EFZ Tier List 2016

Recently a top Japanese player posted their own tier list opinions to Twitter along with explanation behind each character's placing. We decided to translate this information for Western players! I'd just like to thank Fireseal (@EFZ_revival) and WhiteLen (@WhiteLen_EFZ) for their work on translation - this wouldn't have been possible without them.


The tier list: https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794198843285901312

Exception:
Kanna

[S]
Mizuka, Mishio, Ayu

[A]
Mio, Unkown, Mai, Mayu, Shiori, Akiko

[A-]
Ikumi, Misaki, Akane, Kaori

[B]
Misuzu, Sayuri, Nayuki, Minagi, Doppel, Makoto

[C]
Rumi, Kano

[N]
Nayuki Asleep


The reasoning:

Mizuka:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794449865690357760
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794449900041707521

To put it bluntly she has no bad matchups (maybe a Mishio who keeps fire element 100% of the time is a bad matchup).
No matter what she hits you with midscreen, she gets a ♪ mixup afterwards, and her corner 214214A can hit you even when she's blocking, giving her many safe and consistent options.
Her normals and movement are very strong, and her notes ridiculous, leaving no real weaknesses in her game. If pressed, the only weakness she has is her large air hurtbox.
In the same way as Neyu stands out as the weakest character, Mizuka's abilities make her stand out as one of the strongest, to the point where she could even be in her own class.


Mishio:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794449945461784576
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794449974071214082

Her fire element can only be seen as unbalanced. Even in non-element or lightning mode, her overwhelming normals let her stack up an incredible number of points in matchup charts (especially against the lower ranked characters). However, other top characters have many strengths against Mishio, and oki that is strong against 623* can be tough for her if she doesn’t have fire element. Since she is weak at actively breaking the opponent’s guard, and since by just waiting she can build BIC, she has to come to terms with being patient, and that her wins will often be off an RF/BIC starter into a 2 combo kill.
Once she gets IC, there’s not really any OS that can handle both DPs, so this is another point in her favor.


Ayu:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450020606951424
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450051359653888

With 2 combos starting from 2A, or 2 okizemes/3 red IC combos, Ayu can kill every character from round start. If she has blue IC, she can okizeme into 2-combo kill any character, no matter where she hits on screen. With her float ability, she can keep herself at a near-BIC state perpetually, keeping her a threat at all times.
She has many invulnerable moves, some with 2F startup. Some with hitboxes behind her. Ones that move her forward. Can OS multiple options. Each can reach otherwise awkward spots, and at her best, she can have even more defensive reach than Mishio’s DP. Also has a ridiculously unfair air hurtbox when being comboed.
I was torn on whether to put her here or at the top of A tier, but Ayu is clearly better than anyone in A tier, so she gets put here.


Mio:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450106451775488
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450132569702400

The strongest amongst the A ranked chars. Looking at matchups she should be very close to Ayu, however, being caught in long range mode even once can be fatal, making her fall down to A rank. Her air hurtbox is pretty large, so combo drops are rare when you catch her in long range mode. Trying to negate that weakness by staying in close range mode also leaves her weaker than Ayu. However she has many moves that are almost as broken as Mizuka’s, making her really strong overall.
Can be considered A+ together with Unknown.


Unknown:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450372647481344
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450396810874880
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450424463966208

She has special moves that are great at running away, and normal moves that are great at keep away. Once she gains meter she can repeatedly lock the opponent down with 236236* (Great Migration), allowing her to steamroll her opponents. 5C into 236236* is RNG dependant, however. 2C knockdowns into 236236* oki are strong against reversals, however the number of mixups off those setups are a lot more limited. Conversely, other setups need to worry about reversals. Using her flight removes opportunities to use her BIC combos, and her average damage is on the lower side. On the defense, her jump startup has no throw invulnerability. Her normals which are strong as pokes aren’t very good in RG battles. Similarly to Mishio, she gains a lot of points in the matchup chart from blowing up the lower ranked characters. While she looks strong at playing the patient game, she actually isn’t. She still has 236236*, but the only characters who have trouble with her just doing it in neutral are the lower ranked ones.


Mai:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450454973267968
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450475420557312

Mai 1:
Every 8 seconds you can get an overhead that crushes lows or approach into IC. In a game where left/right mixups run rampant, Mai has a relatively hard to cross up body, and comes with a summon that can trade and beat invulnerable wake ups for you. These are the traits that make her appealing to play.
She has a reputation for having a lot of hard matchups, but similar to Mishio she can gain the upper hand against most melee based characters. If she can use her summon cancel well in RG battles, she can overcome her otherwise poor reward on Recoil Counters. While this is tough to do, it gives her a lot of potential.


Mayu:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450565249933312
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450656954155008

She can force mixups on the opponent just by pressing buttons.
And then of course there’s the dragon punch. Since she can double jump after an air dash, she can easily corner carry off of it, allowing her to use it instead of normals and still get a good return. As she can very easily force the opponent into making a disadvantageous read, and get solid damage no matter what she clips them with, she annoys a lot of players (aka cancer character).
Her weakness is her slow wakeup time and hurtbox, making her especially vulnerable to the powerful oki that is so prevalent in this game.
Although Mayu can easily force mixups with her moves, her options aren’t quite as safe as some of the other characters. A single accident/knockdown can spell the end for her. She might fall to a lower rank, but still has stuff like her corner crossups to keep her here.


Shiori:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450692454760448
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450758519226368

She is a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none. She has a couple of moves that stand out such as invincible moves that launch on the first hit, and a 4F normal. That the reversal starts in 8F is especially good. She is fairly strong in all respects, and also lacks any glaring weakness. As far as offense goes she attacks in combination with her snowmen, varying spacing and timing to land her throw, which, while as powerful as a command throw, has the common throw input, making it easier to land. The shorter the input the better.


Akiko:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450797283057664
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450816920743936

Recently, I’ve been thinking that her time slow (6426*) is even more unbalanced than her jB with all its overhead hits. Since she is forced to approach from the air, it is true that she has it tough when the opponent is good at anti airing. Despite that, no matter who she’s facing, once she activates time slow she gets to approach for free. Since she can easily run until she’s built up the meter for her time slow, she probably isn’t going to fall any lower in the tier list. While I had thought her strong in the match opening, without super, if the player can’t use 623C to get 4k damage, then she won’t show her true strength. In general I think that she only shows her true worth once she has built up super.


Ikumi:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450884637822976
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450919068794880

I feel that I might have rated her a bit low, but she doesn’t have any easily used special moves that launch the opponent on first hit, and with low blood/low meter/no 2426 super set, she feels rather weak. I leave her out of A tier for this reason.
If the game was forced to 3 wins, she might have made it into A tier with Akiko. She gains a lot of points for setting up clones and forcing mixups after all.
She doesn’t have quite the same level of crossup weakness as Mayu, but it’s still bad, and I felt that in itself put her too far below the other characters in A tier.
Within the A- tier, she feels a bit strong along with Misaki, and I was torn about where to put her.


Misaki:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794450966732939264
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451002321575936

If either her 5A or 2A were 4 frames, she would have been A tier. She has special moves that launch, and her firepower from a single hit is ridiculous, so her comeback potential is very high.
Without IC, her lockdown potential is fairly low, except for the 4 characters that 2C 623B works on (she has few ways to deal with low-invulnerable moves).
Even if she has blue IC, without getting a confirm off of 2C or 214C, her BIC is often wasted.
Anyway, she requires a sense for when to 2C, and for each 2C that’s blocked, the match becomes harder.
Her counter is awkward to use, making it roughly on par with Misuzu’s.


Akane:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451036358311936
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451059871608832

The bottom of A- tier. I was torn on whether to toss her and Misuzu into B+ tier, but I’ll touch on that later.
Her neutral game is strong. She can use her attack level 3 moves (jC) to create a very hard to see left/right, and isn’t affected by certain character’s hard-to-crossup bodies.
Her damage is low, and her combos are prone to drops. Sure, you want to set up mirrors and jump to the top of the screen to make the left/right hard to see… but you have no meter, as usual.
With that said, she’s fairly close to Misuzu in a lot of ways, and I may be mistaken in putting her above Misaki.


Kaori:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451138313490433
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451227840888832

If only she had Dictator’s slide. She’s pretty similar to Misaki.
When she has blue IC, she can just throw out 5C or 214C and get damage off of them.
Her pressure is decent without IC, but she has no real dash, so she can get mashed out of her pressure and overheads frequently.
When she gets a hit, her damage can make up for a lot of her weaknesses, but she has even more trouble with character specific combos to her Firestorm (214214) than Misaki does with her Downburst (j236236) (the damage difference between meter and meterless is huge).
She takes a lot of risks, but the damage on her returns makes up for it. Her cyclone loops are also tough and prone to drops.


Misuzu:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451263286951936
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451291787300864

Would have been higher if this was set to 3 wins. Probably would have been bottom of A- or in B+ tier.
Has some pretty good moves here and there. Maybe as many as Akane. Her most glaring weakness is her 2B is 8F. She becomes stronger just by sitting next to one of her traps blocking.
The power of her feathers is legit, so it depends a lot on if you can survive round 1.
If you use EX traps often, you won’t get BIC combos. Probably second on her list of worries when she doesn’t have meter for feathers.
Around this point, the weaknesses of characters start to become more noticeable.


Sayuri:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451352201986048
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451374029189121

First of all, because of bugs she doesn't start on an even footing with other chars. Especially since the vast majority of them are to her detriment.
For advantageous bugs, her IC is 2F to her advantage, and her air throw trades/freezes the opponent when playing 2P.
As for disadvantageous ones, for starters her stand RG lasts 2F longer overall. She's forced into her standing hit animation on taking level 1 attacks while crouching. If she gets hit standing she always recovers with her standing animation, regardless of what direction she's holding during hitstun. She cannot block or RG on her first two airborne frames in a jump. She needs 4F before being able to act after a double jump instead of the usual 1F.
Her tactics are also very straightforward. Hitting 623A when the opponent is in the corner. If she's in the corner then hoping to land 426C. At least she has her ☆ crossup mixups.
Her invincible moves are pretty good against most characters, and she also has a command throw. She has decent meterless combos, and unlike Misuzu and Misaki her counters are strong.
She's pretty good overall amongst the B ranks.


Nayuki:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451419222851584
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451445198135296

If she always had ES meter, and her opponent's wakeup was the same as Mio’s, she would be strong.
While she's commonly seen as a high damage character, her damage output is still lower than Misaki's or Kaori's.
Being able to combo off her 4F 623A is excellent. She has strong moves here and there, such as her -6F dash C and her air to air jB.
One of her obvious weak points is that only a few characters are susceptible to her Snow Rabbit oki off a Super Nayuchan Kick knockdown. Using 623C outside of BIC is also difficult. The more you delve into her moves the more their shortcomings stand out.


Minagi:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451481332043777
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451505080193024
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451592984469505

I wish Michiru would be a little more flexible with where she stands.
Though she gets a lot of flak for having a rather weak move set, when it comes to combos she is actually fairly strong, and gains points just for that.
An easy example of one of her weak points is when she gets RGed. Since her B buttons have such short reach, she’s forced to press her C buttons. You could try using stance cancels, but at that point the RG battle is already decided. It’s possible to use it in mindgames for a whiff option though.
She has few lows, so her ability to control the opponent’s RG is very poor. Her A buttons are 5F and hit mid, and really stands out against opponents with 4F moves.
When she has Michiru and the opponent in the corner, her real strength can be seen. But in order to even get there, you’ll have to do things like waste several EX tickets and win on the oki afterwards as well.
It takes her too long to get to her strong mixup options, and often, the battle ends before you can even get there.


Doppel:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451641147625473
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451702233468928

Her lack of good midscreen combos drags her down.
So even if she gets a left/right mixup with jC, the damage afterwards is pitiful. The only really good one is if you leave a little bit of room in the corner and use typhoon to change sides if you end up in the corner.
Leaving aside what happens afterwards, I had at first thought that you couldn’t get much off of air-to-air battles. If you happen to have IC, which she’s good at waiting for, you can actually get a fair bit of damage off of them.
She’s strong on the ground. Her C command throw’s range leaves something to be desired, but other than that, I can’t think of much else that I’m dissatisfied with.
I think her potential could grow with effort put in.


Makoto:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451734626123776
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451757334048768

For a trap character, she's pretty strong at forcing the opponent back with her j2C, dash 2C and fB.
Unlike Nayuki she's good at Recoil Counters so her 623C is pretty decent.
Although she has upper/lower body invulnerability 623*’s that launch on hit, 623A is a bit disappointing since it's not invulnerable from frame 1, and it's hard to convert from.
When you try to use her you notice that the short range of her normals is a real problem. Her 412C projectiles are strong but using them really lowers her damage output.
If she had a couple more strong mixups off her projectiles/traps she could be a tier stronger.


Rumi:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451785641435137
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451814565281792
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451866625003520

Her delayed homerun timing has a lot of points to talk about.
To put it simply, it’s not just about when you press B, you also have to blindly input 236 from neutral at the right time, leaving the timing on this move rather unstable.
And you don’t just have to learn the delayed timing, if you RG, you have to do the normal homerun timing. This led me to put her in C tier, though I wondered if the bottom of B tier would have been a better place.
Other than that, you have to deal with the opponent using low risk moves, while you’re stuck with only high-risk options.
Her damage is high, but it’s coupled with the instability of the homerun timing, so I can’t really say the reward is worth the risk.

※For home run, you cannot pre-input 623* during the toss up. When 15 frames passes (the input window for DPs), it immediately turns into 236 in the input buffer and may mess up the timing. Because of this, you have to be relatively precise when you input things.


Kano:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451897872584704
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794451914914078720

I’m just guessing but I think that her weakness comes from the trade off between access to spells, 236D and charge cancel. She wants access to 236D, so cannot keep a full magic gauge. However her supers are vital for her damage, so she needs her magic gauge almost full, so that the spells charge fast enough for the combos to connect. This in turn weakens her charge cancel pressure, as she cannot charge cancel many times before the magic meter fills up. As there are only very few Kano players, her rank is just going by superficial impressions. She might in reality be as weak as Neyuki, on the other hand she might also be stronger than I think.


Nayuki Asleep:
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794452010506416128
https://twitter.com/72_49_74/status/794452035785539584

More often than not, as soon as the match starts, you get knocked down three times and can never jam up again. If you can outlast the opponent and build up BIC and meter, you can possibly make a comeback, but even if you spend a full BIC you can, at most, get 1 or 2 jam back, leaving her chances for recovery slim. I’m not sure she has a matchup in her favor, so I put her in dead last. Even if she gets 9 jam, she’d be around A- tier with Misaki and Ikumi, but weaker than Akiko, I think.