Borg Tier List

[juggernaut]

Well if you disagree with me on that the 3 dragons i listed are game breakers i would love to hear why. I think theyre the equivalent of akuma in sf2, the best and most viable way to fight one would be with another one.

[MeAmCryzor]

Wait. So your saying that the borgs with the highest cost in the game that you can put in your team legally (i.e. without hacking, glitching or cheating) happen to be the best borgs in the game and for this your saying their broken?

If that happened on every game, there would be no gaming community. It's like saying

On pokemon; 'Hai, Mew is more powerful than squirtle! Evidently he's overpowered because I don't know how to make him work to my advantage'

On any shooting game; 'This isn't fair. The guns which cost more are more powerful than the ones that are cheap. Waaa, I'm going to cry about the game being unfair'

To sum up. The big dragons are unstoppable because they cost 1500 which is 3 times as much as an average borg cost.



Edit: Inappropriate name calling is a no-go - Admin

[Admin]

^ Though your statement is true, more lenient word regarding other members is in order.

[juggernaut]

They cost the highest, but they are also the most cost efficient.

People say cyber ninja, blade wing, flame ninja, gatling gunner, beam tank, machine red, pff, so many borgs are strong too right? Put all of these on one team vs 1 flame dragon and id give the advantage to the dragon. I think the only thing that can possibly survive the x blast on that team would be machine red, while b blast would still knock him on his rear. All of those borgs cost way more than the dragon, but still dont have a chance. Lol, the xblast that kills cyber ninja would probably still be active when blade wing spawns and either kill him too or at least wreck his health, making him fodder for a b blast

"well gee, none of those borgs are good against flame dragon, rotten example"

Then who is good against a flame dragon, for its cost? Metal hero, samurai shogun, beam gunner are all totted as being dragon killers, but against a human theyd be dead before they could activate their attack. You could have 10 shogun on 1 team, and not 1 of them could get their attack off.

The only thing i can think of that can touch dragons are fortresses, off the top of my head. They dont flinch, so a dragon cant just keep tripping them up. They have the highest health and good damage so they can actually hurt the dragon before it dies. Fortresses die in like 2-3 x blasts though, with some variable amount of b blasts between those. This doesnt make fortresses a match, only the 1 thing i can think of that can hang around enough to do damage.

Pokemon is a bad example since there is a broken tier (like im proposing here) and the pokemon are wildly imbalanced.

The price system also doesnt balance this game. Its wildly imbalanced like pokemon, at least at the extremes. 30 roaches will never beat a revolver gunman, 10 normal ninjas will never beat one anubis wing.

[MeAmCryzor]

(Sorry, Admin, I went a bit over the top, it wont happen again )

What do you mean, 30 roaches will never beat a revolver gunman? Of course they will if a skilled player is using them.

10 normal ninjas vs. one anubis wing? You need to check your maths but I can beat an anubis wing with a single normal ninja.

Now to the point. If you pit a dragon against a borg with a similar cost or multiple borgs equalling the cost, the dragon may win. But it would also probably lose if the player behind those other borgs is skilled enough to use them properly.

If I were against myself, 3 Neo G Reds on one side and the dragon on the other, it would definitely be a close match.

And, hey, even if the dragons are the best borgs in the game, as I said before, they cost the most, so players barely get to use them.

And even if they didn't cost the most, you don't expect every borg to be balanced do you? You don't actually think that death borg Nu should have a good chance against the Galactic Emperor or Sirius? If you do so, then that's your problem, not ours. I doubt anyone agrees with you so we should stop this argument as everyone has feelings against you (and if someone does in fact agree with Juggers, then I plainly invite them to start another flame war against me)

[juggernaut]

Flame war? Im pretty sure thats when multiple people are spitting insults at each other, not just the one.

It sounds like your experience with fighting dragons comes from the cpu, or at least from players who havent got the hang of them.

Revolver gunman has so many advantages over a roach it is ridiculous. If we're talking about two humans here, a human has no way to take advantage of 30 roaches against one gunman, it becomes a shooting gallery for the gunman. if 1 roach couldnt do anything, why could 30? Maybe you could do something to one of your friends new to the game, or the cpu, but that isnt the point here.

Against a human anubis wing, 10 ninja dont have a chance, let alone 1. With anubis and any wing borg you can really twist an opponents arm when they dont have any viable long range weapons. You can abuse the hell out of the huge arenas, and use the shooting while x gliding trick to make you next to impossible to hit. Since ninja have no viable long range weapons and anubis wing has position, speed and range dominance, the ninja will fall, even if it took a while to eat through 10 of them.

The same idea can be applied to dragons, but they could fight 10 of just about any borg and have no counters. Normally i would say status changing borgs like pop honey and bug witch are counters, but a tier list is all about the metagame, and those borgs shouldnt be able to get a shot off before being obliterated against a human dragon at the metagame.

The reason i think your experience with dragons is limited to the cpu is by this comment

"If I were against myself, 3 Neo G Reds on one side and the dragon on the other, it would definitely be a close match."

With neo g red, most of your money goes into survivability and good stats in everything else. A borg with only good speed can not close the distance with a dragon. If the first one cant, the other two wont either, theres no reason to think they could. The first will probably die within the first attack, not the first attack that connects, i mean the first attack that is even launched. So in this tiny amount of time, ngred has done 0 or very little damage, how are the next two ngreds going to be able to fare any better? They wont, thats why this borg is broken.

If no one used akuma in sf2, it wouldnt mean he is any less the most broken character in that game.

I didnt expect every borg to be balanced, i didnt even insinuate that. The whole thing im saying here is that a certain 3 borgs are too strong to be grouped with other borgs.

a straw man argument

If everyone disagreed with me, it wouldnt make a flame dragon any less of the broken borg it is. You could all think milk came in bags, or you were abducted by aliens, or if you wanted to you could lift 10 million tons, it wouldnt make you right.

Now i havent seen any specific example to how any borg can actually deal with a human dragon at the metagame. The closest ive seen to an actual example is dogmantras cyberninja strategy, but it doesnt work against this human metagame i keep bringing up. Ive given specific examples as to how a dragon would deal with like 95% of the games borgs. The only other borgs that could use a modified strategy when fighting against them are fortresses and other dragons.

I dont see what is difficult to understand here. Gotcha force was never designed as a competitive game, the game has over 200 characters too. Much smaller, more refined, competitive games have balance issues, if you acknowledge that, it should be no surprise that one like this would exist in this game, especially concerning boss characters.

[Deleted]

Something inside me hates tier lists..... Just flat out despises them. Sorry, but I can't really contribute.

[Admin]

Nov 19, 2009 21:23:59 GMT @antarescommander said:

Something inside me hates tier lists..... Just flat out despises them. Sorry, but I can't really contribute.

Quote of the Month.

[MeAmCryzor]

Juggers, I'm a nice guy and I don't like to argue and to be honest I couldn't be arsed reading your last post so I guess that it was something about me being wrong. Anywho, the simple fact is I disagree with you and I'll never change my opinion, especially for a foreign jonny that I will never meet so basically I refuse to retalliate ergo the argument ends.

[juggernaut]

Ah, the perfect way to end an argument. Instead of debate intelligently, share ideas and hammer out details, lets get red faced, stick our fingers in our ears and lalalalalalalala, im not listening.

I guess you dont understand the point of discussing tiers when you simply drop your point and refuse to discuss, or defend it.

[MeAmCryzor]

No, its just that when I posted that comment it was 0:44 am

Now that I've read it though, I do see your point, although I still stand firmly by mine.

[yuurei]

Not taking sides or anything but juggs... i have the ultimate dragon killer. SAPPHIRE KNIGHT. The damn near impossible to kill, ultimate knight of death, doom, and occasional destruction.

Shield blocks X or B from any dragon, Saph Knight's X is hard to dodge as a freakin normal sized borg let alone a giant dragon. Plus it does good damage, though with a dragons high Defense it would take awhile.

Then for wing borg's, again Saph Knight is stupidly hard to kill without melee. Anubis wing charged B blast thingy can be blocked without much trouble. The shooting while X-Dashing thing is again easily blocked. Melee is the hardest thing to block with a shield and if a wing borg tries to get in close they get smacked with a barrage of lasers, and optionally a lance laser.

Therefore Saph Knight can, with alot of patience, kill almost anything without much trouble.

Note

I feel we should go one borg at a time for this tier list. Each dragon has its own strength, For example ice dragon (Or whatever) can freeze you if it hits you with it's B blast or if it steps on you. Meanwhile elec dragon (Or whatever it's called) will send you flying away if it hits you with its B blast or if it steps on you. What do you think is more useful? Freezing or Shocking? I would go with freezing because then you can hit them with your X attack and wreck their health.

Also i love how this thread turned out! it's always nice to watch a good argument.

[juggernaut]

As far as shields go i cant comment on them since im terrible with them and i dont have any friends who like to use them.

Alright, you say a shield can be used to effectively nullify almost any borgs long range attacks. Ill take your word for it for the sake of this discussion, but solid evidence is what would put any concerns to rest on shields.

If this is true i would not immediately list sapphire knight as a dragon killer until further testing is done. Dragons still can fight from the top of the arena, directly above a knight where x blast and b blast can come in at strange angles since the borgs will be constantly orientating themselves to face one another. Could a knight at top shield proficiency handle this? I dont know, i dont know anyone i can test this with. The other thing is that the sapphire knight can only use its basic shot to do damage. As soon as it lifts its shield for its x blast, a dragon could greet it with an x blast of its own, ending the knight. This doesnt change tier position if its possible to block 100% of a dragons attacks though, it just means killing one would take a while. I think this is a better alternative to dieing though.

Also, although we are discussing the metagame where all players are assumed to be at the best anyone can be, it should be noted that a knight would take much more skill to use effectively than a dragon. This wouldnt change the tier list, but it is always a good idea to study skill floors and skill ceilings, and the space between them. Specifically, if a sapphire knight cant block just 1 of dozens of critical attacks, while only using one attack (the shot that lets you keep your shield up) to eat away at a dragons gigantic health, the knight wont compare to a player who can block 100% of attacks. It is important to bring these skill ceilings to light when discussing tiers since most people reading the tiers arent at the metagame and dont reap the rewards of metagame skill.

For plasma dragon specifically, i dont think his b blast can be blocked. I havent seen it happen, ive never been able to do it either. I always figured the lighting effect that accompanies the blast could go through shields.

The reason i grouped plasma dragon, blizzard dragon and flame dragon together is because their performance against the majority of borgs doesnt change between them.

Plasma dragon sends out a shock wave whenever it takes a step. It does the least damage out of the 3 with its b blast and x blast, but that difference is tiny. It costs the most.

Blizzard dragon freezes enemies with its attacks. It can also freeze by stepping on enemies, but doesnt have a shock wave. It does more damage than plasma dragon, but less damage than flame dragon with its b and x attacks. While frozen, enemies have a much higher damage resistance. This doesnt seem to provide any benefit in 1v1.

Flame dragon is the cheapest dragon that does the highest damage with its shots. It doesnt seem to have any special abilities like blizzard and plasma do.

[Dogmantra]

Nov 19, 2009 21:06:35 GMT @juggernaut said:

The closest ive seen to an actual example is dogmantras cyberninja strategy, but it doesnt work against this human metagame i keep bringing up.

I admit, it's not optimal, but then I don't make pretensions: I probably suck at this game compared to you guys. However, it works like rocket launcher tag: hit first and you win.

When you get into the meta for a lot of games, it turns into rocket launcher tag. Part of the reason I think you reckon dragons are so overpowered is because they are built for playing tag with nukes, rather than rolled up newspapers: if you can hit first, then you can keep hitting and stop them from even having a chance to get back.

[loopy]

Please dun fight ^^

I havent read much because their so much but i've read a little.

Lets say their was 2 of me, both equally as good at Gotcha. I think cost would and wouldn't be irrelevent. For example 1 Revolver Gunman would own 30 Roaches, regardless of skill. But i'd probably be able to beat a Dragon using a Sigma II no matter how good my other self was. Confusing i know >.<'

Basically, i think it's only about cost in some circumstances.

[njayhuang]

I'm not a big dragon user, so going by what juggernaut says, it looks like big dragons go in top/banned tier.

I'm a bit hesitant on banning them completely since I can see some difficulties against wing borgs or borgs with high speed. Wing borgs could use their speed and fly behind a large dragon, making it useless.

Opinions about small dragons anyone? The way I see it, large dragons are good because of their unflinchability and huge power working together. If a large dragon gets hit by a powerful attack, it can just send back another shot. For a small dragon, a single flinching attack would just start a cycle of flinching attacks.

I would post more, but it's time for dinner.

[juggernaut]

Well, when fighting friends flinching is when the tables turn. During recovery time, the downed borg will get a free hit if the other borg doesnt make some distance.

Small dragons flinch, but i feel not so often as normal borgs, so spamming melee is out of the question.

Small dragons are very similiar to normal dragons, so a lot of the strategy remains the same, only the small dragon has less staying power. They can still breath boost, kill a lot of borgs in one hit, but everything they do is in less capacity. I feel these borgs are more balanced for their price, they have half the health of their cost, but trade that for a lot of damage potential.

Small dragons still dominate long range id say, but as soon as a borg can get above one, or start forcing one to strafe it loses a lot of steam. Its no slouch in close range, this is a 1000gp borg were talking about here, it still detonates b blasts in its neck, but the damage is reduced and not nearly as much of a problem compared to a big dragons b blast.

So, im actually having trouble articulating myself right now so ill just list some points.
Whats strong about them:
- still do devastating damage with x breath
- still big borgs that have a wide field of view
- ability to fly and glide
- ability to breath boost
- can still defend itself in close range

Whats weak about them:
- low health for price
- b blast still strong, but no longer the wrecking ball it was
- although big, still much shorter than big dragons, more realistic to fly above one
- flinches, hurting position dominance and allows other player to setup
- moves slower while walking/flying/gliding, gets less distance with breath boosting

I also think thunder dragons and ice dragons special abilities could help them compared to their big counterparts.

B blasts do a good chunk of damage, but they arent the small dragons killing weapon. It would be better if this had some sort of utilty. Ice and thunder dragons ice and thunder should be able to give them breathing room and allow for some setup when needed.

[The Regal RP Mod]

well ice and thunder dragons are in my mind better than the large guys. (for one thing you can easily use them against GE)

BUUUUUT In my mind for cost effectiveness you cant really beat cyber ninja. strong, fast( fastest in game actually a full 10 in speed.) and hits hard in both range and melee. You are right though. with MOST borgs, style and skill determines effectiveness. for example. i have, in fact, COMPLETELY DESTROYED the dragons in the dragon's den, using my DEATH FORCE. pathetic borgs, vs. BIG DRAGONS? if this was a comp fight, dragons would win. but i beat them by pretty much abusing DB Beta 2's X shot. flinch the dragons and they cant hit me.

[loopy]

Nov 21, 2009 3:37:52 GMT The Regal RP Mod said:

well ice and thunder dragons are in my mind better than the large guys. (for one thing you can easily use them against GE)

BUUUUUT In my mind for cost effectiveness you cant really beat cyber ninja. strong, fast( fastest in game actually a full 10 in speed.) and hits hard in both range and melee. You are right though. with MOST borgs, style and skill determines effectiveness. for example. i have, in fact, COMPLETELY DESTROYED the dragons in the dragon's den, using my DEATH FORCE. pathetic borgs, vs. BIG DRAGONS? if this was a comp fight, dragons would win. but i beat them by pretty much abusing DB Beta 2's X shot. flinch the dragons and they cant hit me.

Im like you. I don't think what makes a borg good is how many other borgs it can beat. I think what makes a borg good is how good it is all round. Good speed, cost, HP and attack matter in my opinion. Take Anubis Wing. It's flying ability alone makes it really good. Then it has all good attacks (In my opinion) and good HP. It can even take a blast from Ultimate Cannon/Death ICBM. It doesn't cost too much either. I think its well worth its cost.

[juggernaut]

I too think a lot of borgs are good, especially considering their cost. The thing is, how fast/resilient/strong a borg is doesnt make up for being able to get 1 shot at the start of the match, from across the arena, from an attack that registers exactly where youre pointing it at.

Remember that you dont want borg preference, or effectiveness vs. a cpu to influence where on the tier list it belongs.

I actually want to talk about planet heros placement. I think he could handle death borg sigma II and slow valkyrie easily.

Planet hero is very quick and has incredible melee, with a decent shot but its not the best. I think he is capable of running down wing borgs like slow valkyrie and dbsII and dispatching them quickly.

I think slow valkyrie shouldnt even be in top. There is too much reliance on landing that one, dodgeable attack. Its hard to hit anything thats watching for it, and her b shot cant keep up with the better shots most high tier borgs have. In 1v1 i dont think she is very strong, what do you think?