Community Card Tierlist 19/2/2013

So since Struesdell seems to have gone on an extended hiatus I thought I'd try my hand at coming up with an up-to-date tierlist of cards that factors arena usefulness into the rankings. My intention is to continuously update and improve the tierlist following feedback from the community

As with other tier lists the same disclaimers apply- this is all opinion and should not be taken as a reflection of card values (which is hugely variable and influenced by card rarity, card/sprite art and current supply/demand).

In terms of methodology I rate cards based on their:

1) Arena usefulness
-Arena usefulness comprises the card's deploy cost, arena speed (the letter value, taking into consideration known speed changes when leadered), arena damage (based on themadmanazn's formula) and skill type (knockback>slow>area attack=posion, with posion being valued more at 5* or lower rarity).

2) Non-arena usefulness (i.e against quests, bosses and player defences)
-This is based on damage per second, real effective attack speed, skill type and range. Damage per second is largely based on BKwiz's DPS tables for 6*s and encyclopedia/anecdotal data for 5*s and below. Rather arbitrarily I weight land attack 2.0, air attack 1.5, sea 1.0.
If two cards have similar DPS the one with higher attack speed is rated higher as you waste less damage and you proc your skill more often with a higher attack speed.

I weight arena:non-arena usefulness about 1:1 which is very disproprtionate to how often arena actually occurs. I will to try to justify this by saying that quests and bosses in general are very manageable with any mix of 5* and 6* cards which makes arena a massively important differentiator of card usefulness.
The order the cards are listed in within a tier is random but I have tried to group cards with similar skills together.

An explaination of tiers:

S= These cards are great for both arena and non-arena use
A= Either good in both arena and non-arena or great at one and not so great at the other
B= Good for arena/non-arena but not both
C= Generally there are better alternatives to these cards
D= Extremely niche in their usefulness

★★★★★★ 6 Star units
S Tier- Aragon, Manfred, Ellen, Oktavia, Diana, Grey*
A Tier- Monica, 9Tails, Reinhard, Nina, Dana, Nanaca, Lu Bu, Minerva, Fenrir, Cecilia, Paris, Marybell, Alvida, Vampiress, Reve
B Tier- Charles, Georgios, C.Reamy, Loki, Belethi, Vlad, Ethelred, C.Francois, Chiara, Agrippa, H.Monica, Vine, Succubus, Tina, Faith, Rouge, Cornelia
C Tier- Hippolyte, Debbie, Petra, Anastasia, Saki, Seth, Dorothea, Gloria, Abel, Beatrix
D Tier- Alexander, Zhao Yun

*Grey's DPS values are pending

★★★★★ 5 star units
S Tier- Werewolf, Oliver, Victoria, Sleipnir, Kyo, C.Lieselotte
A Tier- Sofia, Ignat, Camille, Bernard, Barbara, Winston, Lana, Edgar, Laura, Aleister, Stefan, Heidemarie, Penthesilea, Lily, Erhard, Yuki, Elizabeth, Ivy, Rem
B Tier- Sheryl, Bernhard, Rose, Arrebol, Caecillia, Xiao Qiao, Eleanor, Plautia, Diane, Joachim, Norma, Meg, Da Qiao, Franziska, Sonia, Theodore, Deese, Sarah, Sitri, Seymour
C Tier- Thrain, Serafina, Emma, Mihiro, Patricia, Marguerite, Vivianne, Boleyn, Zhou Yu, Kiki, Lucrezia, Julia, Antiope, Gremory, Ater, Claude, Catherine, Fiona, Elena, Adolph
D Tier- Gerhard, Melissa, Hildegard, H.Helmut, Hrwm, Sogno

★★★★
S Tier-
A Tier-
B Tier-
C Tier-
D Tier-

There is no formula basis for the above why must people rank tier, the idea itself is stupid. A true card worth is base on the team assemble for it, it doesn't matter what tier it it.

Are you telling us that your team of S tier can beat any team with a combination of tier?

sleepybryan wrote:

There is no formula basis for the above why must people rank tier, the idea itself is stupid. A true card worth is base on the team assemble for it, it doesn't matter what tier it it.

Are you telling us that your team of S tier can beat any team with a combination of tier?

This isn't meant as an arena advice thread.

The aim of this tierlist is to help new players pick cards based on usefulness. I know that when I started I used struesdell's tierlist to help me decide which 5*s I wanted to aim for and which to avoid

Which is why the above is useless and fails to justify how a card is useful. There is no single card that overpowers the rest without support from other cards

Which is why the above is useless and fails to justify how a card is useful. There is no single card that overpowers the rest without support from other cards

I think this is a decent concept. I know that when I was knew I generally wondered whether a new card I got was "good" or not. This thread could at least be helpful for new players, especially when it comes to avoiding scams, or setting a leader that will be useful to their allies.

I understand the argument that the usefulness of a single card is virtually impossible to judge, but I doubt many people would argue that Sleipnir isn't objectively better than Antiope. What we lack is a reliable formula (though it's my understanding that people have tried), so for now I think it makes perfect sense to "crowd source" the information from players with more experience.

For what it's worth, I recommend splitting the "C" class into two parts: Arena, and Quest. Also, perhaps the "niche" section could use a brief explanation for each card.

Overall, I'm glad this thread exists.

A useful thread. Thanks for the effort you put in to create it.
Overall it gives people a sense of how useful their card is for different purposes.
Great for new players looking for a decent starter 5*

you do realize aragon is terrible dps other than arena. Also putting a value in arena worth is also silly. There are 3 cards far superior to others in arena, aragon, charles, nina, and anything D is terrible. As far as the game is concerned the only time players actually care about stats for a ranking event is during boss fights. A lvl 120+ boss will make you wish having a real s rank card, and half of your S list aren't it.

Craft wrote:

For what it's worth, I recommend splitting the "C" class into two parts: Arena, and Quest. Also, perhaps the "niche" section could use a brief explanation for each card.

I think explanations are a great idea and hope to eventually have individual card breakdowns for every 6* card at least.

Pandalicious wrote:

you do realize aragon is terrible dps other than arena. Also putting a value in arena worth is also silly. There are 3 cards far superior to others in arena, aragon, charles, nina, and anything D is terrible. As far as the game is concerned the only time players actually care about stats for a ranking event is during boss fights. A lvl 120+ boss will make you wish having a real s rank card, and half of your S list aren't it.

What would you move into S and what would you move out? I'd like the tierlist to be community-moderated so if you give a good reason I will change things

My logic is that Aragon has marginally less land attack than Diana (66k vs 69k), and Diana has the 5th highest land dps in the game- with Vlad and Agrippa being the only 2 melee units above her. BKwiz hasn't updated his tables yet so I am just assuming their attack speed is the same. If she does indeed have top 10 land dps as well as being one of the best arena cards in the game wouldn't that easily make Aragon S class material?

Also I'm considering moving Oktavia down from S to A.

I support the idea of a tier list, some units are better than others... but i think i will just grab some marshmallows and enjoy the flame war here... keep at it

Ariesthecat37 wrote:

Craft wrote:

For what it's worth, I recommend splitting the "C" class into two parts: Arena, and Quest. Also, perhaps the "niche" section could use a brief explanation for each card.

I think explanations are a great idea and hope to eventually have individual card breakdowns for every 6* card at least.

Pandalicious wrote:

you do realize aragon is terrible dps other than arena. Also putting a value in arena worth is also silly. There are 3 cards far superior to others in arena, aragon, charles, nina, and anything D is terrible. As far as the game is concerned the only time players actually care about stats for a ranking event is during boss fights. A lvl 120+ boss will make you wish having a real s rank card, and half of your S list aren't it.

What would you move into S and what would you move out? I'd like the tierlist to be community-moderated so if you give a good reason I will change things

My logic is that Aragon has marginally less land attack than Diana (66k vs 69k), and Diana has the 5th highest land dps in the game- with Vlad and Agrippa being the only 2 melee units above her. BKwiz hasn't updated his tables yet so I am just assuming their attack speed is the same. If she does indeed have top 10 land dps as well as being one of the best arena cards in the game wouldn't that easily make Aragon S class material?

The actual dps for diana and aragon is 77k vs 73k assuming they have the same speed. Doesn't look much but that puts aragon only marginally better than rein for ground(marybelle and georg are better), she is only 5th best ground melee and her other stats are much worse. Problem with such list atm is like you said it's YOUR opinion. As much as bkwiz didn't want people use his list as a valuation guide, it was used. At least his list was hard stats and not opinions, I do not want to see another valuation debacle that was strusdelle's list.

Haha oh dear, these things again. I still have struesdell's excel sheets and all that so I could pull out the old tierlist, but I guess it would have to be changed.

One of the issues is that different units do well in different events. Arena event tiering is simple enough now that we know for real how damage is calculated, and could be changed a bit to account for speed and skill.

Then we have tower events, mina's trials/questing, and training events. The first and the latter are the same in that they involve killing bosses, so you could consolidate a tier into "boss killing" which would be top magic air/land/ground etc, that already exists in BkWiz's thread. I guess questing would just have to take into account all types of general things.

It's good to know where units stand though. Aside from arena & boss killing tiers though, I'm not sure how you would do one.

clocksprocket wrote:

Haha oh dear, these things again. I still have struesdell's excel sheets and all that so I could pull out the old tierlist, but I guess it would have to be changed.

'Tis the nature of the beast madame

Either way, I didn't look too deeply into anything you wrote, I juped right down to what each of the tiers means...I noticed an immediate hiccup: You have most of your tiers reading "good in either arena OR everything else" and then when I look at the tiers all the names lok exactly alike...Who's good at what in tier A for instance. I know they got there for being good at something, but what was it???

I suggest incorporating a spectrum, ROYGBIV. If they're really good at arena, the name is red. If their really good at everything else (Also I want to know how a card can be greeat at everything else, but suck at Arena's only...an I missing something?) the name is violet. Good/bad at everything (assumed by the tier) would be green.

Also, I would have tiers 1-5, then an S tier. Why?
S would be reserved for Green units in your current tier 6. Tier 5 would house all units in your current tier 6 that are only good at one thing. And so on and so forth.

btw arena competition is done through vials, proper opponent selection, and just pure grind. If you think you can get away with a mix of 5/6 for bosses, then i can easily argue you can get away with 4/5s for arena. If anything, having a 5 or non optimal 6 taking on high lvl boss is much worse than having a team of 4/5 just running on vials.

If you want to make a serious tier list, you're going to need 3 separate ones - Arena, Tower/Questing and Boss DPS. A unit could be subpar at arena, but surprisingly good at clearing enemies in inferno or whatever.

VitaeMortifer wrote:

If you want to make a serious tier list, you're going to need 3 separate ones - Arena, Tower/Questing and Boss DPS. A unit could be subpar at arena, but surprisingly good at clearing enemies in inferno or whatever.

Agreed.

Unfortunately a great Arena card (Aragon) doesn't translate well to Boss DPS, and vice versa.

*said the exact same thing earlier up on the first page* =___=

predator852 wrote:

clocksprocket wrote:

Haha oh dear, these things again. I still have struesdell's excel sheets and all that so I could pull out the old tierlist, but I guess it would have to be changed.

'Tis the nature of the beast madame

Either way, I didn't look too deeply into anything you wrote, I juped right down to what each of the tiers means...I noticed an immediate hiccup: You have most of your tiers reading "good in either arena OR everything else" and then when I look at the tiers all the names lok exactly alike...Who's good at what in tier A for instance. I know they got there for being good at something, but what was it???

I suggest incorporating a spectrum, ROYGBIV. If they're really good at arena, the name is red. If their really good at everything else (Also I want to know how a card can be greeat at everything else, but suck at Arena's only...an I missing something?) the name is violet. Good/bad at everything (assumed by the tier) would be green.

Also, I would have tiers 1-5, then an S tier. Why?
S would be reserved for Green units in your current tier 6. Tier 5 would house all units in your current tier 6 that are only good at one thing. And so on and so forth.

Thats a really good idea I'll definitely add that in.

VitaeMortifer wrote:

If you want to make a serious tier list, you're going to need 3 separate ones - Arena, Tower/Questing and Boss DPS. A unit could be subpar at arena, but surprisingly good at clearing enemies in inferno or whatever.

The point of tierlists in most videogames is to act as an easy-to-read 'dummy's guide' for unit usefulness. If you're a beginner it's hard to interpret and understand tables of numbers when you don't have much experience with the game. Tierlists aim to distill all the information into an easier to understand form, albeit one that is very subjective. By gaining a community concensus I'm hoping to remove as much subjectivity as possible. But unfortunately combining everything into one general heading of 'card usefulness' is a necessary evil if I'm to keep things simple. I think predator852's suggestion is a good way to make the list both more informative as well as more transparent.

Ariesthecat37 wrote:

The point of tierlists in most videogames is to act as an easy-to-read 'dummy's guide' for unit usefulness. If you're a beginner it's hard to interpret and understand tables of numbers when you don't have much experience with the game. Tierlists aim to distill all the information into an easier to understand form, albeit one that is very subjective.

That's incorrect for the most part...

In 1v1 fighting games (good ones at least) real tier lists are compiled via a matchup chart. Early on in the game's lifespan there are "general consensus" tier lists, but as time goes on they morph into matchup charts from which the tiers are inferred. The only fighting games where there are only consensus tier lists either have a weak competitive scene, or are team fighters like MvC... And even MvC games tend to have two tier lists - one for assist move usefulness and the other for individual character strength.

In competitive pokemon (which is a rather real thing btw) Tier lists are compiled via usage statistics, I.E, pokemon fall into various categories based on how often they are used (or if they're too powerful for competitive play) - There is no "Top Tier" there is simply the "Overused" tier... Instead of "Low Tier" there is "Underused". That is of course discounting the banned tier.


I'm actually drawing a blank as to what else even uses tier lists. MOBA games often try to form tier lists, but always fall flat since there's too many variables, unless your tier list is assembled by sheer winrate. The one tier list for League of Legends that was accepted for a while actually (elementz's tier list) had /three/ separate lists based on the game's various modes and maps. I suppose weapons in FPSes can, but those tend to be backed up by empircal data as to the gun's output damage.


Anyways - tl;dr conclusion time: Most games actually do have tier lists based in mostly objective fact. Those that have too many variables to put into one list do indeed form multiple lists.

The spectrum idea does sound pretty nifty, although it's a smidgen convoluted imo.

VitaeMortifer wrote:

In competitive pokemon (which is a rather real thing btw) Tier lists are compiled via usage statistics, I.E, pokemon fall into various categories based on how often they are used (or if they're too powerful for competitive play) - There is no "Top Tier" there is simply the "Overused" tier... Instead of "Low Tier" there is "Underused". That is of course discounting the banned tier.

I'll have you know Competitive Pokemon is one of my favorite uses of tiers and lists etc!!!!

Sola and Selene can fit in A tier for 5* unit :O (Arena)


edit: Nvm lol.

predator852 wrote:

VitaeMortifer wrote:

In competitive pokemon (which is a rather real thing btw) Tier lists are compiled via usage statistics, I.E, pokemon fall into various categories based on how often they are used (or if they're too powerful for competitive play) - There is no "Top Tier" there is simply the "Overused" tier... Instead of "Low Tier" there is "Underused". That is of course discounting the banned tier.

I'll have you know Competitive Pokemon is one of my favorite uses of tiers and lists etc!!!!

Heheh - I was a big fan of smogon and marriland (the websites) during the Diamond/Pearl era =)

Actually there is another kind of Arena event called Arena Battle (currently only in Japanese version) where there are many differences from the one you guys had, like Knockback only working on the strongest unit on the opposing team, making having too many Knockback units on your team pointless, etc.

So until you guys in the International server get to experience that I think it might be a good idea to exclude Arena from one of the factors to decide unit strength.

Or just separate the tier list into different event usages like many people suggest.

As a relatively new player, I can say that having tier lists dependent on event/use would not be overly confusing. I look forward to seeing the final results of this, as I have yet to break into the 5* realm.

Schdawn wrote:

Actually there is another kind of Arena event called Arena Battle (currently only in Japanese version) where there are many differences from the one you guys had, like Knockback only working on the strongest unit on the opposing team, making having too many Knockback units on your team pointless, etc.

So until you guys in the International server get to experience that I think it might be a good idea to exclude Arena from one of the factors to decide unit strength.

Or just separate the tier list into different event usages like many people suggest.

It would be easy just to not take into consideration Battle Arena... battle arena is really janky anyways, like the first one, you cannot use 30DC units. I also think all of them only allow for melee units...