Tier

Tier is the common word given to the rank a character in a fighting game has on a "Tier List".

Tier list

How the specific tier ranks in the list are defined usually depends on the person writing it. The most common tier lists use the ranks "High", "High-mid", "Mid", "Low-mid", and "Low" and use character placement one the list to signifiy that one character is better than the other, even if in the same group. For instance, if in the group "High-mid" in a Tekken 5 tier list, Devil Jin was placed above Asuka, it would mean that Devil Jin was considered a better character.

Another typical tier list setup is the non-specific letter system, which is roughly the same as the one mentioned above, just with different names for the ranks, in this case "SS" (for the highest), "S", "A", "B", "C". Like the above mentioned tier list, the placement of a character relative the others signify how good the character is.

The final typical tier list setup is the specific letter system, which goes into great detail with adding + and - to some of the letters. the ranks are "S+", "S", "A+", "A", "A-", etc. down to "C". Because it is more specific, all characters in the same group are considered approximately equal.

A tier list ranking is an approximation of how well a character does against all other characters. Therefore, it is possible for low tier character (which performs poorly against most characters) to be a favorite against a specific high tier character.

Tier placement

The tier a character has is based on their potential performance (based on data), their move arsenal, e.g. the amount of safe moves they have, the amount of tracking moves they have, how fast they are performed, how punishible they are, etc., and sometimes a bit of personal opinion, which is why tier lists often differ slightly from person to person.

For instance, if Jin Kazama were able to punish any whiff with strong results, have a great wake-up game, keep out opponents with safe mid hits, ect., Jin Kazama would be among the top tier. Consequently, if he lacked any of those things, his rank on the tier list would drop.

Despite the tiers, the common school of thought is that any character can beat any character if one is good enough, it's just that it may be more difficult with characters that are lower on the tier list.