naaa, you have to classify all characters and steve is the most obvious miss there. He's a genetically proned top tier machine. Also (and i've had many a debate with Mo about this) Lee would not be low tier. Even I, who hates Lee, would say mid-tier but Mo thinks he's top. Also, what about God's gift to cool people? Hwoarang! He's definately Mid to Top tier (once again, one of Mo and I's tekken debates).
Plus, there's all the characters you missed out.
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Yea, Ill admit to Steve. Eddy maybe...
Tiers are sometimes hard to spot in some fighters and Tekken is one of the harder games to split the characters into tiers. Top and Mid are pretty much inseperable in Tekken 5 because the characters are pretty closely matched. But I think it's pretty easy to spot who's overpowered and who's underpowered.
Going by Tekken 5.0 (the version you all got in console), I reckon this works. In Tekken 5.1, several characters had their move physics altered and arcaders will bitch and moan about these forever xD (especially if you use Bryan *ironic evil laugh*)
GOD Tier: Steve, Heihachi.
Top Tier: Law, Bryan, Feng, Wang
Mid Tier: Anna, Baek, Bruce, Christie, Jack-5, Yoshimitsu, Hwoarang, Raven, Jin, Kazuya, Xiaoyu,
Low Tier: Lei, Roger, Kuma/Panda
The characters I've left out I want to discuss seperately:
Paul is pretty hard to place into a tier. He's definitely above Mid but not quite Top given the fact that his most of his mix-ups have remained unchanged since about Tekken 3. His game is predictable, even with Tekken 5's huge additions. Some people have a lot of trouble dealing with Pauls. He has Phoenix Crusher (qcf+2) which is devestating against a wall (you can Phoenix Crusher again right after O___O about 75% damage). He also mix-ups from high to lows very quickly. I'll put him in Very Upper Mid. xD
Marduk is AWESOME! I would definitely place him in top tier, it's just that NO-ONE agrees with me. There are VERY few Marduk players in my area, but the few that I have seen base their game on Marduks superior evasion commands. VTS (Vale Tudo Stance) crushes STRAIGHT which is effing awesome and can be mixed up with a launcher or a grab from 40 damage (provided that the opponent doesn't guess which throw you're using). His Crush game is better than anyone elses. Give this guy top tier. Believe me.
There were rumours flying about before the release of DR here in Australia that King would be top tier. I've yet to find out whether that's paid off but his T5 appearance is a very strong one indeed. His grabs are classic and his juggles are impressive as well. He's the type of charater that only needs a few things to go his way in a round for him to clench it. Upper Mid please.
Lee. I'm a bit biased toward him because he's MY character. It's amazing how Namco's been able to take this half-assed unusable character from Tekken 1 who was a complete Law clone + an infinite kick combo and turn it into a very, very abusable guy (with a lot of class xD). He doesn't have a good lauching game, but his juggles are effing awesome. Once you can get them up there, you can easily propel the opponent from whereever you are on the arena into a wall, where 4,3,4 does criminal damage. I've been on PIXEL health and reduced human opponent to tears (well, almost) by dealing 100+ damage with a Mist Step juggle and wall damage. In all honesty, he's probably Mid tier only because his mix-ups are pretty weak. Whereas some characters like Paul and Julia rely on strings that go high, low or mid, low etc. Lee relies on chip damage which works for him because he's the fastest kicker in the game. Don't think you can rip out Blazing Kick (d,df+4)? Wait it out by poking with your fast lows, they may only hit once but it all adds up.
Julia is, for all intents and purposes, low tier. But she still has a lot of fans from her TTT (Tekken Tag Tournament) outing. She did take a massive hit going into T4 but the love is still clearly there. She still mix-ups pretty well and I've been beaten by plenty of Julias very solidly. In fact some of the best players in this area use Julia consistantly. She's the top of low tier. xD
Ganryu may seem stupidly stupid but believe it or not, he's top tier. The great thing about T5 is that Namco had finally woken up to themselves and had given all the big characters like Jack, Ganryu and Kuma REAL moves so that they can stand a REAL chance. Look at 'em now. Ganryu is the BEST at okizeme (wake up games), knock an opponent down and a good Ganryu player will NEVER let them stand up straight again. Annoying? Yes, but damn effective.
Eddie isn't just like Christie. Their grabs are different and their limb lengths are too. Though they can use the same juggles, Eddie's timing tends to be a bit tighter.
Devil Jin was the king of TTT (back then, he was just Jin). Due to the games evolution though, he is no longer up there. His game still plays like a standard Mishima: relying on EWGF (f,d,df+2). His wavedashing isn't as strong as Kazuyas (canceling one crouch dash into another) but it's there to use and abuse still. Low Top Tier.
Asuka, being a new character, you'd think that she'd pack some punch like Feng (top) or Raven (mid) but no, she's been relegated to the low tier. If you've tried to use Jun in TTT, you'll know that SHE SUCKED. Asuka IS greatly improved over Jun and she's got a lot of game. I can use Asuka decently and I've found the trickiest part to winning is getting into the opponent spaces. Asuka is very short range, her launchers require very very little space between you and the opponent but once you can get around this with some clever play, you can dominate with okizeme and light mix-ups. Oh yeah, and don't even think about using her "infinite" strings. They suck.
O____O
I still think that Hwoarang has more than enough capability to be top tier and I always saw him as the steve of kicks. His advancements from the flamingo are deadly when put into execution and the fact that you can create the same affect as a juggle, without lifting your opponent off the ground is a big upper (the only other person i've seen that can really do that is steve).
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Hwoarang's 1 and 2 (square and triangle) buttons are punches however. And they play an important part to his game. Steve's 3 and 4 (cross and circle) buttons are evasive dodges which have huge crushing properties and can lead into stunning moves and juggle starters, all of which will deal CH damage. While I'd admit that Hwoarang's Flamingo Stance is a huge part of his game, giving him that extra edge over Baek due to added confusion properties, it's got no game on any of Steve's stances which are just so much more useful because they invite the opponent to attack, whiff and get punished.Originally Posted by Gir Guy
Steve's 1,2,1 is able to stop ANY opponent mid-move due to it's lightning speed. This creates a chance to relaunch the opponent and mount the pressure again. Hwoarang, being a kicker primarily, has to deal with the fact that his moves just take a few extra frames to come out and needs to really LOOK for opportunities instead of creating them like Steve can.
Oh, and that thing you said about Hwoarang being able to juggle without lifting. That's just a stun. Everyone can do it with specific moves. And Kazuya does it best. Bryan is just plain mean with them too.
Last edited by Mo-Nercy; 02-28-2006 at 09:14 AM.
I was actually referring to how well his moves flow, like a juggle. Not stunning an opponent with one move.
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OHH! Well then...Welcome to Terminology School.
You're talking about a Natural Combo. This term was only recently adopted into Tekken from Soul Calibur fans. An NC is a combo where if the first hit has hit, then the rest are guaranteed (unable to be blocked or avoided). 1,2 is a natural combo for almost all characters. Faster characters obviously have more natural combos but in general, all characters can have as many as a dozen or two including those that only become NCs on CH (counter hit), that is, when you hit an opponent mid-move. The rest of the time, they're just strings.
A String is a chain of moves that CAN hit more than once but can be blocked halfway through or avoided. All 10 hits that you see in that handy-dandy command list are strings, for example.
Now, I'm not just saying the following because she ismy favourite, but I'v heard many times that Nina is an obvious top-tier and one of the best characters of the game. True or not, it just confused me when you mentioned earlier in this thread that she is only a mid-tier?
Well, I'm one of those that totally disagree with you here. I actually think that Marduk is the worst character in Tekken 5, which may sound somewhat harsh to youIt is not that I have to tried to learn him - I have, but it just seems I can not make him work the way I want him to.
Julia, a low-tier!? She is one of my favourite characters to play with - how come she´s considered a low-tier?
Oh, I accidently forgot Nina. My bad. If I hadn't forgotton about her, I would've said something about at the end of my thread like I did with the other hard-to-tier character like Paul, Lee etc. Speaking T5, I reckon she's upper mid to top tier. But in DR, I don't think she's up there anymore. I'd also like to reinterate that there isn't a physical listing that divides each character into a tier and that usually it'll all fall down to the opinions of the players. But in this case, our opinions aren't all that different.
I honestly think you should try again. Out of the biggies in the game, he is definitely the best one to use. I know it sounds strange to hear that Marduk is the ideal character for evasion tactics (short of Steve, maybe) but it's true. db+3+4 going into the 1+2 tackle is pwnage against most average human players as it has HUGE crushing properties and it also deals a nice 40 damage, very good for a move that's so safe. Against more advanced opponents, the 1+2 tackle becomes easy to work around so you'll need to build on your game with some block stun moves d+2, d+1, f+2...and the greatest of them all db+1+2. Setting up db+1+2 is vital to the game. Like db+3+4, it dodges just about every damn move in the game and lets not dismiss it's launching properties. Fast jabbing characters can really dance around him though so he's not ideal for every situation. I'm not saying that his evasion moves are 100% guaranteed because they DO need practice and tight timing.Well, I'm one of those that totally disagree with you here. I actually think that Marduk is the worst character in Tekken 5, which may sound somewhat harsh to you
My advice? Don't think of him as your standard biggie. Let him move around with Vale Tudo Stance, mix-up between the tackles, the long range punch and the low sweep and you'll find that he's a lot speedier than you think. In my experience of the game and it's players, I've found that the majority of people put Marduk in the middle somewhere.
There's this one Julia player in Sydney. I totally FEAR that guy. Julia is a force to be reckoned with in the right hands but you need to be damn good at punishing and CH-hunting. You can't just stand around with Julia chaining moves together, you have to SS, move back and crush your way to getting on top of your opponent (even though her crushing is horrible). Her juggles are pretty worthwhile and her wall game is excellent. The downside? Quite a few of her "good" moves are rather unsafe on block or just put you at a frame disadvantage outright. df+2,1. f+3~1 (a new move). f+1 and d~df+1,2 are all moves that you should have in your repetoire but at the same time make you say to yourself "I hope to God that this works, otherwise I'm getting floored."
When I first looked into Julia, I thought I would like using her and I actually did for a very very very short while. I thought her style of play was similar to Cassandra's (from Soul Calibur) as she is also a CH-hunter and punisher. But if Julia was anything like my Cassie, I'd be a happy man. Anyway, the only useful thing I learnt from the experience is that f~f+1 (the elbow) is good for creating pressure.
I hope I've been able to clear some things up. I've actually convinced myself out of believing that Julia is low tier after typing this. Mid isn't out of the question but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter how a character is tiered because any player can use any character effectively. I don't make my decision on who to play depending on what tier that character is in. Out of the God - Top tier characters I've listed, I use Nina and Wang sparingly. If I had to place my primary characters in order of preference, it'd be Lee, Xiaoyu, Asuka, Bruce.
So you could play a graphical inferior, portable rehash of Tekken 5?
Also, if I recall correctly, there was a very competant rendition of Tekken 3 on the GBA...
-"If she's happy then... I don't mind."
Yeah, but I heard it was crap.
PSP graphics are nearly the same quality as PS2 graphics. Although the changes to T5So you could play a graphical inferior, portable rehash of Tekken 5?
Also, if I recall correctly, there was a very competant rendition of Tekken 3 on the GBA...R from T5.1 are nothing compared to the leap from TTT to T4 or T4 to T5, ALL characters play differently and MOST players have to had to re-adjust their game to compensate.
As much as I love the game though, I'd rather play in at the arcades. A PSP still isn't worth getting IMO.
Tekken Advance wasn't a very good game by Tekken standards. With only two buttons for attacking instead of the usual four, a lot of fun was sapped out of the game.
See, the problem IMO is that you can do, what you've done (in listing some of the characters attributes and why you've put them where they are or why they're hard to list) with every character. It's, as you said, a matter of opinion. I'm sure you could get a person using a low tier character who is that good with the one character that they woop a top tiers ass. It's just to hard to classify.
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