Forceful's Tier List (November Update)

PvP Pit
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I have made changes to reflect the November update. Thoughts on the new hero, Kobold, below.

God Tier:
Nightingale, Panzer, Mandrake, Mauler.

Competitive Tier:
Keel, Heimlock, Dogface, Ronin, Flatline, Caine, Moss, Min, Kobold, Halo, Odachi, Bolt, Sentry, Artemis, Razorback, Ifrit, Hardscope, Cinder, Phalanx, Vanguard.

Viable Tier:
Baron, Gammond, Butter, Operator, Wesson, Anvil, Clyde, Francois, Cross, Hideo, Sapphyr, Callidus, Cast, Hivemind, Castellan, Prophet, Ghoul, Brogan, Maven, Oracle.

Garbage Tier:
Beck, Halloway, Salvatore, Kunoichi, Savage, Steele, Surge, Elite Rifleman, Phoenix, Heckler, Matador, Fischer, Galante, Chesterfield, Ryker, Pris, Fortress, Yanlong, Richter, Scum, Oro.

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Kobold is competitive for 2 reasons.

  1. Her gold is buggy and triggers off other shields, even Phalanx’s gold. While the damage reflection itself is miniscule (also bugged?) it’s capable of triggering Halo’s plat and that combo basically nukes the enemy team right off the bat. That combo is still not unbeatable, but it’s good enough to justify using.

  2. Her plat potentially makes her one of the few strong frontline “team” healers.

Without the plat she is just a worse version of Heimlock or Butter. She has a high ROF which means she can charge her bronze fast, but only if piloted… and since that’s a terrible idea, it means her main skill charges slowly and unreliably.

Her own shield isn’t strong or fast enough to get much mileage out of her plat so you need a 2nd shielder. Unfortunately getting a shield on her is pretty iffy, only Vanguards shield is likely to stay up for a significant duration but that shield is untargeted and so actually getting it on Kobold is quite unlikely against most teams. Castellan has an ideal shield for the job but bots just seem to hate standing in it, so you’d have to pilot Kobold just to make sure she doesn’t run out of it. You could try multiple shields but that often requires throwing out top-tier supports, and there’s always the chance you get an enemy Anvil who will just eat Kobold alive.

Ultimately the (recently buffed) Phalanx seems to the best fit for the job. The Phalanx shield lasts 2x as long as most shields since it only absorbs 50% of damage, this is perfect synergy with Kobold’s plat which will quickly heal whatever damage isn’t absorbed by the Phalanx shield. This gives most teams a very hardy opening that will keep your team near full health.

Kobold’s plat isn’t so strong that you can just build the entire team around either, so the reality is that once Phalanx’s shield wear off Kobold both Phalanx and Kobold will have diminished utility for the rest of the match - that duo will ultimately fare worse than something like Mandrake/Heimlock who will continue to provide crucial support throughout a longer match. Still, even without abusing Halo I believe Kobold is a competitive frontline choice.

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Ronin above fortress, hmm

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How is Ryker garbage? I got him to plat 6 stars and he’s a beast in pvp!

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Ryker is trash because of his lack of ability to use effective synergies with any other hero, while also not having the raw power to make up for that. The only instance of Ryker I see in pvp is some guy min/maxing with him and getting lucky with match-ups.

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Some other notes:

  • Why did HHG nerf Fortress? Fortress stopped being a problem once Panzer was introduced and at some point they quietly nerfed recharge so that it wouldn’t account for outside heals (what originally made it kinda OP). Of all the problematic abilities in this game… and they nerf Fortress? The new bronze is actually a little better but recharge being trash ruins any utility he had as an off-DPS.

  • The worse hero is somehow even worse… after a buff?! Oro’s dmg reduction gold is bugged or poorly worded, either way he still dies to a stiff breeze and while he at least had a niche before (impressive DPS if he can stay alive at low HP), that mechanic was neutered and now he’s just a generic garbage frontliner.

  • Reworked plats into something worse? Both Savage and Callidus saw their otherwise decent plats given terrible reworks. Savage now has to miss at least 6 shots for every crit to beat his old bonus and Callidus plat now basically helps the enemy team focus damage onto a secondary target, the opposite of what a tank should do. Leave it to HHG to rework a plat so that it’s actually better if left underleveled…

  • Francois almost competitive. Unfortunately HHG still doesn’t seem to grasp how much high RoF seems to gimp healers. While low RoF heroes put out their bronze heals on a consistent and reliable basis, Francois continues to disappoint. 99% of the time she will be spraying air or cover and fail to charge even a single heal before CHUG becomes available. She then proceeds to waste one of the key benefits of chug (rapidly charging her heal), and she displays no intelligence about stopping the chug (i.e. someone is getting focused and mere seconds from dying, better keep chugging) so she’s often chugging away instead of tossing a heal to the person who needed it 8 seconds ago. She’s a candidate for piloting but her low damage (thanks again to high ROF and low offensive mod) and dependence on getting a good Chug (easily denied by skill stagger) make her just too unreliable as a competitive healing choice.

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i found that callidus plat’s interesting, at least for now
at first it’s sounds bad, but its gonna help her tanking more damage and make her health above 50% and taunt a bit longer

still working platting her to test her, dunno about the results tho

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Fortress 30% chance recharge is a joke, they could have gone with at least 60% or above 50%

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I think Beck, Kunoichi, Steele, Elite Rifleman, Phoenix, and Matador should be in the lower/middle viable tier. I feel like all those heroes get hidden because there are better options, but there are certain situations where I feel like one of the ones listed above may outclass a higher tier character

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I played around a bit with Kunochi during the last event. I found her to be quite good.

Dopedgoat has smoked me with her at 10 star 3 bar plat a number of times too.

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I dropped Steele’s ranking some after playing with him more during KLG events. He MUST be piloted to be effective but unfortunately that just makes him a ripe target for Panzers and Maulers. Mechs already have a very good selection of DPS so I can’t really think of a reason to pilot Steele.

Phoenix is just way too dependent on incinerate for good DPS. She has a high RoF weapon, low Offensive Mod, and no damage bonuses in her passives. Matchstick inexplicably has RNG to determine if its useful or not. While her plat gives her a very robust defense she still has to do damage and unfortunately a competent opponent will almost always interrupt your incinerate.

I moved Beck, Kunoichi and Rifleman all up in this update but I’m not quite convinced they should get to move into viable yet. Beck’s guns still have some pretty atrocious spread, her grenade is a joke, and she has this obscene power inflation. Ironically the power inflation is the only way I’ve seen her used effectively, with Beck and other inflated heroes it’s possible to field teams close to 100k power that all but guarantee you will either face Bots or human players who have less power.

Rifleman’s main edge comes from pulling off a single-target scattershot but you can’t guarantee that the target you want will ever be that isolated - but I am still open to the possibility that he is viable.

Kunoichi has lots of potential but I still haven’t found a team (or an opponent) who can pull it off. Most of my games are decided in the first 20 seconds but Kunoicho plays like Dogface and requires ~20 seconds to really get her DPS off the ground, but unlike Dogface she is much squishier, loses too much damage to spread and armor, and she’s a middle line hero who can’t even dream of hitting backliners in cover without Knives. Plus she seems to have this terrible issue where her knives don’t stun sometimes. If there was a way to get her gold to trigger on a desired target early (<10 seconds) in the match I would give her a lot more credit because she gets very scary against stunned/rooted targets.

Matador continues to remain a disaster in my book. His high ROF + low damage means even light armor just destroys his DPS. HHG’s move to shift his mods to even more defensive just further ruined him since his Bronze and Gold and Plat are built around him doing damage, total bonehead move. If his high ROF would charge a useful skill like Rally Cry he might be viable but instead he just charges Bull Rush which is a skill interrupter at best. Rally cry is his ONLY upside but it remains only roughly as strong as other frontline team heals (Heim, Gammond, Kobold) but with the downside of having a slow windup and channel effect that makes it easy to interrupt.

TL;DR I remain open to Beck, Rifleman and Kunoichi being viable but in my experience there’s never a reason to use them over Mech DPS like Panzer, Dogface, Bolt, Hardscope, Clyde, or Hideo. They are simply worse versions of those heroes due to the armor penalties and spread associated with high RoF weapons.

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As always, I appreciate your insight and deep understanding of the game’s fundamentals.

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Great review dude, I completely agree

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Becks biggest strength is her Gold in my opinion. It is a good self heal if triggered. Since no one plays HROF it sadly does not shows its full potential, but still save her. Combined with her silver skill beeing good (can not miss and does okay damage) and a good DPS, she does good as a secondary damage dealer.

For sure not god like, but depending on your own playing style at least viable.

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Love this assessment of a lot of heroes, but I’m curious if you have tried out Pris since the last update?
Plat aside, because its basically a less effective version of a bunch of different similar passives, It seems that her bronze charges a lot quicker then before when landing shots (Just played a match were I was able to get 6 charges off in a 1:26) Plus with the added %health damage on multiple uses shes been a decent hero against some of the larger health heroes especially mandrake and Heimlock. Even against Mauler I haven’t had a bunch of trouble and If I can hit him with an early Bronze he goes down extremely quick.

After landing a bronze, she has been doing similar amount of damage per shot as my plat Ronin does with a few stacks. It may be because my Pris is only gold, but I’ve had a few really good games with her but also a few one sided ones against stronger teams. Dont think shes anywhere near top tier, but she seems like shes decent enough to try and make a team with her. Just was curious if you have tried to play around with her since the update.

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I see Pris as a fundamentally bad hero.

She is 100% dependent on Beguile to do anything useful and Beguile itself is a god awful ability for a DPS since it does less damage than her actual weapon over the same period of time - but I guess HHG justifies it being terrible because its main purpose in her kit is to set up Sapper and Gold bonus.

The next problem is that if you ever see someone piloting Pris you know that’s going to be their 1 trick pony. If you see Pris being piloted you know what their entire gameplan revolves around, Beguile, and it becomes very easy to stagger her before she ever gets it off.

But what if things go wrong and she DOES get if off?

Well the other beautiful thing about her combo is that it finishes up around the same time Heimlock’s sanitize is ready, poor Pris busted her butt to get secure that precious Beguile debuff and its gone a few seconds later.

Also her damage with the Beguile buff still doesn’t come close to Ronin’s. They have virtually identical RoF but at 10* Plat+2, Pris only gets +5,500 damage against Beguiled victims - meanwhile Ronin is sitting at +14,000 damage with x4 Honorbound.

Also now she’s a midliner so I probably could’ve just answered this with “she’s a free Panzer kill lol”.

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