Player vs Player Tiers

[Yaggleberry Finn]

DT, we would love to have your help (and others!) on this project. I completely agree it's going to be better and more comprehensive if we have a larger community of people contributing. Part of our dilemma to this point is simply that Tashiji and I have been the primary ones to test all of this out.

I like the idea of ranking them 1-64 (if we do all of the paths) but, at least for now, I don't think there are hardly any people who could do that accurately... in fact, I don't think I could do that either. (Or even just 1-however many figures we currently have.) The reason I say that is because few people have a) every single released character; b) the time/energy/willingness/efficiency to adequately test both paths of each character and c) someone they can play against that gives them quality data to work with.

I have "a" and maybe "b" but probably not "c" (since I PVP almost exclusively with my son right now)... so I guess what I'm saying is that ranking them Smash Bros style is probably not practical. But for those of us that do play it competitively with people around us, I think we should chime in and make our cases for why fringe players should move in one direction or another, etc.

And I'm with you that it's weird to not rank every single path option. I'm on board with that, but it's going to require a fourth tier... one that ranks below the Chompy group, which is already pretty low =P Unless the Chompy group just becomes a catch all for whatever is weakest, but then not all builds would have a fair shot at competing in that category. That's the main dilemma for me, which I suppose is best resolved by figuring out which builds would fall below the Spell Punk group and then pitting them all against each other to see if any of them genuinely can't even hack it in the Chompy set. If there were enough of those, then they'd deserve a category all to themselves...

[tyris01]

Pay a visit over to the GameFaqs forums. Guy named Rossmacdaddy has a pretty good tier listing already in the Wii console area. I know Tash has seen this before, as I've seen him there.

The main difference I see with this one (aside from a greater number of tiers) is the inclusion of a 'broken' tier, comprised of Pook Blade Stealth Elf, Shadowdancer Cynder, and Master Blaster Drobot. All of which can pretty much decimate 90% of the rest of the Skylanders with little effort, and act as a sort of Rock-Paper-Scissors circle to each other. Basing it on a Smogon-like comparison, those three are the Uber tier, while the rest you have are the Overused (Dino Rang, Bash, Ghost Roaster), Underused (peeps like Spyro and Flameslinger), and Never Used (guys like Zap) tiers.

Well, that... and people here seem to want a list of all 64 possible paths, which personally I think is an awesome idea.

Also, different console versions have different damage/stat values on some of the SL's. Eruptor, for instance, has godly damage at close range on the Wii version, but only average-high on 360 and PS3, where he is much lower on the list. Flameslinger is the reverse, having a fairly low damage and unimpressive Nova attack on Wii, but dealing a 90 damage tick with push every couple of seconds on the PS3 version (where he can also re-cast it in time to make it almost perma, and still get a couple of ranged attacks off in the meantime).

[Yaggleberry Finn]

Hey Tyris, thanks for chiming in! I only have access to the Wii version and have always wondered if damage output is the same across platforms. I have no way of testing it out elsewhere and this is the first I've heard of Flameslinger being much better outside of the Wii. One of the frustrations for me regarding Skylanders is that the games have variations from one platform to another. I recently read an interview that said Toys for Bob designed the Wii version and then allowed other studios to do the other versions, which is why there are variations. On Giants they'll be handling all of the versions, so hopefully there will be continuity between systems.

I'll try to check out the GameFAQs tier sometime. I don't know that I'll agree with those three characters being broken, as I am able to beat them with other characters.

[tyris01]

Aww man. That news saddens me. I consider the Wii version to be the less enjoyable of the two. Drill Sgt's charge is much slower there, making him much less viable (especially with his low damage), Flameslinger is weaker, etc. At least Cynder's slow effect works (On the PS3 it does NOTHING). Honestly, though, I love those characters despite them being low on the list, and it saddens me to know that Giants, if made by the same people, will probably defer to the Wii standard for damage/stats. Because characters like those will rarely see any sort of competitive use.