History Main / LowTierLetdown

** Twelve in ''Third Strike'' is not just bad, he's ''dysfunctionally'' bad. His combos are pathetically weak and don't put his opponent at a disadvantaged state, he can't convert any of his decent normals into a combo, his specials have so much end lag that they're punishable ''on hit'', two of his supers are gimmicky as hell and the one that isn't doesn't even connect properly, and his damage output is so low that even if you make as little mistakes as possible, he will get bodied as soon as he guesses wrong once. He does possess a somewhat decent neutral game due to his high mobility and great reach on a lot of his normal moves, but the problem is that while he may not struggle with getting in hits, he has no ability to actually capitalize on those hits, meaning his only real gameplan is to slowly poke the opponent to death and hope they never get a chance to punish him.
** Sean was a bit of a monster in ''Second Impact'', and was, consequently, given a smack with the nerf bat in ''Third Strike''... which, unfortunately, turned out to be more of a hammer-blow. He's a {{Shotoclone}}, which means sharing a lot of properties and even most of his animations with Ryu and Ken, but that results in him essentially having all the worst attributes of both and the strong points of neither. His hitboxes are bad, to the point that he has few ways to combo his Tackle, and Dragon Smash, his Shoryuken equivalent, exclusively hits above his head. The Tornado, his HurricaneKick equivalent, looks flashy and strong, but its recovery is so bad when used meterless that it leaves him wide open ''even if he hits''. The result puts him in pretty close competition with Twelve for the game's worst character, and even relatively good appraisals of him will admit there's almost nothing he does that Ryu and Ken can't do better. Notably, this was intended on the part of the developers, who believed that Sean being superior to Ken would be GameplayAndStorySegregation--and not expecting the game to have the longevity it did, they paid little heed to balance.
** Vega was off to a very poor start in vanilla ''VideoGame/StreetFighterIV'', with dismal normals and not much better specials that lack invincibility. But what really held him back was some of the worst meter usage in the game, due to terrible EX specials, an all-or-nothing super without any reliable confirms, and an almost completely useless Ultra that often wasn't even guaranteed from the otherwise universal focus attack crumple. He fortunately got most of his worst traits buffed along with a much more useful Ultra II in the ''SSFIV'' re-release, putting him in a more solid mid tier position for the rest of the series.
** [=DeeJay=] fell to this place as of ''USFIV'', with him now considered to be the worst character in the game. This is due to his very limited hit confirms, having precious few ways to combo into a red-focus attack, and generally poor reversal options.
** Hugo in ''USFIV'' is an extreme MightyGlacier of a grappler, with his punches and throws having exactly the insane damage output you'd expect of an eight-foot-tall wrestler. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of basically everything else. He has no projectiles, terrible mobility, needs to burn meter just to have a hope of approaching, and his hitbox is so gargantuan that he can be hit by anti-air projectiles while on the other side of the screen. Notably, his matchup against Gouken is considered one of the worst in the game, as even Hugo's limited approach options get countered easily.
** F.A.N.G. in ''VideoGame/StreetFighterV'' has suffered the misfortune of being the worst ranked on the tier list. Despite the unique poison gimmick, he suffers from pitiful damage output and bad health.
** Zangief's also feeling this in ''V'', to the point that several pro players maining him have switched to other characters. His lack of speed, problematic match-ups, and lack of varied tools are cited as why he's attained this status
** Alex in ''V'' was good for exactly one patch cycle, on his debut. After that, he's was stuck in the bottom of the barrel until much, much later in Season 5.

** Selphie in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'', mainly because of her LimitBreak. While Squall, Zell or Irvine (Zell especially) can dish out hundreds of thousands of damage with their Limit Breaks and Rinoa as well as Quistis have useful support abilities, Selphie's Limits are hard to execute (you have a list with spells/effects that will be executed and their number, you can use the current one or pass it without chance of return, you can pass spell/effect as many time as you want, but in the meantime enemies are punching/nuking Selphie and her teammates) and while she has one move that kills absolutely everything including Bosses, good luck getting it (without passing it over) during fight where it matters.
** Kimahri in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', again because of his Overdrives and the fact he has barely any Sphere Grid section of his own to speak of. He's meant to be as a WildCard, taking any role, but in the end he's more like MasterOfNone, and while he can supplant some roles you have no access to yet (for example he can learn Stealing before you get Rikku), he still lacks behind the original. His Overdrives can hit at most once and have no variety and support ability of Rikku's Mix. For these reasons, most people just ignore him.
** Fran from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' is not very liked, surprisingly for a CuteMonsterGirl and Statuesque Stunner. However, her stats in general have MasterOfNone nature, being below average. On top, she has longer animation using her default weapon.

In fighting games and [=MOBAs=], they are frequently {{Skill Gate Character}}s who are easy to pick up and do well with and are dominant in lower-level play, but do exceptionally poorly in higher-level play; the Letdown part often comes from bad players who insist on using them with the same suboptimal strategies and builds and refuse to get better, get destroyed by competent players, and proceed to ragequit, lagswitch (if possible), abuse report functions, send abusive private messages, rage on message boards demanding nerfs, and generally act like incorrigible {{Scrub}}s.

* In ''VideoGame/TeamFortressClassic'', the Pyro is based on flame usage, unsurprisingly, with a lot of weapons capable of igniting the opponent and exclusive access to the game's flamethrower. The trouble is, fire damage in ''Classic'' is completely pitiful, with even full afterburn dealing only 8 damage to characters with around 100 HP before accounting for armor, meaning that the most fire can do is [[InterfaceScrew annoy players by blocking their screen]]. The flamethrower, as a result, ends up playing VideoGameFlamethrowersSuck as straight as an arrow--it's a short-ranged weapon with damage that is at best unremarkable--and the rest of the Pyro's kit is just a strictly worse version of the Soldier's. Though its ''[=TF2=]'' counterpart is often mocked as an unfocused SkillGateCharacter, it's at least a functional and usable class; the ''Classic'' Pyro, meanwhile, is considered useless for anything barring a SelfImposedChallenge.
* The Spy in ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' has been regarded as the weakest of the nine classes for a long time. Design-wise, Spy is a "pick" class: with the ability to turn invisible or disguise himself, building-disabling sappers, and a OneHitKill BackStab, he can get an almost guaranteed kill in the hands of a good player, but due to his low health and weak weaponry, he crumples quickly in a straight firefight, meaning he's meant for hunting down priority targets and opening holes in the enemy defense. However, he isn't the only class to fill his intended niches, and in some cases isn't even the best at it. Scouts can also act to pick off priority targets due to high speed and the power of the Scattergun, Snipers can charge their sniper rifles to also get almost-guaranteed kills with a headshot at any range, and Soldiers and especially Demomen can also proficiently smash through buildings with their explosives. And unlike his teammates, who have varying degrees of usefulness besides their primary gimmick, [[CripplingOverspecialization Spy has very little to offer outside of picking off targets]], being too frail and weak to aid in a push and lacking any real team-support abilities. Spy also suffers from the two-pronged difficulty of being both a SkillGateCharacter ''and'' DifficultButAwesome, but in the worst way. He is regarded as the hardest class in the game to play proficiently, which means that there are many people who pick the class due to being attracted by its cool factor and go on to contribute nothing but failed backstab attempts--not helped by the fact that Spy's aforementioned specialization makes him [[DiminishingReturnsForBalance highly undesirable in large numbers]]. But he is also regarded as the hardest class to play in a skilled environment, because even a modicum of team communication makes his means of stealth far less effective, since simply telling other players where a Spy is will usually lead to their demise. In competitive settings, it's often said that a Spy managing a single kill and then dying immediately afterward is an excellent showing.

* The Khergits are widely considered to be the worst faction in ''VideoGame/MountAndBlade''. As [[BornInTheSaddle a nation of horse archers]] they are textbook [[FragileSpeedster fragile speedsters]] in a game that heavily favors MightyGlacier type units. A Khergit horse archer can easily outrun anything else, even other cavalry, on an open battlefield, but when he needs to hit over a dozen arrows to kill an opposing knight, whereas the knight only needs two hits to put down the horse archer, the odds are still heavily in the knight´s favor. Horse archers also have rather poor AI that causes them to occasionally charge opposing infantry head on despite their poor melee skills and their horses´ lack of armor. Things are even worse during sieges, where nobody is mounted and the ability to gain or hold ground are paramount, and the horse archers´ poor armor and ability to fight in melee often sees them devolve into cannon fodder.
* Ichiko Ohya is considered the worst Confidant in ''VideoGame/Persona5''. Her abilities let you reduce the Alert level faster, but that's already easy enough to do, since ambushing a Shadow and defeating it reduces the Alert meter, and ambushing isn't that hard to do. Unless you're ''really'' bad with the stealth mechanics, want to fuse Beelzebub and/or are going for HundredPercentCompletion, you're better off spending your time with another Confidant.

* ''LowTierLetdown/{{Tekken}}''

* While most of the cast of ''VideoGame/AnimationThrowdownTheQuestForCards'' range from good to bad depending on the current theme, [[WesternAnimation/AmericanDad Avery Bullock]] is widely considered the worst character in the game. Not only has he fallen to PowerCreep due to a lack of new combos, most of his existing combos suffer from being very mediocre ability-wise (Hoverthrone King, Rocket Launcher Bullock), [[CripplingOverspecialization horribly overspecialized]] (Rocker Bullock, Furry Bullock), or having poor card distribution (Finger Cutter only works with one Legendary weapon card: [[WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}} Long Stick with Sharp Rock]]). While he still has some genuinely good combos such as Angry Bullock, Ripped Bullock and Beer Helmet, these combos aren't enough to redeem Bullock in the long run and it's widely agreed that he desperately needs new combos to use.

** Kimahri in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', again because of his Overdrives and the fact he has barely any Sphere Grid section of his own to speak of. He's meant to be as a WildCard, taking any role, but in the end he's more like MasterOfNone, and while he can supplant some roles you have no access to yet (for example he can learn Stealing before you get Rikku), he still lacks behind the original. His Overdrives can hit at most once and have no variety and support ability of Rikku's Mix. For these reasons, most people just opt to ignore him.

** The Wood Shooter combines the 3 movement and vulnerability to armor-slaying weapons as the [[MightyGlacier Armor Knight]], but have the additional detriment of being locked to bows like the [[CripplingOverspecialization Archer/Bow Fighter]], meaning they can't counterattack at melee range, they also lack the advantages that the other armors have.[[note]]Armored Knights can increase their movement and improve their stats with promotions, whilst also having skills or growth rates that increase their movement like urbanite or Billford's movement growth.[[/note]] That said, their [[StoneWall massive defense]] and ability to use special, albeit rare, long-range ballista weapons that only they can use make the first character in the class, Thomas, NotCompletelyUseless despite his bad stats and skills. The other Wood shooter, Hagaru, despite having better stats and skills, does not even have this. Not only does Hagar join very late in the game with terrible base stats, but he first appears as an enemy reinforcement on Turn 10 of Map 34, meaning you have to waste time on [[ThatOneLevel an already very difficult map]] to get him. Hagar also comes on the route with AntiGrinding, meaning you can't stop the campaign and put him in optional RandomEncounters to give him levels close to the rest of the party and whilst he does have a good support, it is with a high movement cavalry unit that Hagar is unlikely to reach most of the time. Even Hagar's MagikarpPower style growths have no chance of increasing movement, meaning you'll really have to slow down just to use him.

** Armor Knights get this status ten times worse than [[Franchise/FireEmblem that series]] - while Armor Knights were largely seen in its home series as a low-tier class, there ''have'' been good Armor Knights (namely [[VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade Oswin]], [[VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn Gatrie, the Black Knight]], [[VideoGame/FireEmblemFates Benny and Effie]]), and the gap the class tends to demonstrate tends not to be insurmountable - they can become a LightningBruiser if things go well for them, and not only is their semi-low Move not a problem if the player doesn't go full speed ahead with Move, they may otherwise have a lot of potential utility if the player really seeks to use them. Armor knights in ''Tear Ring Saga'' have none of these boons, and they're bad for for much the same primary reason, if not worse - an abysmal 3 movement, which is even lower than the usual home series standard of Armor Knights having at least ''5 or 4 move!'' Combining this awful movement with the generally large maps in this game and a frequent emphasis on reaching objectives on the map quickly, means getting them to even see combat can be misery. Norton suffers from this slightly less than Billford and Zachariah, as he can promote into a mounted class at level 10, but even getting him to see enough combat to level him up that much can turn the game into a slog.
** [[ExaggeratedTrope There is a worse class in the game, however]] - the Wood Shooter. It shares the same 3 movement and vulnerability to armor-slaying weapons as the Armor Knight, but with the additional detriment of being locked to bows, meaning they can't counterattack at melee range, and unlike Armor Knights, they have no promotion to increase their movement or improve their stats. They could see some use with access to special long-range ballista weapons that only they can use... but not only are these rare, they also ''stop the Wood Shooter from moving for the remainder of the map'' while lowering their high Defence. Of the two, Hagaru has the worse reputation, as not only does he join very late in the game with terrible stats, but he first appears as an enemy reinforcement on Turn 10 of Map 34, meaning you have to waste time on [[ThatOneLevel an already very difficult map]] to get him.