It seems that on many threads, people like to say some champion is overpowered or underpowered, and then dozens of people chime in to agree or disagree for sometimes good and sometimes crazy reasons.

There is a better way to do it. Fighting games rank a character's power and then place it into a tier (usually about 5 different ones). Top tier characters are agreed to be much better than average, and bottom tier is considered a weak character. The rankings are based from professional play and assumes that the characters are being played correctly.

This system would eliminate the black and white character of the OP/UP discussions, and provide a better framework to discuss how a character will fit into the grand scheme of things.

Here is an example for Street fighter 4 rankings:http://anmlhse.com/blog/2009/07/01/s...-tier-listing/

tiers are for *****s.

that being said, every time people try to break characters into tiers, its just a ton of ****fail.
breaking smash bros characters into tiers is stupid beyond reason, it comes down purely to player skill. in fighting games, its the same thing unless the creators really ****ed up a few characters.

doing it here will also be ****fail. support heroes get shafted to the low end? **** that. this game is item based anyway, so its all about how you play the hero. granted, this game is far from balanced so there are CLEAR divisions in some places (jax), but its still dumb and just ruins the game. nobody will play "low tier" characters anymore. its just a stupid system.

to start fixing the balance or to establish the character's role in the group because not everyone can be equal.

your "nuke" tiers are so wrong its sad. both annie and anivia are incredible nukers, its what they do. and fiddle has weak skills, but just enough synergy to keep him above bottom tier. janna has 1 nuke so i'd put her in the bottom.

and where is karthus? depending on how fed he gets, he can be a carry, and he can easily be great magic dps.

see? this is what im talking about, some arbitrary person comes about and locks people into places, then arguing ensues, and the then the sheer fact of POTENTIAL item building and game flow throw the entire chart out the ****ing window. the whole practice is stupid.

I don't think anyone has mentioned the main point yet.

In tournaments, or any high level play, it's going to be a team selection similar to DotA, yes?

The minute active counterpicks are entered into a closed system like that, it permanently borks the tier ratings. And the math just ripples through and grows exponentially. I would imagine it's possible to pick hard counters for far over 50% of the possible choices in the game if you're judging it at the level of individual selection.

Lets say you pick what is generally considered to be a top tier character. If I've got next pick, and I pick a hard counter to you, does it matter that the hard counter might be a lower tier? Somewhat, but minimally, at best. What if it's a hard counter so powerful that not only is his guy > yours, but it FORCES someone on your team to pick a hard counter for him? Yikes. Gets gamey fast.

Most games are going to revolve around team synergy; pick a gimmick or two to build a team around, or an overarching strategy to build a specific team around, or a combination of a few key abilities to build a team around and you may throw in a few hard counters, depending on how things go down and how many of your slots are devoted to the above decisions.

Tier = pointless, here. If you're going to 'compare' heroes against one another, the only honest way to do so is (surprise) the way the game is designed. By fighting specific 5v5 team matchups against one another.

Once you're at that point, player skill becomes the differentiator, along with the theorycraft, item choices, and all the other things. But tiers are pretty weetodded for this, no matter how you look at it, and of practically zero use.

Cheers.

Damendar