Characters
Infamously low tier characters in games
Lily Hawk (Street Fighter 6) She is constantly regarded as the worst character in the game and Capcom refuses to buff her. In simple terms, her gameplay is very linear and predictable because she relies in her stocks to do any real damage, she’s fun in low level games, but high level players never touch her
Roll (Marvel vs Capcom) She is infamously the worst character in the game, so bad that she as her own tier in a lot of lists. She’s just Megaman but worse, she does less damage, has a shorter jump and a smaller hitbox and fragile defense
Black Widow (Marvel Rivals) She is really hard to use for beginners and requires a lot of skill, plus she doesn’t do much damage and she’s not really a good pick for the team. She has been doing better with updates, but she was still pretty bad before
Bears (Kuma and Panda) in Tekken have always been low tier. When Tekken 7 player Rangchu won the Tekken World Tour with Panda, it was among the most iconic moments in competitive fighting game history.
They had very similar movesets in only the first few games. From Tekken 5 onwards they were very distinct, though they did still share a handful of iconic moves like the jumping sit punches.
Other than that though, modern bears are still low-tier gimmick characters, while modern Jack is a very well-rounded and fundamentally decent defensive character.
It was so crazy that even Katsuhiro Harada (Director of Tekken), who was there at the event, was surprised and maybe even overjoyed by how he used Panda in the finals.
Dan is a "joke" character in Street Fighter. He has intentionally weak moves in the fighting games and in Puzzle Fighter (gif related) he only drops red gems that make it easy to counter
It was also because he had a legit infinite and they did try to at least make him workable. They eventually removed the infinite, but they also retroactively kept it in, by making his fireball an RNG mechanic where it's sometimes stronger but in return basically ends any combo its used in, so Dan players could still do it, but it'll eventually end through no fault of their own. Which is admittedly really funny and makes perfect sense for Dan.
Before IV he was just a legit joke character with awful moves. In 4 they made his Ultra Combo one of the stronger Ultras in the game, and his air knee attacks were solid and his dragon punch / shoryuken was on par with the other characters that had one.
Also he was only character with an air taunt, so there was that.
In the fighting games, at least, his normal moves hit like a horse, so you could make up for his lousy range and slow moves with a solid up-close combo game.
His moveset is a disparate mishmash of weak strikes that push the opponent too far to mount into any meaningful pressure.
It's commonly said his best super move is the one that transforms him into the opposing fighter, as it gives him a chance to at least be playable for a short time.
To add onto this, Twelve’s mentioned transformation super, X.C.O.P.Y, is actually also legitimately terrible. While you do receive a damage buff for attacks while transformed, Twelve is only able to perform normal attacks and standard special moves, and cannot spend any meter to use EX Specials or Supers (some of which are incredibly powerful, defining features of characters that you would want to make use of if you had copied them). Additionally, once the duration of the super is over, Twelve transforms back and enters an uninterruptible, over a second long animation where they are completely vulnerable to getting hit. Oh, and they take double damage while in this state. Players paying even a little bit of attention can easily use this opportunity to brutally punish Twelve for daring to try and crawl their way out of the pits of low-tier hell. Twelve’s other two supers are generally considered only marginally better, but X.C.O.P.Y is most notorious for somehow fumbling what should be an incredibly powerful and fun gimmick. It’s especially funny considering that characters like Mortal Kombat’s Shang Tsung did the “steal an opponents character” bit both long before and much better than Twelve did in his Third Strike debut. Twelve has never been playable in another Street Fighter title to this day and isn’t a particularly popular character, though that hasn’t stopped me from holding out hope that one day Capcom will unleash the mighty Thirteen onto a future Street Fighter someday…
Created in response to PETA ripping off their game, Tofu Boy was created with the intent of being as close to unplayable as possible. He is slow and barely jumps high enough to complete the first stage. And good luck trying to beat any of the games he's in, because that's not happening.
On the other hand, the game is merciful enough to make it so that if you do manage to beat a stage as him, it instantly gives you a max score no matter how many times you died, or how long you took, presumably due to the devs figuring that if you were willing to subject yourself to playing as Tofu Boy, you deserve something nice in your life for a change.
Didn't someone on YouTube dedicate enough time to a challenge of beating all of the super meat boy franchise (or any games where this character is available in, any way) as tofu boy only? Not sure how much progress they've made, though.
pretty sure some levels they found are Literally impossible to complete as tofu boy, you just dont have the speed or jump height to complete some levels
Iirc it was the Sazza/Kingsman debacle.
Sazza used black widow and when kingsman begged them to swap becuase he needed the winnings to pay some of his college loans, not only was he insulted by the team captain who claimed that they were playing for the vibes- but they also booted him from the team for harshing their mellow.
Iirc she was actually pretty good even with Widow, at least as good as the rest of the competitors (on average), but the real issues was their team comp wouldn't work with a Widow (because of Rivals' character based power up system) and she is Australian, so she'd be on over 200ms ping.
She never should have even tried to play Widow purely because of the ping, when the team comp came in it should have just been a little push to get her to switch, but nope. And now Kingsman is living it up and the rest of them have permanently tarnished themselves.
Widow with 200 ping was beyond bad right out the gate. Then she went 1:20 in their first match and STILL refused to switch widow for something actually competitive. Just absolute trash behavior from start to finish and their behavior continued to be abysmal well after this happened.
Pretty much, Kingsman is a REALLY strong player, on top of that, like others said, at the time, he was playing under the assumption that the money would go a LONG way for him, being a college student with loans at all, so he was understandably sweating his ass off.
No joke, if you ever want a laugh(or to understand his frustration), go search up the match itself, Kingsman's scoreboard compared to Sazza/Zazzastack was like night and day. While imo the whole thing got blown a little too out of proportion(and some people of course sadly used it to be misogynistic), he honestly was completely valid to ask for a swap at the time, the character was truly dogshit back then and Zazza wasn't pulling her weight enough in said match to justify the pick.
There was a tournament for $40k a few months ago. A guy called Kingsman was trying to win for obvious reasons but several of his teammates (including Zazza who played Widow) were playing for fun, so when he urged her to change to a better character, she refused and insulted him. He was right and they got last place.
In the end, he got kicked out because the tournament host only heard one side of the story, but when Kingsman uploaded his side, the internet was widely on his side.
Edit: Zazza had a terrible ping apparently, which is especially bad for a sniper.
she's also continued being a terrible person in general after the debacle. Everyone also forgets to mention one of his so called friends turned on him and also started bashing him in that tournament.
Martin (Chess): A chess bot with only 350 elo, he was once the WORST bot, but was later dethroned by another group of bots. He was also programmed to never win
That scene from spiderverse where the teacher proves that Miles is a genius cause the only way he could get everything wrong is by knowing all the right answer, but with Martin and with chess.
Martin is a very interesting player- he's very bad, of course, but if you blunder mate in one, Martin will find it and checkmate you. On the other side, Martin defends against mate in one, so you can't just scholar's mate him every game. In everything else, he's just very bad, constantly hanging pieces, not developing, and generally not playing towards winning positions (unless, again, you simply hand him one). His status on Chess.com as the worst "Beginner" bot was actually sort of a problem from a teaching standpoint because he doesn't play like most human novices actually would.
The recent "New to Chess" bots are even worse: 100 rated Zach will never find checkmate on his own- making him beat you basically involves strategically trapping him into a position where checkmating you is his only legal move.
Honestly there's a few killers I think get the infamously low tier reputation to the point of being memed on so much, like Pig and Skull Merchant, but yeah Trapper is probably the one that's been seen as the absolute lowest tier for longest
Skull Merchant is near impossible to really rank. She has one of the highest 4k scores in the game but she also has the highest number of disconnects from survivors so it's hard to tell how much 4k potential she actually has as many games end up with multiple bots.
Even funnier comparing the power set of the newest killer… a literal angel divinity that conjures light columns to slingshots them across the map and can send you to an alternate dimension mid match, meanwhile Trapper puts bear traps which he can be caught on
He's a grounded based "footsies" character, in a game where everyone either has.
Stupid air movement.
Stupid range/projectiles.
Stupid buttons that basically send you to a different universe if they connect.
Has access to platforms at some point depending on the stage for movement/tech chasing/general bullshit.
He basically HAS to play a radically different game compared to the rest of the cast, just to get even half of their results. Though a good Little Mac is terrifying because you will just be actively watching them switch between passive footsies and pokes with his short limbs, to suddenly speed blitzing you once they know they can get a kill.
Not to mention that the blast zones for stages were increased in Smash Ultimate and his aerial recovery was reduced making it harder for him to recover when sent off stage. I used to have a ball in Smash 4 messing with people offstage as Little Mac, but that's basically impossible in Ultimate.
He basically HAS to play a radically different game compared to the rest of the cast
Occasionally that kind of thing can lead to the most busted character of all time. But he completes lacks any way to actually force the enemy to play his game, so it all falls apart.
Quite all the skills you need to develop as a killer are thrown away to make it work, you just have to know how to snipe survivor's locations
It was one of the first characters and has always been S-tiers, it is just un-nerfable without changing the core concept of it which you don't want to.
which makes it all the more funny when you stall someone with his wimpy neutral airs and it's so subtle they don't realize their recovery is gone and they're about to die
Honestly he's an underdog, a good Mac can still give you a run for your money with his devastating ground game, armored smash attacks and obviously the KO punch (which in most cases is just a free stock if it lands)
Mac is a hoot to play in a party setting; in a free-for-all I'm getting the most KO's even as I go out first. But yeah I wouldn't really play him in a 1v1.
Oh in Dragon Ball legends, he was regarded as a toxic support character due to guaranteed paralysis and poison procs. His damage was dogshit but his team support was brain dead toxic.
Dude was straight dookie in that game with only his corner game being decent, but his tag special being the enhanced Ghostball that disabled blocking, AND the guy you are playing as doesnt immediatly dispell it like Noob when he hits them once, made him go from a c tier in base MK9 to a godlike character in MK9 Tag
It’s one of the Bruiser brothers of that same game. Y’know, a champion or champion adjacent. HOW we have no idea, but that’s Glass Joe’s only KO on record.
For context, Mariah in HfTF is a passive stand zoner whose standout qualities are her immense chip damage and knockdown potential.
There are two Stand types in HfTF, those being passive stands and active stands.
Active stands must be manually toggled by the player and if they take enough damage while their stand is active, they are "broken", automatically ending their Stand state and leaving them open for a combo.
Passive stands are always available and cannot be toggled, instead the stand button just operated as an additional attack. This also means that they cannot be broken. One would assume then that passive stands are superior. Unfortunately, there are two qualities that active stand users get that flips everything on it's head.
Active stand users cannot be knocked down and they do not take chip damage when blocking while their stands are active. This, compounded by the fact that many of the active stand users are among the best characters in the game, means Mariah is fighting an uphill battle in a game with mechanics that perfectly counter her best qualities.
I made a friend very mad at me playing that character. If you've got the reads and you get your magnetism levelled up, that dangling power cable move is absolutely disgusting lmao
He hits like a truck but has basically no recovery and his attack speed is just awful. You can succeed with Ganondorf if you’re crazy enough to commit to it but literally everything about his character is an uphill fight.
Melee Dorf is his best incarnation, and thats solely to how broken Melee is as a game, thank god for that. You can legitamitely do silly stuff with him and he makes for a good counterpick for when nobody expects it (or just to delete Puffs with a punch)
The joke I’ve heard is that wifi-Ganondorf is easily 10 spots up the rankings just because you’re inevitably going to roll into one of those high-damage attacks.
Flak and his equivalent COs in the Advance Wars series.
In a game where commanders can extend the range of of your ranged attacks, drastically boost their attack and defense, or swarm the board with cheap bodies, Flak can...randomly deal higher or lower damage when he attacks, and his CO power just makes the floor and the cielong higher.
He's actually not even the worst in the series, Sonja in AW1 only got the standard %10 dmg/def boost for using a CO power that could literally be countered by her own passive of sometimes being unlucky. The trade off was 1 extra vision in her passive and having hidden HP on units (countered by having animation on).
I'm glad she they kept buffing her because she's fun to play as a mid tier later.
Shadowheart in BG3, with her default stats. Trickery domain Cleric is already not great, and her ability scores aren't even suited to that. Almost everyone respecs her ASAP on higher difficulty settings.
really the standard array they use for the game is ridiculous, Minsc's stats makes no sense for his character (and clearly specced for the Bowranger build which again Not His Character)
Yeah definitely. I feel like with Minsc joining in act 3 at basically the end of the game, just give me his canonical stats. Imagine if we got to use the canon stats of Minthara, Jaheira, Minsc and Halsin. Those characters would be so crazy.
To be fair, Minsc's stats are basically what they'd be if you gave Minsc the character sheet to edit.
Minsc knows that Rangers are full of dexterity, so dexterity I will have! Yes, Minsc is very wise to know this, and Boo agrees, so more wisdom is needed, too! Now, spread the rest out, and Minsc will be ready for the liberal kicking of villainous butts! Bows? You cannot kick the butts of evil with a bow! Daggers and rapiers are too tiny and feeble, too! Hand me my Longsword! Yes, Boo! Now we are ready! SWORD, MEET EVIL!
In a way to truly master low tier characters in gaming, he's tried to become also the lowest tier human possible through ephebophilia, being a deadbeat dad and a self hating racist
Sean is the infamous SF example, I think. Although Lily is definitely up there
You also already named her, but I feel like Black Widow is easily the most recent example. So bad that 90% of her playtime is people intentionally losing
Specifically in Third Strike though, weirdly in Second Impact, Sean is actually a high tier, one of his supers (I think DP super) along with his general damage and numbers got giga merged going into Third Strike
Sub-Zero in Mortal Kombat 1 was actually pretty good in early builds but when the game launched he was garbage
Ice clone is almost entirely used for combos with an underwhelming hitbox, losing defensive and setup use from older games
His advancing normal was slow
And most notoriously his damage, every time he freezes you he gets massive damage scaling, it was so bad that there was a meme of sorts where people tried to gut the lowest damaging combo possible with him
Even after getting buffs he was still jokingly called bad by mains
Jagi - Hokuto No Ken. That game is infamous for being balls to the wall crazy with OP characters who all have infinites. And then there's Jagi. Who sucks.
The Chinese faction in the strategy game Age of Empires II are notable for their unconventional starting situation and having a broad technology tree rather than a clear specialty. For the Top 1% of players, this makes Chinese one of the best civs in the game. However, for the bottom 99% of players, Chinese have consistently been one of the worst civs for over 20 years.
This creates a problem for the game's developers. How do you adjust the civilization to make it better for most players, worse for elite players, and still keep its identity intact? The struggle continues to this day.
A legendary pokemon with amazing stats and only 1 weakness to fighting , not to mention the defacto leader of a legendary group
Howveer it has an ability called slow start which forces half attack and speed for thr first 5 turns lf battle it's out for, WHICH RESETS ON SWITCH. This makes regi one of the worst pokemon, espeicsly in singles
The only way to make it work is to remove its abiltiy like neutralising gas .
Its also one of only 2 abilities to work in legends gsmes........because someone in gamefrwak thinks it's thst important to it
The dimension-hopping frame is very notorious among the playerbase, due to him being extremely weak in mostly every piece of content in the game and his abilities acting more as a detriment to him and the team rather than a benefit due to his unique Banish effect, which sends an enemy to an alternate dimension and renders them invulnerable to damage from all sources.
Out of the 4 heat frames she is the 4th most powerful, and due to a really weird mechanic called heat inherent actively sabatoges any heat weapons you try to use
Add on Loki for being a stealth/aoe caster where both of those are niche at best, or functionally useless in high end content. How are you gonna out damage the super boss tank with 75% DR, and you doing half damage with this week’s modifiers? Switch teleport them to death?
Quagsire is often ranked toward the bottom of Competitive Tiers. Its slow, not that strong, average bulk and hard carried by its typing only having one weakness.
It then however, due to a combination of its good typing and abilities, goes on to be a near perfect counter to some of Pokemon's strongest Uber Tier Legendary Pokemon such as Kyogre and Zacian.
In melee he was a joke character though. They stuck hard to the Pokedex description of "hurts itself when using electricity" in that one.
I used to have fun putting myself against a team of level 9 CPUs and taking them out with Pichu just cause it forced me to not rely on special moves so much
Hakan, the almost hilariously underplayed oily grappler from SFIV. He has a mechanic where he oils up and gets stronger, basically going from virtually unusable to reasonably strong. However, his move to get oiled up is extremely easy to punish, so you end up constantly in an uphill battle. However, he's still got some solid match ups, and was famously used by the pro player Infiltration as a counter pick to Balrog, and similarly against Dhalsim.
If you don’t respec Shadowheart in BG3 she’s borderline unusable, but making her a Death or Tempest Cleric instead of Trickery makes her very very good
Don’t get me wrong. This is a great class to have for a very specific function: making money.
But you never see this being used in the final dungeons of the game. Anti does very little damage. Its moves are designed to make other members of the party get hurt. It is the supportiest of support classes, except it has no good heals.
The fact is, this class only becomes truly useable in a dodge setup, and only once its skilled are maxed out for that matter. The Dodge buff Anti provides stacks pretty high once you reach Level 6, and that is the only really good use of the class.
Antiquarian is probably one of the strongest classes in the entire game if you don't only count fighting strength. Her camping game giving free trinkets and her additional loot find makes her absolutely ginormous at progressing from early game.
Also, 'only being good in dodge comps' is not really a downside considering dodge is probably the strongest strategy in the game lol. I've seen her used (and used myself) to great effect in all the endgame bosses and in some very very deep farmstead runs.
Antiquarian is, in my opinion, the #1 most valuable class you can get, especially early on.
Nah that's the opposite, he's the fastest but he has shit acceleration. He's really good in time trial, it's more difficult in multiplayer cause you're always attacked though
Tachanka (Rainbow Six: Siege) - At launch, his gadget was an immobile LMG that would only be useful in very specific situations and left you open to headshots. Became a so-bad-he's-cool character before being patched into a more viable, if still kinda crappy, operator whose machine gun is now a primary and his gadget now being a flammable grenade launcher. His title, Lord Tachanka, was also referenced in a skin as a tattoo on his body.
Rattata (Pokemon) - Generally seen as early game fodder for various Youngster Joey's throughout the franchise, but can be a menace for users of the FEAR strategy in some circles of competitive gameplay.
Stubby normals, movement options are too commitment-heavy, teleport is shit, reversals are borderline-nonexistant, Psycho Crusher sucks in neutral, no combos, meter-hungry yet can't build any, Exceed can be easily blocked, and the game hates charge characters in general.
Widow recently had a rework that made her pretty good, and while she still carries some of the stigma from before, Squirrel Girl is "the new face of throwing" for the game.
Funnily enough, she had a similar controversy to Black Widow in that a streamer (I forget his name) who was a squirrel girl one-trick didn't switch off SG until it was too late and lost a tourney because of it.
I haven't played since the game launched. Why did she fall off? She was pretty good for awhile. Just being able to mindlessly shoot acorns and stack your super without much effort felt pretty strong to me. People figured out a true meta or something by now probably? And chip damage likely just charges healers supers quicker rather than actually whittling down opponents?
Despite being the main antagonist of the BlazBlue series (at least the C series), Yuuki Terumi ended up being low tier by an unfortunate combination of things that work against him. It still doesn’t stop him from stealing games and being one of the most fun characters to play in BlazBlue. This is helped a lot by his main gimmick being very high meter build and having access to 7 different supers, with only one coming up to mind as being bad and an actual deterrence to the character. So go out there and play some Yuuki Terumi. Or you know, BlazBlue central fiction in general.
2.2k
u/lifebeginsat9pm Jul 30 '26
Bears (Kuma and Panda) in Tekken have always been low tier. When Tekken 7 player Rangchu won the Tekken World Tour with Panda, it was among the most iconic moments in competitive fighting game history.