| abstract
| - So the game's been out for a while. It's been beaten and re-beaten. The secrets have all been discovered, the items have all been collected, the Easter Egg has been unearthed, and the ridiculous rumors have been debunked. For all intents and purposes, the game is solved. That means there's only one thing left to do... ...That's right. It's time to get on the Internet and argue about which characters are the best. It seems inevitable when you've got a game with Loads and Loads of Characters: the time will come when the only thing left is to try and figure out whether Lowen's early joining time and superior supports make up for his crappy strength growth. It can be a polite discussion or a Flame War; a debate of logic and reason or a contest to see who can stick their fingers in their ears the longest. It usually gives birth to legions of Scrubs and "Stop Having Fun!" Guys. The characters are usually divided into rough levels of ability or "tiers", from which the trope takes its name. Those tiers frequently look something like this:
* God Tier: Characters that are ridiculously good, to the point that it is almost unfair to use them. Most likely some sort of secret boss character that was not meant to be used in normal competitive play. There have been very few games with characters that could be considered to be in this tier, and they are probably banned.
* Top Tier: Incredibly good characters that are still overpowered, but less so than those in God Tier, and not overpowered enough that they warrant a ban. When God tier is banned, these are the characters to choose. They are generally better than most non-God Tier characters.
* High Tier: All around good choices. Usually, they are here because they have advantages over Top or God tier characters and beat a lot of lower-tier characters. They have only a few weaknesses.
* Mid Tier: The "average" guys. They are usually here because they have an advantage over at least one Top or God tier character, but have too many flaws to be used effectively elsewhere.
* Low Tier: You probably don't want to choose these. They could theoretically be useful, but choosing such a character is a suboptimal choice; take only if you need to fill space. Sometimes, these characters find a niche for their shock value, or because they work well against unprepared or surprised opponents. This sort of usage stops working once your opponents get wise, at which point you should return to a higher tier.
* Bottom Tier: Joke Characters, and those who are just bad. They may have an advantage over someone in top tier, but outside of that specific situation, be prepared to have extreme difficulty using a Bottom Tier character in high-level play. Sometimes the tiers get shaken up due to Metagame shifts, and characters that were once below-average can become more useful. However, the chances of this phenomenon occurring diminish if no new content is added to the game. Depending on the game, tiers may not be as pivotal as they seem or are portrayed to be (indeed, some games are closely balanced enough that the tiers are only rated as a formality, Street Fighter IV being one such example); most often, they exist, but are generally less important than than the skill/advantages of a particular playstyle or adaptive player. Which, of course, leads to discussion for which playstyle is best. Compare: PVP-Balanced, Competitive Balance. When a character's tier placement negatively affects players' opinions of him, he becomes a Tier-Induced Scrappy. See also Super Weight for character power levels narrative-wise. Examples of Character Tiers include:
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