Forceful's PVP Tier List

Within each tier the names are ordered roughly by strength but the differences within each tier are pretty minor. If you have questions about the rankings I will try to provide answers but each ranking assumes that the hero is placed on an ideal team (e.g. Mauler is only Godly with the right support) with an appropriate promotion level (gold, plat, etc.) against a competent opponent.

God Tier:
Nightingale, Panzer, Mandrake, Mauler.

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

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

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

Who are you?

Iā€™ve played a LOT of PvP, at least 25,000 wins in the last ~6 months. I placed Top 10 in the first PVP Draft and multiple other tournaments along with First place in one of the elemental brawls. Even after so many games I will check the stats of almost any difficult game I have to see how all the heroes performed. This has given me a very strong game sense for hero performance.

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Please explain how is Bolt, sentry and Artemis competitive. Would like some enlightenment here

Why is Dogface at competitive tier?
He should be at god tier

Boltā€™s bronze skill deals tons of damage to energy heroes, Artemisā€™s Gold is basically Sentryā€™s Gold skill but with random effects and Sentryā€™s Gold skill staggers enemies, which is useful in PVP

Sentry provides an impressive amount of damage while basically shutting down whoever he is hitting. Stagger rounds cannot be overstated.

Bolt after his update is extremely lethal. If piloted for headshots he will put down energy heroes in a matter of seconds. His silver and bronze are both among the highest damage skills in the game. Called shot is also an really good passive, I canā€™t recommend it enough.

Artemis has a similar style to bolt, and is very rewarding to piloted play. During draft Artemis was the only solo dps that could rival panzer. Having a mark is quite valuable but her getting headshots plus chimera bonuses. As a backline she has has an easier time finishing off reloading enemies in cover too.

Dogface is still highly ranked but he has a fair amount of serious counters. Min was practically designed to ruin Dogface but the rise of disorient heroes like Mauler and Ifrit have also contributed.

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Good list. Ronin and Castellan seems surpising, but I have never trained mine up so I cannot judge them. I say, we can sort of make a monthly update on the tier list from December onwards, I can help you with it if needed.

Heck, we can even give a numbered rating for the heroes in each tier list, for aspects such as power (survivability+DPS), synergy (ability to support teammates) and flexibility (works well in different teams).

Power wil range from a 1 in Flatline to a 5 on Razorback
Synergy can range from 1 on a Bolt to a 5 on Ifit
Flexibility can range from a 1 on Mauler to a 5 on Night

Thanks for the replyā€¦ I just felt that arte and sentry drops too quicklyā€¦ their bronze skills are also easily disrupted

Btw where is prophet? Iā€™m guessing viable/ garbage tier?

Plat ronin, have him as your strongest party member and pilot him, u will see why :slight_smile:

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IF you pair him with lower health heroes. Platinum Ronin is for this reason very attractive for min/maxers.

Itā€™s what the plat ability does. People normally add a star or a plat bar extra to him to have his health higher than the rest

This is not min-maxing or if it is it is legit because the whole intention is for Ronin to have more HP than his allies to trigger his plat. This is different from, and unlike, the other forms of artificially depressing power loadout.

What I said is,
for this reason platinum Ronin is attractive for min/maxers. I have seems plenty of examples with a a 10* Platinum Ronin coupled with gold and silver heroes. I am not saying the platinum skill itself is a min/max thing but the way it works makes for an easy exploit.

My issue with ronin is that hes starting to make a name for himself as a primary DPS with the right team. And as a mid line energy hero, hes a easy choice for high level mech DPS to take out. Its also considered viable to couple him with other heroes who make extra targets to trigger honorbound deaths - halloway, hivemind, etc. Most are weaker and again energy based.

For those reasons I would take him from Competitive to Viable, but thats probably just me. He would be higher if the current meta wasnt so mech heavy. I guess he functions as a Mauler counter?

Definitely gotta try Bolt more, but im not exactly skilled with the headshotsā€¦

Side question for OP - are all these heroes in the tier list at platinum with skills maxed? Or at least Gold? their level certainly dictates what types of people/ranking you face in game. I know you kind of mentioned that in your post, but can you elaborate? For instance, I tend to consider Sentry good, but probably only gold at like 6-7 stars right? Im just curious how much you upgrade heroes.

Plat is a major power dump that I avoid on heroes with bad or mediocre plats.

For example Keel is an incredible healer but she has one of the worst plats in the game. Sentry has a plat thatā€™s basically ā€˜do ~6% more damageā€™ but given that plats add +1125 power itā€™s really hard to justify adding his plat when another star would give maybe 12% more health and damage for the same amount of power.

Adding stars just depends on what the power of your teams are. As a general rule I try to have my main DPS as the highest power on a team but not by so much that matchmaking punishes you.

Makes sense. It does make me wish you could downgrade or play with your guys in certain brackets at max level or lower. For instance, if I have multiple guys at plat 10* I feel like I should be able to take those guys and make a 5* gold team with them at even levels. Similar to how you can control this in dueling. Whether this is a brawl or a regular option for pvp, it makes more sense to deal with min/maxing as another option for skilled play.

This is really well done and I struggle to poke holes in any of it. Neatly and concisely organized and as usual for you, itā€™s very accurate.

The only ā€œcomplaintsā€ I would raise are:

  • Having Flatline that high. I get excited when I face a team with Flat in it because I know the match is going to be an instant 5-4. Flatline is one of the ONLY heroes I will target before Caine when heā€™s in a match. Which leads me to my next pointā€¦

  • Caine, in my opinion, is nearly always the highest priority must-kill (with the exception of flatline). If he gets his abilities off before one of his allies is killed, the game is basically over. I run Caine in every team and heā€™s the linch pin that keeps my team together (since I typically run a rather low-heal team). When I see Caine in the enemy line-up, I know the fightā€™s going to be a pain.

  • Dogface. He sees much less usage than Panzer, sure. But if Panzer didnā€™t exist, then he would unequivocally be in the ā€˜god-tierā€™ list. I donā€™t think he gets enough credit though personally when comparing the two. If he IS worse than Panzer (which most seem to agree), then itā€™s only by a hair. I have always preferred him over her and I still do. I think Dogface and Caine should either be the highest in the competitive tier or the lowest in the god tier. But to have them in the same tier as vanguard seems like a flaw.

Good assessment imo. I do agree that caine has become a bit of a low key god tier guy lately. He doesnt get the heat that Gale or Panzer do, but he definitely plays a huge role in high level play. Hes always a solid choice for a team.

I also tend to agree on Dogface. His regular shot is strong enough to down some targets (with headshots) with his initial clip or seriously wound them right off the bat. Plus he can target anyone effectively. Panzer is limited to the front/mid line for effectiveness. However, she makes all energy tanks in-effective with Gammond likely being the only exception due to his gold. She also owns the midline. So shes guaranteed to take out at least 1 if not 2 energy heroes in the front or mid line in the first few seconds of the match. Dogface MAY take out a squishy target this early and if he does, then he gets even better than Panzer as the match goes on and his abilities kick in. The main reason Panzer wins out here is because the quicker you can turn the match into 5v4 is the quicker you win it in most cases. I appreciate how each have different flavor and a place. Personally think they both fit the God Tier. But i totally get why Dog hovers on the edge.

Rankings within tiers are always up for debate.

Personally until the crit buff I wasnā€™t wild about Caine. His countermeasures come out predictably every 20 seconds, so between Panzerā€™s first burst and Galeā€™s mark at 16 seconds. Cover breaking and other abilities starting to fly around the same time also created a frustrating likelihood that Caine would ā€œmissā€ with his skills as the focused hero would scramble for fresh cover. My other issue is with the ā€œSingle Targetā€ healers - the same thing prevents me from ranking Operator or Vanguard any higher. When they clutch they clutch but often youā€™ll see Caine tosses armor and then countermeasures onto 70% health Mandrake and then 2 seconds later enemy Nightingale marks your 80% health Nightingale and Caine canā€™t do anything for almost 20 seconds.

Before October his plat was pretty garbage too. Crit only used to provide 2-3k bonus damage. Even when it was listed at 150% it still only did 2-3k bonus damage until October when it finally started doing 150% damage, then in the 2nd October update crits were buffed to 200%. While he still shines at gold, I think plat Caine is worth picking up once your teams get around 40k.

I ranked Flatline so high because of the strength of her gold and how she truly forces herself to become a ā€œmust killā€ target. With Mandrake and unskinned Nightingale it becomes quite reasonable keeping her alive. Across many of my teams Iā€™ve simply found nobody does a better job of minimizing heart losses across many games. Sheā€™s gone up in my book with the last update because Panzer struggles more than ever to bring her down quickly and I frequently have to rely on Galeā€™s mark to stop her. Even when she does go down itā€™s not as painful as losing your main DPS or Nightingale first, and Iā€™ve soldiered on through plenty of games where we traded my Flatline for their DPS and then it was an easy cleanup.

I think many people still run underpowered Flatlines that donā€™t do much. Unlike some other supports, Flatline canā€™t get away with being below the teamā€™s average power. Keep in mind that unlike Stars, promotions barely improve HP, so giving Flatline bars or Plat is pointless or even counterproductiveā€¦ I would only plat her at 9* or higher personally - HP is her chief priority for both staying alive and allowing her gold to keep others alive.

With Dogface, I still see too much holding him back from ā€œGod Tierā€, but I still have him ranked as the #3 DPS so heā€™s hardly in a bad spot. Dogfaceā€™s 3.5s reload and reliance on precision shooting can utterly ruin his ability to provide early pressure. Energy targets can gimp his DPS just by rolling around, and with heroes like Panzer itā€™s easily possible to Bronze stagger his first reload, then break cover to stagger the next one, and then swap to Nightingale to mark and kill him before he even gets around to shooting his 2nd mag.

P.S. Really good Dogface players know that rolling before the stagger will save reload progress and pre-emptively roll out when cover is about to break or they see breach coming, but Iā€™ve only seen 4-5 players who ever do that.

I do agree that panzer can counter Dogfaceā€™s early game, but isnt that what you want? Panzer is used for her early game to kill targets in the first few seconds before reload. She becomes increasingly less effective as the match goes on. Dogface otoh excels later when he can stack abilities. Thats why i say they are both good, but on opposite ends of the spectrum. I would think the better counter to Dogfaceā€™s first clip is controlling who he is shooting at by rolling like you mentioned. However, that also makes your panzer less effective so its a give and take imo.

I still think correct play with him is good enough for God tier, but hey i dont have the time nor the skills to get to top 10 so take my opinions with a gain of salt as they say. You definitely have much better incite to all this at high level.

This is another reason I think you donā€™t give dogface enough credit and rather default to only using panzer as the be-all-end-all of mech dps. I donā€™t think Iā€™ve ever played a game seriously where flatline was an issue (aside from the pre-nerf ifrit era). With some decent piloting skills, sheā€™s down in the first dogface magazine easily. During the draft brawl events, I didnā€™t use panzer a single time and I was going through panzer teams with relative ease - due almost entirely to dogface and caine.