killer instinct set potential tier list

S Tier
Aganos (Aganos is literally already an MYM set. He has a stacking mechanic, terraforming of a sort, and even has a prop weapon that he can summon. Its really ridiculous. To put it into specifics, Aganos can fill his body with boulders, which give him up to four hits of super armor, at the expense of his speed. He can also expend the boulders into creating walls behind him or the opponent, and can in turn grab the wall and start to use it as a club, which has its own set of normals. He can also use the boulders as projectiles, and can shove the club into his body in order to replenish his boulders faster. He also has a ridiculous punch move that gets enhanced if he hits an opponent through a wall. This isn't even mentioning that he's the LARGEST CHARACTER IN THE GAME, by a significant amount! He's absolutely ridiculous.)

Kan-Ra (Kan-Ra is a trap based moveset, based around placing sand pits around the stage and then using them to boost jumps, summon minions, or upgrade certain attacks. A lot of his normals are long ranged, and designed to pull opponents in close to his traps. Like, he's basically a perfect MYM set already.)

Gargos (Gargos has two unique minions, a command grab that he can use to interact with the minions, and some really good specials and normals besides that. There really isn't a whole lot else to say, he's pretty prime for a set already.)

Eyedol (Eyedol has two movesets already, which gives him a pretty incredible amount of potential. However, how he uses the two movesets is the interesting part. instead of a standard stance switching move, Eyedol will randomly switch between a heavily melee focused warrior form, and a longer range mage form. Each uses significantly different attacks, both in normals and in specials. Eyedol can even use an attack to up the chances of switching forms. He even has specific to each form that the opposite form has to fill up, giving some nice connectivity. It could be hard to implement, but I feel this would be an incredible set if done right.)

Spinal (HELL YEAH. Spinal has a really cool playstyle. Hitting with certain moves will reward him with skulls, which he can shoot at the opponent to curse them, or spend them on another attack in order to buff it a bit. Cursing an opponent will drain their shadow meter, but this can pretty easily be translated into Smash. His sword and shield also fill out any really tough moves. Also, he's a pirate skeleton.)


A Tier
Fulgore (Fulgore doesn't have the standard shadow meter system, instead he has a reactor meter. This refills at a completely set rate, and is split into 10 sections. Fulgore can use these meters to cancel a special attack directly into another special attack, unleash a powerful laser, and even gets buffs. However, using certain attacks causes the meter to fill up slower. This is a mechanic I know has been used before, probably. Well, something like it at least.)

Kilgore (Kilgore has the coolest name in existence, and his main gimmick relates to his two chaingun arms. When using his chainguns, they will start to speed up, increasing the amount of bullets the specific attacks will fire, thus upping their damage. But when the attack is used too much, Kilgore will start to overheat. This isn't actually a problem, though, because he's KILGORE! while overheated, Kilgore can fire FLAME BULLETS that set the opponent on fire, though the downside is that they have a much shorter range. Overheating also affects a number of other moves, and his set is, in general, just really awesome.)

ARIA (ARIA is another very weird, unique character. She has three different health bars, all of which need to be drained in order to defeat her. This corresponds with her three different forms, Blade, Booster, and Bass. Yes, ARIA has three different forms that she can switch between whenever she wants. This isn't an automatic switch, as her other bodies will hover around the background, and can even be called in to attack. Her Instinct mode has her combing all three together, complete with anime transformation sequence, which is incredible. Anyway, this could be an interesting use of form switching in Smash, though her abilities in each form are rather limited.)

Maya (Maya is armed with two daggers, both of which she can use as melee weapons, and as projectiles. However, the gimmick is that when she uses one as a projectile, it won't return to her, and she'll either need to catch it as its flying back, or pick it up off the ground. She can even upgrade the daggers by throwing them at a blocking opponent. The upgrades increase the movement and durability of the daggers, and she can even combine them into a single, large projectile. This could have a lot of interesting stuff in Smash, especially considering how that's a game that has items, which could have some interesting applications.)

Eagle (Eagle and Maya are like, the most boring characters on this list design wise, but they're actually super fun. Eagle's set s based almost entirely around firing arrows, but he has a limited reserve of 12. Unlike the Arbiter's gun, Eagle can pick his arrows back up so he doesn't become completely useless. But in order to make this more manageable, he ALSO has a minion, a robotic bird that he can command to pick up arrows, or attack opponents. So, he mixes a lot of fun stuff together. I really liked it.)

General RAAM (RAAM feels like a Warlord character already. He has two gimmicks relating to the locusts that surround him. The first is that he can activate a shield, which grants him super armor that lets him tank an infinite amount of projectiles, and one physical attack. He can also use the locusts as weapons, and those attacks afflict a poison status effect on the opponent as the locusts swarm around them. Other than that, he's an incredibly heavy close-up/grappler character. He feels very Warlord to me.)


B Tier
Arbiter (Is it fair that I have this guy up here when he's a character who already has a lot of potential due to being in a bunch of different games? Either way, Arbiter's main gimmick is that he has a gun that can fire a flurry of shots off, but the weapon has limited ammo. And you can't get the ammo back, so you have to use it wisely! He also has plasma sticky grenades that are also limited, but recharge, and can also summon up an energy shield to protect him. He plays a whole lot like how a Halo character would play in a 2D fighting game, its actually really weird.)

Riptor (Riptor can enter various stances, each of which grant her various different attacks. She is super cool as a concept, and her stance gimmick is great and can definitely be translated into Smash very easily, but the problem is that her special attacks just aren't that incredible. That's basically the big problem, even with fire breath.)

Hisako (Hisako is heavily based around counters, surprisingly. She has a special wrath meter that, when full, gives most of her attacks the counter-hit ability. This lets her put opponents into incredible amounts of hitstun, due to her own counter-hits being far more effective than any other character in the game. The meter also lets her cancel moves into counters or her teleport, which gives her some pretty crazy mobility. Her standard mobility is terrible, though her forward dash is great. Anyway, the counter-hit thing is really cool, but it could be hard to translate into Smash without some considerable thought.)

Shin Hisako (Shin Hisako is a slightly less interesting version of regular Hisako. She no longer has the defensive counter based playstyle, and is more aggressive. He main gimmcik is that she can summons pirit balls, which are harmless projectiles that she can hit with her katana in order to turn them into actual projectiles. She also has a teleport dash that's weird. The rest of her set is based around a series of very anime sword slashes, including the anime sword dash attack, complete with a hit delay option.)

Shadow Jago (He's a recolor, but he has an entirely different moveset. Its still not that interesting, but he has the surge mechanic, which allows him to perform an attack a second time if he has enough shadow meter, is relatively interesting... but might be hard to implement.)

Omen (Omen is so cool, but he's sadly not that interesting. His biggest gimmick is that he has three shadow meters instead of the usual two, which lets him use more shadow attacks. His other gimmicks are this incredibly short ranged intangible dash he can perform at any time, and his main special attack. This attack causes Omen to fire out a projectile, which will then behave in one of 11 different patterns. This is random, and basically makes Omen into a projectile spam character. Unfortunately, the rest of his attacks are not that interesting, which limits him a lot as a potential set.)

Jago (Jago has potential in that Ryu has potential. He's the shotoclone, and functions pretty much exactly like Ryu, but with a few modifications that actually seem to make him a lot funner to play as. But yeah, could have a set, probably would just be Ryu with a sword, though)


C Tier
Rash (Listen, Rash is awesome, and his set is awesome, but it'd be hard to directly translate into Smash. Rash's gimmick is that his light punches and kicks can go directly into combos without any other kind of opener, which isn't really something that can be put into Smash considering how different the systems are. Still, he could have a very good brawler based set, especially with his ridiculously large hitboxes and cargo carry grab. Oh yeah, he also has a tongue zipline that would make a good recovery move.)

Cinder (Cinder's two main gimmicks are that he can set fire to opponents if he combos them, and that, if he waits long enough, he'll get a power up, allowing him to use a stronger version of one of his attacks. This would be cool if his specials were more interesting. They just include a number of rather general fire attacks. His gimmicks aren't even that intensive compared to others, which limits him even more.)

Kim Wu (Kim is based heavily around melee attacks and combos, which doesn't make her stand out that much, but she does have something some other character like her don't have, a real gimmick! Whenever she uses certain attacks, Kim will create a dragon spirit. She can have up to three dragons, and can use them to perform a dash cancel. When in Instinct mode, she can even fire them like projectiles. Unfortunately, this still isn't particularly useful for making a good set.)

Mira (Vampire lady's gimmick is that using all of her actually really useful tools, be them attacks or mobility based, will cause her to damage herself, signified by sections of the health bar turning silver. I'm pretty sure I've seen this in a set before, but it doesn't help that the rest of Mira's set is really just kind of boring. Her special atatcks aren't particularly interesting, aside from the one where she summons some bugs to attack.)

Glacius (Ice powers! He doesn't do much interesting with them, but its still something to considerably work with. Has fun projectiles to work with, and a potentially interesting dodging maneuver where he melts into a puddle, but really, he is just kind of Sub-Zero.)

Thunder (Thunder is a rather standard heavyweight bruiser character, but he does have something marginally interesting going on with his dash. He has a special version that makes it intangible, which I imagine could be used for some fun things in aerials. But other than that, he mostly just hits things with his axes.)

Sadira (Sadira's entire thing is that she's very good at moving around. This is something special in regards to a regular fighter, as a lot of characters lack consistent movement tools, but in Smash it wouldn't be that impressive. She just doesn't have much to impress power wise, either, its mostly just spinning and throwing daggers.)

Sabrewulf (Sort of just a general rushdown character. He doesn't have a whole lot interesting to him, much like the other 6 starter characters. His attacks mostly consist of claw swipes and such. He could still have a set, but trying to work out a hook for him would be difficult.)


D Tier
Tusk (Tusk is a big guy with a sword. His main gimmick is that he can deflect attacks, and that doesn't refer to projectiles. When Tusk performs certain attacks, his big sword will glow for a few frames. If an opponent hits Tusk with a melee attack during that, they will stagger and be left open for hits. This is a pretty passive ability, and Tusk isn't left with much else besides that.)

TJ Combo (He's a pretty standard boxing character. He's based heavily around combos, and his specials aren't even that great... which makes him a rather poor fit for an interesting set. Besides, we already have Little Mac.)

Orchid (Her moveset is heavily combo based, which is kind of fun, but even in the game she's completely outclassed. Her most interesting attack has her turning into a fire cat, but there isn't much you can do with that in regards to the rest of the set in a Smash game.)