A Big Band Tier List

[Pepperlunatic]

Taunt can be easily used after Cymbol Clash

Not saying it is difficult to use taunt. I am saying it is not efficient to use move slot on taunt instead of using something more effective like blockbusters. Also, I must stress that I am not the only one who thinks epic sax is better than heavy metal in offense

 

[Reshiram18]

Not saying it is difficult to use taunt. I am saying it is not efficient to use move slot on taunt instead of using something more effective like blockbusters

But the trade-off here is that while you have fewer slots for blockbusters the blockbusters you do have (usually SSJ, Beat Extend, and Tuba Tuba) will do way more damage than what Epic Sax can dish out with those same moves because of a 50% max damage boost for Epic Sax compared to a 100% damage boost to the blockbusters for Heavy Metal with the armor active. Heavy Metal also has a slightly higher attack stat as well

 

[Pepperlunatic]

But the trade-off here is that while you have fewer slots for blockbusters the blockbusters you do have (usually SSJ, Beat Extend, and Tuba Tuba) will do way more damage than what Epic Sax can dish out with those same moves because of a 50% max damage boost for Epic Sax compared to a 100% damage boost to the blockbusters for Heavy Metal with the armor active. Heavy Metal also has a slightly higher attack stat as well

Here is the problem: You need two things to activate sa 2 and they are using taunt and hitting enemy with blockbuster. The main porblem is you only have about 15 second window to hit enemy with your blockbuster and that is it. After the armor is expired, you won’t have other ways to proactively use your sa 2 until taunt’s cooldown is done. Epic sax, on the other hand, does not have this issue of using taunt and use blocbuster before armor expire stuff while dealing damage consistently throguhout the match. Also, epic sax can get regens and other buffs that increases his survivability other than having 1 or 2 stack of armor that lasts 5 second when hit. The versatility and flexibility of epic sax literally out matches the clumsy and rigid play style of heavy metal even considering the stats.

Also, i know it sounds funny but thats all folks counters heavy metal

 

[Reshiram18]

Here is the problem: You need two things to activate sa 2 and they are using taunt and hitting enemy with blockbuster. The main porblem is you only have about 15 second window to hit enemy with your blockbuster and that is it. After the armor is expired, you won’t have other ways to proactively use your sa 2 until taunt’s cooldown is done. Epic sax, on the other hand, does not have this issue of using taunt and use blocbuster before armor expire stuff while dealing damage consistently throguhout the match. Also, epic sax can get regens and other buffs that increases his survivability other than having 1 or 2 stack of armor that lasts 5 second when hit. The versatility and flexibility of epic sax literally out matches the clumsy and rigid play style of heavy metal even considering the stats.

Also, i know it sounds funny but thats all folks counters heavy metal

The main counter to your argument here is that the level 15 taunt(yes it has to be level 15 to get the full 15 second armor buff) has a cooldown of only 10 seconds, which means your taunt will be ready to go 5 seconds before the armor has even expired. Also UV is a way better counter to Heavy Metal than That's All Folks

 

[fanghoul]

Taunt can be easily used after Cymbol Clash

I think the argument here is that equipping the Taunt means that you have one less slot to equip a move that deals damage, which is a significant opportunity cost for someone that can deal double damage with their blockbusters. Even with the taunt, unless your enemy attacks and leave you with an opening right away, you might still have the armor run out before you finish one of Big Band's longer combos. It's not an ideal set-up for offense in my own experience.

That said, I'm still glad I have both Heavy Metal and Epic Sax as diamonds. Epic Sax is the one that it's easier for me to find a use for and to use on average, but Heavy Metal fills a nice nitch for rift battles of being another character that can deal a ton of damage in a few hit if you set him up right. It's great for the immunity or armor nodes. The +5 stacks of regen node is another one where he's been getting a lot of use for me lately, because regen doesn't matter if you're already dead from a massively damaging Super Sonic Jazz.

I'd probably put Epic Sax ahead on offense, but they're both good in different ways.

Edit:
Wow, a whole conversation happened while I was writing this

 

[theLoneskull]

I am not sure why Heavy Metal is on number 1, assuming this tier list is mostly based on offensive capability (if it isn't Resonant Evil won't be 7th). Sure it is "possible to empower your blockbuster using armor. However, the main problem with this is that it is very difficult to sustain armor, thanks to its short duration of 5 seconds, to utilize SA2 without the use of taunt and using taunt is very inefficient compared to using additional blockbuster. I've also debated this with other players and many agreed that Heavy Metal is not a good offense character compared to Epic Sax. I believe that Epic Sax is still the number 1 of big band tier right now and heavy metal should be 2nd place due to others aren't great in offense and heavy metal has better stats than most other big bands.

Its easy to use the taunt after plenty of Big Band's moves. But its best to use it after Cymbal Clash because it keeps the opponent far away enough to do it efficiently. Plus it has a chance to stun without being a BB

 

[theLoneskull]

Plus Take The A Train can give armor and could be used to fill in the slot the taunt could

 

[Pepperlunatic]

Its easy to use the taunt after plenty of Big Band's moves. But its best to use it after Cymbal Clash because it keeps the opponent far away enough to do it efficiently. Plus it has a chance to stun without being a BB

Like I said above, putting taunt that gives armor in an offense character is the problem not how easy it is to use it. It is doing something that can be done the hard and inefficient way. What about the take the A train? That blockbuster is used at the end of the combo so that is also theory-only stuff. My point is, if we are going to look at this big band tier list in a offense perspective, Heavy Metal should not be above Epic sax due to the clumsy and inefficient way to proactively trigger the SA2 that requires theorycraft-ish environment. Sure, Heavy Metal is better than Epic Sax in defense team but in offense team, he lacks versatility, simplicity, efficiency, utility which Epic Sax has.

The main counter to your argument here is that the level 15 taunt(yes it has to be level 15 to get the full 15 second armor buff) has a cooldown of only 10 seconds, which means your taunt will be ready to go 5 seconds before the armor has even expired. Also UV is a way better counter to Heavy Metal than That's All Folks

Level 15 taunt is nonsense that is in the realm of theorycraft. Having a single level 15 skill is a troublesome work but level 15 on a taunt is... ...very unrealistic. The talk about That's All Folks is not a serious one but I was talking about how That's All Folks apply armor break when she gets hit which removes the armor you need which ruins the fun part. Consdiering that I was not talking about Heavy Metal on defense, it is very ridiculous to say that UV is a counter to Heavy metal in this conversation.

 

[xcapibara]

He still struggles against tanks without team support. Diva is the best BB3 spammer in the game because she has tools that let her deal with tanks by herself and also has easy intercepts and self healing.

Best, as in, the one who can spamm the most bb3s in a fight. My point is beatbox is better than robocopy and should be above him on the list simply for this reason.

 

[fanghoul]

I think the way to define the difference between Heavy Metal and Epic Sax is that Heavy Metal has a much higher potential damage than Epic Sax, but in the least requires a quirky play style to get there, while Epic Sax will likely have a higher DPS over the course of a fight when in the hands of most players.

Heavy Metal requires a weird stilted style of play, which I find kinda reminiscent of how I play Primed: Being mostly defensive, then pounding out some big damage when you have the chance. Heavy Metal also requires a very different set of moves than you would put on most Big Bands, focusing on those that do a bunch of damage rapidly, rather than those that chain together.

I still think either could be more valuable depending on the situation. Sometimes the game rewards long combos, and sometimes it punishes you for them.

 

[Reshiram18]

The talk about That's All Folks is not a serious one but I was talking about how That's All Folks apply armor break when she gets hit which removes the armor you need which ruins the fun part. Consdiering that I was not talking about Heavy Metal on defense, it is very ridiculous to say that UV is a counter to Heavy metal in this conversation.

I had thought that you were talking about using That's All Folks on offense against an opposing Heavy Metal when I made that little comment about UV countering Heavy Metal better

 

[ChaoticNeko]

i find that (in my playing of solely beat box) beat boxes greatest weakness is unflinching. nothing absolutely screws him over more than being unable to constantly be hitting the oponent as a way out of his quick death. besides from that with enough concentration beat box is easy to play without getting hit so as to neutralize his greatest weakness

 

[theLoneskull]

i find that (in my playing of solely beat box) beat boxes greatest weakness is unflinching. nothing absolutely screws him over more than being unable to constantly be hitting the oponent as a way out of his quick death. besides from that with enough concentration beat box is easy to play without getting hit so as to neutralize his greatest weakness

Oh yea I forgot unflinching exists.
Well honestly, that could be said for literally every character that doesn't inflict curse, so I wouldn't think too much about it

 

[Irghen]

Any thoughts on the placement of Dream Band and Treble Maker in the list? I got both but I'm not sure how much are they worth the investment.


And to chime in the current discussion, I consider Sax better than HM, at least in terms of flexibility.

 

[Lililira]

Any thoughts on the placement of Dream Band and Treble Maker in the list? I got both but I'm not sure how much are they worth the investment.

Don't have anything to say about Treble since I've never used one, but I have a Dream Band and some Very Strong Opinions™ about him. I feel like he's one of the worst diamonds, and definitely not worth investing in.

Main Points:

1. He's entirely reliant on the other fighters in a match to get buffs, which makes him easy to counter and useful only in very specific situations.
2. The AI isn't good enough at Band combos to make much use of his SA1, since it takes at minimum a 10 combo to copy even one buff, and I don't think I've seen Band AI's ever manage a combo more than 35 or so.
3. The buff mirroring doesn't give him any advantage over his opponent, it only evens the playing field a bit by giving him a copy of a buff that the enemy already has.
4. Most of the time, the buffs he gains from his SA1 have really short durations and are usually expired by the time his combo ends.
5. Only some buffs are worth copying, like Enrage, Haste, Regen. Any defense buff like Last Stand or Thorns is rarely useful due to point #4.
6. His SA2 only works if he has other buffs active, which he can only get from his SA1 (which is a problem because of point #4) or support teammates (or taunt I guess, but a single stack of armor isn't very useful).
7. His SA2 is reliant on the enemy knocking him down, which seems like it's make him good on defense, but in actuality it rarely works due to the problems mentioned in points #2 and #6 above.
8. He can't do anything to defend against debuffs without his SA2, which is a problem because of point #6.
9. When on defense, he's so easily countered by just not using a buff-reliant attacker or by using one that can remove buffs (Silent Kill and Doublicious do both these things at once).
10. On offense, he's only somewhat useful when up against opponents who can gain long-duration timed buffs, so he's super situational.

( It bothers me a little that this post came out sounding so negative, but I really can't find anything good to say about Dream Band, other than that he's *maybe* useful against Surgeon General teams, but even then there are much better counters to SG. )

 

[fanghoul]

I've seen him preform so-so with a SG who had maxed trauma center. It's annoying to have those buffs replenished if you haven't planned ahead around his SA. I suppose certain catalysts and event modifiers might also help him that way. But the key is that you need to have not planned ahead for him to really benefit there.

Hmm, he'd be hilarious to use with the Light Weight catalyst on a 1 vs 1 node, particularly the one that gives regen. 30 seconds of unflinching and immunity that refresh on the off chance you knock him down.

But that's really finding edge cases where he's useful though.

 

[Lililira]

Yeah, he does do okay with a support Val partner to give him long duration buffs. Ran into one during a recent pf with that setup, and I had to play rather defensively to time out the Final Stand to the point where I could start my extended ground combo without worrying about resetting the buff timers, but it wasn't much harder than working around the match modifiers in the Big Band master dailies.

Still have mine on my rift defense team with my maxed Killjoy and a Last Words catalyst which I thought would be a strong combo, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone lose to that node.

He might also do alright on the Reactive Armor trio node with Heavy Metal and Resonant Evil along with a Futile Resistance catalyst, but I feel like wherever you include him you have to build the entire team around him since he's totally reliant on outside sources to get the buffs he needs.

 

[Disasterrr19]

Hmm, he'd be hilarious to use with the Light Weight catalyst on a 1 vs 1 node, particularly the one that gives regen. 30 seconds of unflinching and immunity that refresh on the off chance you knock him down.

Faced this combination once. Deliberately refused to pick buff removers (I was losing that Rift already) just to check how fun that could be. Don't even remember what fighter I chose, but the battle was not even half as fun as I imagined. AI was basically sitting in one place spamming charge attacks and sweeps until Light Weight ran out, after that - hello, default Big Band ...

On attack it could be fun to copy opponent's buffs, but attacker usually does not need Armor or Regen that much, while defenders rarely get Enrage or Haste. Did anyone check if he can copy PERMANENT buffs?

Honestly, don't know if he's useful in his current state, seems that too many stars should align for him to really shine.

 

[Lililira]

He can't copy permanent buffs, unfortunately. Just tested it against a Raw Nerv, and even though she had her perma Enrage and Haste, my Band didn't copy either when I hit the right combo number.

 

[ZeoW]

Big Band feels much less threatening as a whole ever since the Futile/Armor nerf and the addition of Piercing. The only thing Dream Band has going for him is that huge HP stat and Light element. Light Catalysts and Char-specific Armor sounds like an annoying combo for him to timeout the opponent, although triple light Val node does that better. DGum and SSalt will be obvious counters, but then again most boss nodes are.

Aside from Valentine, Persona Assistant comes into mind as a potential partner. Pair that up with Light Weight to stall the 30 seconds activation to get infinite blessings and barriers (in an ideal world). I would put those two in a Biofeedback node and see how that goes.