I mean, as a long-time player, this makes sense. Despite being a four star Op her utility out does even some 5 and 6 stars. Depending on the niche, she can provide good DP generation and healing utility.
@@baguetto563She's in every event because of low rarity and accessibility. There are plenty of units who do more than her, better than her. Largely because they are not competing with her.
@@baguetto563Because other than providing insane DP generation with the low sp and dp cost, she provides nothing else that is noteworthy while Saileach, Elysium can provide debuffs for the team.
Yeah I agree, everyone shits on the gamepress tier list saying something along the lines of "tier lists don't work in arknights at all because there too many different roles + situations" or "waifu over meta". But some operators are just kinda objectively (generally/in 99% of situations) better than others and I think most of the rankings make sense. I think it does do a pretty decent job at what it does, even if it isn't perfect.
People are just on copium, people do not like being told that something they like is "bad". It's really hard to sit down and admit you can like something that's "bad" and dislike something that's good. I hate using Kalt'Sit, but you'll never catch me saying she's a terrible unit to build. I love Nearl, but you'll never see me tell anyone "build Nearl over Gummy or Saria".
The copium I heard when Vigil was added omfg. Mfs were legit trying say people didn't like hiking because he wasn't meta breaking. No bitch he's a vanguard with worse stats than a 4 star of the same type and generates *2 DP*
@@joaogoncalves5357As a Hung user (meaning I use him instead of Gummy and Nearl because of male only squad and husbando reasons) I have the same response when people ask me who to build. You shouldnt build Hung over someone like Gummy, unless your at end-game, husbando reasons, or expirementing with certain niches. Although we should build our own squads with what ever fits our playstyle.
@@KekeLyro-qu1eqyeah, Hung maybe good at e2 maxed But gummy is so powerful at e1, tried hung e1 and he can't barely survive. Most operator need max investment to be good, that's why tierlist matter so people know which operator is good when not maxed because the resource is limited, and i believe even you played from day 1 (without paying for sanity) you still have not everyone maxed.
The ratings were also compared to others in their class, originally an S in a weak class could be weaker than an A in a heavily populated class with powerful operators. I believe value in the rogue like is also factored, hence Jaye being an S-.
Jaye was like the best cheap unit in the first rogue like mode, since he did a bit of everything. Each mode has enough change to them at a fundamental level they will vary. Thorns is also a unit that was also extremely strong. With the nerf to to the class squads Thorns has fallen a bit. He only really becomes good at E2. So units that are good at E1 are more viable. I prefer to pick Kal over Thorns, for utility. Kal is a kind of healer with a large range and a 3 block unit.
Agreed, though what I think some people may not take into account, or maybe they do and dont care?, or atleast how I look at the Gamepress Tier List is that its not comparing ALL S class operators to each other. Obviously most S tier will be 6*'s they are normally better than their 5* and lower counterparts, but when you are only comparing them to their own class/subclass, that is where I find the value especially when the class/subclass has a large number of operators. Flag Bearer Vanguards are slim but are DP printers so in the vanguard class they do stand above most others especially for most general content. I think trying to say that an S tier vanguard is better than an S tier Guard isnt really a good argument. They fill different roles so I try not to compare them to the entire operator pool since that isnt really going to give me good information on if someone like Myrtle is better than NTR. They are both very good at what they do so they are ranked high but trying to compare them to one another could add a lot of variables, like "Would I use Myrtle to hold a lane or heli drop?" Not necessarily no so NTR is better. Also, "Would I deploy NTR early and use her to print DP?" Also no, she literally cant so she is F tier there making Myrtle better. Those are probably really bad examples, but I do agree overall, I think when you compartmentalize each class and then compare them that way, I find there is more value there than just saying this 5* is better than this 6* even though they are different classes and fill different roles.
From GamePress tier list page "This Tier List organizes Operators by Class Archetypes in order to make the list easier to search, filter, understand, and compare. This does not mean that comparisons are only being done within Archetypes.Evaluation and ranking is based on the strength/potential of the Operator to have an overall meaningful impact on the game."
I remember my friend telling me not to use tier list and level who I want, but the new player tier list in particular really helped in informing me who I should build first, so that I can start completing EX stages and IS runs even in the early game. Lots of 4-stars I initially slept on as well as 5 stars I shouldn't build just yet were had. Though once you have a solid team tier-list's become less and less useful.
The new player tier list is an EXCELLENT resource for new players, as the namesake would suggest. New players arguably imho should always use resources like that in Gacha games because these games require a lot of time investment, especially if you don't spend money. You don't want your account feeling like crap because then you'll probably just quit lol
I hate that advice. Especially as a beginner your ressources are tight and often you will need to squeeze the most out of your roster that you are able to. Hence it makes sense to aim for and raise your objectively best units. After that you can get into raising waifus and husbandos, as luxury units.
I think another reason it's hard to do a truly even distribution in tier lists is that power is rarely distributed evenly. There may be more strong units than average or weak units, which makes it harder to rank things. It would be weird for a bunch of otherwise excellent units to be shoved into C or B tier purely for the sake of maintaining an even distribution in the tierlist.
I understand your reasoning, but I also believe that it's very important to know how well a certain operator does in their role comparatively to others in that same role. This allows for people to prioritize certain units if they have multiple that can fill that slot.
tier lists, in the grand scheme of things, work. you follow it and you’d generally find yourself in a decent place. its a great starting point for players to be introduced to the game. as the play progresses, they’ll develop their own playstyle and their own mental tier list. let people cook. tier lists are helpful and gamepress made a pretty dang good one, considering how complex this game is
Arknights is a really interesting example because almost every operator has SOME niche where they shine. 12F is not a good splash caster, I used him on Patriot so he could try to use his 50% Physical Dodge to sidestep a spear or two. Yato is not a good Vanguard OR a fast-redeploy, but I used her in the recent Story chapters to draw turret fire on occasion -- only she and Mr. Nothing have 2-block on a short redeploy timer.
Before watching this full video, I think GP tier-list is good enough for starter to pick out some of the operators to promote as their very first E2s; GP tier-list do include a detailed description of said operators.
As a week 1 player, my perspective on the Arknight's tier list is that it worked up until a certain point in the game's lifecycle. During launch, if you didn't reroll for a SA or Ejya, you had to deal with the permanent account damage from building "worse" units that couldn't accomplish what those S tier units could. Also during that time, the overall distribution of operators did look more like a normal distribution so according to the logic of this video, the tier list was also pretty (mathematically) decent back then. However, as the game got more complex and more operators fulfilling different niches came out, the tier list became unessential and the game shifted to evaluating operators within their own niches and people's own team comps instead of a general tier list. For example, Blemishine compared to all the operators in the game probably is just an S- tier operator, but she is the only operator in her niche of allowing defensive recovery SP skills to recover offensively which opens the door to some strategies that wouldn't be possible otherwise without her. I think the value in the tier list now is comparing the versatility of operators compared to each other. In a vacuum, a higher tiered operator is more useful in a majority of the maps than a lower tiered one, so for any player looking for a useful tool they can bring in to any map, a higher tier operator is generally better than the rest. If you comprised a team of only EX and S+ tier operators, you could likely clear 99% of content in the game with ease, but that's not to say lower tier operators aren't less useful in certain maps or don't fit in your own specific strategy.
True, there so many niche in thins game, so specific operator is really valuable to execute those roll, the comparison starts when you have multiple character with the same niche
I spent the entire first month of this game on release to reroll for the god reroll which was SA + Exusai. Those carried me so much early but now its just Ling. Ling everything.
Hi, i am also a week 1 player and f2p, i think tier list IS useless, once you have your team of 12 all other operator are unrequired, i will explain, my team is composed by pure "meta" units: surtrt, chalter, murtle, Elysium, texalter, Thorn, kal, ling, skalter, ntr... and other "méta brute force" il use only this team and i Roll on the game, all other operator are useless for me (well i have maximum a rotation of 20 operator, all Time the same) even in Integrated Simulation when i have a caster voutcher i can only pick eyja, ceobe, dusk, ill try to pick a 5 star but i have a problem my question is who to pick because i think all 5star caster suck (i have a plenty of caster, i have choice i mean) im stuck and can't choose nobody, bc lack of damage or poor utility, i think objectively amiya still the best 5 star caster today, even in stage with hole or typhoon, pusher and puller operator does less than a surtr or Thorn for exemple i think is sad.
Yes and no. I took all the helidrops or helidrop like operators in the EX and S tiers and knew nothing about Andoain. You can't easily beat the darn game without knowing how the boss works. Some people can beat it with two operators like Texas and Yato but going blind without reading anything doesn't make OP operators OP. Bad doctor is going to fail with OP operators or crap operators. XD They aren't that strong to help you blindly bypass game mechanics. But yes, any stages without special mechanics will be easy with the OP operators. 😅
I think the problem with judging tier lists using a normal distribution is that the ideal forms of these distributions tend to suppose an infinite number of data, which is significantly harder to achieve with smaller data samples, like the number of operators in Arknights. Additionally, it's not in Hypergryph's biggest interest to keep a normal distribution of power level, their interest tends towards releasing strong or at the very least playable operators that are worth pulling for, which is why there are virtually no operators in the bottom half of the ranks minus the freebie or the occassional severely underperforming unit. Minus some inconsistencies between tiers in different classes, their tier list is fairly decent, and resources like this are useful to help new players decide who provides a better payoff for their resource investment because Arknights is, among other things, a resource management game. If anything, GP's biggest issue (shared with the wiki) are the summaries that tend to restate the archetype or skill's strengths and weaknesses without saying more. Like yes, I know that Specter's S2 allows her to cheat death and stuns when the skill ends, everyone who can read the summary can read it in the skill description, it's more useful to point out how it gives her a lot of cheese potential in high-end content and that the stun prevents her from taking damage by blocking enemies after the skill ends which paired with her higher-than-usual passive regen and other forms of healing gives her a much needed breathing time.
I still don't like to use her though. Why do this "high end" thing when I can like just Hoshi it? Or Surtr it? I mean she is great for a 5 Star and for Abyssal Hunters but... That's it. Unless you just want to use her niche cause you want to use her. Lol.
@@ikyiAlter That's the beauty of a game with such a diverse roster. There isn't a single answer. "Just Surtr it" is viable and may even be optimal in many cases but the game never forces you to. For every "Just surtr it" there's 10 other solutions involving different operators that you can do.
When they first added the EX tier, I felt like instead of adding a new tier to replace all the S++ and S+++ they had, it would've been better to just collapse one of the empty tiers and move everyone down a ranking. This was in part because I was worried they would eventually add an EX- and an EX + tier instead of just asking the hard question of "should we reorganize this" Fortunately, they haven't added EX- or EX+ yet
They said they will not add EX+ tiers EX tier just means top meta and its in every gacha game so expect it to be in arknights Horn is a top tier character but in no world she is close to texas alter in terms of game value
Ex is the highest it can and should go and there is no reason to add extra tier. EX is for op that is out right busted, they change how your play throught, a hard stage can become easy, you can put them any where and they still gonna work. S only for op that you should build around or better than other op in the same archetype, while A and below op should still be able to function in their place but with lower value.
first, that would take too much work since you should move everyone one tier down instead of just adding one tier above everyone else. second, bringing everyone down even one tier may emphasize that the WHOLE meta has changed, hence the downgrade on all previous character and the rise of new meta operator, while in fact, they all still relevant just like before and not losing any of their capabilities just because one meta operator appers. just like everone else said, EX tier is just for the most OP character that could change the gameplay, doesn't mean the other characters below them become unusable.
The one transgression I have against Gamepress is the comparison between Blemishine to Saria. Blemi is a 3 block guard that heals, Saria is a defender that can more reliably heal and can debuff enemies. Blemishine just doesn't adhere to the traditions of her class, opting for damage output while still healing remarkably well,
I never deploy blemi alone without mudrock. Blemi has interesting utility but it's not enough. As a healer: s3 can't heal herself, s2 makes enemy sleep but her allies can't attack them. She's not priority
@@azer5703 Thats the thing with her She can do MANY things but master of none of them and current helidrop dps orianted meta hurts her usefulness a ton sadly
@@kyarumomochi5146 That's not even true, Blemishine is a really good unit. After using her for over a year she's been more than enough in almost every situation, and her potential is just not noticeable on paper, and her numbers quickly add up when used correctly.
@@kyarumomochi5146 Talent 1 allows for any operator with defensive recovery to be absolutely busted; Penance, Mudrock and most importantly, her own skills S1, decent afk skill with self sustain and up to 2100 phys damage with 4 sp charge and 3 storage S2, good passive healing + massive sleep, low sp cost (def AND off recovery) and around 2.4k damage to sleeping enemies thanks to her talent. S3, Massive conditional healing (up to 1700hp with 1.2s interval), strong def (15% DR from module), double hit (1700 arts + 1700 phys) with good uptime. Shes a defender with good offensive skills, decent healing capabilities, 3 different niches (massive conditional heal, sleep control, def recovery buff )
It's always important to keep in mind that every tier list involving a large cast of characters is going to be biased in some way. People have their own preferences, ways of playing and priorities that might differ from other players. Nonetheless, it can be a useful tool, especially for newer players. Even if the information isn't fully accurate, it should give a decent picture of how units compare to each other and which ones to raise over others.
This was a well made video. Although I believe the purpose of tier lists was to make use of usage of operators in a general setting. In a vacuum, would a particular operator perform their job well? So of course the higher star operators, with higher base stats, would make up the higher tiers. Opinions on an operator's strength and role can change with time and with the release of future operators. But who knows, maybe there will be enough operators one day that a normal distribution can occur.
The thing is, Arknights have the most variable character in any RPG games, each of them has their own niche and some of them also became a core in a gameplay impact sense, and there is literally a lot of way to solve each stage or event mission, what i love about Arknights tier list in gamepress are the way they make seperate category for each archetype
What an amazing video. Arknights gamepress tier list is fantastic despite of some silly texts on the "cons" section of a unit. ( only block 1) - Well, that's the archetype so....
Block 1 was in fact a huge disadvantage during the timeframe the text was written for those operators. Have you tried doing Ep 7 on release without enough vanguards or blockers for stages like 7-4 and 7-9? When Thorns and Mountain haven't been released yet? Not everyone had flagpipe, or had them to a sufficient level of investment, and it was common to have to bring additional vanguards to deal with the dog rush. It's silly *now* since Bagpipe has featured at least once in gold cert shop and she's Recruitable to add to that, so almost everyone except the newest of doctors have at least one copy of her, and we have other flag and recently agent vanguards that pump out all the DP in the first few seconds of the stage that we no longer need the 2-block laneholder vanguards across the board.
@@cat-vv9xb They're still doing it. Just a recent example. Reed Alter skill 2 description: " *_Prioritizing ground Operators, gives 2 allies 3 fireballs with the following effect: Every 1.5s, deals 240% of Reed the Flame Shadow's ATK as Arts damage to an enemy, triggering her Trait but only on that ally._* " Gamepress cons: " _- S2: Requires units (preferably melee) within range to place the fireballs on._ "
@@STREEEEEET That's a completely different con from the 1-block example I was talking about(and also what you originally stated). And it is also extremely relevant to her usage. S2 does basically nothing if the fireballs aren't touching enemies, and ranged units are far less likely to be good holders of the buff. If you aren't properly planning your unit placements and deployment orders to maximize S2, you may as well just use S3 which is far more dummy-proof than S2. The only nitpick I have with the con description is that they should have specified those units be within touching distance of enemies.
@@cat-vv9xb The block was just one example. This is a terrible con because it's literally how the skill works. That's like saying: " Myrtle con: " DP gain isn't instantaneous ".
I think another reason why people dislike GamePress tier list was because it was made a little bit too technical (and sometime stupid cons). When people like a unit too much, they try to use it in every stage, even if it doesn't work, they'll slam their head onto the wall until it does. Then, when they see GamePress tier list about their bias, sometime their bias got obliterate to a low tier because of their niche and weird usage or high requirement to perform decently, which they tend to ignore because it's... their bias, without a second thought, people start to use their knowledge about their bias which they have for using the operator for 2 decades and explain why the niche and weird usage can be fix by X or by Y team/synergy, AND when other people (who don't have the same bias as them) also disagree with their "explanation" like GamePress, they'll get very mad, and you know what people do when they're mad? They try to find a thing to blame their anger on, that's when they look at the root of the problems, GamePress. But maybe i'm just stupid and overthinking too much idrk, feel free to scream at me because of this.
The thing with tier lists is that they are useful when you're a new player strapped on resources/you're just beginning to grasp the mechanics/avoid getting overwhelmed as you wrestle with the steep wall that nearly every gacha game tends to have for new players. I started around Stultifera Navis, and after actually playing and understanding the game nearly a year later, I'm almost certain there was no way in hell any account re-roll was going to help me clear that event. But unlike many other players whom when they started out rolled for units like SA, the account re-roll I ended up keeping had my favorite operator, who is also extremely meta: Bagpipe (she is absolutely a Valkyria Chronicles tribute in her design), and in that way, Bagpipe's never been the one unit to carry any sort of clear, but she definitely made the mid to late game progression of my account smoother having access to Flagpipe. If anything, the list should rather be focused on just that, teaching new players the best units to invest into early. Once players develop a feel for the game, they can then branch out into those niches they want and the value of the tier list drops.
>If anything, the list should rather be focused on just that, teaching new players the best units to invest into early. Once players develop a feel for the game, they can then branch out into those niches they want and the value of the tier list drops. This part is so true. I also started at Stultifera Navis, and I'm sure I couldn't progress past the 2nd stage no matter who i'd rolled on my acc (even if I had SA at the time). It just demanded an insanely high unit investment even if it was only low star operators. The newbie tier list was more helpful into helping me figure out which units to invest into in order to round out my core team, but even further than that, I wish there was a tier list that purely scraped 5* and 6* away, leaving only the rest. THe reason for that is that the chip missions to e2 5* and 6* operators are really hard and I simply couldn't clear em at the time. HAving an early investment in lower tier units could've helped a lot at the time.
Gonna be honest: The section around 7:20 to 7:45 was confusing. You were saying that it's really weird that these operators are on the same level, but I was confused as to which side do you think should be lower and which side should be higher. Next time you should explain it. (also Gamepress says that their grades are only between a branch, so things might look a bit weird if you compare between braches)
They actually changed that at some point! If you look at the Tier List now, there's a section that includes a description of them initially grading within branches, but moving away from that as branches became less distinct and overlap became more common: "This Tier List organizes Operators by Class Archetypes in order to make the list easier to search, filter, understand, and compare. This does not mean that comparisons are only being done within Archetypes. Evaluation and ranking is based on the strength/potential of the Operator to have an overall meaningful impact on the game. Thus, we consider and compare operators that provide similar roles/functions even if they don't share the same Archetype, and attempt to assign rankings suitable to comparison over Operators of ALL Archetypes." Also I agree about that portion being confusing. I couldn't say for certain which side is supposed to be so much stronger than the other side for any of them.
I love that even blaze is a lock operator for my squad. She's like Thorns, very viable for general content. Need auto? S1, need afk? S2 is always a good option, burst out some damage? S3 is your answer. The Tier list did a good job over the time. It's definitely not and probably will never be perfect, but it's still a good thumb scaling method for newbie.
Guard Chen for me, and been having her since the first week I played back in 2020, couldn't get her off almost every team I could ever come up with She has 2 block, a bread-and-butter skill that has no sp cost at M3 at the first drop that deals 2 types of damage each hit and also hits air units, an offensive/defensive sp battery and that makes it combining her with irene feels more essential than replacing another and its upgradeable with a module lmao
@@ZuraJura Two rush Doggo-mobs that will hit your box before you can use Myrtle to print DP to place something else on the tile next to your box and if you place her there a doggo will leak. Checkmate.
@@katomamundara8106 Place Bagpipe down in the middle of dog lane, watch them die painfully, get free dp and place down Myrtle for even more instant dp. There's a reason Flagpipe's been the endgame meta all the way up to now, they're both just that good.
I feel like you should ignore the operator that was given an E ranking, and plot a bell curve based on EX to D However, I feel like EX is not a "real" tier but rather means "unreasonably good", so within the EX tier you're not calling all the operators equally powerful; merely that they all meet some threshold of power that makes that game-breaking. Also, 7:31 that sounds quite reasonable tho...
I agree. They may not be equal in terms of dps or however you see it but they each have a niche that have equal viability. While I don't agree with a lot of gamepress's rankings like putting Thorns below Silverash and frankly silverash at S+ makes no sense to me because he is absolute garbage while Exusiai is a beast when comboing skalter and Warfarin. There are a lot of things that can't perfectly be decided because of all of those playstyles and combos compared to the standard operator or its potential. People are subjective anyhow
@@zodkip3147 Modern high end ak meta revolves a lot less around lane holders than fast redeploys and swipers. Thorns barely gets used in high tier content due to him being slow to ramp and not rly that effective against bunch of very tanky enemies, same with exu, she struggles really hard against high armor if u dont buff her like crazy, but counting in external buffs for power makes it a bit awkward for tiering. SA on the other hand gets used a lot still, especially since we got 2 absurdly overtuned fast redeploys, his passive got an indirect buff while also being able to clear difficult to reach enemies in a large range. The issue then becomes, at what content do u rate ops, thorns is still propably one of my go to's for stage clearing, but for high end content i rarely bring him.
@@rollipeikkors ah yes the current meta: delete button meta :v META that evolves around whichever has the ability to realibly decimate enemy the fastest
For me if you newbie just follow tier list, to those people who say just ignore it i will give middle finger to them. Newbie have limited resource, many of my friend quit ak at beginning because they follow waifu over meta and they either quit because always need low rarity guide or frustrating because how many effort to clear one stage or worse cant clear it at all
Yeah, I did pramanix as my first e2 and while she is a pretty good supporter, she isn't as helpful as some other operators I had at the time wouldve been
Exactly. Yeah sure, build Frostleaf if she's your waifu. And then quit in 2 weeks because you spent thousands of sanity on E2 Frostleaf (permanent account damage) while leaving Thorns at E1/30, and now you're hardstuck JT8-4.
Using distribution to judge a tier list is dumb. There's no correlation between the distribution and quality. If I were to put Vigil in EX and Mlynar in E, that wouldn't change the distribution but it would definitely affect the quality of the tier list.
Thank you for the video, it must have been a pesky work to tabulate this histogram. I think maybe it's more reasonable to fit the bell curve than to make it stretch over EX to E tier, which assumes the mean and standard deviation. This means that we can shift the bell curve slightly to the left, in which case the bell curve would fit pretty well.
You can't categorize the tierlist before trying many maps, for example the murtle only has a 4 star but is more useful and efficient than the 5 & 6 star flagbearer.
It's kind of shit, to be honest. One example. It says Hoshiguma's S3 is so much better than S2. But if you watch some strategies for high difficulty content every single one of them without exception uses Hoshi's S2. And there are a lot of others just like this.Off the top of my head, it says Ifrit's S3 is better because of the res shred but we all know S2 is better.
I maintain that the biggest crime of the gamepress tier list is having Kirara at D tier. They wanna tell me that Kirara contributes the same to a team as Durin? Nahhhh, nearly-invincible true-aoe damage has more space than one would expect, provided you take a step down from the tippy top of the meta ops.
I got 3 out of 5 gg's EX characters in my first 3 months of playing AK. I always got full medal every single event since then. GG is right. NB: Yato Alter is questionable though. GG said if her 3rd skill is her first mastery priority. While i found out her 2nd are got more benefit from masteries and far more easier to use.
Yato Alter s3 is a weird case since it has a higher potential damage against waves or moving enemies and almost feels like it does better when enemies are just entering the space you're targeting, and don't bother dropping her on enemies with her s3. From the perspective of max use potential, I agree with s3 being better, but if you just want a simple deploy and kill then s2 will be more straightforward... but that's where personal valuation comes in.
S3 is amazing because it can be used to amazing effect in ways that S2 just can't. S2 is an awesome general purpose skill and I do believe gamepress even mentioned that it can still be your first priority, especially if you have Texas alter.
Yato Alter is unique because if you can deploy her directly onto a single, grounded unit, or a group that's stack into one single square, her S2 shines really hard. But if you're trying to hit a whole line of enemies, a single enemy far away, or flying enemies (or a combination of all 3 of these) then her S3 can do that. And even if there's a bunch of enemies stacked in 1 square, S3 will still deal decent damage against them. S2 has higher dmg ceiling but is way more niche.
Most of the time I look at tier list just to see if my newly get 5 star oprt good but most of the time i skip 5 star oprt because the resource use almost same as 6 star.
the tier list isn't perfect, i don't think any tier list really ever will be, but it does give you a general idea of ops strengths and weaknesses which is very helpful.
Great video. I could tell when you broke it down by stars they did a much better job at keeping ratings even. It looks like they did a pretty good job overall at breaking down operators whereas most tierlists are just clickbait. I do wonder if they could add more nuance by scaling all the ratings down toward the almost unused e-tiers especially cause they could seemingly move most 1-3*s down there. Right now it just seems that for the higher star operators you're mid until proven otherwise so it might be useful to spread them out more.
I know many people hate on GamePress but I liked it as a noobie and I still like it after playing Arknights for a year and being a seasoned Doctor. The actual Tier might be off by a bit but the general assessment and relative comparison between each operator within their class is pretty good. But nothing horrible. And yes, it's a single player game. Just build whoever you want as long as you have a core team to help you get pass the stages. No point playing a game you cannot beat any stages on.
Arknights tierlist don’t really work because all characters can be used to an extent, if the character can deal damage, they can be used to clear content (yes even frostleaf) and if they can’t, they can probably heal, and if lancet-2 can see sufficient usage, there’s no reason every other healer isn’t (except the deployment slot). You can look at the tierlist to see what is and isn’t better than something else, but it only really matters if you have to compare them (like if you have multiple of a niche or trying to budget pulls).
I think the point of a tier list is exactly what you describe. To compare and decide. Not for the top 10% of players who knows everything about the game but the 90% who don't. Is La Pluma better than Highmore? If not, why? From the outside you can make a decision yourself if you compare their numbers but the average player doesn't do that for one reason or another. They wanna look at a tier list and see "Ah, okay, I should do X."
You can pull off some extremely impressive clears but generally some units are just either more powerful or more versatile than others The problem comes with the assumption of lower tier meaning unusable, its like with game reviews, a score between 5-6 is supposed to be the average but rarely do people wanna admit that an okay game should only get a 5/10 score, even if it shines in certain aspects Same for ops, can you do something with everyone? Yes. Are some just going to be overall better than others? Also yes
theres some validity in rating units on a binary, worth your mats, not worth your mats. Vanguards: myrtle and texas, both reasonably free, don't need more in this class, usually. if you do, fang and courier generally work. Guards/specialists/casters/snipers uhhhhhhhh thats nuanced. I generally split them into 'ground DPS, Ground arts DPS, and Ranged DPS/Ranged arts DPS.' which isn't a tier list so much as just math, whether or not it works, is a DPS check. Medics/defenders. this is the survival thing. most situations adding more DPS just fixes the issue, but in other cases some things want to be stalled to ...make things line up better. so ....we have units. DP generation, Myrtle, and texas. always enough. in some situations texas defense isn't enough for the early block 2 needs. but there are low cost guards and specialists that will add DPS to solve the issue. your issue then isn't DP generation, its DPS. DPS ground, now we got two types of DPS ground we got sustained, or at least high cycle, and we got burst. not going to even bother evaluating this, more DPS = more gooder. not even going to split it between arts/physical/true. instead we just go with expected DPS. OK. so lets take annihilation 3. lungman downtown. I played this map at a lower level. and we encounter issues, issues that are somewhat standard across the game. every 50 kills or so it adds a ballista that does 500 physical damage. which means we need heals to keep up or high enough defense to ignore it. we are covering 4 ground lanes and 2 air lanes so we need healing for those lanes. we got constant enemies coming in so we need enough sustained DPS to deal with constant enemies. and we got some heavy enemies coming in that we need 'burst' DPS for. and you watch it, and if you are dying, you need more healing or defense, and if you are not killing fast enough you need more Sustained DPS, and if you are having trouble with the heavies, you need more burst DPS. and that just covers the bulk of the units. oh I suppose there is also the skill issue for units where timing is especially important to get something to work or fail. and of course the various status effects and crowd controls. and situationally useful things. which should be evaluated on a situational basis.
i am not convinced of the normally distributed tierlist argument lets say there are only 5 units and 5 tierlist ranks. to be normally distributed each one has to be in 1 rank. texalter Surtre 12F yato and a robot following the argument that it should be normally distributed would mean 1 unit in each rank (1:texalter 2:surtr,3:yato,4:12F,5:robot) but that isnt a good representation of the power of the units: clearly surtr is much better then yato yet the tierlist puts them close together. and texalter and surtr are similiar in power and should probably be both in the same tier. a tierlist should represent the actual performance ingame. and if that performance distirbution between all units in game isnt normally distributed and more units overperform thenw hy should we force a tierlist that is normally distributed?
well with 5 units even a distribution of S: texalter, surtr E: yato, 12F, robot could be still a normal distribution because the normal distribution only exists with infinitely many pieces of data and infinitely many states of it so we can only judge how likely is it that a distribution is a normal distribution which gets nonsensical with so little data
my reserve operator boys and girls carried me through the IS stages like a donkey with 4 lame feet, the fact that their commander(me) has half brain smooth half brain void doesn't help either lol
Heres my evaluation: Gamepress tierlist isnt perfect but its MUCH better than even the CN tierlists at this point (anyone that has any idea about CN tierlists knows howmuch of a meme they are) They evaluate their reasonings and dont just mindlessly give tiers based on CC performance wich is quite good in my opinion Is the tierlists Shafted/bad at times? Yes for exampke eunectes dropping a tier when she got a module was extremely weird Also its obvious that they forgot to change tiers of some characters biggest example being Phantom wich has fallen off quite hard already But for ANY pkayer this tierlist is perfectly sourceable and works pretty well in that regard The fact that they easily tell you pros and cons of characters alongside giving brief instructions for newbie players is an amazing addition Overall i give it 9.5/10 from value perspective But please dont forget that some of the authors tend to be REALLY biased about certain characters (for example creating the whole "dont pull for limited units every time" thing on Ling and even almost ranking her S)
@@hartoramasenju4012 CN doesnt have a proper tierlist like EN does They just have random tierlists by random players and thats it They had NGA polls wich infamously got hilariously worse because of people teolling the poll results so there isnt a back bone tierlist to rely on CN players often make fun of Tierlist attempts because of how bad they tend to be and the toxic environment makes it impossible to adapt a proper back bone tierlist system (Even gamepress had to close comments because of how horrible toxicity got over time)
@@kyarumomochi5146 that's horrible. Even people in Discord have better manners. The only bad thing I saw on Discord is when a new player asking for advice and the reply is full of "build whoever you want or your waifu, it will work in the end trust me"
I think the reason Eunectes dropped was because Module Y was so anti-synergetic with her (because making her kill fastthat it made her worse if you used it. But if that was the issue, it's not hard to solve and shouldn't affect her tiering: A) Not use/build the Y module. B) Use Module X instead, which helps at fixing her core issu, that being the fact she takes ages to charge her skills.
"Average 6* is in A+ tier" factoid is actually just a statistical error. Average 6* is S tier. Vigil, who lives in a mediocre niche and relies on a squishy summon is an outlier adn shouldn't be counted.
The gamepress tier list is best used when sorting by class/subclass imo. Like e.g I wouldn't put Dusk in S- if we're considering all the operators, but I'd say that's fair if we're only looking at AoE casters given the lower power level of those in general.
How can you disagree with Mountain negative lol? His S2 forces you to place him in the enemy face, unlike other guards, that you can put sideways and let defender tank the damage. Bruh
I don't understand why Gamepress gets hate for their tier list. It is objective and factual. Operators are ranked among their peers, how good are the anti-air snipers amongst themselves, not versus entirely different archetypes. If I want to know which AA sniper to raise I look at that specific part of the tier list. I don't look at the entire tier list and go "oh, Surtr is very high, I should raise her to fulfil my AA sniper needs". They give reasonable explanations for their rankings and for 90% of people that is enough. The 10% may disgree because of technicalities or because their gameplay is so advanced that they can compensate or exploit specific weaknesses. Tier lists are not for those people, they know everything anyway and all their arguing about tier lists is basically dick measuring contests. I find myself disagreeing with GP sometimes nowadays, because I have gathered a lot of experience with AK over the years. When I started (about a year after launch) I was completely lost among hundreds of operators and if I didn't have their tier list I would have made mistakes. Heck, I still made mistakes because I thought I knew better and it turns out... I didn't. In conclusion, I think their tier list is great. It helps the average player to make informed decisions about operators and explains the reasoning to them so they can broaden their knowledge. It's not the absolute truth because there is none. That's all there is to it.
Honestly, the bell curve kinda sucks as an idea because it would imply a game is balanced in such a way but what if a game is very well balanced? Do we have to force a decent character in a low tier because it's a little weaker than another? I'd say tier lists like the one gg strive players do are a better idea of what a list should be, it's a game where every character is pretty damn strong so they are usually ordered from S+ to B because there's no point in pretending even the weakest character are that weak even when compared to the top tiers
Should tier lists be normally distributed? NO! I believe it incorrect to judge the quality of a tier list by its appearance as a normal distribution. Bell curves are natural while tier lists are unnatural, game balance has no reason to follow a normal distribution, and we don't even want tier lists to be bell curves in the first place! Bell curves aren't something that should be strived for or forced in a tier list setting, that isn't what bell curves are for. Normal distributions form naturally in data sets with random or semi-random variables. If we were to simulate certain types of data, particularly numbered data, using a normal distribution, we can expect a bell curve to form. If a bell curve doesn't form, we can expect that something is off with our data, maybe the data was manipulated, or maybe a Vigil- sorry, an outlier is causing the data to be skewed. However, video game characters and their balance state isn't necessarily random, and tiers in a tier list aren't numbers. These characters aren't creating by rolling two D6's, these are created by game developers and designers, with the goal of making a new, enticing, not necessarily balanced character, with the end goal of making more money. These characters' power levels aren't judged by an objective numerical score, they are judged by nerds at gamepress. The only element of randomness here is how well both sides do at their job, and while of course, sometimes the devs and nerds accidentally make and judge a character as too strong or too weak, we still shouldn't expect a game that regularly releases stronger and stronger characters over time to follow a normal distribution whatsoever. Lastly, wanting a games balance to follow a normal distribution is a bad idea. First of all, to get it out of the way, it is reasonably possible for game devs to force their game's character power levels to follow a normal distribution curve, by buffing and nerfing certain characters until it is achieved. Lets say this occurs, and in our tier list, we have 1 S tier, 4 A tiers, 11 B tiers, 11 C tiers, 4 D tiers, and 1 F tier. We did it, we have a normally distributed set of characters! This is not a good thing though!!! Our few top tiers are trampling everyone below, with our 5 high tiers dominating the meta, and the remaining 27 characters being hung out to dry. Even if we banned the top tiers, likely only the S tier, for the sake of fair play, the poor F tier and a few of the D tiers will still be totally outmatched in the meta. Hypothetically, if the master devs manage to make it such the the high tiers are only marginally better than mid tiers, and the low tiers only marginally worse than mid tiers, then we would technically have a bell curve of comically low variance, and this would be good, but it is an unrealistic goal that won't be achieved by a game designed to make money through the release of new, powerful characters. Also, if we were capable of achieving a borderline perfectly balanced game, then we are also likely capable of making the game perfectly balanced, leading to a game with one tier, which also isn't really a bell curve, and isn't really normally distributed, either. We are also assuming that S, A, B, C, D, and F tier are effectively numbers, equidistant from each other. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6th tier, or in your video, each of the 19 tiers is a number of 1, 2, 3, ..., 17, 18, and tier #19, but tiers aren't scores, or at least they aren't scores that are evenly spaced on a number line. While it may feel natural, many tier lists don't follow this format, and have no reason to. I could go on, but point being, to say a tier list is good *because* it follows a normal distribution is a claim that needs evidence to back it up, but it is lacking in evidence.
That's where she belongs. She is good but she is not the best at anything that she does. Her best feature is enabling Murdrock and Penance to generate SP faster. There's a reason why i never see her been used in any hard content clear. There's always a better option. Thorns recently demote to S- is unfair in my view. Nobody does her job better than her, that's worth S+. See the difference ?
@@STREEEEEET Fully agree about Thorns. There is no other operators who can fill that many roles, while being very good at all of them. Putting him on the same level as Ceobe and somehow below Gavialter and Roca is honestly confusing to me.
To me when I was asked Who should I level in Arknights for a new player This is what I say, Level all your 3 Stars and below to E1 Atleast since they're cheap and reliable After that Feel free to level whoever you want, You want to level Beehunter? Go knock yourself out.
aah sorry for making a really long comment, i think this video is interesting, but i disagree with the conclusion and would like to explain why i think the point being made here is kind of moot, as tierlists following a normal distribution curve is not a result of planning and consideration, but more just human nature. i think most people when asked to make a tierlist would reserve top spots for only the most broken units, and the bottom ones for the least useful ones, while putting most operators closer to the middle. whether that be due to them thinking the operator is average compared to the rest of the roster, or simply not being opinionated enough to make strong judgments on thier kit. (personally my tierlist tend to be top-heavy, as i feel bad ranking units low, and i think the same sentiment is true for at least a few others) i also do not think statistics are the right tool to judging the quality/accuracy of a tierlist. it is an interesting and fun topic to explore, but not the right tool for the job in this case. simply put, a tierlist could be completely randomized within rarities, such as it still follows the general normal distribution curve to a degree, but who the units actually are is not taken into consideration. this way there could be a tierlist where vigil is in the top tier, but surtr is in the bottom tier in terms of 6*s only. if looking at it from a statistical perspective, one could arrive to the conclusion that the tierlist somewhat follows normal distribution and thus has to be accurate to some degree, but upon taking a closer look, it would be easy to realize the placements don't make any sense personally i don't think of the gamepress tierlist one way or the other, while i disagree with some of the placements and descriptions, there are others which i can agree with and understand the logic behind ultimately, the conclusion of a quality of a tierlist is just as subjective as the placements of units within it. points that we don't agree with and cannot understand, we see as incorrect, while ones we agree with and can follow the reasoning of are correct to us
Gamepress' Integrated Strategies tierlist doesn't even mention Schwarz, the queen of Integrated Strategies. No one else carries as hard as her in IS2 Hard Mode, and no one else except sometimes Pozy carries as hard as her in IS3 D15.
The comparisons to standard distributions make no sense. This is ordinal data. Standard distributions arise when metric variables have a tendency to a mean. The variance that arises causes the emergent normal distribution. it's an inherent property of that type of data. Tier lists are akin to a tournament ranking system, there are no assumptions of normality or central tendency. If you could quantify performance of operators, you could make these assumptions, like how you can quantify the speed of race cars. But a tier list is the equivalent of only looking at the places that the cars finished the race in.
As a person who used the gamepress tierlist when I'm new, I would say that for a standard player(a player that doesn't do top tier strategy etc), it is rather accurate and the analysis is usually pretty good
Operators rated low yet used in every difficult boss strat....... Hoshi and Shining. In fact in Trials of the Navigator#2, Hoshi was a must have operator.
Ah yes, Hoshiguma, the low rated A+ operator. So low, terrible infact that she's in the 2nd tiered in her subclass, terrible one might say. You can't say shit like this and pretend you have a point. The tiering itself reads: "Despite having a niche use for dealing with invisible ranged enemies, Hoshiguma does not fill many other irreplaceable roles. Despite her honest Skill-set, Hoshiguma is an excellent choice for a standard Defender." There's barely, BARELY, any content where I can't just drop Nian in the place of Hoshi, fuck there's barely any content I **need** a Protector in, in a game where you have limited resources, the amount of usage you're going to give an operator matters, and it matters alot.
@@joaogoncalves5357in the settings for afknights, hoshi is one of good options due to her thorns skills. And damage nullification is a good addition especially with her module. If she has a taunt skill hoshi definitely an S worthy operator. But for general usage especially afk, i feel like hoshi should be higher than nian
I think a better example of your point would be using 1 star robots to charge the twilight of wohlmund gramophone or yato and noir corne for their use as bait/stall units in maps such as the CC one with the cannon.
@@TokinoSora10thApostleHere's the thing though, the conditions for making Hoshiguma's S2 a better skill to have equipped over her S3 are fairly slim. Hear me out. The only scenarios where her S2 can really shine as a solid choice are against fast-attacking enemies, lots of ranged enemies, or the super-ranged enemies that target her. The dps on her S2 is really low minus in the above scenarios, it's merely chip damage against the majority of enemies that face her. Now, we could say that all damage is good damage and it would be correct. However, you're likely to get way more damage out of 1 or more decently-timed S3s. Now unto the def boost. While it is consistent, it's not that large of a gain. That means that the margin of off-skill Hoshi dying while S2 Hoshi survives is quite small, factor in timing her S3 to have better survival for 25 seconds and that margin becomes even smaller. So again, minus those niche scenarios that were mentioned, her S2 doesn't provide enough power or utility to be much more useful than working with her S3 burst. Her S2 is just a crutch, it's a skill that only really allows you to place her and not have to touch her again or see a little yellow symbol pop above her head. It's also a weak crutch, because even if you placed her with her S3 equipped but never used it, she'd still pass an overwhelming majority of scenarios that her S2 can do. So if you want to argue that Hoshi should be as high or higher tier than Nian, then you should either sell us on her S2's niche better than before, or you should consider her S3 against Nian instead. I personally think Nian should be higher still, but I typed out way more than I planned to so I'll check back on this and maybe repond some other time.
I was told, the reason Arknights fandom wiki don't have a tier list is because: "The Tier List was removed not because many complaints about it, but because it was infeasible or even outright useless in the first place, since every Operator remain useful regardless of their rarity; even many operations can be cleared with low-rarity Operators so long as one knows what they are doing. Anyone who takes tier lists seriously, no offense, are nothing more than "meta slaves"; Arknights is a tower defence and strategy game, so raw stats alone does not mean that an Operator is strong or weak; it's how they were meant to be used." "The Tier List is not just infeasible to keep up to date and ""objectively"" correct, it's also utterly detrimental. New players will all too easily fall back on tier lists as a resource because they lack game knowledge, which will teach them all the wrong lessons and actively hinder them from improving at the game. We can't stop players from going to tier lists outside of the wiki, but we still have the responsibility to stop them from ruining their own enjoyment of the game by learning all the wrong lessons here." Unless money and time is not concern, I still like to hear someone convince me why a new players would be better served if he spent his time/money on pulling Phantom and E2 him and get his module instead of investing the same resources on Yato alter (or Texas alter). Without a tier list, how would someone not familiar with the operators would know any better? And tell the poor soul who bought into that, that his Phantom would make him enjoy the game better than Yato alter (or Texas alter) would.
I don't have an issue with their mindset, I think it's fine but it comes off a bit ridiculous due to the wording. Whether or not people want to learn and get better or be brainless "meta slaves" is up to them. The holier than thou attitude portrayed with this quote "but we still have the responsibility to stop them from ruining their own enjoyment of the game by learning all the wrong lessons here." comes off as them wanting to force their own idea of what's the correct way to play onto others which is also biased. Some people don't have time or even want to learn how to complete stages with low rarity characters so they look up guides or use what's generally considered "better" characters. This part is also weird "The Tier List is not just infeasible to keep up to date and ""objectively"" correct, it's also utterly detrimental." Tier lists mainly consist of what people generally consider good ranking higher, it doesn't have to be objective and the infeasible mention of keeping it up to date is also weird, SOMEONE will have time to work on it even if the person who made the point didn't have time or didn't want to work on it anymore. Sadly the game is made by people and due to human error or greed being possible powercreep and imbalance issues are bound to occur even for things with the same role. Arknights is one of the more balanced gacha games I can think of but even I doubt every stage and challenge is possible with only low rarity units and without support. Every player also has their own roster rng to consider or certain matchups that their roster struggles against. Again I agree with their basic ideas. People should get better and learn the game to make it easier, they shouldn't only rely on the opinions of others BUT having other's perspectives can be useful. If the person doesn't have time or want to work on a tier list that's also fine, they aren't forced to do it. Some people may want to challenge their strategizing skills and use lower rarity ops, high rarity isn't needed if the game is balanced enough. The only way to have a truly balanced game is if every character had the exact same stats.
Nobody is arguing that you should be pulling phantom over yato What people mean with tier list bad iis that tier list are only vertical and lack crucial horizontality. Phantom objectively is worse but weedy? Weedy is the poster child of unnecessary but hilariously strong in high brain gameplay and allows stuff no one else can. This is why tier list suck, they cannot convey complex relationship, they are basic to a fault
@@pougetguillaume4632 You made some excellent points. What I am having trouble with, they say tier list has faults, so players are better off without one. And I Strongly disagree with that line of reasoning.
@@spamrme1654 the problem is that a tier list is a beginner's cruch Getting in a new game with hundreds of units, archetype and such, it's overwhelming. Sooooo what does a new player do? Go check tier list! Then they see that suzuran is S tier and they like the character. So cool you get suzuran... and she does 0 damage... because she's a debuffer... turns out being a S tier for a supporter isn't the same as S tier for guards. Ofc you could read the note at the end of the tier list that warns you, but which tier list to trust? What does each do? What's the standard? Are they consistent with each other? Also EN can't read. A more veteran player doesn't need a tier list because you have acquired a more innate sense of what works and what doesn't, and has gotten community feedback which gives much better information regarding the operator. You are more aware about the caveats that tier list entails, but you're also past the point where it's actually useful. Tier list are just misleading. What about 3 stars operator? They're amazing for new player but they don't use it because tier list don't rank them high and you don't innatly understand their value i know i didn't apart from kroos. Community feedback is SO MUCH BETTER at delivering informations rather than obtuse ranking system. Tier list can be actively harmful to the progress of a new player (who is the main consummer) because they don't understand what a proper arknights tier list entails. Finally i've seen many game communities plagued by the meta slave mentality of aiming for the highest ranked unit and endless community wars about who's better than whom. For example in FGO (also a gacha) you get stupid arguments like morgan vs arjuna alter or space ishtar vs kama because they don't understand horizontality. They have a vertical tier list system and can't fathom the idea that being 0.5% less efficient in one category doesn't make the unit worse. The equivalent inarknight is mudrock vs penance... yeah we solved that problem overnight, basically mudrock stronger vs single ennemies when penance stronger with ramp up time against waves of smaller fry. Or mountain vs chongyue, one is more sustainable but the other has more raw power. You can have tier list within tier list in arknights, i'm thinking about the abyssal hunter teams were a shit unit like skadi can actually be a legitimetly good operators. You have the niche knight meta too what operator makes liberi knight viable? In this situation astgenne becomes critical. That last one is a self imposed challenge ofc, not exactly the "meta" but still. I think tier list just push players toward a single goal and single idea of what "good" means. In a context where there is a precise metric to measure "good", players dig themselves in a mentality where being 0.5% less efficient is, in fact, a detriment. Because a tiers list automatically means there is a point at the very top whereas good game design give you possibilities where the "good" is a cursor on a scale instead of a point.
GamePress AK tier list doesn't make new players dumb. For example, you get the red frame for Ops that are good early investments until you get the higher-tier version, provided you even read the tier list legend. Then there's also the pro's and con's as well as the overview available directly from the tier list, and on the Operator's page you have the newbie-tierlist explanation, and between one of them there often is something like "cheap option if you need xy but havent gotten z yet" or "don't invest here if your resources are limited, there are similiar options at lower tiers". The actual rank can be a good first impression, say you are new and you pulled a Surtr or a Mylnar, you are still lacking own experience, but when you see them in EX-Tier, you can be sure you won't regret the investment. Similiar thing with S+ and S, you do not need to have a good understanding yourself to know these units will have great impact on you gameplay. And then you can still read the Operator page. I argue, if you've got any brain and want to play the game, you will gravitate away from looking at these ranks as your roster gets more powerful. And if you stay a slave to the rankings they themselves disclaim as solely meta-focused and so on, that's honestly not because of the tier list. Really, if a mentality like this exists (in an individual or a community), I do not think the cause for that is some tier list, or at least not a tier list like GP's AK tier list. This is of course all assuming players can actually read, but again, if they can't, it's honestly their own fault. You can only handhold someone so much.
tier lists should not follow a normal distribution, but the strength distribution of the units. If you want a normal distribution tell that to the game developers, not to the fans making the tier lists. dont force it if it doesnt fit
The units you like and succeed with are S+ Tier lists are nice to look at but with this game you can play anything, provably even vigil if that is what you like.
That's not the point of the tier list, though. The tier list takes into account mainly three factors which are IS, story (ie. casual), and high risk (ie. competitive). For the first two, you score better if you're easy to succeed with. So if I can use Vigil to beat the stage, he's still worse if it requires me to spend an hour planning when compared to where I can not do any planning at all. Meanwhile in high risk... you certainly can't just bring random operators and expect to clear max risk CC
God, another "waifu > meta" parrot. Look, some units are better than others, period. If some new player struggling with 4-3 is asking whether Silverash or Frostleaf is better, the answer is Silverash. Build Silverash. Anything beyond that is copium.
tacticalbreakfast is full of it, the sad truth of it is CN players and theorycrafting groups define the meta, EN/global players pale in comparison, tacticalbreakfast included
What I get from this is that we must always exclude Vigil to have a well balanced tier list.
I laughed, but really if you just slide that original bellcurve a LITTLE to the left, you'd find it still worked. Mostly.
"Myrtle is better than 73% of the entire roster" seems legit
I mean, as a long-time player, this makes sense. Despite being a four star Op her utility out does even some 5 and 6 stars. Depending on the niche, she can provide good DP generation and healing utility.
I was surprised to see that there were 27% of operators better than her since she makes it onto almost every high cc or similar event
@@baguetto563 It's definitely because we've gotten some very viable DP options outside of Myrtle and people are starting to build their rosters up.
@@baguetto563She's in every event because of low rarity and accessibility. There are plenty of units who do more than her, better than her. Largely because they are not competing with her.
@@baguetto563Because other than providing insane DP generation with the low sp and dp cost, she provides nothing else that is noteworthy while Saileach, Elysium can provide debuffs for the team.
Yeah I agree, everyone shits on the gamepress tier list saying something along the lines of "tier lists don't work in arknights at all because there too many different roles + situations" or "waifu over meta". But some operators are just kinda objectively (generally/in 99% of situations) better than others and I think most of the rankings make sense. I think it does do a pretty decent job at what it does, even if it isn't perfect.
People are just on copium, people do not like being told that something they like is "bad". It's really hard to sit down and admit you can like something that's "bad" and dislike something that's good. I hate using Kalt'Sit, but you'll never catch me saying she's a terrible unit to build. I love Nearl, but you'll never see me tell anyone "build Nearl over Gummy or Saria".
@@joaogoncalves5357tbh I'd build nearl over Gummy if IS didn't exist
The copium I heard when Vigil was added omfg. Mfs were legit trying say people didn't like hiking because he wasn't meta breaking. No bitch he's a vanguard with worse stats than a 4 star of the same type and generates *2 DP*
@@joaogoncalves5357As a Hung user (meaning I use him instead of Gummy and Nearl because of male only squad and husbando reasons) I have the same response when people ask me who to build. You shouldnt build Hung over someone like Gummy, unless your at end-game, husbando reasons, or expirementing with certain niches. Although we should build our own squads with what ever fits our playstyle.
@@KekeLyro-qu1eqyeah, Hung maybe good at e2 maxed
But gummy is so powerful at e1, tried hung e1 and he can't barely survive.
Most operator need max investment to be good, that's why tierlist matter so people know which operator is good when not maxed because the resource is limited, and i believe even you played from day 1 (without paying for sanity) you still have not everyone maxed.
The ratings were also compared to others in their class, originally an S in a weak class could be weaker than an A in a heavily populated class with powerful operators. I believe value in the rogue like is also factored, hence Jaye being an S-.
Jaye was like the best cheap unit in the first rogue like mode, since he did a bit of everything. Each mode has enough change to them at a fundamental level they will vary. Thorns is also a unit that was also extremely strong. With the nerf to to the class squads Thorns has fallen a bit. He only really becomes good at E2. So units that are good at E1 are more viable. I prefer to pick Kal over Thorns, for utility. Kal is a kind of healer with a large range and a 3 block unit.
Agreed, though what I think some people may not take into account, or maybe they do and dont care?, or atleast how I look at the Gamepress Tier List is that its not comparing ALL S class operators to each other. Obviously most S tier will be 6*'s they are normally better than their 5* and lower counterparts, but when you are only comparing them to their own class/subclass, that is where I find the value especially when the class/subclass has a large number of operators. Flag Bearer Vanguards are slim but are DP printers so in the vanguard class they do stand above most others especially for most general content.
I think trying to say that an S tier vanguard is better than an S tier Guard isnt really a good argument. They fill different roles so I try not to compare them to the entire operator pool since that isnt really going to give me good information on if someone like Myrtle is better than NTR. They are both very good at what they do so they are ranked high but trying to compare them to one another could add a lot of variables, like "Would I use Myrtle to hold a lane or heli drop?" Not necessarily no so NTR is better. Also, "Would I deploy NTR early and use her to print DP?" Also no, she literally cant so she is F tier there making Myrtle better.
Those are probably really bad examples, but I do agree overall, I think when you compartmentalize each class and then compare them that way, I find there is more value there than just saying this 5* is better than this 6* even though they are different classes and fill different roles.
From GamePress tier list page
"This Tier List organizes Operators by Class Archetypes in order to make the list easier to search, filter, understand, and compare. This does not mean that comparisons are only being done within Archetypes.Evaluation and ranking is based on the strength/potential of the Operator to have an overall meaningful impact on the game."
"Oooh wait, is that Vigil?" *proceed to eliminate him from the distribution*
I remember my friend telling me not to use tier list and level who I want, but the new player tier list in particular really helped in informing me who I should build first, so that I can start completing EX stages and IS runs even in the early game. Lots of 4-stars I initially slept on as well as 5 stars I shouldn't build just yet were had. Though once you have a solid team tier-list's become less and less useful.
The new player tier list is an EXCELLENT resource for new players, as the namesake would suggest. New players arguably imho should always use resources like that in Gacha games because these games require a lot of time investment, especially if you don't spend money. You don't want your account feeling like crap because then you'll probably just quit lol
I hate that advice. Especially as a beginner your ressources are tight and often you will need to squeeze the most out of your roster that you are able to. Hence it makes sense to aim for and raise your objectively best units. After that you can get into raising waifus and husbandos, as luxury units.
It’s not hard to figure out a starter set, there’s like 3-4 people on TH-cam that beat every stage with 3-4 stars and maybe 1 borrowed 6 star.
I think another reason it's hard to do a truly even distribution in tier lists is that power is rarely distributed evenly. There may be more strong units than average or weak units, which makes it harder to rank things.
It would be weird for a bunch of otherwise excellent units to be shoved into C or B tier purely for the sake of maintaining an even distribution in the tierlist.
I understand your reasoning, but I also believe that it's very important to know how well a certain operator does in their role comparatively to others in that same role. This allows for people to prioritize certain units if they have multiple that can fill that slot.
tier lists, in the grand scheme of things, work. you follow it and you’d generally find yourself in a decent place. its a great starting point for players to be introduced to the game. as the play progresses, they’ll develop their own playstyle and their own mental tier list. let people cook. tier lists are helpful and gamepress made a pretty dang good one, considering how complex this game is
Arknights is a really interesting example because almost every operator has SOME niche where they shine. 12F is not a good splash caster, I used him on Patriot so he could try to use his 50% Physical Dodge to sidestep a spear or two. Yato is not a good Vanguard OR a fast-redeploy, but I used her in the recent Story chapters to draw turret fire on occasion -- only she and Mr. Nothing have 2-block on a short redeploy timer.
What you mean Yato isn't a great fast redeploy? She's at least the second best.
I'm joking, btw.
@@zoramarslink5788She indeed is, Yato Alter
Before watching this full video, I think GP tier-list is good enough for starter to pick out some of the operators to promote as their very first E2s; GP tier-list do include a detailed description of said operators.
As a week 1 player, my perspective on the Arknight's tier list is that it worked up until a certain point in the game's lifecycle. During launch, if you didn't reroll for a SA or Ejya, you had to deal with the permanent account damage from building "worse" units that couldn't accomplish what those S tier units could. Also during that time, the overall distribution of operators did look more like a normal distribution so according to the logic of this video, the tier list was also pretty (mathematically) decent back then. However, as the game got more complex and more operators fulfilling different niches came out, the tier list became unessential and the game shifted to evaluating operators within their own niches and people's own team comps instead of a general tier list. For example, Blemishine compared to all the operators in the game probably is just an S- tier operator, but she is the only operator in her niche of allowing defensive recovery SP skills to recover offensively which opens the door to some strategies that wouldn't be possible otherwise without her.
I think the value in the tier list now is comparing the versatility of operators compared to each other. In a vacuum, a higher tiered operator is more useful in a majority of the maps than a lower tiered one, so for any player looking for a useful tool they can bring in to any map, a higher tier operator is generally better than the rest. If you comprised a team of only EX and S+ tier operators, you could likely clear 99% of content in the game with ease, but that's not to say lower tier operators aren't less useful in certain maps or don't fit in your own specific strategy.
True, there so many niche in thins game, so specific operator is really valuable to execute those roll, the comparison starts when you have multiple character with the same niche
I spent the entire first month of this game on release to reroll for the god reroll which was SA + Exusai. Those carried me so much early but now its just Ling. Ling everything.
Hi, i am also a week 1 player and f2p, i think tier list IS useless, once you have your team of 12 all other operator are unrequired, i will explain, my team is composed by pure "meta" units: surtrt, chalter, murtle, Elysium, texalter, Thorn, kal, ling, skalter, ntr... and other "méta brute force" il use only this team and i Roll on the game, all other operator are useless for me (well i have maximum a rotation of 20 operator, all Time the same) even in Integrated Simulation when i have a caster voutcher i can only pick eyja, ceobe, dusk, ill try to pick a 5 star but i have a problem my question is who to pick because i think all 5star caster suck (i have a plenty of caster, i have choice i mean) im stuck and can't choose nobody, bc lack of damage or poor utility, i think objectively amiya still the best 5 star caster today, even in stage with hole or typhoon, pusher and puller operator does less than a surtr or Thorn for exemple i think is sad.
Yes and no. I took all the helidrops or helidrop like operators in the EX and S tiers and knew nothing about Andoain.
You can't easily beat the darn game without knowing how the boss works. Some people can beat it with two operators like Texas and Yato but going blind without reading anything doesn't make OP operators OP. Bad doctor is going to fail with OP operators or crap operators. XD
They aren't that strong to help you blindly bypass game mechanics.
But yes, any stages without special mechanics will be easy with the OP operators. 😅
I think the problem with judging tier lists using a normal distribution is that the ideal forms of these distributions tend to suppose an infinite number of data, which is significantly harder to achieve with smaller data samples, like the number of operators in Arknights. Additionally, it's not in Hypergryph's biggest interest to keep a normal distribution of power level, their interest tends towards releasing strong or at the very least playable operators that are worth pulling for, which is why there are virtually no operators in the bottom half of the ranks minus the freebie or the occassional severely underperforming unit. Minus some inconsistencies between tiers in different classes, their tier list is fairly decent, and resources like this are useful to help new players decide who provides a better payoff for their resource investment because Arknights is, among other things, a resource management game.
If anything, GP's biggest issue (shared with the wiki) are the summaries that tend to restate the archetype or skill's strengths and weaknesses without saying more. Like yes, I know that Specter's S2 allows her to cheat death and stuns when the skill ends, everyone who can read the summary can read it in the skill description, it's more useful to point out how it gives her a lot of cheese potential in high-end content and that the stun prevents her from taking damage by blocking enemies after the skill ends which paired with her higher-than-usual passive regen and other forms of healing gives her a much needed breathing time.
I still don't like to use her though. Why do this "high end" thing when I can like just Hoshi it? Or Surtr it? I mean she is great for a 5 Star and for Abyssal Hunters but... That's it. Unless you just want to use her niche cause you want to use her. Lol.
@@ikyiAlter That's the beauty of a game with such a diverse roster. There isn't a single answer. "Just Surtr it" is viable and may even be optimal in many cases but the game never forces you to. For every "Just surtr it" there's 10 other solutions involving different operators that you can do.
i was expecting an analysis of the unit placements and your opinions on them but the stats class was also sufficiently entertaining
When they first added the EX tier, I felt like instead of adding a new tier to replace all the S++ and S+++ they had, it would've been better to just collapse one of the empty tiers and move everyone down a ranking. This was in part because I was worried they would eventually add an EX- and an EX + tier instead of just asking the hard question of "should we reorganize this"
Fortunately, they haven't added EX- or EX+ yet
"Clearly its to emphasize how unusable Justice Knight is"
They said they will not add EX+ tiers
EX tier just means top meta and its in every gacha game so expect it to be in arknights
Horn is a top tier character but in no world she is close to texas alter in terms of game value
Ex is the highest it can and should go and there is no reason to add extra tier. EX is for op that is out right busted, they change how your play throught, a hard stage can become easy, you can put them any where and they still gonna work.
S only for op that you should build around or better than other op in the same archetype, while A and below op should still be able to function in their place but with lower value.
first, that would take too much work since you should move everyone one tier down instead of just adding one tier above everyone else. second, bringing everyone down even one tier may emphasize that the WHOLE meta has changed, hence the downgrade on all previous character and the rise of new meta operator, while in fact, they all still relevant just like before and not losing any of their capabilities just because one meta operator appers. just like everone else said, EX tier is just for the most OP character that could change the gameplay, doesn't mean the other characters below them become unusable.
@@Zarthrow someone with common sense on a arknights comment section? How is this possible??
Gamepress analysis helped a great deal when forming my first core team
The one transgression I have against Gamepress is the comparison between Blemishine to Saria. Blemi is a 3 block guard that heals, Saria is a defender that can more reliably heal and can debuff enemies.
Blemishine just doesn't adhere to the traditions of her class, opting for damage output while still healing remarkably well,
Well even if you look at blemi alone she doesnt warrant anything to be worthy of S tier at all
I never deploy blemi alone without mudrock. Blemi has interesting utility but it's not enough. As a healer: s3 can't heal herself, s2 makes enemy sleep but her allies can't attack them. She's not priority
@@azer5703 Thats the thing with her
She can do MANY things but master of none of them and current helidrop dps orianted meta hurts her usefulness a ton sadly
@@kyarumomochi5146 That's not even true, Blemishine is a really good unit. After using her for over a year she's been more than enough in almost every situation, and her potential is just not noticeable on paper, and her numbers quickly add up when used correctly.
@@kyarumomochi5146
Talent 1 allows for any operator with defensive recovery to be absolutely busted; Penance, Mudrock and most importantly, her own skills
S1, decent afk skill with self sustain and up to 2100 phys damage with 4 sp charge and 3 storage
S2, good passive healing + massive sleep, low sp cost (def AND off recovery) and around 2.4k damage to sleeping enemies thanks to her talent.
S3, Massive conditional healing (up to 1700hp with 1.2s interval), strong def (15% DR from module), double hit (1700 arts + 1700 phys) with good uptime.
Shes a defender with good offensive skills, decent healing capabilities, 3 different niches (massive conditional heal, sleep control, def recovery buff )
Loved the video! Really good job! Very informative but surprisingly easy to comprehend. ❤
It's always important to keep in mind that every tier list involving a large cast of characters is going to be biased in some way. People have their own preferences, ways of playing and priorities that might differ from other players. Nonetheless, it can be a useful tool, especially for newer players. Even if the information isn't fully accurate, it should give a decent picture of how units compare to each other and which ones to raise over others.
This was a well made video.
Although I believe the purpose of tier lists was to make use of usage of operators in a general setting. In a vacuum, would a particular operator perform their job well? So of course the higher star operators, with higher base stats, would make up the higher tiers.
Opinions on an operator's strength and role can change with time and with the release of future operators. But who knows, maybe there will be enough operators one day that a normal distribution can occur.
The thing is, Arknights have the most variable character in any RPG games, each of them has their own niche and some of them also became a core in a gameplay impact sense, and there is literally a lot of way to solve each stage or event mission, what i love about Arknights tier list in gamepress are the way they make seperate category for each archetype
What an amazing video.
Arknights gamepress tier list is fantastic despite of some silly texts on the "cons" section of a unit. ( only block 1) - Well, that's the archetype so....
Many of those silly Pros or Cons mostly on old operators, and Gamepress never updated those comments 😂
Block 1 was in fact a huge disadvantage during the timeframe the text was written for those operators.
Have you tried doing Ep 7 on release without enough vanguards or blockers for stages like 7-4 and 7-9? When Thorns and Mountain haven't been released yet?
Not everyone had flagpipe, or had them to a sufficient level of investment, and it was common to have to bring additional vanguards to deal with the dog rush.
It's silly *now* since Bagpipe has featured at least once in gold cert shop and she's Recruitable to add to that, so almost everyone except the newest of doctors have at least one copy of her, and we have other flag and recently agent vanguards that pump out all the DP in the first few seconds of the stage that we no longer need the 2-block laneholder vanguards across the board.
@@cat-vv9xb They're still doing it. Just a recent example. Reed Alter skill 2 description:
" *_Prioritizing ground Operators, gives 2 allies 3 fireballs with the following effect: Every 1.5s, deals 240% of Reed the Flame Shadow's ATK as Arts damage to an enemy, triggering her Trait but only on that ally._* "
Gamepress cons:
" _- S2: Requires units (preferably melee) within range to place the fireballs on._ "
@@STREEEEEET That's a completely different con from the 1-block example I was talking about(and also what you originally stated). And it is also extremely relevant to her usage.
S2 does basically nothing if the fireballs aren't touching enemies, and ranged units are far less likely to be good holders of the buff.
If you aren't properly planning your unit placements and deployment orders to maximize S2, you may as well just use S3 which is far more dummy-proof than S2.
The only nitpick I have with the con description is that they should have specified those units be within touching distance of enemies.
@@cat-vv9xb The block was just one example. This is a terrible con because it's literally how the skill works.
That's like saying: " Myrtle con: " DP gain isn't instantaneous ".
I think another reason why people dislike GamePress tier list was because it was made a little bit too technical (and sometime stupid cons). When people like a unit too much, they try to use it in every stage, even if it doesn't work, they'll slam their head onto the wall until it does. Then, when they see GamePress tier list about their bias, sometime their bias got obliterate to a low tier because of their niche and weird usage or high requirement to perform decently, which they tend to ignore because it's... their bias, without a second thought, people start to use their knowledge about their bias which they have for using the operator for 2 decades and explain why the niche and weird usage can be fix by X or by Y team/synergy, AND when other people (who don't have the same bias as them) also disagree with their "explanation" like GamePress, they'll get very mad, and you know what people do when they're mad? They try to find a thing to blame their anger on, that's when they look at the root of the problems, GamePress.
But maybe i'm just stupid and overthinking too much idrk, feel free to scream at me because of this.
I think they did a pretty good job making the tier list
The thing with tier lists is that they are useful when you're a new player strapped on resources/you're just beginning to grasp the mechanics/avoid getting overwhelmed as you wrestle with the steep wall that nearly every gacha game tends to have for new players.
I started around Stultifera Navis, and after actually playing and understanding the game nearly a year later, I'm almost certain there was no way in hell any account re-roll was going to help me clear that event. But unlike many other players whom when they started out rolled for units like SA, the account re-roll I ended up keeping had my favorite operator, who is also extremely meta: Bagpipe (she is absolutely a Valkyria Chronicles tribute in her design), and in that way, Bagpipe's never been the one unit to carry any sort of clear, but she definitely made the mid to late game progression of my account smoother having access to Flagpipe.
If anything, the list should rather be focused on just that, teaching new players the best units to invest into early. Once players develop a feel for the game, they can then branch out into those niches they want and the value of the tier list drops.
>If anything, the list should rather be focused on just that, teaching new players the best units to invest into early. Once players develop a feel for the game, they can then branch out into those niches they want and the value of the tier list drops.
This part is so true. I also started at Stultifera Navis, and I'm sure I couldn't progress past the 2nd stage no matter who i'd rolled on my acc (even if I had SA at the time). It just demanded an insanely high unit investment even if it was only low star operators.
The newbie tier list was more helpful into helping me figure out which units to invest into in order to round out my core team, but even further than that, I wish there was a tier list that purely scraped 5* and 6* away, leaving only the rest. THe reason for that is that the chip missions to e2 5* and 6* operators are really hard and I simply couldn't clear em at the time. HAving an early investment in lower tier units could've helped a lot at the time.
Gonna be honest: The section around 7:20 to 7:45 was confusing. You were saying that it's really weird that these operators are on the same level, but I was confused as to which side do you think should be lower and which side should be higher. Next time you should explain it.
(also Gamepress says that their grades are only between a branch, so things might look a bit weird if you compare between braches)
They actually changed that at some point! If you look at the Tier List now, there's a section that includes a description of them initially grading within branches, but moving away from that as branches became less distinct and overlap became more common:
"This Tier List organizes Operators by Class Archetypes in order to make the list easier to search, filter, understand, and compare. This does not mean that comparisons are only being done within Archetypes. Evaluation and ranking is based on the strength/potential of the Operator to have an overall meaningful impact on the game. Thus, we consider and compare operators that provide similar roles/functions even if they don't share the same Archetype, and attempt to assign rankings suitable to comparison over Operators of ALL Archetypes."
Also I agree about that portion being confusing. I couldn't say for certain which side is supposed to be so much stronger than the other side for any of them.
I love that even blaze is a lock operator for my squad. She's like Thorns, very viable for general content.
Need auto? S1, need afk? S2 is always a good option, burst out some damage? S3 is your answer.
The Tier list did a good job over the time. It's definitely not and probably will never be perfect, but it's still a good thumb scaling method for newbie.
Myrtle and Bagpipe always a permanent in my squad. Can't go wrong with them.
Guard Chen for me, and been having her since the first week I played back in 2020, couldn't get her off almost every team I could ever come up with
She has 2 block, a bread-and-butter skill that has no sp cost at M3 at the first drop that deals 2 types of damage each hit and also hits air units, an offensive/defensive sp battery and that makes it combining her with irene feels more essential than replacing another and its upgradeable with a module lmao
@@ZuraJura Two rush Doggo-mobs that will hit your box before you can use Myrtle to print DP to place something else on the tile next to your box and if you place her there a doggo will leak. Checkmate.
@@katomamundara8106 Place Bagpipe down in the middle of dog lane, watch them die painfully, get free dp and place down Myrtle for even more instant dp. There's a reason Flagpipe's been the endgame meta all the way up to now, they're both just that good.
@@goldencookie6317 *Watches the 2nd dog run right past Bagpipe*
I feel like you should ignore the operator that was given an E ranking, and plot a bell curve based on EX to D
However, I feel like EX is not a "real" tier but rather means "unreasonably good", so within the EX tier you're not calling all the operators equally powerful; merely that they all meet some threshold of power that makes that game-breaking.
Also, 7:31 that sounds quite reasonable tho...
I agree. They may not be equal in terms of dps or however you see it but they each have a niche that have equal viability. While I don't agree with a lot of gamepress's rankings like putting Thorns below Silverash and frankly silverash at S+ makes no sense to me because he is absolute garbage while Exusiai is a beast when comboing skalter and Warfarin. There are a lot of things that can't perfectly be decided because of all of those playstyles and combos compared to the standard operator or its potential. People are subjective anyhow
@@zodkip3147 Modern high end ak meta revolves a lot less around lane holders than fast redeploys and swipers. Thorns barely gets used in high tier content due to him being slow to ramp and not rly that effective against bunch of very tanky enemies, same with exu, she struggles really hard against high armor if u dont buff her like crazy, but counting in external buffs for power makes it a bit awkward for tiering. SA on the other hand gets used a lot still, especially since we got 2 absurdly overtuned fast redeploys, his passive got an indirect buff while also being able to clear difficult to reach enemies in a large range.
The issue then becomes, at what content do u rate ops, thorns is still propably one of my go to's for stage clearing, but for high end content i rarely bring him.
@@rollipeikkors ah yes the current meta: delete button meta :v
META that evolves around whichever has the ability to realibly decimate enemy the fastest
For me if you newbie just follow tier list, to those people who say just ignore it i will give middle finger to them. Newbie have limited resource, many of my friend quit ak at beginning because they follow waifu over meta and they either quit because always need low rarity guide or frustrating because how many effort to clear one stage or worse cant clear it at all
Yeah, I did pramanix as my first e2 and while she is a pretty good supporter, she isn't as helpful as some other operators I had at the time wouldve been
Exactly.
Yeah sure, build Frostleaf if she's your waifu. And then quit in 2 weeks because you spent thousands of sanity on E2 Frostleaf (permanent account damage) while leaving Thorns at E1/30, and now you're hardstuck JT8-4.
not the video that I expected but the video that I needed. Honestly it was pretty good and interesting!
Using distribution to judge a tier list is dumb. There's no correlation between the distribution and quality.
If I were to put Vigil in EX and Mlynar in E, that wouldn't change the distribution but it would definitely affect the quality of the tier list.
Thank you for the video, it must have been a pesky work to tabulate this histogram.
I think maybe it's more reasonable to fit the bell curve than to make it stretch over EX to E tier, which assumes the mean and standard deviation. This means that we can shift the bell curve slightly to the left, in which case the bell curve would fit pretty well.
Have you though about disregarding E and D tiers at all? How would the graph look like then? Those tiers are almost empty
You can't categorize the tierlist before trying many maps, for example the murtle only has a 4 star but is more useful and efficient than the 5 & 6 star flagbearer.
just wanted to let you know that this is a great video!!! I love these kinds of videos
Understandable, reasonable, very visual. Good video.
It's kind of shit, to be honest. One example. It says Hoshiguma's S3 is so much better than S2. But if you watch some strategies for high difficulty content every single one of them without exception uses Hoshi's S2. And there are a lot of others just like this.Off the top of my head, it says Ifrit's S3 is better because of the res shred but we all know S2 is better.
I maintain that the biggest crime of the gamepress tier list is having Kirara at D tier. They wanna tell me that Kirara contributes the same to a team as Durin? Nahhhh, nearly-invincible true-aoe damage has more space than one would expect, provided you take a step down from the tippy top of the meta ops.
I got 3 out of 5 gg's EX characters in my first 3 months of playing AK. I always got full medal every single event since then. GG is right.
NB: Yato Alter is questionable though. GG said if her 3rd skill is her first mastery priority. While i found out her 2nd are got more benefit from masteries and far more easier to use.
Yato Alter s3 is a weird case since it has a higher potential damage against waves or moving enemies and almost feels like it does better when enemies are just entering the space you're targeting, and don't bother dropping her on enemies with her s3. From the perspective of max use potential, I agree with s3 being better, but if you just want a simple deploy and kill then s2 will be more straightforward... but that's where personal valuation comes in.
S3 is amazing because it can be used to amazing effect in ways that S2 just can't. S2 is an awesome general purpose skill and I do believe gamepress even mentioned that it can still be your first priority, especially if you have Texas alter.
Yato Alter is unique because if you can deploy her directly onto a single, grounded unit, or a group that's stack into one single square, her S2 shines really hard. But if you're trying to hit a whole line of enemies, a single enemy far away, or flying enemies (or a combination of all 3 of these) then her S3 can do that. And even if there's a bunch of enemies stacked in 1 square, S3 will still deal decent damage against them. S2 has higher dmg ceiling but is way more niche.
How do you only have 27 subs? have all my engagement and a sub for good measure.
Very well put together video as well
Most of the time I look at tier list just to see if my newly get 5 star oprt good but most of the time i skip 5 star oprt because the resource use almost same as 6 star.
the tier list isn't perfect, i don't think any tier list really ever will be, but it does give you a general idea of ops strengths and weaknesses which is very helpful.
Great video. I could tell when you broke it down by stars they did a much better job at keeping ratings even. It looks like they did a pretty good job overall at breaking down operators whereas most tierlists are just clickbait. I do wonder if they could add more nuance by scaling all the ratings down toward the almost unused e-tiers especially cause they could seemingly move most 1-3*s down there. Right now it just seems that for the higher star operators you're mid until proven otherwise so it might be useful to spread them out more.
I know many people hate on GamePress but I liked it as a noobie and I still like it after playing Arknights for a year and being a seasoned Doctor.
The actual Tier might be off by a bit but the general assessment and relative comparison between each operator within their class is pretty good. But nothing horrible.
And yes, it's a single player game. Just build whoever you want as long as you have a core team to help you get pass the stages. No point playing a game you cannot beat any stages on.
Arknights tierlist don’t really work because all characters can be used to an extent, if the character can deal damage, they can be used to clear content (yes even frostleaf) and if they can’t, they can probably heal, and if lancet-2 can see sufficient usage, there’s no reason every other healer isn’t (except the deployment slot). You can look at the tierlist to see what is and isn’t better than something else, but it only really matters if you have to compare them (like if you have multiple of a niche or trying to budget pulls).
I think the point of a tier list is exactly what you describe. To compare and decide. Not for the top 10% of players who knows everything about the game but the 90% who don't. Is La Pluma better than Highmore? If not, why? From the outside you can make a decision yourself if you compare their numbers but the average player doesn't do that for one reason or another. They wanna look at a tier list and see "Ah, okay, I should do X."
You can pull off some extremely impressive clears but generally some units are just either more powerful or more versatile than others
The problem comes with the assumption of lower tier meaning unusable, its like with game reviews, a score between 5-6 is supposed to be the average but rarely do people wanna admit that an okay game should only get a 5/10 score, even if it shines in certain aspects
Same for ops, can you do something with everyone? Yes. Are some just going to be overall better than others? Also yes
theres some validity in rating units on a binary, worth your mats, not worth your mats.
Vanguards: myrtle and texas, both reasonably free, don't need more in this class, usually. if you do, fang and courier generally work.
Guards/specialists/casters/snipers uhhhhhhhh thats nuanced. I generally split them into 'ground DPS, Ground arts DPS, and Ranged DPS/Ranged arts DPS.'
which isn't a tier list so much as just math, whether or not it works, is a DPS check.
Medics/defenders. this is the survival thing. most situations adding more DPS just fixes the issue, but in other cases some things want to be stalled to ...make things line up better.
so ....we have units.
DP generation, Myrtle, and texas. always enough. in some situations texas defense isn't enough for the early block 2 needs. but there are low cost guards and specialists that will add DPS to solve the issue. your issue then isn't DP generation, its DPS.
DPS ground, now we got two types of DPS ground we got sustained, or at least high cycle, and we got burst. not going to even bother evaluating this, more DPS = more gooder. not even going to split it between arts/physical/true. instead we just go with expected DPS.
OK. so lets take annihilation 3. lungman downtown. I played this map at a lower level. and we encounter issues, issues that are somewhat standard across the game.
every 50 kills or so it adds a ballista that does 500 physical damage. which means we need heals to keep up or high enough defense to ignore it.
we are covering 4 ground lanes and 2 air lanes so we need healing for those lanes. we got constant enemies coming in so we need enough sustained DPS to deal with constant enemies.
and we got some heavy enemies coming in that we need 'burst' DPS for.
and you watch it, and if you are dying, you need more healing or defense, and if you are not killing fast enough you need more Sustained DPS, and if you are having trouble with the heavies, you need more burst DPS.
and that just covers the bulk of the units.
oh I suppose there is also the skill issue for units where timing is especially important to get something to work or fail.
and of course the various status effects and crowd controls. and situationally useful things. which should be evaluated on a situational basis.
i am not convinced of the normally distributed tierlist argument
lets say there are only 5 units and 5 tierlist ranks. to be normally distributed each one has to be in 1 rank.
texalter Surtre 12F yato and a robot
following the argument that it should be normally distributed would mean 1 unit in each rank (1:texalter 2:surtr,3:yato,4:12F,5:robot)
but that isnt a good representation of the power of the units: clearly surtr is much better then yato yet the tierlist puts them close together.
and texalter and surtr are similiar in power and should probably be both in the same tier.
a tierlist should represent the actual performance ingame. and if that performance distirbution between all units in game isnt normally distributed and more units overperform
thenw hy should we force a tierlist that is normally distributed?
well with 5 units even a distribution of S: texalter, surtr E: yato, 12F, robot could be still a normal distribution because the normal distribution only exists with infinitely many pieces of data and infinitely many states of it so we can only judge how likely is it that a distribution is a normal distribution which gets nonsensical with so little data
my reserve operator boys and girls carried me through the IS stages like a donkey with 4 lame feet, the fact that their commander(me) has half brain smooth half brain void doesn't help either lol
0 mention of the rating relative to their own archetype, why?
TL;DR:
-Tier list is pretty decent
-We're only human
-Things are just complicated
Heres my evaluation:
Gamepress tierlist isnt perfect but its MUCH better than even the CN tierlists at this point (anyone that has any idea about CN tierlists knows howmuch of a meme they are)
They evaluate their reasonings and dont just mindlessly give tiers based on CC performance wich is quite good in my opinion
Is the tierlists Shafted/bad at times? Yes for exampke eunectes dropping a tier when she got a module was extremely weird
Also its obvious that they forgot to change tiers of some characters biggest example being Phantom wich has fallen off quite hard already
But for ANY pkayer this tierlist is perfectly sourceable and works pretty well in that regard
The fact that they easily tell you pros and cons of characters alongside giving brief instructions for newbie players is an amazing addition
Overall i give it 9.5/10 from value perspective
But please dont forget that some of the authors tend to be REALLY biased about certain characters (for example creating the whole "dont pull for limited units every time" thing on Ling and even almost ranking her S)
Any link to CN tier list?
@@hartoramasenju4012 CN doesnt have a proper tierlist like EN does
They just have random tierlists by random players and thats it
They had NGA polls wich infamously got hilariously worse because of people teolling the poll results so there isnt a back bone tierlist to rely on
CN players often make fun of Tierlist attempts because of how bad they tend to be and the toxic environment makes it impossible to adapt a proper back bone tierlist system (Even gamepress had to close comments because of how horrible toxicity got over time)
@@kyarumomochi5146 that's horrible. Even people in Discord have better manners. The only bad thing I saw on Discord is when a new player asking for advice and the reply is full of "build whoever you want or your waifu, it will work in the end trust me"
I think the reason Eunectes dropped was because Module Y was so anti-synergetic with her (because making her kill fastthat it made her worse if you used it. But if that was the issue, it's not hard to solve and shouldn't affect her tiering:
A) Not use/build the Y module.
B) Use Module X instead, which helps at fixing her core issu, that being the fact she takes ages to charge her skills.
@@monchete9934 Her tier dropped on Module x release...
4:56 my poor man vigil QWQ
"Average 6* is in A+ tier" factoid is actually just a statistical error. Average 6* is S tier. Vigil, who lives in a mediocre niche and relies on a squishy summon is an outlier adn shouldn't be counted.
The gamepress tier list is best used when sorting by class/subclass imo.
Like e.g I wouldn't put Dusk in S- if we're considering all the operators, but I'd say that's fair if we're only looking at AoE casters given the lower power level of those in general.
How can you disagree with Mountain negative lol?
His S2 forces you to place him in the enemy face, unlike other guards, that you can put sideways and let defender tank the damage. Bruh
The best tier list for me is how often chars appear in afk guides and how irreplaceable they are
Why tier list Soo general. Why can't be specific.
Like Integrated strategy tier list
What a great video
I don't understand why Gamepress gets hate for their tier list. It is objective and factual. Operators are ranked among their peers, how good are the anti-air snipers amongst themselves, not versus entirely different archetypes. If I want to know which AA sniper to raise I look at that specific part of the tier list. I don't look at the entire tier list and go "oh, Surtr is very high, I should raise her to fulfil my AA sniper needs".
They give reasonable explanations for their rankings and for 90% of people that is enough. The 10% may disgree because of technicalities or because their gameplay is so advanced that they can compensate or exploit specific weaknesses. Tier lists are not for those people, they know everything anyway and all their arguing about tier lists is basically dick measuring contests.
I find myself disagreeing with GP sometimes nowadays, because I have gathered a lot of experience with AK over the years. When I started (about a year after launch) I was completely lost among hundreds of operators and if I didn't have their tier list I would have made mistakes. Heck, I still made mistakes because I thought I knew better and it turns out... I didn't.
In conclusion, I think their tier list is great. It helps the average player to make informed decisions about operators and explains the reasoning to them so they can broaden their knowledge. It's not the absolute truth because there is none. That's all there is to it.
Honestly, the bell curve kinda sucks as an idea because it would imply a game is balanced in such a way but what if a game is very well balanced? Do we have to force a decent character in a low tier because it's a little weaker than another? I'd say tier lists like the one gg strive players do are a better idea of what a list should be, it's a game where every character is pretty damn strong so they are usually ordered from S+ to B because there's no point in pretending even the weakest character are that weak even when compared to the top tiers
My brain went poof
People can shit on GamePress's tierlists all they want, but it's consistent with the Max Risk CC clears from CN...
Should tier lists be normally distributed? NO! I believe it incorrect to judge the quality of a tier list by its appearance as a normal distribution. Bell curves are natural while tier lists are unnatural, game balance has no reason to follow a normal distribution, and we don't even want tier lists to be bell curves in the first place!
Bell curves aren't something that should be strived for or forced in a tier list setting, that isn't what bell curves are for. Normal distributions form naturally in data sets with random or semi-random variables. If we were to simulate certain types of data, particularly numbered data, using a normal distribution, we can expect a bell curve to form. If a bell curve doesn't form, we can expect that something is off with our data, maybe the data was manipulated, or maybe a Vigil- sorry, an outlier is causing the data to be skewed.
However, video game characters and their balance state isn't necessarily random, and tiers in a tier list aren't numbers. These characters aren't creating by rolling two D6's, these are created by game developers and designers, with the goal of making a new, enticing, not necessarily balanced character, with the end goal of making more money. These characters' power levels aren't judged by an objective numerical score, they are judged by nerds at gamepress. The only element of randomness here is how well both sides do at their job, and while of course, sometimes the devs and nerds accidentally make and judge a character as too strong or too weak, we still shouldn't expect a game that regularly releases stronger and stronger characters over time to follow a normal distribution whatsoever.
Lastly, wanting a games balance to follow a normal distribution is a bad idea. First of all, to get it out of the way, it is reasonably possible for game devs to force their game's character power levels to follow a normal distribution curve, by buffing and nerfing certain characters until it is achieved. Lets say this occurs, and in our tier list, we have 1 S tier, 4 A tiers, 11 B tiers, 11 C tiers, 4 D tiers, and 1 F tier. We did it, we have a normally distributed set of characters! This is not a good thing though!!! Our few top tiers are trampling everyone below, with our 5 high tiers dominating the meta, and the remaining 27 characters being hung out to dry. Even if we banned the top tiers, likely only the S tier, for the sake of fair play, the poor F tier and a few of the D tiers will still be totally outmatched in the meta. Hypothetically, if the master devs manage to make it such the the high tiers are only marginally better than mid tiers, and the low tiers only marginally worse than mid tiers, then we would technically have a bell curve of comically low variance, and this would be good, but it is an unrealistic goal that won't be achieved by a game designed to make money through the release of new, powerful characters. Also, if we were capable of achieving a borderline perfectly balanced game, then we are also likely capable of making the game perfectly balanced, leading to a game with one tier, which also isn't really a bell curve, and isn't really normally distributed, either.
We are also assuming that S, A, B, C, D, and F tier are effectively numbers, equidistant from each other. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6th tier, or in your video, each of the 19 tiers is a number of 1, 2, 3, ..., 17, 18, and tier #19, but tiers aren't scores, or at least they aren't scores that are evenly spaced on a number line. While it may feel natural, many tier lists don't follow this format, and have no reason to.
I could go on, but point being, to say a tier list is good *because* it follows a normal distribution is a claim that needs evidence to back it up, but it is lacking in evidence.
Blemishine being S- still hurts my soul, I mean that sword and shield talent alone make her viable option a lot of times
That's where she belongs. She is good but she is not the best at anything that she does. Her best feature is enabling Murdrock and Penance to generate SP faster. There's a reason why i never see her been used in any hard content clear. There's always a better option.
Thorns recently demote to S- is unfair in my view. Nobody does her job better than her, that's worth S+. See the difference ?
@@STREEEEEET Fully agree about Thorns. There is no other operators who can fill that many roles, while being very good at all of them. Putting him on the same level as Ceobe and somehow below Gavialter and Roca is honestly confusing to me.
To me when I was asked Who should I level in Arknights for a new player
This is what I say, Level all your 3 Stars and below to E1 Atleast since they're cheap and reliable
After that Feel free to level whoever you want, You want to level Beehunter? Go knock yourself out.
aah sorry for making a really long comment, i think this video is interesting, but i disagree with the conclusion and would like to explain why
i think the point being made here is kind of moot, as tierlists following a normal distribution curve is not a result of planning and consideration, but more just human nature. i think most people when asked to make a tierlist would reserve top spots for only the most broken units, and the bottom ones for the least useful ones, while putting most operators closer to the middle. whether that be due to them thinking the operator is average compared to the rest of the roster, or simply not being opinionated enough to make strong judgments on thier kit. (personally my tierlist tend to be top-heavy, as i feel bad ranking units low, and i think the same sentiment is true for at least a few others)
i also do not think statistics are the right tool to judging the quality/accuracy of a tierlist. it is an interesting and fun topic to explore, but not the right tool for the job in this case. simply put, a tierlist could be completely randomized within rarities, such as it still follows the general normal distribution curve to a degree, but who the units actually are is not taken into consideration. this way there could be a tierlist where vigil is in the top tier, but surtr is in the bottom tier in terms of 6*s only. if looking at it from a statistical perspective, one could arrive to the conclusion that the tierlist somewhat follows normal distribution and thus has to be accurate to some degree, but upon taking a closer look, it would be easy to realize the placements don't make any sense
personally i don't think of the gamepress tierlist one way or the other, while i disagree with some of the placements and descriptions, there are others which i can agree with and understand the logic behind
ultimately, the conclusion of a quality of a tierlist is just as subjective as the placements of units within it. points that we don't agree with and cannot understand, we see as incorrect, while ones we agree with and can follow the reasoning of are correct to us
Gamepress' Integrated Strategies tierlist doesn't even mention Schwarz, the queen of Integrated Strategies. No one else carries as hard as her in IS2 Hard Mode, and no one else except sometimes Pozy carries as hard as her in IS3 D15.
The comparisons to standard distributions make no sense. This is ordinal data. Standard distributions arise when metric variables have a tendency to a mean. The variance that arises causes the emergent normal distribution. it's an inherent property of that type of data. Tier lists are akin to a tournament ranking system, there are no assumptions of normality or central tendency. If you could quantify performance of operators, you could make these assumptions, like how you can quantify the speed of race cars. But a tier list is the equivalent of only looking at the places that the cars finished the race in.
As a person who used the gamepress tierlist when I'm new, I would say that for a standard player(a player that doesn't do top tier strategy etc), it is rather accurate and the analysis is usually pretty good
I totally agree that tier lists should be gaussian.
Why does a wiki write a tierlist tho
Gamepress isn't really a wiki
Ngl, gamepress tier list so helpful for dumb me lol
Whatever any tierlist says,I like Goldenglow because her S3 is just like Panic Button.😂
Operators rated low yet used in every difficult boss strat....... Hoshi and Shining. In fact in Trials of the Navigator#2, Hoshi was a must have operator.
Ah yes, Hoshiguma, the low rated A+ operator. So low, terrible infact that she's in the 2nd tiered in her subclass, terrible one might say.
You can't say shit like this and pretend you have a point.
The tiering itself reads: "Despite having a niche use for dealing with invisible ranged enemies, Hoshiguma does not fill many other irreplaceable roles.
Despite her honest Skill-set, Hoshiguma is an excellent choice for a standard Defender."
There's barely, BARELY, any content where I can't just drop Nian in the place of Hoshi, fuck there's barely any content I **need** a Protector in, in a game where you have limited resources, the amount of usage you're going to give an operator matters, and it matters alot.
@@joaogoncalves5357in the settings for afknights, hoshi is one of good options due to her thorns skills. And damage nullification is a good addition especially with her module. If she has a taunt skill hoshi definitely an S worthy operator. But for general usage especially afk, i feel like hoshi should be higher than nian
I think a better example of your point would be using 1 star robots to charge the twilight of wohlmund gramophone or yato and noir corne for their use as bait/stall units in maps such as the CC one with the cannon.
@@TokinoSora10thApostleHere's the thing though, the conditions for making Hoshiguma's S2 a better skill to have equipped over her S3 are fairly slim. Hear me out. The only scenarios where her S2 can really shine as a solid choice are against fast-attacking enemies, lots of ranged enemies, or the super-ranged enemies that target her.
The dps on her S2 is really low minus in the above scenarios, it's merely chip damage against the majority of enemies that face her. Now, we could say that all damage is good damage and it would be correct. However, you're likely to get way more damage out of 1 or more decently-timed S3s.
Now unto the def boost. While it is consistent, it's not that large of a gain. That means that the margin of off-skill Hoshi dying while S2 Hoshi survives is quite small, factor in timing her S3 to have better survival for 25 seconds and that margin becomes even smaller.
So again, minus those niche scenarios that were mentioned, her S2 doesn't provide enough power or utility to be much more useful than working with her S3 burst. Her S2 is just a crutch, it's a skill that only really allows you to place her and not have to touch her again or see a little yellow symbol pop above her head. It's also a weak crutch, because even if you placed her with her S3 equipped but never used it, she'd still pass an overwhelming majority of scenarios that her S2 can do.
So if you want to argue that Hoshi should be as high or higher tier than Nian, then you should either sell us on her S2's niche better than before, or you should consider her S3 against Nian instead. I personally think Nian should be higher still, but I typed out way more than I planned to so I'll check back on this and maybe repond some other time.
No game has tier list, the tier list is only for reference
I was told, the reason Arknights fandom wiki don't have a tier list is because:
"The Tier List was removed not because many complaints about it, but because it was infeasible or even outright useless in the first place, since every Operator remain useful regardless of their rarity; even many operations can be cleared with low-rarity Operators so long as one knows what they are doing.
Anyone who takes tier lists seriously, no offense, are nothing more than "meta slaves"; Arknights is a tower defence and strategy game, so raw stats alone does not mean that an Operator is strong or weak; it's how they were meant to be used."
"The Tier List is not just infeasible to keep up to date and ""objectively"" correct, it's also utterly detrimental. New players will all too easily fall back on tier lists as a resource because they lack game knowledge, which will teach them all the wrong lessons and actively hinder them from improving at the game. We can't stop players from going to tier lists outside of the wiki, but we still have the responsibility to stop them from ruining their own enjoyment of the game by learning all the wrong lessons here."
Unless money and time is not concern, I still like to hear someone convince me why a new players would be better served if he spent his time/money on pulling Phantom and E2 him and get his module instead of investing the same resources on Yato alter (or Texas alter). Without a tier list, how would someone not familiar with the operators would know any better?
And tell the poor soul who bought into that, that his Phantom would make him enjoy the game better than Yato alter (or Texas alter) would.
I don't have an issue with their mindset, I think it's fine but it comes off a bit ridiculous due to the wording.
Whether or not people want to learn and get better or be brainless "meta slaves" is up to them.
The holier than thou attitude portrayed with this quote "but we still have the responsibility to stop them from ruining their own enjoyment of the game by learning all the wrong lessons here." comes off as them wanting to force their own idea of what's the correct way to play onto others which is also biased. Some people don't have time or even want to learn how to complete stages with low rarity characters so they look up guides or use what's generally considered "better" characters.
This part is also weird "The Tier List is not just infeasible to keep up to date and ""objectively"" correct, it's also utterly detrimental." Tier lists mainly consist of what people generally consider good ranking higher, it doesn't have to be objective and the infeasible mention of keeping it up to date is also weird, SOMEONE will have time to work on it even if the person who made the point didn't have time or didn't want to work on it anymore.
Sadly the game is made by people and due to human error or greed being possible powercreep and imbalance issues are bound to occur even for things with the same role.
Arknights is one of the more balanced gacha games I can think of but even I doubt every stage and challenge is possible with only low rarity units and without support. Every player also has their own roster rng to consider or certain matchups that their roster struggles against.
Again I agree with their basic ideas. People should get better and learn the game to make it easier, they shouldn't only rely on the opinions of others BUT having other's perspectives can be useful. If the person doesn't have time or want to work on a tier list that's also fine, they aren't forced to do it. Some people may want to challenge their strategizing skills and use lower rarity ops, high rarity isn't needed if the game is balanced enough.
The only way to have a truly balanced game is if every character had the exact same stats.
Nobody is arguing that you should be pulling phantom over yato
What people mean with tier list bad iis that tier list are only vertical and lack crucial horizontality.
Phantom objectively is worse but weedy? Weedy is the poster child of unnecessary but hilariously strong in high brain gameplay and allows stuff no one else can.
This is why tier list suck, they cannot convey complex relationship, they are basic to a fault
@@pougetguillaume4632 You made some excellent points. What I am having trouble with, they say tier list has faults, so players are better off without one. And I Strongly disagree with that line of reasoning.
@@spamrme1654 the problem is that a tier list is a beginner's cruch
Getting in a new game with hundreds of units, archetype and such, it's overwhelming. Sooooo what does a new player do? Go check tier list! Then they see that suzuran is S tier and they like the character. So cool you get suzuran... and she does 0 damage... because she's a debuffer... turns out being a S tier for a supporter isn't the same as S tier for guards. Ofc you could read the note at the end of the tier list that warns you, but which tier list to trust? What does each do? What's the standard? Are they consistent with each other? Also EN can't read.
A more veteran player doesn't need a tier list because you have acquired a more innate sense of what works and what doesn't, and has gotten community feedback which gives much better information regarding the operator. You are more aware about the caveats that tier list entails, but you're also past the point where it's actually useful.
Tier list are just misleading. What about 3 stars operator? They're amazing for new player but they don't use it because tier list don't rank them high and you don't innatly understand their value i know i didn't apart from kroos. Community feedback is SO MUCH BETTER at delivering informations rather than obtuse ranking system. Tier list can be actively harmful to the progress of a new player (who is the main consummer) because they don't understand what a proper arknights tier list entails.
Finally i've seen many game communities plagued by the meta slave mentality of aiming for the highest ranked unit and endless community wars about who's better than whom. For example in FGO (also a gacha) you get stupid arguments like morgan vs arjuna alter or space ishtar vs kama because they don't understand horizontality. They have a vertical tier list system and can't fathom the idea that being 0.5% less efficient in one category doesn't make the unit worse. The equivalent inarknight is mudrock vs penance... yeah we solved that problem overnight, basically mudrock stronger vs single ennemies when penance stronger with ramp up time against waves of smaller fry. Or mountain vs chongyue, one is more sustainable but the other has more raw power.
You can have tier list within tier list in arknights, i'm thinking about the abyssal hunter teams were a shit unit like skadi can actually be a legitimetly good operators. You have the niche knight meta too what operator makes liberi knight viable? In this situation astgenne becomes critical. That last one is a self imposed challenge ofc, not exactly the "meta" but still. I think tier list just push players toward a single goal and single idea of what "good" means.
In a context where there is a precise metric to measure "good", players dig themselves in a mentality where being 0.5% less efficient is, in fact, a detriment. Because a tiers list automatically means there is a point at the very top whereas good game design give you possibilities where the "good" is a cursor on a scale instead of a point.
GamePress AK tier list doesn't make new players dumb. For example, you get the red frame for Ops that are good early investments until you get the higher-tier version, provided you even read the tier list legend. Then there's also the pro's and con's as well as the overview available directly from the tier list, and on the Operator's page you have the newbie-tierlist explanation, and between one of them there often is something like "cheap option if you need xy but havent gotten z yet" or "don't invest here if your resources are limited, there are similiar options at lower tiers".
The actual rank can be a good first impression, say you are new and you pulled a Surtr or a Mylnar, you are still lacking own experience, but when you see them in EX-Tier, you can be sure you won't regret the investment. Similiar thing with S+ and S, you do not need to have a good understanding yourself to know these units will have great impact on you gameplay. And then you can still read the Operator page.
I argue, if you've got any brain and want to play the game, you will gravitate away from looking at these ranks as your roster gets more powerful. And if you stay a slave to the rankings they themselves disclaim as solely meta-focused and so on, that's honestly not because of the tier list. Really, if a mentality like this exists (in an individual or a community), I do not think the cause for that is some tier list, or at least not a tier list like GP's AK tier list.
This is of course all assuming players can actually read, but again, if they can't, it's honestly their own fault. You can only handhold someone so much.
tier lists should not follow a normal distribution, but the strength distribution of the units. If you want a normal distribution tell that to the game developers, not to the fans making the tier lists. dont force it if it doesnt fit
Waifu over Meta
Cringe
The units you like and succeed with are S+
Tier lists are nice to look at but with this game you can play anything, provably even vigil if that is what you like.
That's not the point of the tier list, though. The tier list takes into account mainly three factors which are IS, story (ie. casual), and high risk (ie. competitive). For the first two, you score better if you're easy to succeed with. So if I can use Vigil to beat the stage, he's still worse if it requires me to spend an hour planning when compared to where I can not do any planning at all.
Meanwhile in high risk... you certainly can't just bring random operators and expect to clear max risk CC
God, another "waifu > meta" parrot.
Look, some units are better than others, period. If some new player struggling with 4-3 is asking whether Silverash or Frostleaf is better, the answer is Silverash. Build Silverash. Anything beyond that is copium.
It is good
Arknights fanbase is just hardcore
arknights every unit niche is complex it may need a lot seperate category their own niche tier list
Winflit tier list (real)
cute SSS+
garbage F-
we have 7 ex now ;P
tacticalbreakfast is full of it, the sad truth of it is CN players and theorycrafting groups define the meta, EN/global players pale in comparison, tacticalbreakfast included
Okay 10 minutes of wasted time
its bad ok bye