darkSpyro

Quote: Zenephret

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.

I would like to hear your recommendations about what Skylanders should go in the initial S Tier that we start with. I need to know which of the old S Tier characters from 'Giants can still be regarded as overpowered in SF.

My findings:


Spyro's charge, on either path, can cancel almost any attack if it connects.

Trigger Happy's yamato charge(except highest charge)can be jump canceled the moment the coin launches. Can also be done with the minigun. His yamato blast also doesn't pierce anymore. His bullets travel faster when you get a certain upgrade on Golden Frenzy path(can't temember off top of head).

Stealth Elf's extra knives from 3rd upgrade on pook path went down from 8 to 2 damage. Her scarecrow's blades also went down from I think around 30-35 to 18. They also don't attract enemies anymore. The decoy when she goes invisible also cannot go through enemies anymore.

Hotdog's firewall damage went down to 66 for firewall path(don't remember what previous damage was exactly). His "special combo" damage went from around 35 to 23(this is considering if you went the fireball path). Comet Dash now only hits each enemy once and can't be steered. Pyro Pinwheel now doesn't shoot any many fireballs in a single charge.


I'll add more when I can.

I agree with the suggestion about S-Tier.

Swap Force pretty much broke the Tier List. Basically it's x2 as much work now as a Top with a different Bottom can make a SWAP Force character more broken, plus you have to consider Top and Bottom have 2 Paths now.

Why did they take out the two fun games (sky gem master and sky goals) and leave in the rubbish known as ring-out?

Quote: killercore007

Stealth Elf's extra knives from 3rd upgrade on pook path went down from 8 to 2 damage. Her scarecrow's blades also went down from I think around 30-35 to 18. They also don't attract enemies anymore. The decoy when she goes invisible also cannot go through enemies anymore.

I'm fairly certain that Stealth Elf's scarecrows still attract enemies, just nowhere near as well.

Consider putting rattle shake's top half on the OP tier, deputy snake has a very long range and a nice control. I personally think that deputy snake is better than bttom half of grilla drilla since you can throw deputy snake arround, he really is annying.

Quote: EgoNaut

Quote: killercore007

Stealth Elf's extra knives from 3rd upgrade on pook path went down from 8 to 2 damage. Her scarecrow's blades also went down from I think around 30-35 to 18. They also don't attract enemies anymore. The decoy when she goes invisible also cannot go through enemies anymore.

I'm fairly certain that Stealth Elf's scarecrows still attract enemies, just nowhere near as well.

Well, yes, but I found that you'd have to be so far away from the enemy that it's not even worth trying.

Quote: Kiroq

Why did they take out the two fun games (sky gem master and sky goals) and leave in the rubbish known as ring-out?

Your opinion, I actually liked Ring Out, it was not exactly original (a bit like Super Smash Bros) but it did help balance out the roster a little and it gives you a chance to just mindlessly hack and slash your opponents faces without too much of a need strategy (not that Arena Rumble takes a lot of strategy anyway).

I thought Skygoals was ok, but I'd rather play real football instead since all you do is just run to the ball and take it to the goal. Sky Gem Master was horrible in my eyes.

lol sorry i wasn't trying to be to eager about new s tiers. In fact i was gonna point out that a lot of people are weaker now but i had to go to bed and then i forgot all about it. I think most new skylanders are on average better than older skylanders. Especially in regards to melee characters. But since i don't really want to be reprimanded for being to "eager" i'll just stick to new information about characters without tier suggestions. Slam bans ice doesn't seem to freeze people in pvp anymore. Makes me think a certain path of his is useless in pvp. also i don't know if anyone knew this tactic in giants but slam bam could create ice while sledding . Spamming the sled and ice was super powerful and broken at the time however he can't do that in this game. His melee is also slower but you can wait longer on the last hit of his combo and it will still work. example: i could press a two times, as fast as i can, then wait like a sec on the final hold of a and it will still work. dunno if that even helps in pvp but hey it might. also no more stuns in pvp. So thats a nerf to undead defender and blitz spyro. I'm gonna make this neater.

SPYRO: his fireballs now do 42 which is decent. His airslam now does 135 i think. but s2 doest have more damage on slam like it used to, now it just shoots fireballs and if they get hit by those they do 42 just like his normal ones. think sun forged smolder dash. His ram attack does 28 now (on blitz path) which is kinda pathetic and with no stun. Megaram wow pow doest seem that good it does 55 dmg but takes a while to charge. Dawnbringer does 125 now which is pretty nice. Doesn't have the same aoe it used to tho making it harder to hit.

VOODOOD : his melee now does 51 on the path that makes it stronger. technically thats a buff but its not much compared to some other buffs. also his aab combo and aaz combo are switched. doest affect much.

CAMO: his melon master path does 90 dmg per melon. even when the melons get small. he can also knock down the melons himself instead of releasing them all at once. his blasts do 30 and are fired in bursts of two. his heal is now +13 and goes ten times for a total of +130 hp if the blasts don't hit sumthin and stop.

more info to come later

I havent gotten that far into the game but i will report wahtever I can.

Fire Kraken's topmon the Magnificent parade path is pretty annoying. I haven't done too much battle against it, but the fireworks that fly out, and the fact that he very rarely takes damage make him annoyingly OP.

If I had SSF now, I would test my 5 characters in a heartbeat. Sorry I can't help with the thread right now guys.

Quote: Mrmorrises

Fire Kraken's topmon the Magnificent parade path is pretty annoying. I haven't done too much battle against it, but the fireworks that fly out, and the fact that he very rarely takes damage make him annoyingly OP.

The only thing about Fire Kraken's Magnificent parade path is he is slow when using the parade and it's hard to control/turn.


I tested quite a few characters and I have more testing to do before I give the win/loss ratios. I do want to state a few observations though. First, Stump Smashes acorns no longer slow the opponent, and do roughly 18 damage (depending on opponents armor rating) a piece, which I believe is less from Giants. The few battles he was a part of, he was able to put up a good fight and win but I think that was due to my skill level over my opponents.

Next, Hex did incredibly well, but one of the reasons she was put in S Tier was because of the Skull Buddy's damage at 280 a hit, but now it is only around 60, almost making the time to get the attack setup not worth it. I feel other people need to test Hex, but I believe she is still S Tier worthy. She can definitely compete, but she may not be broken, which is a requirement to be in S Tier.

I have high doubts, that Stump Smash, Bash, and Drill Srgt will remain in the S Tier. Considering most of the arenas are smaller, except for the Frozen arena, it makes hit and run tactics a harder strategy. This could potentially affect Drill Srgt and Flameslinger. Double Trouble was tested pretty extensively and he is able to compete, but again I think it resulted from different skill levels. It also required a bit of strategy and more intense use of the doubles. I don't feel just spamming the beam is enough anymore. His beam was attracted to Hex's wall, Stumpy's acorns, and Drill Srgt's auto blaster. Not to mention his beam can be interrupted now, not by all attacks but by many. He was able to compete and win many of the times, but others may have different results.

Terrafin on Brawler is obnoxious. His minisharks do decent damage and when he takes damage the sharks hit from anywhere in the arena. This is what caused his victory in a few instances. A note, he cannot go through Hex's bone wall while underground.

Lastly, Ignitor was barely tested but again, I don't think he is S Tier. His mortar attack does 50 damage, and I could only get one to hit. Maybe others will have better luck. His sword attacks do 42 damage (depending on opponent's armor rating) which is not much less than the mortar attack, especially if only one hits this time around. With the buffs in damage on many of the other characters, I think A Tier is a good place for Ignitor maybe lower, given others recommendations of course. His sword path may actually be the better path this time around.

I don't recommend any characters being moved without further testing, but if you want to be on the safe side of things, Terrafin, Hex, and Chop Chop would be great candidates to test other characters against. I did no testing with Bumble Blast, though I would imagine both paths would be higher tiered and I did no further testing for Night Shift but he doesn't really need it.

I plan to further test this weekend and that's when I'll relay the win ratios, but I don't have an equally skilled opponent to play against so we tested each match twice by switching characters and seeing if the results were different. In any event, I hope this information helps.

@skilletmonkey: You don't have to feel "reprimanded" for making your own tier suggestions! Any suggestion or opinion given in this thread is useful as long as it's justified: You can suggest a character for any tier you feel would fit, just as long as you provide a good reason for them being in that tier and not one of the others. The best kind of justification I like seeing in this thread is when people compare things about that character with other characters in or around the tier you are suggesting.

@Zenephret: Great post!
Please explain one thing about Ignitor to me though: Does his old "OP tactic" from SA and 'Giants on the Soul of the Flame path still work where he could continuously spam-and-explode his flame mortar attack at close range, or have they done something to prevent it now?

ok so i just got star strike and heres what i think.

She destroyed a lvl 20 bumble blast on his honey tree path and she was lvl 7 . All she has to do is reflect her attacks to core more damage and she can reflect his bees and honey too. The reflected bees and honey were doing 31 i believe. You can also reflect projectiles while in air. I found with this tactic i could dodge while continuing my own attacks . She looks like she'll destroy just about any ranged character . I haven't done much testing with her versus melee skylanders yet but against ignitor she did lose once ( his mortar attack couldn't be reflected). I wanna say s tier I feel like a lot of melee chars can't beat her so... Maybe A tier with the fact that she can counter some s tier characters.But not s herself. Btw ignitor can no longer hit people with multiple instances of flame mortar but... his flame mode has great dmg and knock back so i feel that path is just as good.

@Egonaut: I am imagining you are talking about Ignitor's following attack - in the previous games he could shoot a mortar than explode it by hitting the attack button a second time. Well from what little testing I have seen, the flame form needs to move just a little bit before it explodes. It cannot explode instantly when it is released anymore. Furthermore, when the flame form returns to Ignitor, it pushes him back a bit which makes spamming the attack a bit odd, as eventually it pushes him back into a wall. I've found when I'm by a wall and fire the mortar attack, only one shoots out and I cannot control the flame form, I'm on a PS3 by the way in the Frozen Outpost level. I personally don't feel he is as powerful, but in ordr to move him we would need some other confirmations from above.

@skilletmonkey: Again I'm on a PS3, I found Star Strike was able to deflect the flame mortar back at Ignitor and the weirdest thing happened when she did. Once the deflected attack hit Ignitor, the entire rest of the match he just sat there as a lump of armor, unable to move or attack. This happened all three times I tried it. I'd like someone else to confirm this, as I'm wondering if my game glitched or if maybe it is console specific.


About Star Strike, I don't disagree with skilletmonkey about a high tier ranking. I had only limited testing with her, but here is what I found.

1. Her star deflection goes right through Hex's wall, she can deflect Hex's troll skulls and attack 1 projectiles. There is no real way for Hex to attack outside catching Star Strike off guard or hitting her with a bone wall
2. She does indeed deflect Bumble Blast's bees, honey, and Queen bee attacks
3. She deflects Flameslingers fire arrows (attack 1) and volley shot (attack 3)
4. She deflected Stump Smash's acorns, and I believe the meganut as well. I can't quite remember though.
5. She even deflected Chop Chops bone brambler (I know you wouldn't use this attack often, but think of the other attacks she may be able to deflect). Her star deflection does not go through his shield
6. She deflected Chill's ice lances but not the ice blocks
7. She deflected Drill Sergeant's rockets and auto blaster. Some of the auto blaster shots hit, but every time she deflected one it hit Drill Sgt for 30 damage. Strictly using the auto blaster resulted in his defeat.

It would seem anything considered a range attack can be deflected, so consider Cynder's lightning, Shroomboom's mushrooms, Warnados tornados and minis, Whirlwind's clouds and rainbows, Sonic Boom's roar and eggs, Flashwing's crystals, Dino Rang's boomerangs and shield, Prism Break's energy beams, Hot Dog's fire wall, Sunburn's flame breath and teleportation, Wham-Shell's poseidon strike, Wrecking Ball's tongue, Boomer's dynamite, and Sprocket's mines. None of these have been tested, but it would be interesting to know if she can deflect any or most of these.

Lastly, Star Strike is vulnerable to melee attackers as skilletmonkey said previously. On her star deflection path, after the star is deflected four times it does do good damage, 70-60. Even the beginning deflections do around 50 and if the player is skilled enough, you could shoot stars, deflect, rain stars from above, deflect, and repeat. Also, which I think is extremely important to note, I found she can deflect stars while jumping/in the air. I think she requires a little skill to get good at, but nothing above what gamers shouldn't be used to and against ranged attackers she dominants.

Question: How is SS's third attack?

Its almost useless. I dont use it since reflectig her basic star is how she rolls.

Put Chill in S tier. I have several reasons.Ice. Lancer


She has decent speed letting her get away,but if she does get hit her armour can stop her from taking damage.

Her Ice Lances are OP with 25 damage and you can fire from 3-6 at once.

Overall, she is a strong character and when I play against my dad who is nowhere near as god as me and destroyed me.AND I was using BASH!

Quote: wrecknroll

Put Chill in S tier. I have several reasons.Ice. Lancer


She has decent speed letting her get away,but if she does get hit her armour can stop her from taking damage.

Her Ice Lances are OP with 25 damage and you can fire from 3-6 at once.

Overall, she is a strong character and when I play against my dad who is nowhere near as god as me and destroyed me.AND I was using BASH!

You are right.Chill is very strong but I cant see any reason why to put her in S-Tier.

You said that her armor can stop her from taking damage. WRONG. They changed the armorsystem in Swap Force. You arent able to ignore the damage anymore.

25damage isnt op. Its an okay damage. You also mentioned that she can throw up to 6Lances at once but only 1 is going to hit.

And there is also no point to put her in S-tier because she destroyed Bash since he isnt in S-Tier.

You should research a bit more before you decide in what Tier she should get moved.

How does armor work in SF?

the damage the skylander takes is somewhat reduced by armor

zenephret you are right about mortars being deflected and turning ignitor into a lump of useless.
i meant the fire form and explosions while in that form. Sorry for not clarifying. I suppose i should be better at that considering false info leads to false rankings in tier list

Quote: Doomslicer

Question: How is SS's third attack?

Quote: Takadox360

Its almost useless. I dont use it since reflectig her basic star is how she rolls.

Not useless actually. You can use both attack 1 and 3 for devastating results. Here's how(due note that this is on the star storm path and has all upgrades):

1. Send out reflecto star
2. Reflect it
3. Call a star storm
4. Jump cancel to hit the super star and the reflecto star at the same time.
5. Repeat 2 ~ 4

Does require quite a bit of skill to pull off as you must keep track of your movement, your button inputs, and the reflecto star, but so worth it.

The super star does about 55 damage when it explodes and when it's reflected, if it connects, it'll stick to the enemy. Will need to test if it'll cancel out attacks though. It also has a decent AOE range.

To clarify what I meant when I asked about Ignitor:
In both SA and 'Giants, Ignitor / Soul of the Flame was one of the most broken characters in the PvP scene because of the way he could spam his flame mortar attack on his opponent whilst at melee range. When done correctly with all factors utilised, the damage was fourfold: The inital flame mortar attack itself would do some damage, then, the player could manually detonate the controllable flame form for even more damage. Finally, the two addition flame mortars released had a small ammount of auto-aim, so at close range there was a chance all three mortars would connect, leading to astronomical damage. To top it all off, all of these steps had little to no cooldown period, so the entire process was spammable: It meant that Ignitor could out-DPS Stealth Elf / Book Blade Saint easily and defeat Giants in a matter of seconds.

If one or more of these factors have been nerfed in Swap Force then I would wager the likelihood that Ignitor no longer qualifies for S Tier: The addition of cooldown periods between Flame Mortars may be enough to do this, even without the addition of this backwards-movement effect. If someone could just clarify for me one more time how powerful the two extra flame mortars are and whether they still auto-aim, then that might just decide it. In fact, if things turn out particularly badly for Ignitor then he may not even qualify for A Tier! I may be over-stepping myself there though.
On the flipside, it's nice to hear the possibility that Ignitor / Blademaster may have recieved improvements. It's always been a pretty weak path.

Once these things have been laid out then I'll be able to move him between the Tiers appropriately, but first, we need to sort out this business with our initial Tier revamps...

And speaking of which, here is what the initial revamped S Tier is currently going to look like...

• Star Strike / Magic Reflector
  
• Terrafin S2 / Brawler
  
• Terrafin S2 / Sandhog
  
• Bumble Blast / Honey Tree
  
• Chop Chop S2 / Undead Defender
  
• Hex S2 / Bone Crafter
  
• Night Shift / Proper Vampire / Underbat
  
• Night Shift / Champion Fighter / Underbat
  

Are people still happy doing this?

(For those who missed the earlier posts and don't understand what this is for, here's a quote from one of my earlier posts: )
Quote:

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.

@killercore007: that is an interesting point about the reflecto star. I never thought about jumping to deflect the star at enemies, because it just takes too long to fall to be considered a danger any other way.

@EgoNaut: I have not seen any auto aim on the other two mortar attacks and I have never had all three hit in this game. I personally don't feel Ignitor qualifies for A-Tier either, but I'd really like someone else to test him.

Lastly, sorry I haven't posted any other data. My plans to battle this past weekend fell through and I don't believe I will have time until Thanksgiving weekend, but I'll test what I can.

Quote: killercore007

Quote: Doomslicer

Question: How is SS's third attack?

Quote: Takadox360

Its almost useless. I dont use it since reflectig her basic star is how she rolls.

Not useless actually. You can use both attack 1 and 3 for devastating results. Here's how(due note that this is on the star storm path and has all upgrades):

1. Send out reflecto star
2. Reflect it
3. Call a star storm
4. Jump cancel to hit the super star and the reflecto star at the same time.
5. Repeat 2 ~ 4

Does require quite a bit of skill to pull off as you must keep track of your movement, your button inputs, and the reflecto star, but so worth it.

The super star does about 55 damage when it explodes and when it's reflected, if it connects, it'll stick to the enemy. Will need to test if it'll cancel out attacks though. It also has a decent AOE range.

Hey mate what's a jump cancel? I've seen a few people refer to it.

Quote: Zenephret

Lastly, sorry I haven't posted any other data. My plans to battle this past weekend fell through and I don't believe I will have time until Thanksgiving weekend, but I'll test what I can.

There's no pressure.

@lippyskills:
It basically jumping during an attack animation to stop it. Most common use for it is using it right after an attack completes during the recovery animation.
Take Trigger Happy's Yamato blast. Right after the coin is shot, you jump to cancel the recovery animation.

Are people happy with me condensing the S Tier at some point tommorow to the revamped version I've proposed (see my second-to-previous post)? Or, do people think we should do more research first, in case there might be any other overpowered characters to go in it that we could use as yardsticks?
Bare in mind that once I condense the S Tier, the excess characters will be sent down to the A Tier, and we will then have to focus our efforts on testing that (bloated) A Tier so that we can get it up to scratch again. Are people okay doing this?

i'm fine with it but i'm afraid i won't be able to help much... sorry

Wrecking Ball REALLY Needs A few bumps up in tiers. In Giants his tongue attack did 8 damage I believe. Now in Swap Force, his tongue attacks twice in one shot each doing THIRTY NINE damage. His spinner was bumped up too, from 52 damage to 70. And this is at the very beginning without upgrades.

Eummm Stealth Elf does not laugh when turning invisible, that might be worth mentioning.

Do Swap Force Have Insane Health like the giants did in SG?

Apologies, everyone. I don't have time to condense the S Tier tonight, so I'll try to do it tommorow.

EDIT: Scratch that. See my next post below Smolenx's...

Rattle Shake/Deputy's Duty/Grave Springer is S-tier

I put Rattle Shake up against some of what is considered the new S-tier (Chop Chop S2, Hex S2, and Night Shift/Proper Vampire Under bat) with promising results. I played 5 games, 1 live, everything off, and equal skill. Here's the results

Chop Chop S2: 5/0 Rattle Shake
- Rattle Shake had easy wins here as he could out speed Chop Chop with his Grave Springer path by spamming jump and his passive speed boost from his soul gem. Then all I had to do was throw the deputy in his path and stand on the other side. He was forced to either tank the damage from my snake and my auto's until the shield broke and he eventually died or run at me and take damage form the snake that was now behind him. Chop Chop often responded by refusing to fight in that location as it was a easy lose situation but due to the range of the snake he would take damage as he retreated. Overall for Chop Chop Rattle Shake is a no win situation.

Hex S2: 3/2 Rattle Shake
-Wins here were more challenging but definitely possible. The fight here is mostly a burst war trying to see who can kill the other faster. Hex would always set up the wall right away because right off the bat i was going for her. She then had 2 options she could wall herself in well i try to break the walls or she could start to charge. The majority of the time i could break the walls extremely fast in between my autos and my deputy's autos and then it was all over. She did win twice however when she was in a position where she could spam the walls like getting to a corner pulling up a wall that fully protected her. In situations like this i could break the walls but she would use weaker versions of her bone casting and then put the wall up right as i destroyed it. She mainly got to these situations however by my Deputy auto targeting a crate instead of her and she would manage to win with little health. She used this tactic 4 times and beat me with it 2 so i would say without gimmicks Rattle Shake has the advantage.

Night Shift: 4/1 Rattle Shake
- Beating Night shift wasn't a matter of being able to kill him but being able to kill him 3 times in a row. Most of the time you simply out speed night shift due to your snake skin and jump combined with your Deputy making you uncatchable even to a teleporter. However this is definitely a stall match up as if he gets close you will melt and if you stop to do much but throw your Deputy he will get close. On my lose this was the case as i tried to turn to finish him off quickly with him having a little left on his 2nd and all of his 3rd life. However it was a lose Dps fight showing that if he didn't slow you could probably kill him quite easily.


Over all Rattle Shake is S-tier because of his mobility and his Deputy.

Okay, forget my previous post: I do have a little time after all...

To help us re-arrange the old Skylanders to form the basis of our new tier list, the S Tier has been condensed down to a basic set of the most overpowered Skylanders, with the rest moved down to the (now very bloated) A Tier. We now need to focus our efforts on the A Tier by test-battling all of its Skylanders against each other and moving those Skylanders down or up tiers where appropriate.
Remember that a Skylander only qualifies for S Tier if it can compete with some of the overpowered Skylanders that are currently in the new S Tier.

While we’re doing all of this, any new information about the new Skylanders in Swap Force is appreciated as always, but keep in mind that we may not be moving the new Skylanders into tiers much until we’ve re-arranged most of the old Skylanders first.

EDIT: @Smolenx: Excellent post!
Does anyone else think Rattle Shake is broken enough to go in the new S Tier?

Personally I don't know which bottom path of Rattle Shake would be better, but I do feel the Deputy snake has good range and the ability to slow the opponent is incredible. Not to mention it can be tossed again as soon as it disappears and I don't believe it can be killed. Though I don't know how he was able to beat Night Shift, he is probably S Tier, definetly A tier material.

Yeah i definitely agree with rattle being s tier. He has a slow and slows are just op. his bottom is meh tho. Btw has anyone tried scorp? His stinger path was actually able to defeat nightshift in fiery forge because the stings knockback constantly pushed him in lava. Dot for him also seems a bit too good. also i feel like swapforce kinda ruined pvp :/ new mechanics like cancelling people out of there attacks favors some chars alot more than others ( smolderdash while powered up while doing her melee is crazy ) also seems like the new chars are for the most part strong while old chars got nerfed a good bit. Now u may be saying nerfs? What nerfs? Most damage values are higher. But... Cancelling ruins old melee chars, spyros fireballs dont have knockback, and for some reason stumpsmash lost his slow along with others losing freezes and stuns. Maybe they did get buffed but in pvp im finding most new skylanders dominate ones from the previous two games. Heres to hoping that since toys for bob is working on the next that some of this stuff gets rebalanced. And bring back skygoals

If one more person advocates it, I plan to put Rattle Shake / Deputy's Duty / (Both Bottom Paths) into S Tier.

I also agree with Rattle in the S tier also if someone is following you, you can drop the bone snakes and they'll hit the person who is following you

If it'll help:

Roller Brawl's attack 3(the buzzsaw one) can go right through Hex's bone wall and hit Hex.

That all sounds good so far.

• Rattle Shake / Deputy's Duty / Bone Herder placed in S Tier.
  
• Rattle Shake / Deputy's Duty / Grave Springer placed in S Tier.
  

So what effect does the other path of Rattle Shake's top half have on the deputy? Is it any less effective for any reason?

The other path for is rattle pretty much just as effective. It doesn't do as much damage for the deputy but it will still slow which is the broken part anyway. Also the bouncing shot flies through walls and terrain and will hit you regardless of those so it's fairly good by itself too. So yah both rattle paths are more or less the same tier.

I concur. Also, the Snake Shot (When he fires the snake) can pick up a lot of gold and even food and powerups. Think about it, you and your opponent bare duking it out on one end, both of you are low health, food appears on the other side, you charge your shot up and BAM! Instant health.

Is the Bee Keeper path for Bumble blast S tier Also?

I hate to clog up this thread with more adding to the list of to-dos rather than actually doing(sorry! ), but have you guys tried Boom Jet- more specifically Jet- yet? Jet's Soul Gem is amazing and it alone probably makes him a sure character for A tier(or higher...).

Mach 2 is amazingly spammable at close-range. It does... Drumroll... 150 damage. And trust me, it is easy to keep firing it. It's close ranged, but Jet is ludicrously fast and can "run" forever like Charge does so catching up to enemies to spam the attack isn't much of an issue. Did I mention, the attack also (seems to?) knocks your foe back very slightly(the air blowing before actually activating Mach 2 certainly does).

I tested him on Squad Leader/Ace Gunner so I don't know if picking the other path for Jet would be better- Squad Leader is unquestionable better for Boom though; Super Football Bombs are basically useless in PVP, as they take too long to charge and don't do much more damage than simply tossing over two football bombs(80-ish damage... just toss two non-charged, it'll take about the same time). Even regular football bombs are just the standard ranged attack, so yeah.

I didn't test him a ton in PVP tbh I don't feel like that this week, but I was surprised at how effective he was in the mode. I think a lot of close ranged characters would have a tough time staying up against him, and he can just run up to ranged ones... But I also think the characters currently in S tier all have an edge against him.

I also tested Night Shift (Proper Vampire / Warping Vortex) , and he's definelty at least an A tier. His playstyle is kinda vanilla but the teleporting adds a bit of agility to it. And god, the extra life is awesome on either path, so yeah... It doesn't give him back a ton of health, but can mean the difference between a loss and a win getting just a little extra time... I think the one more life on Underbat and extra recovery might make a difference but he could really end up either way on Warping Vortex. I haven't tried both paths yet, so I dunno.

Roller Brawl on the Shadow Skater (top) path is pretty insane. Exploiting Bullrush lets you stay in dash / fast-skating mode, running circles around the opponent (or figure 8s through them) locking on with headbutt into Bullrush whenever it's available again (every ~1.0-2 seconds). She has no problems staying away from melee by using her speed and dive-bombing headbutts / Bullrushes. She's also hard to hit as ranged when she's skating circles around you. I think with a Bullrush exploit strat, she might be S tier. Whenever you get around to testing her out, make sure you at least try a Bullrush / constant dash strat. None of the videos I've seen of her on YouTube use / exploit this. I've played all 3 games pretty extensively and I've never felt as overpowered / broken as I do with her just flying around the screen, Bullrushing and headbutting everything. It's crazy.

Well, I've been testing my new Boomer and here's what I find that may make him A tier:

I found that his soul gem makes his troll bombs quite deadly as the moment they start moving in any way, they'll explode when they touch an enemy. Which basically means if the opponent even grazes them, BOOM!

Being able to spam troll bombs can make melee characters weep as he can just run away and drop them one after another, which works even better due to his soul gem making them basically landmines with fuses.

For ranged characters, there's a trick to the troll bomb kicking. How you do it is you face the direction opposite of the opponent, then hit attack 3 to drop a troll bomb then immediatly move in the exact opposite direction of the one you're facing. If you do it right, the bomb will go flying towards the opponent. Main thing that can make this threatening is that if done right, the bomb goes REALLY fast, far, and can cancel attacks if it directly hits(will need to test more to be certain)


The way I would play Boomer is to just run away and drop troll bombs, ocassionally kicking them back towards the enemy as a surprise tactic. If the strategy won't be good against a paticular foe, then I would use the bomb kick trick and pressure them that way. His ground pound is kind of useless and his dynamite is basically only if you're in a postion where you can't really use troll bombs.

That's my 2 cents.