CounterSide Tier List Update
PVP Tier List Update
It is time for regular PVP tier list maintenance. The primary objectives of this update are to:
Adjust ratings for characters based on their alternium reactor performance.
Adjust ratings for characters who heavily benefit from the operator shift towards Sasha.
The CounterSide PVP tier list has been updated and changes were made to reflect the current state of PVP meta. This blog post provides some commentary on changes made to the ratings.
ASSR Commentary
Awakened Regina
SS->S
Awakened Regina (ARegina) still dominates slower games, but her many issues are becoming harder to overlook. These are:
- Awkward to play with current meta operators (Sysop and Sasha)
- Poor matchup spread against the many meta Awakened Strikers
- Struggles to keep pace with faster tempo comps (predominantly new Sasha-enabled comps)
As a result, ARegina suffers as the meta shifts towards her natural counters.
Eve Meitner
SS->S
With the constant buffs to ASSRs over the months, teams have steadily been shifting away from traditional SSR units and toward their costlier ASSR counterparts. As a result, Eve, whose kit functions around killing and snowballing off low-cost units, has been steadily denied those opportunities.
As low-cost units take a back seat and average team costs continue to rise higher and higher, there has been less and less reason to use Eve.
Awakened Joo Shiyoon
S->SS
Awakened Joo Shiyoon’s (AJSY) Alternium Reactor has improved his PVP performance far beyond expectations. His offensive buffs were strong on paper but it was hard to evaluate how good the guaranteed passive counter after special counter is.
In practice, it has proven to be remarkably difficult to hit AJSY in between his counterattacks, him annihilating your rangers, and disruption from the rest of his team.
AJSY’s rating has been updated to reflect his place in the meta.
Awakened Maria
S->A
As more and more ASSRs get their Alternium Reactors, the power gaps between ASSRs narrow.
Awakened Maria is not one of those units.
Kubera Alice
A->S
Alice has benefited greatly from the release of the operator Sasha. Among other things, Sasha synergizes well with rush comps by enabling its rangers. Alice happens to be played as a core damage dealer in a rush comp, enabled by Alice, its ranger. For the duration of Sasha’s buff, her damage potential is so unhinged that she can vaporize almost any unit in the game, including even ASSR Strikers.
Sasha gives these comps a surge in tempo needed to more consistently push through and overwhelm their opponents. For more on Sasha, see additional commentary below.
Awakened Amy
A->B
Amy’s value is entirely hinged on her ability to pull stuff towards her with her on-deploy pull. In theory, her short range and low damage are supposed to be offset by the fact that her initial pull would have killed any threats to her. In practice, Amy struggles to clear the RNG evasion check to actually pull, and then she dies to splash damage.
Even when Amy clears all the RNG evasion checks and successfully pulls the backline, it can often be the case that Amy (and the rest of her team) cannot break through the frontline before the opponent stabilizes again, at which point their ASSR of choice almost always outvalues Amy.
Although Amy’s pull has the potential to turn games around, she is far too unreliable to be played with any consistency.
Awakened Seo Yoon
A->B
Awakened Seo Yoon (ASY) is most notable for her healing reflux debuff, which in theory can shut down comps heavily reliant on healers. In practice, it can be remarkably difficult to keep the debuff on the target for long enough to matter. This is attributed to:
- Prevalence of cleanses/ debuff immunity
- 1:30/ 1:00 healing reduction debuffs
Even in an ideal scenario where her healing reflux is applicable, ASY is still ultimately a niche counterpick unit reliant on enemy healers to contribute value. It is depressingly the case that when it comes to counteracting healers, the operator Momo, in all her jank and clunkiness, is often preferred over ASY.
Without her healing reflux, ASY is effectively just a mediocre overcosted ranger woefully lacking in damage. Until ASY receives buffs to shore up other areas of her kit, she will continue to struggle to find relevance.
Awakened Shin Jia
A ->B
Awakened Shin Jia (AJia) has been left behind by the meta. For reference, over the span of 4 PVP seasons from Loyal (November 2023) to date, AJia has not once seen Mid-Week Top 100 usage rates >20%. During the weeks she was “strong” (4/ 40 weeks), she struggled to break ~15%. Every other week, she sits around 0% to 2%.
In the current PVP environment, it’s hard to justify using AJia when teams could instead opt to bring an extra Awakened carry, who would offer more damage and versatility for the team slot.
Jack-O
A->B
Jack-O has settled into the PVP meta as a terror-exclusive unit with limited application beyond that niche. Jack-O is amusing when she works, but she has been plagued with consistency issues that never could be mitigated.
Ultimately, Jack-O is a novel, gimmicky unit with limited application in a PVP environment. She has been downtiered to better reflect her place in the meta.
Additional Commentary
Sasha Operator Release
Sasha is the latest in meta PVP operators released on Global. As of writing, Sasha is the second most used PVP operator in KR. Certain comps (e.g. rush, terror) have benefited greatly from the introduction of Sasha. Many of these comps now see improved performance in PVP. Ratings for core characters whose performances have been improved by Sasha are gradually being adjusted to reflect their new power levels.
To briefly summarize the current state of KR operator meta, Sysop still dominates operator usage rates at the upper end of the leaderboard with ~50% usage rate on any given week. Sasha becomes the next best operator, pushing out older operators to carve a ~20% usage rate for herself.
For more information, see Sasha’s operator review: https://www.prydwen.gg/counter-side/operators/sasha
120 Level Cap Increase
As part of the recent system changes, the character level cap has increased from 110 to 120, with costs scaled by rarity. Owing to the prohibitively high costs of bringing (A)SSR characters to level 120, there will be a period of time where 110 (A)SSR characters will be fighting against 120 low-rarity characters.
In the short run, this resource shortage can create situations where less popular comps (e.g. Evolved-001) will perform better than they should. These are comps that can immediately capitalize on the changes, either because:
- The comp hinges on few core characters to do the majority of the heavy lifting
- The comp uses many low rarity characters that can be immediately leveled to 120
- The comp uses less frequently banned characters
It is difficult to anticipate how the 110-120 gap will play out in the long run.To account for the timing issue, PVP ratings will continue to assess all characters at 110.
For more information about the system, see the dev notes: https://www.counterside.com/notice/item/ct/en/tbl/notice/idx/2530/P1
Ship HP Adjustment
As part of the recent system changes, all ships received massive %HP buffs. This has heavily impacted terror comps, specialized PVP comps built around targeting the enemy ship directly.
As a result of the changes, it has become significantly harder for terror to win its unfavored/ neutral matchups (e.g. vs. RTitan-Sysop comps). Additionally, the damage requirement for these teams have been pushed to the point where many traditional terror flex picks (taken at the expense of damage) are no longer viable.
Siege comps, a slower variant of terror that uses Goliath, have been shafted by the changes. Rest in peace Siege role. Born without purpose. Raised without love. Died in obscurity.
We are closely monitoring the impact of increased ship HP on terror comp performance.
For more information about the system, see the patch notes: https://www.counterside.com/notice/item/ct/en/tbl/notice/idx/2542/P1
UP System Rework
As part of the recent system changes, the BANS & UPS system was reworked. Specifically, the UP part was to be reworked with the intention of improving unit quality and coverage.
Controversially, the cost reduction on UP was removed, removing with it the entire point of the system. Many characters are too expensive for what they provide to the team. The buffs applied to UP units are enough to make these mediocre characters relevant. To reflect this, the C tier (under the current PVP rating system) is used to hold mediocre characters on the cusp of viability that tend to see usage when they receive UP buffs.
Following the changes, the entirety of C tier would need to be emptied, and B, C, and D tiers would need to be redefined to redistribute the characters in some meaningful way. This would be less than ideal. To be blunt, usage rates across B, C, and D rated characters in a competitive context are next to non-existent.
Recently, BSide has sent out a survey to gauge community reception towards these changes. We are waiting on the results of this survey before determining next steps.
The survey can be found here: https://www.counterside.com/notice/item/ct/en/tbl/notice/idx/2567/P1
