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Skullgirls Encore Edition Tiers and Matchups Discussion Thread: The Revengeance

Because the pros show that with practice, fab's Pot can beat Okawa's Zato (low tier vs high tier)... and very, very few of us are playing at Fab or Okawa's level... so why do we think the tier list would apply to us?

Pros show that FAB's Pot can SOMETIMES beat Ogawa's Eddie. Tier lists indicate that this would not happen more often than Ogawa beats FAB, which is borne out by experience, and indeed would happen much less often, which is also borne of experience.

I look at tier lists as "how much more work does X have to put in to beat Y, than for X to beat Z?" A 10-0 matchup indicates "you cannot ever win, it doesn't matter what inputs you do they are all literally useless" but those basically don't exist (there are a few in some games). A 1-9 matchup indicates that you need to significantly outplay your opponent to win, while they can sit back and autopilot for the most part to win. A 5-5 matchup indicates you both have to put in the same amount of effort.

I also agree that tier lists are a lot less relevant for Skullgirls than they are in games where some characters (or the majority of characters) are simply not usable with a regular amount of effort if your goal is to win rather than just to play.

(I also disagree that Val as a character is bad, but whatever.)

I think Eliza is pushing S tier with few weaknesses as a solo, and no real weaknesses in a team. Why am I wrong?
Eliza has no wakeup attacks aside from Lv3 that don't lose to throws. She can't cancel Upperkhat into anything that will make it safe or even safe-ish on block. She gets instant-overheaded by a lot more moves than anyone except Big Band. All her large attacks have a vulnerable box appear first.
If you think she's S-tier you haven't played a game with S-tier characters...I don't even think she beats Painwheel very badly, if at all.

And ^ this is exactly why matchup discussions very rarely get anywhere.
 
Eliza has no wakeup attacks aside from Lv3 that don't lose to throws. She can't cancel Upperkhat into anything that will make it safe or even safe-ish on block. She gets instant-overheaded by a lot more moves than anyone except Big Band. All her large attacks have a vulnerable box appear first.
If you think she's S-tier you haven't played a game with S-tier characters...I don't even think she beats Painwheel very badly, if at all.

And ^ this is exactly why matchup discussions very rarely get anywhere.

L upper khat is -9. m is -15, h is -21. L at max range can't be punished with s.lp or cr.lk from most, if any characters. M is rarely used outside funky resets, if ever. H is extremely hard to punish, if impossible for certain characters (this is ignoring land cancels, so ground blocking it). If H upperkhat is blocked mid to max range, approaching afterwards is risky bc they can call assist+dp before you are in range to be even close to punishing it. It also has the benefit of being confirmable at any range with slight changes to the followup (instead of jump j.mk H sehkmet call, you need to do jump iad j.mk H sehkmet call). This tool has so many applications outside of reversal (damage bnbs, absurd neutral tool when spaced and used with assists, projectile property), and the reward off of it is amazing for the risk. Yes there are characters with better rewards of their reversals, but they do not have the range of this special (and in the corner she doesnt need to use sehkmet to convert).

Her airthrow is AMAZING. She can do so much with this move. If she lands airthrow without using her airdash, she can always end in hard knockdown (super scary when you have assist and hyper armor skeleton). If you use airdash, you just go into your bnb like normal with no changes, or go for reset, etc. It mixes perfectly into her blockstring pressure. Your opponent will generally try to jump out (alot of players bad habits, including mine) so this airthrow will catch people alot during iad pressure strings.

Bird insurance

She has half screen super armor special that can be made safe on block with assists, and can convert into a combo on hit.

Her level 1 super has great damage. and has armor (can be used to punish certain hard to counter supers.)
Her level 3 is pretty crazy strong, and can be followed up on

Her iad stuff is crazy hard to land cancel bc her airdash + button more often than not lets eliza land first.

Has an airsuper that can go right into hard knockdown

She has S.MP
S.MP is godlike (Painwheel really doesnt like this move, alongside her airthrow, and assists make it much worse)

Close to Long Range dp that costs little meter to convert off of and has no meter cost to follow up if close to a corner, can happy birthday assists super easy, is hard/sometimes impossible to punish.

Didnt mean to wall of text, but this character is crazy if not just for the midscreen dp.

Edit:If she isnt s tier, then she is an contender for the top
 
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And ^ this is exactly why matchup discussions very rarely get anywhere.

Exactly.

Eliza has no wakeup attacks aside from Lv3 that don't lose to throws. She can't cancel Upperkhat into anything that will make it safe or even safe-ish on block. She gets instant-overheaded by a lot more moves than anyone except Big Band. All her large attacks have a vulnerable box appear first.

Being as equitable and non-hyperbolic as I can:

She does have a reversal which is at least something. It is arguably not even worst in class. Is it as strong as the top tier options? Absolutely not. But its mere existence means something and requires a different approach because of it. I don't imagine Eliza players would easily give it up or be willing to lose the invulnerable frames, and that at least implies it has some value.

Instant overhead admittedly sucks for her, but if memory serves, her hurtbox makes it less of a liability than it is for Big Band. I'm not entirely confident of that, and I'll see about putting in the lab time this week just to be sure. If it isn't her hurtbox, I distinctly remember there being something weird about trying to instant overhead her. Maybe I'm taking crazy pills.

As for her extended hurtbox, it definitely helps... but I find that at best you usually trade with her, and that is mostly on prediction. I don't see many Eliza's being successfully anti-air'd when she's pushing forward.

tl;dr: I know she has weaknesses... I just don't think she gives up what she gets back.

As for the tier list stuff:

I agree 100%. A tier list shows that a player like Fab will beat Ogawa 4 out of 6 or 3 out of 7 or whatever. But that is precisely my point. I'm not not good enough (and neither are most of us talking about tier lists nor are the vast majority of people who are obsessed with them) for that to matter. At my level, if I'm getting bodied as Potemkin, it isn't because he's shitty... it's because I am. So I need to quit worrying about what the Pot-Eddie MU is and just put in the work.

In all honesty, I wish I had known that two or so years ago (and people did try to tell me). I worried way too much about PWs shitty MUs, and I didn't worry enough about just putting in the time. Was I a top tier PW? Probably not (and definitely not now), so I need to shut the fuck up and grind. Once I'm competing near the top of where solo-wheel can compete, maybe then I'll concern myself about her shitty MUs.
 
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Exactly.



Being as equitable and non-hyperbolic as I can:

She does have a reversal which is at least something. It is arguably not even worst in class. Is it as strong as the top tier options? Absolutely not. But its mere existence means something and requires a different approach because of it. I don't imagine Eliza players would easily give it up or be willing to lose the invulnerable frames, and that at least implies it has some value.

Instant overhead admittedly sucks for her, but if memory serves, her hurtbox makes it less of a liability than it is for Big Band. I'm not entirely confident of that, and I'll see about putting in the lab time this week just to be sure. If it isn't her hurtbox, I distinctly remember there being something weird about trying to instant overhead her. Maybe I'm taking crazy pills.

As for her extended hurtbox, it definitely helps... but I find that at best you usually trade with her, and that is mostly on prediction. I don't see many Eliza's being successfully anti-air'd when she's pushing forward.

I encourage you to play the game more. The majority of this is wrong.

Extended hurtboxes means she cannot play the air poke war at all. If you traded you hit your button late. Filia's j.lp beats it. Bellas j.lp j.lk beats j.mk(this is what i believe you are talking about). I've also witnesses pw beating out eliza with her j.lp.

On to the more important thing. Her "reversal" the same reversal that is just strike invuln. What does this mean? You can grab her but not just that. You can call assists as you grab.

Depending on the assist she has to hold that or tech properly. She can't use dp as a reversal option most of the time. Its value is that its jump cancellable, a good neutral tool that cant be punished if someone is ground blocking without meter(filia can gregor her on block, big bad can ssj on a late reaction, squigs gets a sbo,pw level three and fukua level 3 iirc)


The basic thing i'm trying to tell you is that eliza's dp does not change a thing or raise a flag in the offender to really mind eliza's defensive options.
 
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I think Eliza beats Painwheel, but that's assuming no assists. Eliza should spend most of the fight on the ground as Painwheel should just start an armor charge any time Eliza jumps. You can always fly cancel if they don't press a button. For Eliza, she just needs to walk forward and s.mp. Against jump happy Eliza players, Painwheel should win free. Lack of multi-hit normals makes it a much wonkier matchup when assists come into play
 
Hey guys I want to make a pastebin compiling what everyone thinks about characters via mmcafe of course this is tier-wise. whaddya say? this is just for 2016 i will continue to make new pastebins another year or two to see how everyone feels about the cast.
 
i know worldjem for a while was running a thing where everyone who took the survey put in their thoughts on character order from best to worst (not explicitly a tier list but basically the same thing) and had rankings based on the most common placements for each character but idk if thats still being updated or if people are putting in new info or anything like that, but just saying if you want what skullheart as a collective thought about character power levels as of <whenever it happened> then thats there
 
i know worldjem for a while was running a thing where everyone who took the survey put in their thoughts on character order from best to worst (not explicitly a tier list but basically the same thing) and had rankings based on the most common placements for each character but idk if thats still being updated or if people are putting in new info or anything like that, but just saying if you want what skullheart as a collective thought about character power levels as of <whenever it happened> then thats there

@worldjem
 
The responses slowed down so much that I stopped checking the poll.

Checking it now, there are 62 votes and here is what the list looks like:
  1. Eliza
  2. Peacock
  3. Cerebella
  4. Filia
  5. Fukua
  6. Parasoul
  7. Valentine
  8. Ms. Fortune
  9. Beowulf
  10. Painwheel
  11. Big Band
  12. Double
  13. Robo-Fortune
  14. Squigly
Google Docs sheet for more details

The list hasn't changed since I last updated it.
The link to the survey has been in my signature the whole time, but I guess no one reads those. =P

If we want to start this up again, I would rather make a new survey so I can remove the "N/A" option since I think we have had enough experience with Beo and Robo that we should be able to at least have an idea of where they'd be in each of our lists.

With that said, I think the above list is a good base to start off while we accumulate data on the new survey.

What do you think?
 
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Any opinions change since the game got updated. Maybe views on matchups or character strengths aren't what they were 2-3 years ago. Just interested in hearing opinions. I used to follow this thread but it kinda died out a while ago.
 
There isn't a set tier list and I wouldn't trust the one on google docs for the most part(seriously, who thinks Filia is the worst character?). I guess an interesting change would be Double's insane buff and then her nerfs to make her not so insane.
As for differences, I would say PW vs Fukua has shifted to PW's favor since M shadow changed. What I would like to know is if head on or off for matchups changed @FuLLBLeeD
 
bring back beta robo tbh