doesn't either (unless the order gets swapped somehow), I'm just playing devil's advocate. You said options from playing trio don't matter after you get hit, which isn't correct.
 
Unless you're TOD'ing a mother fucker from like 80%, I'd rather have the options.
 
I just play whatever team composition you play and then go for crossup fridge when it doesn't work.
But I like trios the best. (When I'm not being smeared by optimal duo damage.)
 
Not exactly sure what you mean but no. Cloudking and Taluda both play trio and hold up very well against duo players. Wouldn't really say they're working harder than anyone else just because of how many characters they play. If everything was just a matter of health and damage then we'd see more solo Bella/Fortune/Eliza players placing higher.
 
guys i have a question then. is trio working harder than necessary?
I don't really think so. I think duo and trio are in a good place right now, it feels like a personal preference thing to me. I like duo because it means a greater percentage of my team is Peacock. Alternately if I thought Big Band was a bad character I could play trio so that a smaller percentage of my team was Big Band. (I don't think that though I still think he's top 3. just an example)
 
I think the biggest benefit of trios is that you're not completely up shit creek off a double snap. Going from 3 to 2 for free is less painful than 2 to 1.
 
Unless you're TOD'ing a mother fucker from like 80%, I'd rather have the options.

lol have you ever seen TJ play? You just drop dead after he hits you.

Not exactly sure what you mean but no. Cloudking and Taluda both play trio and hold up very well against duo players. Wouldn't really say they're working harder than anyone else just because of how many characters they play. If everything was just a matter of health and damage then we'd see more solo Bella/Fortune/Eliza players placing higher.

They hold up well against what duo players? Taluda struggles the most against TJ and my set with him the last time we played wasn't all that hot. Cloud in tournament has told me he doesn't like playing his trio against me because it doesn't tend to do enough damage and he dies to fast. Solo is underrated, and no one very good plays solo.
 
im still on the fence about duo and trio.

I used to think (and everyone laughed at me) that duos were flatout better than trios. Now I think trios are making a comeback at least in my own Australian meta.

I still think duos enjoy a certain advantage, but I think it's much closer than before.

Something to remember about the duo versus trio discussion:


When talking about trio having more options, that flies out the window once the trio loses its first character, and since trio first character has less health than duo first character, all other things being equal, trio will lose it's advantage faster than the duo will.

And then there is the whole what if duo has a very powerful assist/anchor that is very all around? Trio assist usage at that point having 2 assists becomes a bit less of an issue since the duo has an all around assist. The trio can pick the same all around assist so everything should even out right? There are diminishing returns at that point for having a second assist. If you have an "all around" assist like brass or hlnl that both have range properties and yet have armor for gtfo properties, your retune are diminished by getting a second, better, gtfo assist in beat extend or updo, or a second better ranged assist in something like robo H beam.
I also feel like duo tends to have a much bigger advantage once they are down to a half life anchor or so, against say, a trio with a dead point, half life secondary character and full life anchor. At that point duos damage tends to shine in the games that I play on either side of the matchup.

And finally, throws work VERY well for duo when it comes to killing trio since duo has big damage and trio has small hp, even after scaling. Whereas the inverse certainly isn't true when using trio against duo. It feels like it takes forever to kill a duo character using throws as a trio character with trio having less damage and duos having more hp on a single character.


But even after having said all that, I still feel like trio having 2 assists at the start of a game is a sizeable advantage, I just believe that that advantage is a fleeting one and hard to keep.



Because of the damage trios could pump out in SDE I felt like trios had the clear advantage there. They were high damage even against duos and had more tools than duos to boot.


I feel like it is in a much better spot now than it was as far as balance between trio and duo.


I still play trio because I find it more fun and challenging to build a cohesive team in trio.

As far as peacock goes, she was on my evo team. I got bored of her. That's that.

I don't think peacock is overpowered in a broken way. I think her item drop not having a vulnerable animation is a dubious design decision though. And I've always felt that way as far as design goes. I however never felt like it had to go since I've always been on the fence about peacock being to good anyways. Like... If she weren't to good then maybe she really deserves a move like that.


My biggest problem with peacock ATM is that peacock backed by robo is godlike. And BEATS brass assist.

Peacock backed by robo H beam is like peacock backed by brass as far as spacial control is concerned, except that:


H beam has fullscreen range, brass doesn't.
H beam beats most other assists pre-emptively because of its huge amount of active frames.
H beam is much safer for peacock to throw out because H beam is much harder for the opponent to lockout since h beam is fullscreen away whereas brass is in the opponents face.


HOWEVER


I feel like brass shits all over H beam as a pick on a duo.

H beam has little to no gtfo options, brass does have those options.

H beam shines on a trio team where it can be paired with a gtfo assist.


My.02
 
I will have to say one thing out of dime's long post. The fact that having 2 assist for options or augmentation is nice but point could very well die quickly and now the playing field is bit more steep for duo. my current idea of how to fight duo teams is to bait out stuff safely Via assist taking hits. Its extremely important you Hch combo a duo team. I didnt want to talk about whether trio is super good or trio sucks. I wanted to get input on what exactly is objectively better when it comes to playing skullgirls.
 
Also, I think the double snap issue is a red herring plain and simple. I don't get double snapped often at all and I think it comes into play far less than what some people make it out to.


to me the double snap argument has about as much weight to it as if I were to use the fact that trio can be double snapped TWICE in one game, as an example of why duo has some sort of advantage.


I've lost more games to duo after I've double snapped a duo character, than I've lost as a trio by getting double snapped twice.

If a trio snaps out a duo while the trio is full health or near that. It's huge advantage for the trio and one of the only scenarios in my mind where the advantage is huge.

However, if a duo snaps a trio while the duo still has full health, it's also a huge advantage for the duo. Things don't merely even out at that point. At that point your "trio" is highly outgunned in both hp and damage, unlike what some duo players would intimate that it is now more or less even.


I mean option for option it is even at that point. But good option for good option it's extremely lopsided because of duo damage.
 
lol have you ever seen TJ play? You just drop dead after he hits you.

Oh no don't worry I've been a victim of the bullshit, it's why I said what I said.

Shit like fox's old Filia/Bella team outright felt wrong.

All that work you'd put in just to lose after getting touched.
 
guys i have a question then. is trio working harder than necessary?
With the damage duo does vs. trio at this point in time.

I'd say trio vs. duo isn't worth it like 60% of the time.
 
As a duo player, might I add to the snapback topic. While snapbacks against a duo really hurts, against a trio team you might not even need to snapback. I usually can just do a full combo and use a bar or two and kill 2 characters at once. Or at the very least kill 1 and leave the other with a sliver of health.
 
And then there is the whole what if duo has a very powerful assist/anchor that is very all around? Trio assist usage at that point having 2 assists becomes a bit less of an issue since the duo has an all around assist. The trio can pick the same all around assist so everything should even out right? There are diminishing returns at that point for having a second assist. If you have an "all around" assist like brass or hlnl that both have range properties and yet have armor for gtfo properties, your retune are diminished by getting a second, better, gtfo assist in beat extend or updo, or a second better ranged assist in something like robo H beam.
I agree with most of this post, but I think having an all around+specialized is assist is better than you're giving it credit for. So long as you're not running pillar+updo, or LnL+h brass, I don't really see the "diminishing returns" argument. Say you do have LnL and updo as an assist. They are two different assists which excel in two different areas. Updo is far superior to LnL in terms of controlling the air, but LnL is obviously much better on the ground.

Personally, I think that trio beats duo simply because of the extra assist. It's hard to find an assist that has both horizontal and vertical utility, sufficient lockdown, has armour/invincibility, and also provides a good dhc. However, in a trio, it's much easier to fit all the appealing assist qualities into your team.
 
I agree with most of this post, but I think having an all around+specialized is assist is better than you're giving it credit for. So long as you're not running pillar+updo, or LnL+h brass, I don't really see the "diminishing returns" argument. Say you do have LnL and updo as an assist. They are two different assists which excel in two different areas. Updo is far superior to LnL in terms of controlling the air, but LnL is obviously much better on the ground.

Personally, I think that trio beats duo simply because of the extra assist. It's hard to find an assist that has both horizontal and vertical utility, sufficient lockdown, has armour/invincibility, and also provides a good dhc. However, in a trio, it's much easier to fit all the appealing assist qualities into your team.


You make fair and reasoned points. And I can't say that you are wrong. All I can say is that I used to think like you do here on the quoted post, and now I no longer do.

I've played around with many assist combinations through the years and I still feel the way I do. "I" feel diminishing returns on my point character using a setup like the one you quoted. But perhaps you don't. I also see why certain "redundant" assist setups can be powerful such as updo and pillar on the same trio team. But at the end of the day, I've counted all these things in my own assessments and come to the conclusions that I have.
 
The question of whether Duo or Trio is best in the long term is a very easy question to answer in my opinion, if you just look at fighting games historically.

What has been the consistent top tier characters "thing" across all fighting games? What have been the characters that are top tier early in a game's life cycle where there aren't a lot of truly skilled competitors?

The early top tier characters are usually ones that do a lot of easy damage, and are really easy to play. In unbalanced games this is generally also where one character just completely dominates other characters neutral to the point of character select invalidation, or have an extra bullshit option that other characters simply can't deal with. This, I don't think is the case in Skullgirls since this game is pretty damn well balanced. Most characters can deal with other characters fine, and those that can't can always pick an assist to make it better.

However, even in balanced games, better characters rise to the top. Generally, this is because the character does have -better- options than others while not being truly oppressive, is better at working through common situations the game can throw at them, and/or has slight advantages that top players get extreme mileage out of.

As neutral and setup efficiency climbs, the benefits of having, say, one neutral assist and also one setup assist will be obvious compared to JUST a setup assist or JUST a neutral assist. Playing a neutral-based team with two neutral assists that cover completely different areas will also be great for a more neutral-minded player or team.

As players get much better at conceptually using characters teams or strategies that require technical knowledge or technical precision to play, there will be much more growth with those characters/teams/strategies compared to much simpler characters that might hit their skill cap earlier.

@Dime_x mentioned something about the benefits of an extra assist being fleeting. This is true. This is also true of spacing and situational advantage. Good players will jockey for good and advantageous positioning and on read good positioning can be both claimed and taken away with fast and accurate movement. Being able to not only win when you have easily reproducible large situations of advantage, but really small windows of advantage becomes much more important as skill levels rise.

Therefore, even if having an extra assist might be a fleeting advantage, it is a fleeting advantage that when properly used will get you the hit or better situation and win you games. Objectively more opportunities and methods to create a win than a Duo team.

Picking two easy/straightforward characters on a duo with decent assists will make a good player great in the short term since they will just destroy everyone else that's under them with no problem, even in the case of going up against superior teams. This will not last, unless the players are Japan-tier character and game loyalists.

tl;dr skill exists pls discover
 
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I feel like generally trios are better. However I do feel like 2 hard hitting duos are comparably just as good. Sure duos have the issue of a double snap being pretty crippling, but 2 hard hitters can be just as crippling to a team as they can take out a character in a blink of the eye. TJ's team is a good example because Peacock is a ridiculously good battery, that by the time he lands a hit on you, he would have accumulated a good amount of chip and enough meter to typically take out your character.
 
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Current list with 43 votes.
  1. Peacock
  2. Eliza
  3. Cerebella
  4. Filia
  5. Fukua
  6. Parasoul
  7. Valentine
  8. Ms. Fortune
  9. Beowulf
  10. Painwheel
  11. Big Band
  12. Robo-Fortune
  13. Squigly +1
  14. Double -1
History
2301
2330

Peacock 1
Valentine 2
Painwheel 3
Big Band 4
Cerebella 5
Beowulf 6
Eliza 7
Fukua 8
Double 9
Filia 10
Ms. Fortune 11
Squigly 12
Parasoul 13
Robo-Fortune N/A

The top 2 should be obvious even though I guess Valentine isn't to some. Most dominating characters at neutral, incredibly safe in general, they dictate the pace of the game, especially backed by assists.

3rd
Painwheel is an absolute monster now, her matchups are better across the board with faster fly, in fact she basically has no bad ones anymore. She can even fly around Peacock's projectiles so getting in is far less of a concern than in the past. Then when she is in, she has the best offense in the game now with 2MK being low and good use of armour as well as pushblock baits. Not to mention one of the easiest to setup and convert hard to blockables in the game, a 2 frame one nonetheless, the only faster one is BB's 1 frame cymbal crash?

4th
Big Band is assist tier. That is the entire reason he is here, he has some issues on point such as bad matchups and his big body issues. However his assists are so incredibly potent that his relevance to the meta is undeniable. I wouldn't be surprised if 80-90% of people end up running BB in the long run.

5th/6th/7th/8th
All very strong threats who are potent in their ways.

Cerebella has great assists and hitboxes that absolutely dominate some matchups.

Beowulf (who is tentatively placed right now) is a neutral game monster with some of the best offense in the game, can get around zoning fairly well at the expense of throwing his chair away or through making a read with Gigantic Arm. He could place higher but I fear he has some troubles against the top placers, particularly Valentine and BB LP Extend assist are problems for him. Beowulf has no adequate answer to full screen upback turtle play and his neutral game is made very honest by LP Extend's insane range and speed. j.HP and wulf blitzer, 2 of Beowulf's most important tools become very very risky to use at all when BB LP Extend assist is available.

Eliza is very strong in all matchups but also can be called out quite effectively. She takes quite a lot of risks, that can be problematic when they don't pay off. She negates pushblock but suffers against PBGC, she dominates space but is easily counterpoked, counterzones well but struggles to actually close the space and ends up outgunned if she can't get in through a risky play etc.

Fukua is an all around solid character that just struggles to open up anyone reliably. Her zoning works on a timer so she needs to call out an approach at some point, but playing Fukua against a patient oponent can be tricky because her pre-combo mixups are rather lackluster. She thrives on tick grabs or risky shadow calls that can both be blown up relatively easily when predicted. Luckily she has the tools to play at any range very comfortably so she can afford to take a few attempts at opening up the opponent if the Fukua player can disengage at the right moments and keep the opponent respecting her fireballs/shadows.

9th
Double was once the assist tier character of choice. She is still relevant in that field but outclassed heavily by characters such as Big Band and can't quite matchup to others such as Cerebella (and perhaps Robo Fortune). To make up for this her on point game was buffed pretty heavily and she is now a very competent footsie based character.

10th/11th/12th
Fillia once wore the crown of offense but can no longer compete with buffed Painwheel. She is still an incredibly potent rushdown monster who can throw out mixup after mixup, but in the current metagame she can struggle at mid to long range. It is far from hopeless however, she has mobility tools though not as plentiful as some and has some great closer range pokes as well as a still-upsettingly difficult to get out of reset game.

Fortune has many of the same upsides as Fillia, except she has more mobility at the cost of some speed and relentless pressure/anti-pushblock and pushblock baiting tools at the expense of raw mixup. If Fortune had easier ways to transition from headless to head on I feel the character could dominate neutral again on the level of characters higher on this list. Overall very strong character but does struggle to contend with some characters aerial hitboxes.

Squigly has been mostly untouched for a pretty long time, her offensive power is undeniable. However this character suffers from a severe lack of horizontal speed, luckily her lvl 2 sing almost makes up for this, allowing her to start her incredible offense at the cost of 2 resources. Squigly's aerial game is quite powerful, with some fast disjointed hitboxes and divekicks to quickly return to the ground, however while aerial approaches are her most consistent way of getting in, she is very prone to being pushblocked from this position. If she manages to get in on her opponent, her pressure from the ground is immense with stance cancelled resets and pushblock baits for any situation, her one problem is getting into that situation usually requires a solid read or the use of resources, which Squigly struggles to build.

13th
Parasoul has absolutely incredible aerial hitboxes. She is an all round solid character. I think that alone says a lot about Skullgirls.
She can control space quite effectively and is almost uncontestable in the air with teartoss normals making her cover multiple angles pretty well. Her main problem comes from her distinct lack of mobility, though she has a great dash jump, Parasoul lacks ways of changing her direction and therefore the opponent can dance around completely outside her threat zone and fairly easily predict/outmaneuver her angles. Her only other mobility tool in teartoss j.MK requires a lot of setup and isn't really fast enough to the point that it would be a threat for most characters. Her other downside is that her offense struggles quite a bit with pushblocks. She dose have tools such as LK Egret to defend against guard cancels but requires a solid read on the opponent to do so. Her basic strings and attack patterns are quite easy to pushblock away or straight up punish through a call out. Although she has plenty of mixup tools, her offense is a bit of a struggle when she has to work quite hard to even get the opportunity at offense in the first place.
Remember, you can change your vote whenever, so even with no new votes this list can change as people's views of tiers change. Still would like more people to vote if possible.
 
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I know it's too early to tell, but I think Robo is definitely up there.

I think she's somewhere around 4th place. She has really good zoning tools and sj.HK can get her out of whatever if she does it soon enough.

Jump cancelable normals are pretty amazing. Beams + Head stuff is hard to beat and when backed by assists she can zone almost better than Peacock.

I'd say Robo v Peacock is in Robo's favour also because robo doesn't have to deal with Peacock's zoning because she can sj.HK > j.Beam L and keep poking Peacock. Peacock's only answer is to call item drop.

Also, I think that once people learn how to fight Peacock she will drop to around 5th~7th.
 
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