A+ Tier:
Ken - Best character in the game. He's got zoning, he's got runaway, he's got rushdown, mixups, combos, infinites, more setups than you can count, and he's got a beak on his helmet. The invisibility glitch is like icing on an ownage cake. A tier of his own imo. There's nobody on the cast that has a good matchup against him.
A Tier:
Karas - Low risk, high reward. He can rushdown super hard with very little fear of retribution most of them time, and then if anything connects, he can go into infinite. Unblockable traps/resets are good, but easy to mess up sometimes. Lacks some mixups, and can occasionally have trouble against a really strong keepaway game (ken), but this very rarely becomes an issue. The only way to beat him for most characters, is to know his tricks inside and out, and even then it can be a crapshoot.
Ryu - I'm going to eat my words on this one. This guy is good, just really solid all around. Really high damage on his combos, even without baroque. Good mixups with the command overhead, lows, super fast IAD.C, crossups, etc. Shinkuu hadouken doesn't do too much dmg, but it's a great utility move. Juggles of shinsho are ********. DP>BBQ is completely invincible and will get you damage and get you out of so many high pressure situations completely free. There is literally no risk on using DP>BBQ.
A- Tier:
Chun Li - Full screen infinite from a low jab, no meter, no red life, and it never breaks like karas'. I was considering putting her a tier up, but she just doesn't quite have the versatility of those other chars. She's really fast, can dish out the damage, and has some nice tricks, but she doesn't have any gamebreaker type bull**** to really shut people down.
B+ Tier:
Rock Volnutt (Megaman) - He's really safe if you use his arm switch moves correctly, he has a good spam game, and good comboability, but he takes damage really bad and also doesn't really do a ton on his own. Played well though, he can be just as hard to get a hit on as Ken or Karas.
Tekkaman - He moves up just because of what a good partner he is. His assist completely *****, and his DHCs and team up supers just create so many retardedly good situations. He can struggle a little on his own due to his speed, but he also dishes out huge amounts of damage without meter and can ride out a ton of hits. He's got good range, and some nice tricks and utility specials that he can use to mess with you.
Doronjo - She's got really safe runaway game with her super jump boulders, which she can actually then turn into some good combo damage, which is just silly. She can do a lot of tricks with her qcf boulder super too. She can be played very safe, at which point it's really hard for someone to get in on her effectively, however, if someone is well acquainted with doronjo tricks, it can be really hard to actually land damage. Can rely too heavily on your opponent running into something.
B Tier:
Yatterman - Has potential, but your mind games, spacing, and execution all have to be phenomenal just to get up to an actual competitive level with Yatterman. So much of his stuff is situational that you have to play a lot of guessing games and worry a lot about just keeping yourself from taking a bunch of damage. If you guess right consistently though, he is completely beastly.
Casshern - The casshern tricks have gradually stepped up and up over time. His rdp is a great asset. He can use it to set up a guessing game with that and low sweep, he can use it to squash a lot of stuff including any jump-ins, and landing one can lead to huge amounts of damage. Unblockables also lead to a bunch of damage, and the A dog gets you out of a lot of pressure situations.
Jun - She's really quick and has a lot of options to counter stuff that you throw at her, her damage is decent, kind of middling, and she can do some fun zoning stuff with bombs, but she sometimes has trouble setting up a real threat on offense sometimes, since her high>low strings can be predictable. She can counter certain characters really well, but otherwise, she relies a lot on just dash in 2A and IAD.C
PTX-40A - Probably the surprise of this game for me has been how remarkably decent PTX turned out. He can rush down remarkably well, taking advantage of the super armor to punish anyone who tries to mount a normal offense, while actually mixing up highs and lows. Guaranteed damage off of throws with megacrash, plus unblockable setups into lvl3 super means he can consistently land good damage. Unfortunately, sometimes it's not quite enough to take out 2 characters, particularly ones with good super armor breaks. If he had Lightan's health, he'd be up a couple tiers.
B- Tier
Batsu - Pretty basic, but decent. Crossups with j.B, a decent keepaway game, decent combo damage, some solid resets to try out for extra damage, and tardy counters occasionally actually help out a lot against Karas, although they're not as helpful against most characters. He's got good tools and can hang in most situations, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Morrigan - She's got some really fast and really good offense, but some low damage output on her combos and some situations seem just really impossible for her to deal with. Certain characters she can just **** with overhead rushdown, but she has no way of getting in on a good runaway/zoning character, and Karas can out-rush her for a nasty lockdown.
Polymar - He's got some good mixups, utility stuff, and the reset grabs, which can do a chunk of health, but, like morrigan, he's really hurt by his inability to get in on people. He has no ranged options and moves kind of slowly at times, which makes it really really hard for him to get in on, say, a runaway Ken or a Megaman spam. Like morrigan, has some good things going for him, but there's just too much stacked against him in a lot of matchups.
Souki - He's got a lot of range on those pokes, and can turn them into a lot of damage if he hits, but he's really predictable, and the super armor is almost impossible to ever actually use well. He also has a really hard time against rushdown or runaway. His megacrash combos are gdlk tho.
C Tier:
Roll - She's small and her moves are pretty quick, but she's pretty predictable for the most part, doesn't have much as far as utility moves go, has to rely on tricks, and she takes it hard in a lot of matchups, not just the top tiers. She can dish out some ok damage, but nothing like the norm in this game anymore, and she's a meter hog.
Gold Lightan - He has absolutely no way to open up offense on somebody who's playing it safe (projectile spam). Unlike PTX, he's got no lows, no unblockables, and no way to guarantee damage off of a grab. He's got more health than PTX, and does well in some surprising matchups (karas), but your gameplan is usually just jump in and spam low jabs and hope your opponent ****s up and you can land a j.236A+B.
D Tier:
Alex - Really bad.
