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It’s clickbait but I’m here for it

People don't know what a D tier character looks like anymore, let alone F tier. Go look at Servbot in MVC2 and consider that he's in the same game as Magneto (practical infinite on the whole cast, 1f low) and Storm (it's Storm). Now consider that Servbot may not be the worst character in that game. That's a grim tier list.

Two things: 1. If no one thinks Pot is tournament worthy, then naturally they won’t practice fighting him, and we saw how that worked out. 2. If anyone wants to see a real nonfunctional garbage tier character, look no further than Roll in MvC2. Every character in Strive is a god compares to her.

The hyperbole in online discourse (in games especially, but in general) is one of my biggest pet peeves. It's so frustrating that no one is willing to talk about anything without saying one thing is black and the other's white.

My other favorite is the "my character sucks ass" option select cause if I win I'm the best player in existence and if I lose it's all good it's a 20-0 matchup so no biggie

I do think Daru is kinda a god though and probably better than everyone else. Watching him play immediately gives me the impression that he's optimized his game so far ahead of everyone else. You see somebody catch a stray hit and combo with it and you're like hey that was cool, then you see Daru never let a stray hit go to waste as his default state. And nobody else moves like he does.

"zato's numerous bad matchups" they literally cannot keep getting away with this

you alerted the horde

most contentious thing in this video is at 1:46 where Strawberries are in F tier. I thought he could never miss, but I was mistaken 😔😔😔😔😔

I will admit I'm someone who didn't think Pot could win a major, though I didn't think he was complete trash either. It definitely helped Snake Eyez that he got to fight Leo twice (the one top tier most Pot players agree is a pretty fine matchup) instead of like, Ramlethal or HC.

Title was clickbait? Smh typical LK downplay

Snake Eyez was right about anime players VS sf players. 😆 Nature is healing.

Enjoyed this one LK. Thanks for helping some people, particularly those who just window shop fighters and don't actually compete regularly, understand that there's a difference between games with viable/non-viable characters, and a game that is made to support viability.

Jokes aside, I think having this mentality is very important for new players coming into the scene who are adamant about competing, especially for the new fighters coming out. Kudos for having enough faith in the scene to offer this perspective LK. This is what it's all about!

the clickbait title actually further proved ur point tbh. people clicking for a reductionist answer, but instead, receive a nuanced explanation for how these characters objectively interact. the shift from letter teir list to a newer and much more realistic rating system should be welcomed with open arms! teir list as they are now hinder play expression 😞

As potemkin main, I heard none of that, was too busy sniffing glue

You know, it would be a little bit funny if some fighting game devs just decided to make an april fools update where they actually made the characters as broken/trash as people said they were. Just imagine those patch notes.

I've always loved your content because you're the only top player who's able to have nuanced opinions and express them in a semi-coherent way. Social media & twitter is cancer for discourse, and we can see exactly why in the case of strive.

I really appreciate your outlook on comparative roster strength and tier lists dude. You’re totally right, there’s no completely inviable characters in modern fighting games. Your angle on how characters relate to each other really helped me have a better grasp on the game. Keep up these break downs on the strive roster and why people put them where they do in tier lists. Your insight on this shit is mad helpful.

This is great, I fell victim to this mentality in early strive as a pot main, blaming my struggles on his poor defense. But I won't turn my back on life I saw he still did big dmg and had so much comeback POTential. Watching people like FAB and Snake showed me the way. Even when I was into comp TF2, I regrettably grilled my irl friend for maining heavy. Sure, won't see heavy much in comp, but that wasn't what we were playing anyway.

It's really just a relative power discussion: Older games just had greater separation in power level between characters, greater severity of matchups, etc, as they only had 1-3 chances to balance and when they did they usually were adding new mechanics too which would change things. So tier lists reflected those gaps. Modern games stand on the shoulders of giants, and simultaneously have many more patches to work with, and so much more sample data from the collectives of people figuring things out exponentially faster and sharing it online. So many older pros show that by grouping the cast closer together in terms of power, because they are still using the same scale as they did for older games. That's why letter systems aren't as good anymore, as people don't understand whether the scaling is relative to fighting games as a whole, the game itself, etc. So description style tiers fix that by sharing exactly what each tier means in terms of power level of the characters in each tier.

Loving the Fire Emblem music in the background

Part of the issue as well is that "Broken" has become a sort of slang, for "really good" or even sometimes "surprisingly good"/"Better than expected" I think the result of that is muddying the waters around how we talk about moves and characters. Is Pot 'broken' in the literal sense? Obviously not Is Pot 'broken' in the sense that he is better than expected? I think for some people, yes.

Sometimes you gotta trick people with clickbait in order to get them to listen to quality discussions. I for once, appreciate it

Your channel is quickly becoming one of my favorite for fighting game content. You present your experiences as a top-level player in a logical, argumentative fashion instead of relying on anecdote or dismissing viewers out of hand. It leads to very interesting topics.

Exploiting your opponent's character's weaknesses is why weak characters lose. Playing to your character's strengths is just how you play. Weaknesses and strengths are relative, and if your opponent knows your character and can play a character that's stronger or counter picks them, your character can be only 10% weaker on average... But the things that make them weaker will come up 100% of the time, and winning will be very difficult. This isn't about playing to strengths. Guilty Gear Strive just has really narrow stratification between characters and tiers. A "trash" character is still bad in the sense that it'll probably lose an even skill match the majority of the time... But because the game doesn't feature absolute nonsense like, for instance, MvC2 Roll vs Cable, every single match is going to be closer, even if the weaker character still loses every match. Let's say your weaker character ends most of the matches with 10% of their health left... What happens when you introduce a 10% skill difference? Suddenly every match is a coin toss. It's not that the people who play the worst characters in Strive are gods. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's that slight differences in skill can make up for slight differences in character power. People just aren't used to playing fighting games where every character has strong specials and normals. There are a lot of fighting games where you can say a large portion of the cast has "bad/no tools." Strive isn't one of them. Everyone is going to play to their character's strengths, but if your character has few advantages over the opponent's it's not going to matter. That's the key lesson Arcsys learned at some point. So they make sure every character has some serious grease.

Snake eyes is legit better than everyone at that tournament by an order of magnitude. He does things with Potemkin that almost nobody else can do (I know, I've day 1'd him.) When he can kara-super from a simple jab on reaction, he is just better.

My guy didn’t even mention snake is a legend in everything he’s played

God needs faster 2P. Just please give me an actual option to hit Jack O minions, please .

Great video! I expected that the title was clickbait going in, but was still happy to hear you talk about Potemkin. I am also very happy with the change to how you do tierlists. I 100% understand and agree with the reason behind S+ to B+ tierlists, but holy hell do I hate how they look lol.

I went to go look up your potemkin is struggling video after texas showdown and this was the funniest thing that could show up.

As an OG Pot believer, I just wanna say LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOO

I can't stand it when people started saying that Ky was trash and the only reason he made it to Evo Japan top 8 was because Churara was that good. Churara's good, but that's because he can take advantage of Ky's strengths instead of crying about his weaknesses. And LK is right about the language too, when you only use hyperbole and call things either trash or broken, you make it impossible to talk about the nuances of characters and matchups.

I think the guy won with sin by people not practicing against him. So someone actually good at the game comes along with solid knowledge of the kit, and people don't know what to do against them. All strengths, no real weakness.

LK here bringing the calm and deep insights that the Guilty Gear community is known for

saw the video title: oh they're not gonna like this watched the video: oh they might like this

0:50 LK always has the broadest music selection in his videos. Conquest from FE: Awakening is like Top 10 chill tracks in all of existence. That shit goes so crazy.

GGST is my first ever proper fighting game I've ever played and I didn't like it all that much at the beginning, until I set my eyes on Potemkin. Big health, big damage, jumpscares, that's all I ever wanted. I didn't choose the glue, the glue chose me!

@ 12:33 Who thought Chipp was "trash" on game release? I don't think Chipp has ever truly been bad.

Consistently winning with a character deemed "Not consistent" is a matter of persevering against the odds and demonstrating superior skill. Skill being a combination of game knowledge, mechanical skill, and the ability to apply them both in a real-time changing environment. Was Snake Eyez more "skilled" than the rest of the entries? Maybe, but match-up knowledge and experience were definitely in his favor as Potemkin is not a popular tournament pick. Also, Potemkin has huge potential but most players cannot consistently execute his commands. Even Snake Eyez flubbed inputs in several of the matches of the Top 8 alone. Haters will hate, but Potemkin's execution is just absurdly high compared to most of the roster.

Being able to play the character you want is the cool thing about balanced fighting games now

It’s clickbait like a boss but I’m here for it besides, always luv your content because you're one of the only top players who's able to have nuanced opinions and express them in a coherent way thats received by many povs. even the conflicting ones

G A P E A R T H

Maybe this is like a bit adjacent to what you're talking about but how do you feel about x/y graph lists like the ones seen on MMCafe? I feel like those tier lists can show character strengths and weaknesses in a much better light than just a regular tiermaker list layout like the ones used in this video tbh. They still do need like an extra page going into more detail in some instances imo but I think being able to rate important factors like setplay strengths or combo game or neutral is a great way of highlighting how good a character is when it all is added together.

I hate this discourse because people lack the nuance to even begin to engage with it. Saying everyone is good/viable is a true statement everyone in this game has a win condition. It's weird to just ignore that x character is good or bad at anything. Most characters have good and bad tools, some good tools are just compensating for the bad ones where other characters don't have the same stability. ie; Ky being a mid dispenser but a great stagger/oki game. Or pot having some of the worst neutral tools but has probably one of the biggest one chance factors in the game.

I think the ending was a good point There are so many people I've interacted with who only describe their character in bad positions Like they'll describe a move that is literally the strongest launcher in the game and goes under highs and some mids, but then say it sucks because it's launch punishable??? Friend, if they're consistently blocking a high crushing move, that's on YOU not the character

I would say Potemkin , Axl, and Anji maybe Testament have had their old play style augmented to their detriment. I'll put it this way characters like Anji , Pot or Axl would have no issues with top tier Strive characters in the XX generation of GG. There have been moves taken away from them , or changes to how they use the moves. The migration away from the older games is just a bigger adjustment for some chars, for example , Chipp and Baiken are handling their changes better. They are very different now with no block parry and no teleports. But the core remains more intact and effective in the newer games.

I didn’t like seem to get that characters are designed in a way that will fundamentally make them weaker, like Anji has to work the way he does because though yes you might want to win the round with him you also sort of win a secondary objective as anji, and that is feeling galaxy brain by doing some crazy mix, because the room that being underpowered gives to fueling the ego is actually huge apparently. It also helps that every character has tools to help them win. Idk why I’m ranting this video is from like 3 months ago

keep the grappler narrative going. love the title

I feel like this should be obvious, but descriptors like "good" or "bad" are all relative terms. It's pointless to evaluate a character based on their own merits because none of them exist in a vacuum. The only purpose in a tier list is to see how a character compares to others -- as such the lettering used is completely arbitrary.

LK spitting facts like usual

The lack of nuance is a general problem. If you judge the world by kneejerk reactions, you're doing it to your own detriment.

I dont play this game but I want you to know that I occasionally come to this channel and ALWAYS enjoy your perspective on things

Do your modern tier lists with the labelling you use still take matchups eg if two players of the same skill play 100 matches like how we used to think of tier lists ?

I wish you had taken a moment to contrast the low tier being B rather than F by showing an example of an F tier character from an old game, but I understand that properly understanding that sort of thing would probably take another 10 minutes to explain so I get it.

The thing about POT is that, never is impossible for a comeback. When you hit that Buster, the opponent gets desperate and is game over! He really needs to get that crucial win ONCE!

I’m way late to this video but I really enjoyed it. Tier lists are fine, and I like them as content but I also think they’re rotting peoples brains, mine included and it’s something I’m trying to get away from. When you bring this up online people say “bro tiers don’t matter just play who you want you’re not going to win evo” and they’re right but the human brain doesn’t work like that. Why would I a player who isn’t winning evo care about tiers? Time. As in the wasting of it, I’m a grown ass man, with a grown ass Job and responsibilities the time I get to play is minimal and with that comes the existential dread, I want to get better and I want to maximise my time doing so, when you see tier lists saying this character is trash, this character sucks, my brain goes, well if you play this character you are wasting your time. Arguably the opposite, playing a low tier and really getting good with them will probably make you a better overall player but that doesn’t help how you feel in the moment, you lose a few sets, the tier lists start coming in and it’s like “why am I wasting my time with this” You mention language, it’s the same for the way people are talking about top tier, it’s always “this character is broken they get you easy wins” and again, the doubt comes in, fuck I like easy wins, if it’s easy wins when you’re average with a bit of work I’ll achieve my goal faster. This summed up my 2023, character switching way too much to try and shortcut improvement, ultimately costing myself in the long run. So this year I’m committed to only playing characters i vibe with and actually getting into the depths with them.

We should watch top players in order to learn capitalizing in the character's strenghts. Daru knows fully well Ino's weaknesses. Her neutral is trash? Oh well I'll condition the opponent and I'll work on making every approach different to confuse them even if I have to gamble heavily: if I do that my win condition will come and it is so strong that even my worst matchup can't stop me. It is easy? No, but worth learning and trying.

My god I read the title and heard Snake Eyez cry out in pain.

LK are you gonna play sf6? I know you said you weren't gonna play it competitively but what characters are you interested in trying out

14:28 or on the other side of that coin where a character is known to be used a lot, can still get results at high level tournaments which doesn't surprise people, yet causes people to get defensive when it's pointed out that that character should, statistically, be getting more results than they are due to their popularity eventually leading to inevitable videos titled something along the lines of "what happened to _______?"

You clickbaited me into watching an good take. Well played

This was a ride 😅 but I appreciated the rant big time!

That edge up lookin clean

God thumbnail

Bonjour depuis la France LK.

It's ironic that "everybody" thinks a certain way from your perspective, but what I take it to mean is that the people with the least understanding do the most talking/commenting. I think the average player can understand what letters mean or relative strength or any of these concepts. The problem is that those players and those above will watch the videos, think to themselves "hmm, interesting"' and move on. The people that stick around to argue over the small stuff are just a vocal minority. Same problem on Twitter or other platforms. It's a clear IYKYK angle. At the same time, this discussion topic continues to bait engagement from those same vocal groups so no reason not to keep rehashing the same obvious point cuz they're the easiest to game the system. Gotta respect that too.

Agreed, discourse is based on perception rather than any knowledge. Can't tell you what Pot does with meter but I know Hotashi got salty one time a year ago and said Ram was busted so she top tier. Looking at consistent results and what it takes to get there is a better lens for most of the player base

aight we can still be friends. You almost had me with that title

I’m wondering if the “grappler = big and slow” is not the only way of doing a grab focused character. I am still relatively new to fighting games, but doesn’t Manon in SF6 revolve a lot around her command grab? She isn’t slow. I could see grappler characters evolving in that direction. E.g. the big command grab starts off weak but you have tools and character specific resources to that can power it up. Definitely think there is a ton of unexplored territory for grapplers to evolve. Potemkin is definitely S tier when it comes to heart. Love the big guy.

Digging deep into the content mines.

shoulda called it "potemkin is extremely busted"

Oh, insightful, quality clickbait is actually a thing! Thanks for the perspective! Edit: I almost forgot to ask, do you have videos on the win conditions of the Strive characters? I think it would be helpful for me to understand my main and how to fight the others

As a pot main I think he is good but to be honest I think the best way to really play him at his best is to really be good a kara his moves which I find hard to really be consistent with.

I might be an old head but I like the letter notation

LK, could you do a video on different classes/tiers of tournaments? You called Summer Jam a major here, but I thought it was more like a regional.

You ugh kinda spitting brother man. 🎉🎉🎉🎉

Seeing this in my feed got me dying at work

Nooooo it's just clickbait guys 😂😂😂😂. Meanwhile I'm to go complain about how unbalanced the game is in another video

Is there a universal system value that affects how much RISC a character takes on block, or is taking less a unique property for Pot?

Excellent video 🙂

I was against you all the way until you got to the disconnect lol. My man, you have no idea how mindfucked I would get when I saw some of those tier lists (I'm more old school. I like top tier, high tier, mid, low and bottom). I perfectly understood what everyone was trying to convey with lettering, but as soon as people started talking (I can name drop big time since I mostly heard it from DBFz players) all that shit went out the window. "Everyone below A+ is trash, but A is still viable". "There are no bad characters. Goku Black SUCKS" "This character is ass but he/she is bottom of A+" Yeah, we were bad coming up in the late 00's, early 10's, but to this degree, nah. If you beat a top player playing a top tier character/team while you're playing a bottom tier, oh, you definitely got your props (top player might've gotten clowned on too). Another problem is we jump the gun way too early on everything. 1 tournament goes by. Up, SOL BEST CHARACTER and then lose in the next one to find out he suddenly sucks. I'm going to sound judgmental here but oh well. You modern players are weird. I don't know when that shit started but I want to blame it on 2015-16. Great video. It's good for discussing. Learn how to talk people. 😅

We’ve been jebaited

I came in with knuckles cracked ready to copy paste this dissertation on why you were wrong and how Snake Eyez won not Potemkin, then I watched the video lol. Good stuff LK.

Last time I checked, he got nerfed. Years later, Snake Eyes is fucking shit up.

Bridget's 6p actually beats megafist.

A lot of this comes from people being quite spoiled with recent fighting games. When you grow up on games where some characters outright break the game (Hello Arakune! Glad Nu was in CT or else I would have definitely quit) or some characters are actually straight up unplayable, I feel like the mentality is different. Way back in 09', we had a Tager player get 3rd in a tournament here in FL (at the time we would call it a major). He did it by analyzing his characters strengths, and stacking the deck as much as possible in his favor. I feel like today, we would just cry that the character is trash and demand buffs until we cry that he's too strong.

What does ruin brackets mean in the context of a tierlist or viability discussion?

Partial counter argument in support of the "there should be a bell curve" side. If you're going to use a tier list that just goes S-F instead of having meaningfully defined tiers, then all of those points are just relative to each other. There is no reason you can't just "zoom in" on the chart so to speak, put the average character in the middle and fill the chart out appropriately. No problem saying a character is S tier or F tier even if the game is extremely well balanced, just means the difference might be "his jab actually hits slightly farther, and his back dash comes out faster." Then again asking even 2% of tier lists to be that well explained, or 2% of viewers to understand that....yeah nm, screw the bell curve.

I'm sure everyone who's played fighting games has met that one guy playing the character nobody else really plays but there so good at capitalizing on the characters strengths that you can't touch them

Comments are gonna have a fun time with this one

16:20 While I agree, I don’t think this really applies entirely to Strive, I will say though that there are still some fighting games with this issue that I don’t like *cough* *cough* Smash Ultimate

I stand by every tierlist needing a genuinely dogshit and a stupid op character for reference. GGML Pot and Justice come to mind

"POTEMKIN IS BROKEN" "okay so here's why millia sucks and I'm not a downplayer"

Mmm mmm guys you gotta try this. This glue smells amazing

Be careful there’s a tonberry standing right behind you

i just wish faust mixmixmix would scale damage less badly

I love you LK

The problem with tierlists is that the people who read them the most are people who aren't at the level to actually apply it. But a lot of quality players can explain strengths and weaknesses well, so its a double edged sword to have parrots who know the reasoning, but don't understand it. This is why I like the "low tier" character upsets(other than the variety) cause it just blows tier worshipers out of the water.