Don’t worry too much about them. Sure, it’s interesting to know what experienced people think about how good a character is, but there are so many reasons why ranking them in a list is wrong.

It’s biased. Tiers are made by people and usually not in a democratic or purely objective fashion, so you’ll end up with a little bit of personal opinion in them. This isn’t a bad thing in that if the argumentation is given you can learn from it or at least you get someone else’s perspective.

It’s not scientific. What is the literal definition of a tier? It means a layer; level; stratum or in the case of game characters it’s a ranking. How is the ranking defined? Is it purely opinion? Has extensive experimentation or surveying taken place? I believe it’s commonly accepted that a character’s ranking is defined by the number of favorable match-ups and how favorable the match-ups are. Let’s for the sake of argument say that the match-up favorability was based on actual real-world numbers over many played games, do you just add up the scores? Do you give more weight to favorable match-ups against higher ranked characters than lower ranked characters (I believe the problem then becomes recursive)? Are two 6:4 match-ups better or worse than one 5:5 and one 7:3 match-up?

It doesn’t show the effects of trends. If the majority of the people you encounter want to play the overall most efficient character A in a game, then character B that has a favorable match-up against A will in essence become a smart and arguably better choice. Character choices based on tiers alone don’t make up for specific situations like that.

It’s deceptive. This follows out of the previous point. If most people based their character choices on tier lists, which don’t reflect the whole match-up ‘table’, then this network of players limits its body of knowledge. If you don’t understand an unpopular character’s play-style and options then the difference in your characters’ strengths will be compensated.

It doesn’t factor in play-style. Again, it’s not what tiers ARE, it’s what they DO. Any given player can become better with character A than character B even if character B is ranked higher on everyone’s tier list. People have different play-styles and strengths and finding a character that suits your style and strengths means a smaller learning curve and possibly even higher potential for mastery.

Of course some characters are better than others. Remember Gon from Tekken3? What I’m saying is that no one really benefits from actually writing it down as a tier list. Picking only the best characters runs the risk of ‘dumbing’ you and the people you play with down. Not only is the list a very simplified version of reality, it’s also badly-defined. The players that suffer the consequences the most are new players, because they feel like they’re playing catch-up already. They will look for any edge they can get and will not want to ‘waste’ time learning characters they might end up dropping. Finally, let’s not forget that good characters are not necessarily ‘cool’.