darkSpyro

I second the notion that the old landers need to be sorted first. I suppose folks scrutinizing the tiers against themselves might be a good place start. I unfortunately have no PvPers at my place at this time. Though I might get some of my buddies to help.

On a side note: booooooooooo to so few PvP arenas.

Could we maybe have two teams (or possibly threads), one that works on oldlanders and one that works on newlanders? Otherwise it may take a while to re-grade everyone...

Just noticed something while battleling against Bumble Blast with Star Strike: When there are like 4 bees attacking her, just use the spin and all 4 are reflecting back dealing around 150 damage making her even more awesome.

Ouch...
Btw //www.darkspyro.net/swapforce/upgrades/
Upgrades are out!
Say, how is Grim Creeper?
His Spook and Scare attack will either not work well in PvP, or dominate it, in my opinion.
Also, does Zoo Lou's wolf still dig up food in PvP, and can it be eaten by both attackers?

I was playing with Double trouble, and noticed that his eldritch beam is quite merged due to jumping. On the bright side, his exploding doubles CANNOT be destroyed...

@Arc of Archives: Props to you for volunteering to do some organised character testing! Such help would be invaluable to this thread, especially at this early stage.

@Doomslicer: It wouldn't be a good idea to divide the efforts of the thread in to two halves like that: Any information about the Oldlanders is relevant in some way to the Newlanders and vice versa, so it's more sensible that this information is shared in the same place. Also, as we've just been discussing, we won't be able to evaluate the Newlanders very well until we've evaluated the Oldlanders first anyway.

You're probably right.
Also, is Terrafin nerfed any?

I've used Dark52's ever-helpful Swap Force upgrades list (//www.darkspyro.net/swapforce/upgrades/) to add in the names of many of the new Skylanders' upgrade paths to the Unsorted Skylanders list.
Thanks goes to Doomslicer for notifying me that the upgrade list had already been uploaded. I never expected it to be there so quickly!

On an unrelated note, I have noticed that the effect radius of Tree Rex's Shockwave Slam has been greatly nerfed to less than half of it's original area of effect, - even when the attack is charged!
I have a feeling it's damage might have been nerfed too, but I'd have to check the numbers to be sure of that.

Quote: EgoNaut

@Doomslicer: It wouldn't be a good idea to divide the efforts of the thread in to two halves like that: Any information about the Oldlanders is relevant in some way to the Newlanders and vice versa, so it's more sensible that this information is shared in the same place. Also, as we've just been discussing, we won't be able to evaluate the Newlanders very well until we've evaluated the Oldlanders first anyway.

I'm not in a position to contribute, though I follow this thread (as I did its predecessors) closely. I think Doomslicer may not be wholly wrong. Perhaps three or four Skylanders can be identified as representative of the tier, and they can be used to help position new cores and reposes. Anyone who lands borderline (e.g. if someone dominates A tier but gets creamed by S tier), then they can be tested more extensively. Most should fall nicely into the tiers, I'd guess.

Just a(n humble) suggestion. If misguided, ignore me. Again, I cannot contribute, I only follow.

I have a feeling Grim Creeper's spooky specter path will be in at least B tier.

I just annoyed the hell out of my brother by spamming his soul attack on Slobber tooth (his character) we both had no upgrades, and gosh that soul attack is already amazing.

Swarm is even stronger than before. His first Blade attack is hiting 2 times which is dealing 100 damage. You can also spam his butstinger which is stronger and homes in on enemies too. He should remain in S-Tier.

@dios: Your suggestion is not invalid, but pinning down those "representative" Skylanders might be more trouble than it's worth just to get that method to work. I still believe that our current setup is more practical overall.

@Takadox360: Noted.

drobot has been nerfed he is slower when flying.

series 2 flameslinger can now run in a circle with his powered up flame.

ignitor seems better but i'm not sure why.

jet-vac has much faster shooting which should move him up a tier.

completly unrelated but wreaking ball is now ugly :-(

Camo can now only shoot suns in bursts of 2 but they do 30 damage each. His Melons on melon master now do 80 damage each and you can launch them at will

Quote: warbot100

drobot has been nerfed he is slower when flying.

series 2 flameslinger can now run in a circle with his powered up flame.

ignitor seems better but i'm not sure why.

jet-vac has much faster shooting which should move him up a tier.

ompletly unrelated but wreaking ball is now ugly :-(

HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT! HE JUST LOOKS MORE REAL!

Ignitor's sword is stronger!

Quote: wreckingballbob

Quote: warbot100

drobot has been nerfed he is slower when flying.

series 2 flameslinger can now run in a circle with his powered up flame.

ignitor seems better but i'm not sure why.

jet-vac has much faster shooting which should move him up a tier.

ompletly unrelated but wreaking ball is now ugly :-(

HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT! HE JUST LOOKS MORE REAL!

Ignitor's sword is stronger!

ok ok but he is uglier but still cute

I know Double Trouble's Magic bomb attack takes longer to use now. it charges for a second or so.

@Arc of Archives: Excellent post about Whirlwind / Tempest Dragon there, so thanks for that.
You don't have to apologise for not getting around to testing those S Tiers yet. We've got a lot of time so there's not much pressure, or certainly not from me anyway.

Quote: Tashiji

Adding my support to seeing this topic stickied. The last two were valuable compendiums for all sorts of information extending far past just PVP, and each became one of the most active and valued topics on its respective board. Let's get this one an early sticky!

not one review from Tashiji yet?
we need you Tashiji !

oh and I add my support for a sticky as well

Quote: Hazard335

Quote: Tashiji

Adding my support to seeing this topic stickied. The last two were valuable compendiums for all sorts of information extending far past just PVP, and each became one of the most active and valued topics on its respective board. Let's get this one an early sticky!

not one review from Tashiji yet?
we need you Tashiji !

oh and I add my support for a sticky as well

I also support this thread getting a sticky.

Thumpback's combos take much longer to execute now. I think Roller Brawl on the path where she gets the new helmet and a spinning attack should be S tier. Not sure about the name of the path, but she's very fast and strong, does damage quick and is a master at playing keep-a-way. Plus her armor is increased with the new helmet.

jet vac is much much better now as his shooting is extreamly fast and does around 25 dmg per shot he can also move pretty quickly and get the advantage over te slow powerful characters like slam bam.

is it just me or is zook amazing now

How is Zook buffed?

Quote: Doomslicer

How is Zook buffed?

He's more nerfed than buffed. His cacti do less damage than before.

How is Zook buffed?

i'm not sure but in pvp his mortar shots can go over huge barriers
this happened a few times i'm not sure but it might be a glitch as zooks mortat shot all the way up the cliff in the quicksand arena.

Keep these little reports coming about changes to the old Skylanders. Although it looks like not much is progressing in this thread, I am saving every little bit of information someone reports into a data file and building up a collated source of information about each Skylander until I can start seeing patterns emerge.

Just to remind everyone what Tier placements and changes are being considered right now:

• Bumble Blast / Honey Tree is being considered for A Tier. Do you agree or disagree? Opinions would be appreciated!
  
• Slobber Tooth / Seismic Tail is being considered for E Tier. Do you agree or disagree? Opinions would be appreciated!
  
• Smolderdash / Sun Forger is being considered for A Tier. Do you agree or disagree? Opinions would be appreciated!
  
• Star Strike / Magic Reflector is being considered for S Tier. Do you agree or disagree? Opinions would be appreciated!
  
• I am still open to suggestions about how the swapping abilities of the Swaplanders should be accounted for in the tier list. Specifically, I am personally wondering whether anyone else thinks we should list the top and bottom halves of each Swaplander as individual contenders, or whether we should continue considering them in combination with other halves?
  

Quote: Arc of Archives

I think we should rearrange the original 48 according to their nerfs and buffs before we add in new characters to the list.

I feel like this would be the easiest:most accurate route. Adjust current Skylanders by how they have changed, then factor in the new ones. We can still observe new ones while we're at it, but I feel like we should focus on the older ones first. I have been playing with mainly new ones, so sorry about that. I'll try to test more old ones when I can, though it'll be hard to keep track of it for levelling and quests.

I heard that S2 Hex's Skull Buddy only does 80 damage a shot now. We should talk about that

Anyway, I expect Honey Path Bumble Blast will end up high-tier. The damage he does is very good and he's hard to escape from, because his bees seek you out and have huge shot range. The honey glob just accentuates that when you're able to use it- AND slows down enemies, making it EVEN HARDER to get away. And even on their own honey glob/beehive mine are good supporting attacks that do nice damage(a beehive mine does 60 damage). The honey glob barely needs to be held down to have it charged up, and launches three bee projectiles, while doing the 45 damage from the glob itself and slowing your enemy! He's kind of slow and I feel like he's more focused on residual damage(the latter might just keep him from S-Tier), but he really makes up for it. His HP/armor isn't too shoddy either. I haven't bought his Soul Gem yet because I didn't manage to find it, but it's apparently supposed to automatically launch bees when enemies are close, which will probably be a nice upgrade! Really, the best thing about Bumble Blast, that makes him such a prime candidate for high-tier placement, is the fact he is so difficult to get out of reach from. His Bee-Zooka range is really insane and tracks enemies down ruthlessly and you need to see it to believe it. His other attacks push him even further because they work great with it.
Haven't tried other path yet, no comment on that. It just seemed a bit pointless because his Bee-Zooka attack is already solid at the start, and I felt that upgrading the honey would be more beneficial because you kinda only use it to make the bees do more damage without honey path's upgrades. It only does 17 per glob without the damage boost from its path... Still, it's got a decent chance to land a solid spot.

I made observations about Tail Path Slobber Tooth on another thread: he just can't seriously compete in PVP. His standard attack is just that, a standard melee attack that's outclassed by a lot of others(maybe I'm wrong on it being greatly outclassed, but still, it's rare that just a good melee move can make a character useful). His biting attacks are pretty much worthless. His tail ground-slam rock-shock wave WOULD be a good, powerful attack, but it makes him move slowly, doesn't launch fast enough, can be easily avoided, and is interruptable by hitting him with an attack, so he has to set that up again to use it. He's not as bad as some bottom of the barrel paths were in past games(his attacks are coherent), but I don't see him making it past second-last tier, if he even reaches there, with the buffs everyone has gotten.
I haven't tried his other path yet either, but considering that the eating moves are PVE-focused, I can't imagine that path would match up even to the tail one, which is sure to end up near the bottom.

I haven't upgraded any of the SF fully with Quests and L20 yet, besides my LightCore Warnado, though... Still, there are some things that are very clear without even having to go into PVP(don't worry, I did make these observations based on PVP though!).

By the way... Another +1 for having this stickied. ^D^ b I messaged the admin.

P.S. sorry this post is kinda a paragraph mess.

No..... I was planning to get because he looks sooooo damn awesome and a total badass. But after reading your comment about him being terrible for PvP, I was shocked. No offense, but I really hope you're just missing something with him. PLEASE tell me he's better than that. Anybody, Anybody at all!! Please be worng, Please be wrong, Please be wrong, Please be wrong

*100 more 'please be wrong's later*

Anyhoo, feels good to be back on this site and in this Thread, I enjoyed the PvP threads for Giants so I feel I'll love this one too. Unfortunately, I can't test or anything since my Xbox (and SWAP Force inside it) is gone right now at the moment until I step up my game in School, which is a real shame after my 15th birthday was already ruined.. I may get it back next weekend though and I'll try to max out my figures as quickly as possible so I can get a spot to judge somebody before someone else takes it (I tend to like being the first person to give critique or place someone on the list, I'm weirdly competitive like that).

Until then, I'll just read.

My kid and i played pvp, lvl 15 Double Trouble vs Lvl 8 Rattle Shake. DT lost. I was playing it and i was surprised tnat i lost. There where instances where i couldnt move while i being attacked with Rattles gun and deputy snake. Deputy is so annoying. It wont die and DT's beam sometimes home on it. I think Rattle's top is good in pvp with the deputy snake path.

@Arc of Archives: Thank you very much for your information about Sprocket.
I can't remember right off the top of my head what was said about Sprocket back in 'Giants. I'd love to be the sort of guy right now who'd go back through the old tier list thread and finds information for you, I honestly would! Thing is, that thread got so frightfully big that I'm too scared to brave its waters again!
This is why i'm keeping a collated record of all the most common opinions stated about each character in Swap Force, so that this doesn't happen again. Next time someone asks "Why is X in such a high/low tier again?" I'll be able to give them an immediate answer!

Another thing: I was currently suggesting that we should consider Slobber Tooth / Seismic Tail for E Tier just to play on the safe side. Do you think we'd be better off considering him for D Tier?

PS: I know that "ThatOnePlayer" feeling. I get it with Mario Kart.


@LightSpyro13: It's good to see you, LightSpyro! I look forward to seeing your contributions again.

I may be new to this forum, but I am not new to the game. Here are some of my opinions and observations. I play on the PS3 and have played all three games.

Characters:
1) I noticed when Terrafin S2 attacks with his fists, there is a slight delay between each punch. I am not making any recommendations on the character, just stating what I see.
2) Spyro S2 has gotten some increased damage over the other two games which I feel may boost him up a tier, especially his Sheep Burner path. First, his Daybringer Flame does 120 damage this time around compared to I think it was 40 damage from Giants. His Earth Pound now does 135 damage (which may be the same) and the standard fireballs do 50 damage. I don't remember the damage output of those two attacks from previous installments but I know the standard fireballs do increased damage. He is fast, and can dish out much more damage which may move him up a tier considering other characters buffs or nerfs.
3) I noticed when Chill uses Glacial bash on the ice blocks, the ice blocks travel much slower than they did in Giants. This could be compensated in the fact that she seems to construct an ice wall faster than in Giants.
4) Magna Charge's bottom path, either one, is completely worthless in PVP. He doesn't attract the opponent in and thus he can't use any of the attacks on the bottom path, unless maybe the attacks work on Pop Fizz's bottles or Sonic Boom's babies.

Swapper Path Recommendation:
I think we should focus on the characters themselves (top and bottom) and not the combinations that can be made from all the characters. Just focus on the top and bottom together and only the different paths that can be picked and let other people combine in the ways they wish. In essence, don't try to label a top as S tier, and a bottom as B tier, because it is too hard to separate the abilities apart to say each belong in a different tier. The power of the character is determined from both the top and bottom and then the respected tier should be determined from that. I hope this makes sense, if not I'll try to explain further.

S Tier Characters:
I didn't have a whole lot of test time, but I firmly believe Hex S2 and Chop Chop S2 should stay in S Tier. Chop Chop takes a little damage now when blocking attacks (1-8 hit points), but he is still very amazing in PVP. Hex's Skull Buddy does much less damage this time around at around 60 or 80 a hit, much less than the 280 from Giants. On the plus side, she can't be interrupted anymore when she does Rain of Skulls and it seems to be a little harder to avoid this time around. If one skull hits, the others will usually too, as it stuns the opponent for a quick second, allowing the others to hit.

Characters Tested:
Night Shift - Top/Proper Vampire Path, Bottom/Underbat Path, Level 10

My opponent is less skilled than myself, and we played on the Frozen Outpost Arena. We did three lives a piece, no food, no powerups, and fair fight off. The less skilled person mainly played as Night Shift.

We tested Night Shift out against the following S Tier characters, Bash S2, Flameslinger S2, Chop Chop S2, Hex S2, and Stump Smash S2. Night Shift was able to beat Bash S2, Flameslinger S2, and Stump Smash S2. What made Night Shift's victory even more amazing was he was only level 10, compared to all other characters being at level 15. Every time he teleports near the opponent, he slows them down, which gets extremely annoying. On top of that, he respawns twice. The Underbat Path has got to be the better bottom path for PVP, each time he respawns with a little over 350 health, which may vary with level (this is unconfirmed). Another strategy used was slowing the opponent then using the fangs to inflict damage over time, and heal back any lost health. He is an extremely difficult character to beat as he can heal, slow, and respawn. I believe he belongs in S Tier. Chop Chop S2 was able to beat him b/c of his shield blocking capability, though the slowing down again was extremely annoying. Hex S2 used the Rain of Skulls and Bone Wall to keep Night Shift at bay long enough to come out with a win, but if Night Shift was in the hands of the more experienced player, I think he probably would have had a win over both Choppy and Hex.


Free Ranger - Top/Storm Focus Path, Bottom/Lightning Linguist Path, Level 20

My opponent is less skilled than myself, and we played on the Frozen Outpost Arena. We did three lives a piece, no food, no powerups, and fair fight off. The more skilled person mainly played as Free Ranger.

We tested Free Ranger against Chop Chop S2, Hex S2, and Night Shift. Free Ranger won against no one. The main thing to note about Free Ranger, his tornado (second attack button, O on PS3) sucks in the opponent and spins them all around. The opponent isn't stunned like environment enemies, but it is hard to land a hit while in the tornado. The problem with it, is it can be interrupted, so while an enemy is in the tornado if Free Ranger takes a hit he stops. That is mainly how he lost against Hex, a bone wall or rain of skulls would interrupt the tornado attack. The Gale Slash did go through Hex's bone wall but she was too powerful. Chop Chop blocked everything and Night Shift continuously slowed him down. Though the charcters tested against were very limited, I really don't think Free Ranger is S material and maybe not even A, which kills me to say b/c he is an awesome character. More testing needs to be done to be positive, but I thought this may help with placing a few characters and giving some basis as who is still in S Tier.

^ Welcome to the forum dude, Constructive Critique man!

Hey I think this is my first post but here goes...

So between me and my friend we have pretty much every skylander so here's what I think of skylanders in regards to pvp . Warning this is gonna be a lot of info and all info is extensively tested so here it is.

Bumble blast on his honey path is easily the most broken thing ever. The damage alone is great but the fact that he can slow is ridiculous . Slowing seems to more than halve both movement speed and attack speed. This along with his high health makes him near impossible to kill. He beats s2 shield chop chop easy . Only way I've beaten him is with hex on quicksand quarry by shooting skulls and jumping off edge every time. So yeah s tier for sure even tho he destroys all in s tier. Can starstrike reflect honey.? That might make him possible to kill

Rattle shake is s tier for the same reason. His deputy snakes ability to slow the enemies. Slowing just absolutely breaks pvp IMO .

Stealth elf all versions seems s tier cuz her damage on pook blade saint is still ridiculous and you can always run away to get health which is +15 in this game.

Chop chop s2 is still s tier but not as bad as he can take damage while in shield and shields damage has got severely nerfed.

Double trouble certainly isn't s tier anymore because he can be interrupted now while using his beam Atk so I'd say only really a or b tier for him in this game.

Jet vac is s tier as his blasts are super fast and have crazy knock back plus they interrupt other people moves really easily. Btw everyone's moves can be interrupted now so the fact that he can do it well is really a great bonus

I'd say beast mode pop fizz is a tier since Atk speed beats dmg and combos in this game because combos are practically impossible to use in this game due to being able to interrupt attacks.

Hoot Loop's teleportation loop is also visible, I suspect Stink Bomb and Trap Shadow will do the same.

Well... I leave this thread alone for one random evening and all of a sudden there are three or so of the largest and most incredibly constructive posts I've ever seen! I've given them a read-through just now, but I'll have to read them again at a later time when I'm less busy with schoolwork before I can collate the information from them that relates to tier placement suggestions or wider talking points that need to be discussed. In the meantime, keep all the research and opinions flowing in: I have a feeling we're really getting somewhere here even though the Tier list itself hasn't budged yet.

i can't spend much time on the game and help too much but i will try to point out stuff that i see,
slobbertooth (the other path) is quite good i tested him against ninja stelth elf and rollerbrawl and he won both 5/6 matches (3 against each opponent) he is quite good but slow his seismic tail dosent do much damage but is a great keepaway and his sucking in gives him the much needed way of getting fast opponents close for high damage
just my opinion

I'll be willing to contribute as well as I can once I get the game at Christmas, even though I don't usually do pvp that much. I have a few friends that I could compete against to help with my judgements, but none of them are exceptionally good at the game (I'm probably not the best either, but I pick up some strategies from reading through threads like this!). Having both players test the character sounds like a fair idea, which I feel should help me if I try to make any judgements. Night shift sounds overpowered, so I can't wait to test how he turns out when I test him with my friends - they'll dominate me if he's on the right paths!

another thing with chill
is that apparently if you stand in the right postion against an enemy she will take no damage because of a glitch(there's a whole other thred abot this)
and i think (not sure) that camo (series 1) heals faster when the fireblats are going around him

Okay, I checked through your lists, and I think these are all of the paths you guys are missing:

Spy Rise:

Top:

Web Spinner
Shock Spy

Bottom:

Fire Tech
Electro Tech

Fryno:

Brawler
Fryno's Hot Shop

Riptide:

Fishy Fencer
Flounder Pounder

Freeze Blade:

Top:

Blizzard Blade
Ice Sculptor

Bottom:

Trail Freezer
Ice Skater

Stink Bomb:

Top:

The Art of Skunk-Fu
The Art of Acorns

Bottom:

Skunk Cloud Controller
Sneaky Tricks

If I missed any or if you guys want to know anything else about the paths, I can tell you (I have the guide) or I'll do as best I can. I'm happy I can help.

Also something I wanted to toss in: Boom Jet's top Soul Gem enables his air strikes to bring food if he has red health. However, it should be noted that both players can eat the food. Okay, just wanted to put that out there.

I've gone through the last lot of posts and recorded the key points about each character in my collated data file.
The amount of constructive content in these posts has been absolutely brilliant. In particular, i'm pleased to see that people have considered how much research they have made to back up their statements, noting what research they've done and pointing out the places where more research might be needed. This is a really useful thing to see in this thread as it shows that people are posting with an objective mindset.

I am pleased to welcome Zenephret to the thread! Your post was impressively detailed and your analysis of Night Shift and Free Ranger were particularly good because of the way your research used the current S Tier as its focal point when you tested the new characters.
Breaking the research down in to smaller, single-tier-focused chunks is very constructive way to do research at this early stage of the Tier list, as I shall talk about later on...
I also thank you for your suggestion about how we should handle the Swaplanders.

Skilletmonkey's post had some very useful information too, though I would advise that you be careful not to be too eager to recommend characters for the highest Tiers, for reasons I shall explain next when I talk about Arc of Archives' posts...

Arc of Archives' posts were detailed and researched, but the most important thing about them for me is that they provide a standard for how mindful we should be about whether information is based on research or just our own opinions. Both types of information are useful in this thread, but we just need to post carefully and always consider that we might not yet know everything about a character or that our opinions may be biased.

Arc of Archives also brought up another important matter which I feel the need to quote. (Concentrate on the bold bits if you don't want to read all of it.)

Quote:

There are way too many "S and A tier characters" available in these first waves. It's... Suspicious? Gluttonous? Preemptive? I can't quite put a word on it.

Anyway, with all these clearly powerful characters, unless older characters simply don't match up to them(which doesn't seem to be the case, many have buffs), I think we're going to have to do very, very serious revision work. What makes a character "truly broken" or "very solid" in SF?

Just some thinking. I just find it odd that so many "powerful" characters have been released. With all of them that seem to qualify as "powerful", ehh. I've also noticed all of my matches in SF are much more quickly-paced, which can't be a coincidence.

Haha I was just in a speculative mood. I still think we're going to have to at least skim over all the characters to really think about what constitutes placement in a tier. I just find it odd that there are so many "powerful" characters- it would make tiers very large if we are thinking the right way with how we've evaluated them so far. Though, that wouldn't be shocking either, considering the amount of new figures, and how VV made things more balanced.

...

This list ranks characters on how OBJECTIVELY powerful they are. Any character can be as good as an A-Tier in the right hands, but the S-Tier will basically always be better in the hands of an opponent with equal skill at using an S-Tier character. Sprocket is my best character, but I know that my dad- and most players in general- won't be able to use her as well because I've used her for a really long time and learned her skills. I guarantee if I did the same with the oh so broken Bumble Blast, used him, learned how to use his skills the best ways possible, I could sweep the floor with a clone of myself using Sprocket. You can learn how to use a character to their fullest to have something like a C-Tier character you can use as well as the average player would use an A-Tier, but some Skylanders have attacks that are naturally more powerful and have a better damage/ease of use ratio. And basically, that's how tiers work, whatever is most "naturally powerful" gets placed higher up. That's why, for example, Stealth Elf was rated so high in SA: other characters can deal the same damage, but none made it as EASY as she did.

Arc of Archives has touched on a problem here which has actually been present since the first Tier list thread for SA, and we just need to be particularly careful to avoid it while the tier list is in its early and "vulnerable" state:
People are very eager to talk excitedly about the positive points of the characters and recommend too many of them for A and S tiers whilst sometimes forgetting what those tier are for, particularly the S tier.
It is important to remember that the S Tier is for the characters who are not just extremely powerful, but BROKEN. This means that the characters often score cheap victories with relatively minimal effort. If characters are simply very powerful, but not quite broken, they belong in the A Tier.

---


With all that aside, I want to propose a strategy for how to start developing the tier new list.

Now that we've had a period of mulling over ideas and doing a little research, a strategy has occurred to me that would help us develop the basic form of the new tier list based on what we currently have, which we could then use to place the newer Skylanders later on.
Our basic problem right now is that we can't decide which tiers a lot of characters should go in because we don't have any yardsticks to represent the basic power level of each tier that we can compare them to.
I suggest that we start at the top with S Tier and work our way down. The reason why I suggest this is because the S Tier should be the easiest place to find a yardstick: All we have to do is find the few characters that we can all unanimously agree are completely broken and overpowered. The S Tier would then become defined as who can compete with these characters, and all the other characters are moved down to A Tier.
Once this basic S Tier has been formed, we then focus on the new A Tier by extensively testing all of those A Tiers against eachother until we decide which characters are a cut above the rest who can be moved back in to S Tier, and which characters are a cut below, who are then moved down to B Tier.
We then move down to the B Tier and do the same process as we did to the A Tier, and so on.
At each step, we mostly think about only moving characters a single tier above and below the one we're currently focused on, and none of the others. This way our efforts are focused and we don't have too much to think about at once.

For example, I might suggest that we, right now, could shorten the S tier down to only the following:

• Bumble Blast / Honey Tree
  
• Chop Chop S2 / Undead Defender
  
• Hex S2 / Bone Crafter
  
• Night Shift / Proper Vampire / Underbat
  
• Night Shift / Champion Fighter / Underbat
  

All of the rest of the current S Tier would then be moved down to A Tier. This would temporarily create a very bloated A Tier, but this is intentional: We would then focus on testing only the characters in the A Tier that we were left with. This would take a while, but eventually we would be able to sculpt out basic forms of both the S and A tiers, then leaving us with a bloated B Tier that we could focus our efforts on by the same process until eventually we've worked our way all the way down the Tier list.

Please provide your comments and suggestions!

EDIT: Thank you Sky Airglow. I will add these upgrade path names to the Unsorted Skylanders list.

I think this is a good place to start, Ace of Archives has a good point. We shouldn't have a mountain of S tiers, when the S tier is supposed to point out the broken chars.

I agree.

nice idea
i'll help anyway i can
but i don't have much time to play (school)

As long as I have time this weekend, I planned on testing the S tier characters against one another, the old S tier with Flameslinger, Bash, Stump Smash and the like. I agree and planned on starting the testing from the top down for the same reasons EgoNaut pointed out.