super, there are two Toadstools in different positions in your Heavy list. >_>
Godlike:
1. Ryu (BoF3) - Yeah, proven winner works.
2. False Althena (Lunar:EBC) - Shockingly covers her bases well even in EBO. While she's not the overkilling monstrosity from EBC, crazy accurate I win status+crazy accurate crippling status+ridiculous MP-busting+good damage of both varieties that mocks evade, elements+speed+okay durability. Just has everything she needs, although the PC-killing synergy needs work (confuse+MP busting? It's an often wasted combo. On the other hand, EBO paralysis is just killer).
3. Cidolfas Orlandu (FFT) - I feel he's sorta overrated, but he covers his bases well too. The magical durability against things he can't equip cheese and the physical reliance bite him when they matter, and sometimes they matter big.
4. Yunalesca (FFX) - I respect Absorb, which makes 'lesca pretty scary. 50% PC HP doesn't seem that much, but it matters when you have a good durability+speed combo, and the auto-PC ownage is useful.
5. Empyrea (DQ8) - Wall with overkill offense. Wallable herself, but hey. The dispelling and anti-physical/elemental game are neat enough.
6. Dhaos (ToP) - Eh. The spoiling is still respectable due to being so insanely comprehensive (PC-killing, spoils most physicals, spoils most magic). Rather underwhelming outside it, though (damage? Needs work. HP? DEFINITELY needs work. God help him if he meets past OHKO-level physicals, his regen just doesn't go that far).
7. Elc (AtLC) - Whores pretty well. Getting the first turn most of the time is great when you're so reliant on getting a buff game going, and he's awfully difficult to take down with damage before that to boot. On the other hand, he has issues making damage stick and being average after the first turn just sucks when you enjoy a good speed advantage on initiative, especially in a fast division like Godlike.
8. X (MMXCM) - Hmmm, I guess. Honestly, the gap between the people above and the people from here on is really huge. But X still feels a Godlike to me.
9. Lugia (PKMN) - I honestly tossup between Lugia and Sierra. While Sierra spoils better and has stronger offense, the durability gap just makes a lot of difference to me.
10. Sierra Mikain (S2) - Needs better speed and durability to make waves in Godlike. The skillset is crazy neat for the division in a very simple and elegant way, but while her stats are salvageable (speed is solid, mdur is okay), the physical durability failure and status vulnerability are terribly crippling.
11. Brahms (VPs) - Now to the Heavies. Remember when I said I'd be taking VP2 Brahms instead? Feel like List is distinct enough. Good Heavy slugger, but has the typical failings (entirely evadable, average speed, partly elementally reliant to boot, and even has some elemental weakness issues). VP2 equips help, as does the status immunity, at least.
12. Dhoulmagus (DQ8) - Underwhelms me in all respects. His truly good damage is actually a limit (if probably accessible and he has enough durability to see it often)? When it's already an evadable physical that spreads itself through a lot of hits (so, more vulnerable to lower-end evasion than usual)? Bad start. His status is a joke and the backup when his physical fails him is both terrible and easily wallable to boot, and he's lacking in speed. All he really has is the physical 2HKOing, solid durability and Dispel, and that doesn't make a Godlike with those failings saddled.
13. Naoto Shirogane (Pers4) - Yeah no. Waffled between her and Dhouly for the last spot, but Dhouly at least doesn't get hilariously owned by SH3 Lights, though Naoto does handle the likes of Lugia and Sierra, who eat Dhoul for breakfast. But this is the way of the spoiler, and Naoto's spoiling holes are just too glaring.
Heavy:
1. Ho-Oh (PKMN) - Honestly, the spoilability only hurts so much. Past that, the combo of good stats+healing+status immunity methods+good damage is just excellent, and Burn can handle people who hit his worse durability to boot.
2. Rayquaza (PKMN) - Brutal. Fairly fast, pretty durable and tends to just murder healers and sluggers. Doesn't handle the truly durable Heavy-type sluggers all that well, since he's barely within the range where he avoids being 3HKOed by average damage, but the blitz is quality, and having non-typed ITD 2HKO damage for backup only helps.
3. Lyon (S5) - ID+solid speed+non-elemental high 2HKO+acceptable physical+elemental walling nonsense. As an offensive fighter, Lyon covers her bases very well.
4. Kaus Debonair (OB) - More limited a slugger as the above, but just about as good as them otherwise.
5. Nina (BoF4) - Mulling over Nina's actual pdur, it honestly hit me that it matters less than you'd think: you need to at least both 2HKO -and- outspeed her if you're beating her with straight damage. Doing both things at once is ridiculously hard because she's like 140% average speed, and she has enough resources to outlast the vast majority of people who 2HKO her and are slower. And if you're trying to status or whore her out, you're just plain out of luck. Kasumi just spoils due to actually being one of the very few PCs in Heavy faster than her (see how well Emelia 2HKOing Nina went for her, and she's actually fast. Just lol resources - and Emelia's isn't even bad at resources! -, and Nina's faster after the first turn).
6. Joshua (FE8) - Beats Nina, but is basically just a typical evasive FE Heavy who doubles a lot of things. Those are usually above average Heavies, though, so it's fine.
7. Emelia (Saga) - Fast 2HKO that isn't too bad on resources is solid. She sorta lacks much else, though, and is sorta frail. Joshua's better performance against melee fighters, arguably better anti-healer methods and notable evade put him above Emelia pretty clearly. I think the notable speed difference against Tony matters more than the better damage and durability (since both have status immunity holes and Tony struggles more against evade), even though she loses to him in a duel.
8. Tony Eisler (MK) - Durable, damaging. His speed is slightly poor, but nothing too glaring. The status immunity holes, though, are sorta glaring for a boss.
9. Princess Toadstool (SMRPG) - Sleep really needed to be better at locking enemies down, and being average speed after the first turn sorta sucks. She has notably better offense, status blockers and elemental resistances than Cristo, though, and it hit me that, while she is notably less capable against physical fighters than him, the wider methods for shutting down mages, not fearing status nearly as much and the ability to 3HKO just matter too much.
10. Kiryl/Cristo (DQ4) - It's funny. Cristo beats a bunch of duellers who I put above him, but actually ends up being less than the sum of his parts. As a staller, he relies too much on the enemy being physical or an easily silenceable mage, and he's way too vulnerable to status himself. Spoils well and is an above average Heavy to me, but he has glaring holes against status whores and stronger blitzers (since he has to contend often against mages 2HKOing him or fighters just overwhelming his defenses if they're faster). The ID itself being very borderline on accuracy and his difficulties against the silence and ID-immune (he's not necessarily lost against them, but he struggles often against those issues) compound this further.
11. Edward "Edge" Geraldine (FF4) - Eh. He's just a fast status whore with a ghetto anti-physical trick (sorta like... yeah, he's actually sorta like less capable variation on Arnaud). Spoils often enough, but isn't too impressive as a Heavy.
12. Kasumi (Suikos) - She's not... THAT bad a Heavy, if only because ITE 3HKO off over 150% average speed is pretty good offense. Not great, though.
13. Yosuke Hanamura (Pers4) - Barely Heavy. P4 equips and elemental nonsense help, as well as the evade tricks, but he just doesn't have that much punch.
14. Barubary (BoF2) - Sort of a high Middle, quite frankly. An easily resisted 2HKO that above average magical durability of any sort turns into a 3HKO, 4-3'd by average speed, poor damage backup that is bound by a limit range and all that running off 1.5x PC HP. Basically, a character who has average damage, average speed and a bit above average magical durability beats him in a straight slugfest, and I'm not even considering how easily spoiled his damage is. This ain't impressing me in Heavy.
Middle
1. Massimo (MMXCM) - I'm damn near convinced Massimo is actually a Heavy now. Really underrated how brutal his durability/damage bursting game is, and the speed is less of an issue than I previously thought. Stopping him from getting the turns he needs to turn most PCs into mush is surprisingly difficult with the impressive durability. The elemental weakness does keep him in check -some-, but it also isn't that bad an issue with the Hyper Mode mending that problem. Good 2HKOers eat him for breakfast, but he doesn't meet -those- in Middle.
2. Yukiko Amagi (P4) - Tons of spoiling, solid enough damage, excellent equip options to back up her plentiful resources. Spoilable herself, but she's annoying enough to handle in Middle that I could see her working in Heavy.
3. Elly van Houten (XG) - One-trick pony, sure. But goddamn, is this one trick broken when it works. If you're not sleep-immune, you have to fatally disable Elly or die, and while she isn't great at durability, she has great statusblockers and isn't OHKOed very often. And there are enough sleep-vulnerable people to make this awesome.
4. Maya (LoL2) - Overrated but decently strong. Maya is really vulnerable to being 1.5HKOed, which makes her not like a lot of physical fighters (she gets 2HKOed through Gospel by like 48% PC HP damage), especially given the somewhat lacking speed. However, it's hard to ignore Legaia 2 equipment cheese and how good she gets when she's not getting 2HKOed through Gospel. She really wishes she had a speed buff, though, since this is what makes Yulie a superior dueller to Maya: Yulie very rarely has to worry about being 1.5HKOed with the speed game, and having to worry only against OHKOs is less problematic (Yulie and Maya being pretty similar on physical durability and all).
5. Dekar (Lufia 2) - Durable, good damage, IPs are a neat option. Problem is he's saddled with pretty awful speed. Utterly lost against status, and honestly the IP healing is overrated to boot (limit healing in general has issues, especially off the crap speed).
6. Landis (S3) - The freeze game is surprisingly brutal, actually, and the magic spoiling is neat.
7. Nanaki/Red XIII (FF7) - Solid limits, solid enough slugging for Middle, FF7 statusblocking. Works.
8. Elaine (S3) - Okay enough. Being generally above average speed doesn't hurt and S3 Water Rune is neat.
9. Miakis (S5) - Miakis has a bit better damage, far better equips and a bit more speed than Elaine. However, the healing worth difference is just too vast (and both have similar durability), and Elaine also gets Silent Lake as a neat niche option to boot, which should balance the elemental nonsense enough.
10. Ryudo (G2) - Is not a Middle I'd call good. The low end of this pool is pretty pathetic, though. Okay stats and ITE have niches, but the resource failure is really egregious - Ryudo gets reamed by healers almost as badly as Kain does.
11. Nergal (FE7) - Good 2HKO damage! Counters against both melee and range! This sounds great until you realize Nergal has terrible FE speed (halving his effective durability against a goddamned lot of people), horrible HP, is vulnerable to ID and loses initiative pretty much always. This leads to a "gets owned by average everything" machine, which is pretty shitty. He has issues.
12. Rikku (FFX) - Resource depth and better stalling abilities put Rikku above Tear to me. Damage is magnitudes worse, but at least she beats Middle PCs by stalling until a status Overdrive and is really quick.
13. Luna (Lunar:SSSC) - The defensive game, in theory, is pretty great. Problem is Luna's healing is trashy and her stats aren't great either, so her spoiling is rather limited. Sleep -does- help getting the defenses going, at least, and she's got more of a niche and spoils better than, say, Tear, who just universally underwhelms.
14. Tear Grants (TotA) - Eh. Poor resources, poor damage, poor speed, healing itself has issues. Also gets some inane hype that makes me want to rip people's arms in order to bludgeon them with their limbs.
15. Sharmista (S5) - God, Sharmista is like pre-Copper Flesh Hellion-lite. Really shitty stats across the board, the 2HKO doesn't nearly make up for the statstical failure. To add insult to injury, she doesn't even get S5's good elemental nonsense options. Just go to Light, where you don't totally suck.
Light:
1. Cinnamon (MMXCM) - Yeah, she's the closest one to Middle in this pool, which honestly isn't great. At least, Cinnamon is someone I could see in Middle.
2. Opera Vectra (SO2) - And the more I think about it, the more borderliner Opera feels. Man, SO2 equipment nonsense is kinda ridiculous.
3. Zhuzhen Liu (SH1) - Dhyer's assessment works. Zhuzhen has a few options, but none of them are good, and vague status failure+SH stalling having very fundamental issues if you're not named Hilda or Shania makes him really unlikely to win against way too many forms of healing.
4. Steena (CC) - Solid CCer, I guess. CC PCs tend to not -utterly suck ass- in the division outside really egregious cases.
5. Miluda Folles (FFT) - 3HKOs and counters. Works for the division.
6. Relm Arrowny (FF6) - 5HKOs! The durability and speed and elemental spoiling are pretty solid, though, so she could be worse as a Light.
7. Leena (CC) - Really not terribly inclined to give Leena a whole lot of credit even with zomg Auto-Life hype. I'll give it dues when I see it being awesome.
8. Cid Pollendina (FF4) - DURABILITY! Oh and a poor 4HKO of the worst damage type off crappy speed and bad MDef makes him status-bait. He actually deserved losing to Miluda there.
9. Irvine Kinneas (FF8) - FF8's suckass limit range isn't difficult to avoid even in Light, and Irvine is -worthless beyond belief- without that.
10. Dominia (XG) - No elemental cheese, no spoiling, nothing other than a crappy 2HKO at best running off XG lategame human boss HP (she's like what, 0.3x PC HP to me? You can't go anywhere with that durability if you're not running off WA4 boss speed and offense). Dominia just sorta doesn't win much at all ever off the sub-Nara survivability, and curses me not giving her support credit.
11. Augst Henriksen (WA4) - Really, really awful. Dhyer is wrong about VP mages without Heal having cases against Augst - they just beat him period if you allow them Wait Reaction. However, the elemental spoiling and me allowing damage tiebreaks - *Sticks tongue at Tally-chu.* - still makes him better than uh Ramus.
12. Ramus Farmain (L:SSSC) - Horrible.
