Here's a rough tier list.

Noob Saibot, Kabal, Human Smoke, MK2 Kung Lao, Baraka, Nightwolf, Ermac, Rain, Jax, Kano, Robot Smoke, and some people list Reptile MK3 Kung Lao, and MK2 Jax as well, some even MK2 Raiden. That's an awesome amount of characters to be in any tier, let alone the top tier.

You might be able to break it down slightly more to a super tier, with just the first few, but still, the rest of the cast can still beast reasonably well and are not completely mismatched.

Matt

Thanks Matt!

What is the criteria for such tiers? I've long been skeptical of such messurments.

Pretty much all that matters is that they all have abuseable enough tactics to win easily against anyone other than who else in that tier. In that tier, they all must earn their victories.

Matt

I don't quite understand it all... but it's, like, mathematical and stuff. All kinds of postulating and theorizing and whatnot. Take all properties of a character into account, all properties of their normals, special moves, etc; factor in damage, damage protection, hit boxes, and so forth. Place each character in the hands of a theoretical ideal player, and that's where all this stuff ads up and you start to see the chinks in armor and the breaks in the system... which characters/moves are "broken," as they say. After all kinds of playtesting and countless matches, the true advantages and flaws manifest themselves, thus revealing the teirs.

And obviously it's not exact science here, and real-world results will vary. But remember the whole idea of the theoretical ideal player. The tiers represent how things work when high level players of equal skill have match.

Bleh, that's enough rambling about things I sort-of-understand... back to stupid-ass job....

Sounds pretty accurate actually.

I think the key there is how they perform in high level play. If its a noobfest then anyone can beat anyone because its all luck. If the players know what they are doing, you start to see how to strategize around the character you pick and the opponent's character and thats when you see Tiers start to pop up, as characters become almost unuseable because they are locked out of the strategies.