PVP Tier List Update
It is time for regular PVP tier list maintenance. The primary objectives of this update are to:
- Assign ratings for new units and operators
- Adjust ratings for characters affected by recent balance update
- Adjust ratings for characters and operators to reflect shifts in the meta
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.
Operator Commentary
Operator metagame is finally settling in. It’s time to shuffle them around again.
Agnes Abigail
🡒D
Agnes’s Command Skill, while novel mechanically, lacks impact required to enable a sniper-heavy team. There is no reason to ever play this operator.
S Tier Operators
The Big Three. Sasha, Sysop and Asha each support a variety of playstyles and see widespread adoption.
Sasha is the overall strongest operator in the game, Sysop fits slower striker lead teams (e.g. RTitan, Lin Xien, Awakened Yuna) and Asha covers teams that focus on early burst (e.g. Awakened Regina).
A Tier Operators
Two strongest and largely interchangeable sniper-oriented operators trail closely behind the best operators in the game. Olivie is generally a stronger choice, but, if metagame features a lot of backline threats, Yuppie’s shields protect expensive squishy snipers from their natural predators.
B Tier Operators
Those operators are viable, but either heavily depend on weekly metagame or support a very limited number of teams (sometimes both).
C And Below Tier Operators
All operators not mentioned above aren’t worth the opportunity cost of not running the higher rated operators. You can have fun with C-rated ones if you have them built for some reason, but building them for PVP purposes is not advised.
ASSR Commentary
Lucia Ridge
B🡒A
Lucia Ridge received one of the biggest buffs in the history of Counterside. Her durability was essentially doubled… and she is still mediocre. Lucia’s kit is simply too weak and lack of Valid Hit Absorption on a 6 cost frontline tank is a massive detriment to overall team viability.
Great Silence Ecclesia
SSS🡒SS
Ecclesia is an absurdly powerful unit, but her weaknesses are very pronounced. Buff removal, skill seal and cooldown damage effects let prepared teams deal with her very early into the game.
Gerard Curian
SS🡒SSS
Gerard Curian commands the game whenever he is free. Curian supports a wide variety of playstyles, making it really hard to tech against him. Sasha, Asha, Yuppie and Olivie operators enable radically different Curian teams, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. It is almost impossible to make a team that performs well against all viable Curian setups.
Solar Codex Yuna Springfield
S🡒A
Yuna is falling further and further into obscurity. Rayleigh didn’t scale well into 120 metagame due to not inheriting limit breaks, and her personal defensive stats are too low to survive in the hostile frontline environment.
Singularity Shin Jia
B🡒C
Shin Jia just doesn’t offer enough for the cost in a modern fast paced metagame.
Sniper Balance Update
April 8th patch featured a balance update to several underpowered snipers. While most of those buffs didn’t accomplish much and just made slightly overrated units into reasonably rated ones, there were two winners.
For detailed changelist, see following blog post:
Noelle Wright
B🡒A
While Noelle’s buff was on a smaller side, it was discovered that she is probably the best cheap sniper to lead for Olivie Park operator purposes. Outside of that niche she doesn’t have much reason to exist, but this is a strong way to enable awakened defender-based teams.
Judy Swift
D🡒B
Judy’s buff increased Amethyst Snow passive stance damage by roughly 150%. This brought her damage output up from pathetic to absurdly high, provided she is in said stance.
As the only way to get into the stance is Ultimate Skill, the most consistent way to enable it is using manual ult functionality to save ultimate for the redeploy after she backsteps. While a big investment in both time and DP, her raw damage output can be worth it.
Notable SSR Commentary
Katharina
🡒B
Katharina landed as a surprisingly reasonable buffer option, mostly tied to supporting fury units (Awakened Karin Wong to be precise). Her hyped debuff immunity gimmick fails to find a consistent use case, but when it works it works very well.
Lee Yuri
S🡒A
Lee Yuri is a strong and consistent anti-counter ranger damage dealer. Unfortunately there are enough non-counter frontline units in the game.
Honorable Mentions
Overperformers
Those units are performing above their current placement, but it’s hard to justify moving them up a full tier.
Underperformers
Those units perform below level expected from their current placement. While not enough to move them down, they are likely candidates for future patches.
