Paladins Design tier list
I like design I don't mean visial design because that falls under your previews of being gay and though I've kissed more boys than most of you will ever kiss women combined I'm also not a butter butthole bottom bitch boy, I'm talking about design of function like how do I make the players clicking on the bad guys feel good or making healing not suck taint. That kind of thing is what I like and like absorbing into my brain because I'm weird and have a fetish for absolutely min-maxxing human suffering
Anyways so ground rules:
1)This based as much as possible on actual development decisions that aren't balance based number changes, and for anyone confused don't worry it doesn't get better eat the bugs or learn my language, as such I'll treat most forms of stats in arbitrary Light, Medium, and Heavy values and other means of making sure this ages slightly better
2) I will be going from the bottom up because that's where I put the "Bloated" characters and I want to talk about them first, and skipping around would make me sound more autistic than I am
3)This will not be impacted by the champions place in the meta that's what a normal tierlist is for
4) Because I am Elohim aka One/God/Allah/Gabe Newell/RNJesus/YHWH/The Nameless Deity(stupid title btw fuck you)/Any other deity you worship therefore everything I say is the undeniable truth, if you disagree with me I'll personally join a troop of lowland gorrilas to beat you to death with monkey wrenches and we will start with your mouth so you can't even correct me
5) And they're not ordered within tier because I can't be fucked
BLOATED "tier"
Idfk if it's a tier but it's definitely a category and here we have Nyx and Azaan
Nyx is probably the less problematic of the two, she's got 3 different moving parts attached to one damn ability and 12+ interections with it, and a hamfisted passive, in the desprate attempt to make another point tank
Azaan meanwhile has a passive that does the following: Increases both by dealing and taking damage to ANYTHING that's not a shield, grants dr as it's fuckin filled, once it reaches a certain level it: increases your damage, gives your primary a secondary AoE blast, alters your abilities, with cards it: heals you based on the amount of resource used which has different values for each ability, and another card that heals you for using an ability when above a certain threshold, and if you use tempering I swear to god we do this but in base kit too so the funny cross comes up at the same rate as if the cool down wasn't already a joke.
All this and we haven't gotten around to the fact Azaan's dash has a stun system that on top of the stun of the actual dash increases the stun if you collide with a wall but also increases the stun duration of his stun if it's used on his own wall or how with tempering his Cross becomes incredibly easy to hit but you can do tech to make it easier.
if that was a bitch to read that's on purpose because Azaan has everything in the entire fucking game and somehow people still struggle to get value out of him, even I can play him and I'm a looping if statement turned Ai that's rewarded the more I make people suffer from my actions
As a whole I don't know where the hell to behin disecting Azaan from his ass backwards fucked kit but I do know his ultimate is really good at leaving fights because the end lag takes forever to do anything with
Bad Design tier
This is where ideas are visible and are understandable without having to resolve itself by giving every ability 30 side effects because I'm already concussed from my own frustration I don't need another from being gangle gut fucked by azaan's glowstick dick
So let's talk about Yag because she's more interesting and I guess the vore-fetish worm has to be more interesting than the 4 riflemen in the damage role, Yagorath has two distinct forms these forms basically act as different characters except one is missing something the other has, and I guess that's the issue Yagorath is entirely designed around her bulk, and immunities and yet they've slowly preened her of substanial drawbacks to this design
And if you're not following the big fucking worm doesn't have proper counter play for 1v1s
And when she spends a substantial part of her gameplay with Heavy DR and can use even heavier DR as an ability I'm starting to think that Yag used DR as a crutch for her weaknesses to the point they became her identity and all this
Her ultimate is also pretty stupid since it does what Khan's does except even more frustratingly so as it seems to waste the time given to actually counter it by being still attached to DR, can have it's health upgraded and already counters most of the cast that aren't Omen and abled to be blocked and made uncounterable for little to no effort beyond finding what walls you can abuse.
Torvald is easier to talk about since unlike yag who while not bloated still has a lot going on in one kit.
Torvald's issue is he's consistently paradoxical in almost every shape and form, his entire kit is countered by items you're usually buying thus you make him shit but if that's not then you're buying it for one character meaning he's getting plenty of economic value, his entire kit bully's new players who don't understand how to counter him but otherwise his ability to play is gimped the second people do.
And almost any balance around him has to balance around two different ideas The Support and The Offtank both at odds with eachother because nerfing one makes the other more viable but likely that one is probably worse version of something else, but a buff intended for just one buffs both sides regardless and so you're having to again slowly gimp one side or another of his gameplay (if not both)
Meh Design Tier
There's only Khan here, like am I sure someone will enjoy him yeah but there's a few gripes I have with him
Khan's big problem is that he's kinda been stripped of other possible playable identities over the years and his kit has been smacked around multiple times in ways that barely addresses his problems or make them worse and really only has one play style worth putting the effort in and that's storm of Bullets Khan Khan feels the least like a Paladins champion because of how almost all of his play styles pale in comparison to shoot good mode Khan.
Of course in this playstyle he's got solid tools and solid weaknesses it's just a lot of people find his non-damage tools frustrating because of storm of bullets being the "good one"
Ok Design Tier
We got like a decent amount of guys with traits that aren't shit, but some pretty shit traits too that aren't by design.
Makoa's first and I'll commend Evil mojo for looking at road hog and deciding that the best way to make a character like that is by not allowing the tank to insta kill combo Squishies before running off and surviving a nuke, at the same time Makoa faces a lot of the same problems as Khan with the only difference it's not yet to the point he's only got one play style it's rather just one part of his kit everything else is designed to crush the kneecaps of
Makoa afforsed very few luxuries that's because his hook is some gnarly CC but it also means a lot of his play styles are more or less different ways you approach the hook being used which don't get me wrong with the recent changes actually have been getting better with the ult talent having some value
Fernando is a rectangle a lot of the time or he's just not a rectangle, his play styles live in such an aggressive distance from each other that while nice there's a pretty clear desire for Aegis to be the shield talent however everything else only getting the shield set to 3500 throws away the idea the inbuilt shield in the first place I don't have a shield I picked up barik and flayed his skin over my shield you're welcome for that image in your head otherwise Fernando's doing good!
Terminus is a melee champion in a game with fps guns, and unlike marvel rivals which has some rather batshit mobility, bulk, having your cake and eating it, and also other melee characters for these guys to enjoy smacking around from the get go Term doesn't
Great Design
Now to the good shit
Raum has a gimmick, one gimmick to make him bulkier, however unlike Yagorath, Torvald, and Azaan it's not batshit insane permanent DR, shields, etc it's effectively overhealth, and his entire kit is balanced around the idea that despite his health he's easy to gun down with firepower and punishes poor play if he makes a mistake, there's a back and forth when fighting raum as his damage and health make a big timer he's running down as he's trying to get you and he has tools both to cheat/accelerate the timer and you have tools like CC to prolong it a small issue is how his talents lack originality
Ash is here to send you to a different spot, she bullies squshies and that's hard to fault with one flaw being some odd quirks like her self slow with rarely any particularly unfair tools.
Atlas you know side note I'm actually surprised how few bugs Atlas has, you'd expect him using his abilities would crash people or send servers reeling with this games history of making using your weapon impossible as Betty and Buck, that aside Atlas has a lot of unique tools without any being bloated novelety, the only issue is his cards rarely are changed due to many just being poorly thought out.
Flawless Design
Now when I say flawless I mean they're designed wel in their purpose not nesicarily good in the meta side of things, and funnily enough people have that confusion for Barik, he's designed well he's just not good.
Ruckus is a great place to start because Ruckus is entirely focused on being a offtank, his guns his mobility his fucking guns, and all around his kit was was always made to do off tanking stuff and very little is close fit for point tanking and this is by design and honestly I think that's owed to his inbuilt vertical dash being a thing
Inara always kinda stood as a really good idea of how a point tank can do roles outside of standing on Point. You can go off point make substantial space, chasing and killing shit isn't hard especially with your walls and Cripple
Barik is a point tank with almost everything about him being designed around that, his abilities aren't going to help you chase anyone running away, and his burst isn't absurd, but he's designed to be entirely brutal to fight point to point for other tanks with his turrets and damage output... In theory atleast. That's the big issue design sometimes just doesn't cut it when it comes to characters being good in game.
I like design I don't mean visial design because that falls under your previews of being gay and though I've kissed more boys than most of you will ever kiss women combined I'm also not a butter butthole bottom bitch boy, I'm talking about design of function like how do I make the players clicking on the bad guys feel good or making healing not suck taint. That kind of thing is what I like and like absorbing into my brain because I'm weird and have a fetish for absolutely min-maxxing human suffering
Anyways so ground rules:
1)This based as much as possible on actual development decisions that aren't balance based number changes, and for anyone confused don't worry it doesn't get better eat the bugs or learn my language, as such I'll treat most forms of stats in arbitrary Light, Medium, and Heavy values and other means of making sure this ages slightly better
2) I will be going from the bottom up because that's where I put the "Bloated" characters and I want to talk about them first, and skipping around would make me sound more autistic than I am
3)This will not be impacted by the champions place in the meta that's what a normal tierlist is for
4) Because I am Elohim aka One/God/Allah/Gabe Newell/RNJesus/YHWH/The Nameless Deity(stupid title btw fuck you)/Any other deity you worship therefore everything I say is the undeniable truth, if you disagree with me I'll personally join a troop of lowland gorrilas to beat you to death with monkey wrenches and we will start with your mouth so you can't even correct me
5) And they're not ordered within tier because I can't be fucked
BLOATED "tier"
Idfk if it's a tier but it's definitely a category and here we have Nyx and Azaan
Nyx is probably the less problematic of the two, she's got 3 different moving parts attached to one damn ability and 12+ interections with it, and a hamfisted passive, in the desprate attempt to make another point tank
Azaan meanwhile has a passive that does the following: Increases both by dealing and taking damage to ANYTHING that's not a shield, grants dr as it's fuckin filled, once it reaches a certain level it: increases your damage, gives your primary a secondary AoE blast, alters your abilities, with cards it: heals you based on the amount of resource used which has different values for each ability, and another card that heals you for using an ability when above a certain threshold, and if you use tempering I swear to god we do this but in base kit too so the funny cross comes up at the same rate as if the cool down wasn't already a joke.
All this and we haven't gotten around to the fact Azaan's dash has a stun system that on top of the stun of the actual dash increases the stun if you collide with a wall but also increases the stun duration of his stun if it's used on his own wall or how with tempering his Cross becomes incredibly easy to hit but you can do tech to make it easier.
if that was a bitch to read that's on purpose because Azaan has everything in the entire fucking game and somehow people still struggle to get value out of him, even I can play him and I'm a looping if statement turned Ai that's rewarded the more I make people suffer from my actions
As a whole I don't know where the hell to behin disecting Azaan from his ass backwards fucked kit but I do know his ultimate is really good at leaving fights because the end lag takes forever to do anything with
Bad Design tier
This is where ideas are visible and are understandable without having to resolve itself by giving every ability 30 side effects because I'm already concussed from my own frustration I don't need another from being gangle gut fucked by azaan's glowstick dick
So let's talk about Yag because she's more interesting and I guess the vore-fetish worm has to be more interesting than the 4 riflemen in the damage role, Yagorath has two distinct forms these forms basically act as different characters except one is missing something the other has, and I guess that's the issue Yagorath is entirely designed around her bulk, and immunities and yet they've slowly preened her of substanial drawbacks to this design
And if you're not following the big fucking worm doesn't have proper counter play for 1v1s
And when she spends a substantial part of her gameplay with Heavy DR and can use even heavier DR as an ability I'm starting to think that Yag used DR as a crutch for her weaknesses to the point they became her identity and all this
Her ultimate is also pretty stupid since it does what Khan's does except even more frustratingly so as it seems to waste the time given to actually counter it by being still attached to DR, can have it's health upgraded and already counters most of the cast that aren't Omen and abled to be blocked and made uncounterable for little to no effort beyond finding what walls you can abuse.
Torvald is easier to talk about since unlike yag who while not bloated still has a lot going on in one kit.
Torvald's issue is he's consistently paradoxical in almost every shape and form, his entire kit is countered by items you're usually buying thus you make him shit but if that's not then you're buying it for one character meaning he's getting plenty of economic value, his entire kit bully's new players who don't understand how to counter him but otherwise his ability to play is gimped the second people do.
And almost any balance around him has to balance around two different ideas The Support and The Offtank both at odds with eachother because nerfing one makes the other more viable but likely that one is probably worse version of something else, but a buff intended for just one buffs both sides regardless and so you're having to again slowly gimp one side or another of his gameplay (if not both)
Meh Design Tier
There's only Khan here, like am I sure someone will enjoy him yeah but there's a few gripes I have with him
Khan's big problem is that he's kinda been stripped of other possible playable identities over the years and his kit has been smacked around multiple times in ways that barely addresses his problems or make them worse and really only has one play style worth putting the effort in and that's storm of Bullets Khan Khan feels the least like a Paladins champion because of how almost all of his play styles pale in comparison to shoot good mode Khan.
Of course in this playstyle he's got solid tools and solid weaknesses it's just a lot of people find his non-damage tools frustrating because of storm of bullets being the "good one"
Ok Design Tier
We got like a decent amount of guys with traits that aren't shit, but some pretty shit traits too that aren't by design.
Makoa's first and I'll commend Evil mojo for looking at road hog and deciding that the best way to make a character like that is by not allowing the tank to insta kill combo Squishies before running off and surviving a nuke, at the same time Makoa faces a lot of the same problems as Khan with the only difference it's not yet to the point he's only got one play style it's rather just one part of his kit everything else is designed to crush the kneecaps of
Makoa afforsed very few luxuries that's because his hook is some gnarly CC but it also means a lot of his play styles are more or less different ways you approach the hook being used which don't get me wrong with the recent changes actually have been getting better with the ult talent having some value
Fernando is a rectangle a lot of the time or he's just not a rectangle, his play styles live in such an aggressive distance from each other that while nice there's a pretty clear desire for Aegis to be the shield talent however everything else only getting the shield set to 3500 throws away the idea the inbuilt shield in the first place I don't have a shield I picked up barik and flayed his skin over my shield you're welcome for that image in your head otherwise Fernando's doing good!
Terminus is a melee champion in a game with fps guns, and unlike marvel rivals which has some rather batshit mobility, bulk, having your cake and eating it, and also other melee characters for these guys to enjoy smacking around from the get go Term doesn't
Great Design
Now to the good shit
Raum has a gimmick, one gimmick to make him bulkier, however unlike Yagorath, Torvald, and Azaan it's not batshit insane permanent DR, shields, etc it's effectively overhealth, and his entire kit is balanced around the idea that despite his health he's easy to gun down with firepower and punishes poor play if he makes a mistake, there's a back and forth when fighting raum as his damage and health make a big timer he's running down as he's trying to get you and he has tools both to cheat/accelerate the timer and you have tools like CC to prolong it a small issue is how his talents lack originality
Ash is here to send you to a different spot, she bullies squshies and that's hard to fault with one flaw being some odd quirks like her self slow with rarely any particularly unfair tools.
Atlas you know side note I'm actually surprised how few bugs Atlas has, you'd expect him using his abilities would crash people or send servers reeling with this games history of making using your weapon impossible as Betty and Buck, that aside Atlas has a lot of unique tools without any being bloated novelety, the only issue is his cards rarely are changed due to many just being poorly thought out.
Flawless Design
Now when I say flawless I mean they're designed wel in their purpose not nesicarily good in the meta side of things, and funnily enough people have that confusion for Barik, he's designed well he's just not good.
Ruckus is a great place to start because Ruckus is entirely focused on being a offtank, his guns his mobility his fucking guns, and all around his kit was was always made to do off tanking stuff and very little is close fit for point tanking and this is by design and honestly I think that's owed to his inbuilt vertical dash being a thing
Inara always kinda stood as a really good idea of how a point tank can do roles outside of standing on Point. You can go off point make substantial space, chasing and killing shit isn't hard especially with your walls and Cripple
Barik is a point tank with almost everything about him being designed around that, his abilities aren't going to help you chase anyone running away, and his burst isn't absurd, but he's designed to be entirely brutal to fight point to point for other tanks with his turrets and damage output... In theory atleast. That's the big issue design sometimes just doesn't cut it when it comes to characters being good in game.