User:Bamiji/Tier List/Philosophy

The purpose of this section is to provide more background information for the tier list as it is now.

What Makes A Tier List

The reasons behind the desire for tier lists, in general, are clear enough. People want to know who the strongest characters are: because they're trying to learn more about the game / because other metrics for bias may not be as meaningful to them / because they're trying to future-proof their accounts / because they're scared of powercreep, and so on.

It isn't untrue for AE that, on a general scale, you would be able to point out characters that possess significantly more potential than certain others. Yet at the same time, when you reach the other end of evaluations, you run into characters that it wouldn't make sense to directly compare--their strengths differ, or they shine in different contexts. How would you go about making a tier list then?

There isn't really anything wrong with a tier list existing in itself, nor is there anything wrong with it being viewed by new/uninformed players. The issues arise when people use them in the "wrong" ways. For this game, in particular, overdependence on any single character is liable to ruin you.

For as strong as new characters keep getting, they never really escape the fact that they're just single pieces in a puzzle. Improper use of their skills, poor selection of party members, inadequate gearing, or not respecting boss-specifics, and it really won't matter how high up in any tier list you saw they were at. Likewise, a tier list pretending to be infallible isn't doing you much good for the purpose of gaining knowledge.

So, there are benefits to tier lists--they make it easy for people to get a bird's eye view on relative power levels. But there are also limitations--blindly picking high-tier characters won't necessarily do much good for you. Add to the fact that the majority of bosses in AE are progressively less demanding over time, and it's somewhat less meaningful to care that much about power levels.

This Tier List

Coming back to the topic of this tier list specifically, there are a couple of things that are good to describe first: when considering how best to design tiers, you would want them to somewhat accurately represent practical use, to be useful to others. However, there is a lot of variety in viable strategies, which also varies significantly depending on the progress of a specific player.

Deep into lategame you might be able to pull off quick victories with unconventional parties, leveraging the strength of Grasta. But earlier on you might find yourself more inclined towards Zones to be able to do powerful things. This is just one example. Within them can lie subdivisions or overlaps, based on specific characters unlocking different strategy patterns, and so on. What a single character is capable of can vary a lot based on things such as those, and they may also be uniquely positioned to take advantage of some fights better than others, further complicating things.

Personally, I think if every character were to be given some "averaged" rating in one big tier list featuring everyone, it would make it significantly difficult to make sense of it. I expect tier lists to be used by newer or learning players, with the intention that they understand more about the game from them. Ideally transcending a need for them over time.

I feel that Zones provide a natural separation for character evaluations, while also being a strong strategy foundation to both new and old players alike. They're far from the only way to do things, but I think it's simpler to look through characters on a per Zone basis to get an idea of strengths in meaningful isolated contexts. And then, once you know who's who on a per Zone basis, you can have the confidence and knowledge to "break the rules" and look out for potential pairings that don't strictly follow their patterns.

For example, Melody is not particularly notable in a typical Magic Zone setting. But given the context that you only want one other Staff-user and do not want to commit to Magic Zone, she can provide Magic Critical Rate and turn-1 Mental Focus. For another example, Felmina and Miyu (Another Style) do not share elements or primary damage types to fit into any regular Zones easily, but in some cases you might want to run them together to take advantage of Miyu's Miglance buffs.

Unconventional play patterns can be fun, but for the sake of simplicity and consistency in understanding, the tier list focuses on the stated Zone contexts.

If you're not sure what to make of Zones, you can check their section in my teambuilding guide here for an explanation.

Flash or Starry Sea Columns

The tier list is based on Zones, yes, but some Zones make more sense to use for it than others. Flash Zone and Starry Sea Zone go in the opposite direction and don't really limit your options. But in exchange, they have downsides to balance this out. Columns for them would not have clear guidance on a rating scheme and it would just return us to the "everyone tier list" that was to be avoided in the first place.

Damage Relativity

The loose word scaling that's used for multiplier descriptions is:

• Strong: 600% ~
• High: 800% ~
• Very High: 1000% ~
• Exceptionally High: 1600% ~
• Obscenely High: 3000% ~

The notable thing here might be the wide range between Exceptional and Obscene. One idea behind this is, at least right now, you could consider 3000%+ multipliers a luxury even for fast clears. 1600% is about where's common enough currently to define top-end damage potential. More is always welcome, but a lot of the time, with proper damage support, you'll get the job done fairly easily regardless with those. A number of characters around that range will also have damage support in their own kits, which can serve to blur the line as well in practical contexts.

Raw damage isn't everything, so characters with numerically less should not be neglected on linear multiplier comparisons. Multiplier consistency, other kit utility, convenient support pairings, and so on, can make a seemingly lower multiplier more useful in certain cases.

Similarly, lower offense support totals may not mean a character is weaker than another option for it, and it may even mean it is good to use them together. This is due to the potential for diminishing returns (or in some cases, effects not stacking at all) when using the same effects repeatedly. So, for example, the damage dealer you are trying to support may work better with someone that appeared to have lower totals but has different effects than they already have, compared to using them with the character with higher totals but the same effects they already have. Or maybe the damage dealer does not have much matching effects with either one and using both supports together can also be feasible.

Another thing that might be tricky to grasp at first is the damage support "meta" nuance that naturally follows isolated Zone evaluations. For instance, generally speaking, Elemental Zones do not have convenient access to Weapon damage buffs. And even when present, they'd likely only affect a fraction of your party or possibly just the activating character, effectively becoming unique self-buffs. Likewise, Weapon Zones usually can't make much use of element-specific effects, so things like party X-element Type Attack can virtually become self-buffs, to factor in when comparing to other damage options.

Possibly most notably, outside of Magic Zone with convenient Mental Focus access, Staff damage dealers can find it hard to compete against the more prevalent Physical synergies that dominate Elemental columns. Inability to use Physical Resistance debuffs, Critical Damage buffs, Physical Critical Rate increases, can be notably limiting. But on the other hand, when a Staff character can guarantee their own critical hits and also comes with self-applied Mental Focus, it can help to significantly close the gap. I like to point this out in their "effective" multipliers, it virtually works as a self-buff for Staff characters in Elemental columns.

Similarly, some characters have seemingly low multipliers but primarily use skills with Speed damage, which basically duplicates SPD buffs in exchange for being unaffected by PWR buffs. When you consider that party PWR buffs are kind of uncommon as it is, the downside is minimal and it's pretty fair to calculate their maximum SPD buff as part of their effective multiplier, to paint a better picture for those otherwise inclined to neglect them. Closely following this idea, some characters with regular physical damage have very high self PWR buffs but seemingly low multipliers, which results in their effective damage being higher than can be expected from raw multiplier in practice, and so on.

...

As you start to mix and match, some of these can become fairly ignorable. You could use Prayer Grasta to grant Weapon Damage buffs to your damage dealer of choice, even in an Elemental Zone. You could use certain characters to provide Mental Focus support to your Mage of choice in any Zone. The relativity limits can matter less the deeper in you get, but they're still important to understand at a basic level, so as to encourage carefulness when reviewing damage options.

The tier list sticks to the pure Zone focus to maintain a simple practical concept, but "cross-Zone" possibilities like these, and varied strategy types possible (e.g turn 2 AF vs no AF, long clears with sustain concerns vs quick nuke clears) are why it's noted in several places to not take it as the final word on characters.