History Main / LowTierLetdown

* ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'' has the Undercover Brella. Introduced in ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'', its the lightweight member of the Brella class, and has the gimmick of not deploying its shield after holding the trigger for a prolonged period of time; meaning the user can continuously shoot while maintaining cover, rather than having to time alternating between an attack and defense mode like the other Brellas. This may seem overpowered at first, but the [[FanNickname Vunder]] has a lot of weaknesses that makes it widely-viewed as the worse weapon in the series by a wide margin. First, as a trade-off for being able to keep up a shield while always firing, said shield is very weak compared to other Brellas, having a mere 200 HP compared to the middleweight Splat Brella's 500 HP and the heavyweight Tenta Brella's 700 HP. Second, it has the worst DPS ''in the entire game'', needing three well-aimed shots to splat any opponent, with the fastest it can accomplish that task being two seconds; an eternity in [[RocketTagGameplay a game as fast-paced as]] ''Splatoon''. Those two things alone mean that a player is unlikely to splat an opponent before their shield is broken, but in addition, it has lackluster ink coverage for a ranged weapon (so tough luck making a quick escape route during an engagement) and poor synergy with its sub weapon, Ink Mine (the Vunder's low DPS means it can't combo the damage from an Ink Mine well). Things don't get much better with its special weapon. In ''Splatoon 2'', it boasts the Splashdown. To be fair, in low-level play, it's a good panic button that will splat anyone nearby. In high-level play, however? Splashdown is an utter joke, as anyone ranked S+ and above can react and take out the user during the brief vulnerability period at the special's start-up. In ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'', it has the Reefslider, which has the same issues except one ''might'' avoid being immediately being punished due to it being a horizontal rather than vertical attack, meaning they can activate it from a safe distance. Now they get punished afterward, as missing the Reefslider explosion means that they're now in ''very'' close proximity with at least one other opponent, which the Undercover Brella can't hope to fend off given all its listed problems.

** Hammer Kirby, shockingly. Normally one of the more legendary [[{{GameBreaker/Kirby}} Game Breaker]] abilities in the main series, it suffers heavily in transition to a fighting game. This is because his best moves are either nerfed (his hammer swing has its invicibility gutted) or just not useful in a fighting game environment (his famed Hammer Flip that decimates bosses proves about as useful as a [[VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Falcon]] [[AwesomeButImpractical Punch]] when fighting less predictable opponents). As a result, Hammer Kirby's aggressive rushdown playstyle just falls apart, especially against the many projectile-based or other range-based movesets in the game. Furthermore, in ''Kirby Fighters 2'', the addition of King Dedede, who can do most of what Hammer Kirby can and then some but still suffers from many of the same drawbacks, further reduces reasons to play him.

* 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, the ''Classic'' Pyro is considered useless for anything barring a SelfImposedChallenge.

* ''VideoGame/PlantsVsZombies'' has quite a few plants that aren't worth the dirt they're planted on.
** The Chomper has the dubious honor of being the worst instant-kill plant in the game, and one of the worst plants in the game period. Sure, it's one of the only instant kills that can be used multiple times (aside from Cob Cannon), but it only eats one zombie at a time and takes forever to digest. Nearly every other instant-kill hits multiple zombies, which makes them infinitely better for dealing with big waves; spending 150 sun on a Cherry Bomb almost always kills more zombies than spending it on a Chomper. It's not even good at dealing with early lone zombies because Squash, Tangle Kelp, and Potato Mine do the same thing for less sun, and its short range makes it undesirable as an offensive plant with all of the long-ranged options available. The only situation where Chomper shines is in speedruns of the game, due to its fast cooldown time for an instant-kill.
** The Hypno-Shroom, unfortunately, ends up as an extremely CoolButInefficient instant-kill plant. Although its ability to [[MookFaceTurn make a zombie fight for you]] sounds powerful for its price of 75 sun, especially on targets like the Football Zombie, the hypnotized zombies are deceptively weak; [[RedemptionDemotion their bites do less damage than they do as an enemy]], and since the zombie at the front will most likely be the one that eats it, it'll likely already have taken some damage, making it easier for the other zombies to defeat. Since a Hypno-Shroom must be eaten to take effect, it doesn't even work on many of the most threatening zombie types. Outside of night levels, its price doubles to 150 sun due to the Coffee Bean needed to wake it up, when a Cherry Bomb or Jalapeño can clear out way more zombies for a similar price.
** The Cactus. It's a slightly more expensive Peashooter that doesn't synergize with Torchwood, whose only real use is countering Balloon Zombies, and even in that one niche, it's outclassed by Blover (which wipes out every Balloon Zombie at once) and Cattail (which is just plain better). You'll probably only use it once to deal with the first Balloon Zombie level and then never again.

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'': Eldoth and particularly Garrick, being bards that have weak stats for everything. This was meant to counterbalance their bard song ability, but the player can create a bard character who has that AND good stats at least for combat (if possible for spellcasting too).

** 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 Super re-release, putting him in a more solid mid tier position for the rest of the series.
** [=DeeJay=] fell to this place as of ''Ultra IV'', 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 ''Ultra IV'' 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.

** [=DeeJay=] fell to this place as of ''[[UpdatedRerelease Ultra]] [[CapcomSequelStagnation Street Fighter IV]]'', 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.

* ''LowTierLetdown/TheKingOfFighters''

* ''LowTierLetdown/ClashRoyale''

* Ichiko Ohya is considered the worst Confidant in ''VideoGame/{{Persona 5}}''. 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.

!This trope is [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1653095100092412800 under discussion]] in the Administrivia/TropeRepairShop.

** ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia'': Chester, Cress' friend who does not join him and Arche in time-traveling. Like Woodrow below, he doesn't gain any levels when the party returns to the present, making putting him in your party detrimental at best and suicidal at worst. The PSX and PSP Vita remakes of the game add cutscenes where he trains at night to catch up to the rest of the party, encouraging players to try him out.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'':
** Dragoons, while not bad per se, have a very high skill floor, and are the class most likely to die to [=AOEs=]. Before the patches, Dragoons had magic defense that was so crappy that many considered them a liability for end game raiding due to many bosses having magic-based attacks. The Dragoon's iconic Jump attack also paved way to the "loldrg" and "floor tank" meme due to the attack having a lengthy animation lock and low strength, which meant most people who didn't time the use of the move just right would get curbstomped by bosses and eat the floor. Compared to other DPS classes, Dragoons were sorely behind in [=AoE=] and spiking damage - by level 50 they only have two attacks that can hit more than one enemy, and the one that actually deals damage has a two-minute cooldown - making the class even less desirable to play or have in a party. Around patch 2.45 and later, Dragoons got buffed by having easier skill rotations, shorter animation locks, and much more defense. Come ''Shadowbringers'', their Jump got an upgrade in High Jump, with its animation being ''lightning-fast'' in comparison. For good measure, ''Endwalker'' sped up their animations even further, making it far less likely to get screwed over by animation lock.
** For a short time, White Mage fell short to their healer brethren in ''Stormblood''. They do their job well, but they were shunned for not bringing enough to the table in utility, Scholar having shields and Astrologian having cards. What did the White Mage have? Just healing, raw damage, and a single-target shield on a cooldown. Coupled with a class mechanic that went practically unused in high-end content (and in early cases, was completely ''counter-intuitive''), there were plenty of parties that wouldn't want a White Mage. Thankfully, when ''Shadowbringers'' came around, White Mage left this status behind with a reworked class mechanic that rewards the player with an extremely powerful spell, making their destructive power one of their big selling points.
** Astrologians were introduced in ''Heavensward'' as a new healer class and were supposed to have the utility of a Scholar and burst healing of a White Mage. However, the class became a MasterOfNone where the utility moves paled in comparison to Scholars and the raw healing power was awful compared to White Mages. Their utility, focused around card play, also suffered from its unreliability and low bonuses. Astrologians were quickly branded as a useless healer class and they sometimes got kicked out of end game raids because of their shortcomings. A number of much-needed buffs and reworks have rescued the class since, to the point that by that expansion's last raid tier, it had broadly replaced White Mage as the expected main healer.
** Machinists were another class introduced in ''Heavensward'' as a new ranged DPS class focused around gunplay; however for the first two patches it could not keep up in terms of damage or utility with the other ranged class, the Bard. Its frustrating gameplay, revolving around the Gauss Barrel and making sure to only overheat it at the right time to deal extra damage, has long kept it out of favour since pinpoint timing with Overheat and Wildfire is ''required'' to bring out its raw damage. Much like Astrologian, though, reworks have rendered the class actually useful. Heat was overhauled into an expendable resource to go into Hypercharge, and Wildfire was reworked to be not nearly as stressful to use, along with the addition of new and powerful abilities, like ''Shadowbringers'' allowing Machinist to upgrade their Rook autoturret into a MiniMecha with incredible damage output. These key changes made Machinist easier to learn and welcomed for their raw damage.
** ''Shadowbringers'' turned the Bard into this in some peoples' eyes. The gimmick of the Bard was that they were the ranged DPS class but also a support class. Their schtick was that they sacrificed some damage dealing potential for support. The problem comes from the fact that the Dancer ''also'' does this, but to many people, the Dancer does it even ''better''. The Bard's abilities can affect the entire party, while the dancer gives a flat damage boost to ''one'' ally.Technically, a flat damage increase is often greater than anything the bard can do. Sure, giving the entire party a one percent damage boost or a boost to direct&critical hits is nice, but a dancer paired with a competent Samurai or Black Mage can burn enemies down faster than that. Bards also rely more off of RNG for repertoire abilities for spike damage, as well as maintaining their two DamageOverTime abilities. In contrast, dancers can reliably cause damage spikes by simply using Standard and Technical Step, ''and'' unlike a lot of classes don't have to maintain a DamageOverTime. While Bards have never been considered "Useless" per se, many people find themselves preferring a dancer.

* Ichiko Ohya is considered the worst Confidant in ''VideoGame/{{Persona 5}}''. 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, you're better off spending your time with another Confidant.

*** The Monk {{class|AndLevelSystem}} in 3.5E is widely considered to be the weakest of the Core Classes. They have low hit points, restricted skill points, rely heavily on multiple stats, nearly all of their abilities can be replicated by a caster of a much lower level, their abilities have terrible synergy (eg. increased movement speed combined with special attacks which can only be used while standing still), and an unarmed Swordsage (''Tome of Battle'') can pull off {{Wuxia}}-style martial arts while still being effective.

*** The Monk {{Class|AndLevelSystem}} in 3.5E is widely considered to be the weakest of the Core Classes. They have low hit points, restricted skill points, rely heavily on multiple stats, nearly all of their abilities can be replicated by a caster of a much lower level, their abilities have terrible synergy (eg. increased movement speed combined with special attacks which can only be used while standing still), and an unarmed Swordsage (''Tome of Battle'') can pull off {{Wuxia}}-style martial arts while still being effective.

*** The Thief in 1e and 2e is the weakest of the major classes. Its hit dice are godawful, its armor isn't much better, and in combat, barring a BackStab that it can use maybe once, it's about on par with a SquishyWizard. Its actual thieving abilities are certainly useful, if a bit situational, but they're based on rolls that could easily fail at the worst time, and if that happened, the Thief will almost certainly die in one hit. In short, though the class is intended to be a UtilityPartyMember, it is so limited outside of those utilities that it ends up simply being dead weight outside of them. By 2e, [[JackOfAllStats Bards]] could do most of the same tricks while also having better fighting skills and access to magic, Mages could use spells like Knock, Find Traps, Invisibility, and Teleport to just skip challenges the Thief was designed for, and Fighters were infinitely superior in combat. At most, some people multiclass into Thief very briefly to pick up the relevant skills, then [[CrutchCharacter abandon it forever.]] The historical uselessness of the class even ended up leaking into some semi-official material like ''ComicStrip/{{Nodwick}}'' where, instead of having a thief, the party uses the titular ButtMonkey henchman as a trap disarmer "in the same way a stick disarms a bear trap." Thankfully, upon becoming the Rogue in 3.x onward, the class became significantly better, with its combat skills improving to the point of being a GlassCannon and it gaining many other useful tricks.

*** The Thief-Acrobat, a Thief subclass intended to focus on mobility and... well, acrobatics. Unfortunately, the tradeoff for this was losing pickpocketing, trapfinding, and [[MasterOfUnlocking lockpicking]], which are the best reasons to keep a Thief in the party (and possibly more, the book suggests). In exchange, you got acrobatic tricks - and not even CharlesAtlasSuperpower acrobatic tricks, we're talking pole-vaulting, tightrope walking, and long jumping - that would probably be somewhat impressive in the Olympics, not so much in the dungeon where everyone has grappling hooks or flying carpets or winged horses or a magic-user with Fly. Their only particularly useful ability was a flat percentage chance to dodge attacks when they had the initiative, and considering they still had a Thief's hit dice, they'd better hope the rolls were in their favor.
*** Really, the Thief in general in 1e and 2e fell into this pretty hard. Its hit dice were godawful, its armor wasn't much better, and in combat, barring a BackStab that it could use maybe once, it was about on par with a SquishyWizard. Its actual thieving abilities were certainly useful, if a bit situational, but they were based on rolls that could easily fail at the worst time, and if that happened, the Thief would almost certainly die in one hit. By 2e, [[JackOfAllStats Bards]] could do most of the same tricks while also having better fighting skills and access to magic, Mages could use spells like Knock, Find Traps, Invisibility, and Teleport to just skip challenges the Thief was designed for, and Fighters were infinitely superior in combat. At most, some people might multiclass into Thief very briefly to pick up the relevant skills, then [[CrutchCharacter abandon it forever.]] Thankfully, upon becoming the Rogue in 3.x onward, the class became significantly better, with its combat skills improving to the point of being a GlassCannon and it gaining many other useful tricks.

** The Monk {{Class|AndLevelSystem}} in 3.5E is widely considered to be the weakest of the Core Classes. They have low hit points, restricted skill points, rely heavily on multiple stats, nearly all of their abilities can be replicated by a caster of a much lower level, their abilities have terrible synergy (eg. increased movement speed combined with special attacks which can only be used while standing still), and an unarmed Swordsage (''Tome of Battle'') can pull off {{Wuxia}}-style martial arts while still being effective.
** Outside of the core classes, the biggest letdown class is the Truenamer from ''Tome of Magic''. The Truenamer is great in concept: Someone who uses the language of creation itself to rewrite reality, with the added bonus of backwards enunciation of said language to obtain inverse effects. That is until you realize that not only are their powers rather limited, they also become [[LowLevelAdvantage less effective as they level up]]: the DC of a Truenaming effect equals 15 + double the target's level. This includes allies. Unfortunately, they can only spend one skill point per level to increase their Truespeech check. Yes, it's really that bad. A Truenamer in combat spends most of his time shouting in Truespeech only for it to ''not do anything''. A guide [[http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?214115-In-the-Beginning-Was-the-Word-and-the-Word-Was-Suck-A-Guide-to-Truenamers here]] named "In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck" notes that even if you can overcome this horrible drawback to be able to actually use your abilities on a fairly consistent basis (which is possible, though the effort involved could be better spent doing basically anything else), the class is still full of unclear rules and crippling restrictions on abilities that were not very powerful in the first place. To cap it off, the class simply isn't playable as intended: the intended playstyle is for the character to start the day being able to always use his utterances before the Law of Resistance makes it too hard to continue, but an optimized Truenamer has pushed his skill checks to the point where he always succeeds no matter how much he uses them (in which case he basically plays on-par with a warlock), while an unoptimized beer-and-pretzels Truenamer starts out with his utterances failing a good percentage of the time and only goes downhill from there.
** Rivaling the Truenamer in sheer disappointment is the ''Complete Warrior'' Samurai, essentially a {{Nerf}}ed and more restricted version of the already below-average Fighter. While the Truenamer is mechanically unplayable, the Samurai is just useless. He has weak features, a poor skill list, bonus feats which mainly border on detrimental, and very little versatility. His only real feature is his [[TerrorHero Intimidate-focused]] abilities, and even those come quite late and can be outdone by other classes. His EleventhHourSuperpower, Frightful Presence, is virtually useless from the start and only gets weaker from there. On top of that, he's a [[ThemeParkVersion pretty poor and shallow translation]] of the idea of a samurai, with a [[DualWielding fighting style]] that samurai didn't use and that he really sucks at, and the massively important concept of [[IaijutsuPractitioner iaijutsu duels]] being reduced to two feats. Just about the only good thing about him is he helped bring about the much more well-liked Ronin prestige class, which he's not really needed for. One of the most well-known tier lists places him on the same level as the Warrior, Aristocrat and ''commoner'', noncombatant classes not meant for actual player use. Ouch.
** The Ninja is considered scarcely better. Basically, take a Rogue, remove or arbitrarily limit half his abilities (including ''armor proficiency''), give him fewer skill points, make him Wisdom-dependent, and make his Sneak Attack strictly worse. In exchange, he gets "ki abilities," which look good on paper (turning invisible), but in practice tend to run out fast and can be easily duplicated by cheap magic items. To cap it off, like the Monk, he's hilariously outdone by the Swordsage in nearly every respect - to the point that on some forums, a joke is to use "Swordsage'd!" instead of the traditional "Ninja'd!"
** The Ranger and Bard in 3rd Edition both landed headfirst into this. 3.5 players recognize the Bard as a DifficultButAwesome skillmonkey and supportive caster, while the Ranger is a capable JackOfAllStats leaning slightly toward GlassCannon. This wasn't so much the case in 3rd Edition. Both classes received only four skill points, which made it hard to do their jobs. The Bard spell list had few to no unique spells and couldn't be cast in armor, while the Bard's signature Inspire Courage gave an absolutely piddly bonus that didn't even scale[[note]]For bonus shinanigans, its Bardic Music ability was keyed off your ranks in Perform, not your level. Thus the best Bard was a Bard 1/Rogue X, as its only other notable class feature was its (at the time) mediocre casting and Bardic Knowledge, none of which were as useful as Rogue levels.[[/note]]. The Ranger was limited to DualWielding, which was even more subpar in 3rd Edition, their Animal Companion was a walking liability, their Favored Enemy maxed out at a +5 bonus, and outside of a weak selection of spells, they received ''nothing else.'' [[TookALevelInBadass Giving these two a buff]] was a big motivator behind creating 3.5 in the first place (well, that and [[GameBreaker Haste]]).
** Talking of the Bard, it was often seen as this early in 3.5 as well - people saw them as [[MasterOfNone a poor-man's mixture of a Fighter, Rogue, and Sorcerer]] with gimmicky abilities and not much to offer next to a pure caster. As people improved, though, it became apparent that [[LethalJokeCharacter the Bard's skills actually have exceptional synergy, even in core]], and it offers a role all its own - that of TheFace and the SupportPartyMember, capable of absolutely trivializing social encounters through a mix of silver tongue and magic while using its combat spells and songs to help the party smash through most encounters. It wasn't as good as a pure caster, but then, [[LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards what was?]] By the time the CharacterTiers rolled around, the Bard was seen as Tier 3 - about as good as a class can be without being a GameBreaker, and the only core class to rank there. That said, those inexperienced with the class can still frequently dismiss it as this.
** Complete Warrior's Swashbuckler is widely considered one of the game's most poorly-made combat classes, with an excess of EmptyLevels and too many abilities based on giving too-small static bonuses, as well as its rapier-focused fighting style being very poor in 3.x. Its few good abilities either come too late, get stonewalled by crit-immune enemies, or both. The only times it's ever used is as a three-level dip to get Insightful Strike, or with the Daring Outlaw feat to essentially turn it into a tougher Rogue.
** Rounding out the Complete Warrior trio is the Hexblade, the best of the three and a textbook MasterOfNone. It's meant to be a MagicKnight, backing up melee prowess with curses to cripple enemies and versatile spellcasting. In practice, though, all its abilities are so badly undertuned that it just sucks at everything--its melee prowess basically consists of a good base attack and HP, with severe armor restrictions and poor Fortitude limiting any ability to tank, its curses have limited uses per day and don't so much cripple the opponent as mildly inconvenience them, and its spellcasting is stuck to a handful of spells known that mostly don't synergize with melee and cap out at 4th-level. Even its utility as a single-class MagicKnight was outdone by the later Duskblade, which beat out the Hexblade in almost every parameter and whose FullContactMagic enabled actual synergy between casting and melee. It boasts a few handy features, like the Mettle ability to resist certain effects, the Dark Companion ability to debuff enemy saves, and an unusually useful familiar, but it's so mediocre all-around that even its ''designers'' claimed they'd screwed up with it and recommended a few buffs.
** For Incarnum fans, the Soulborn is this. It's meant to be the combat-focused Incarnum class... but there's already a combat-focused Incarnum class in the form of the Totemist, who is both much more powerful and much more unique, not to mention able to fulfill non-combat roles. To make matters worse, the standard Incarnate, intended as a JackOfAllStats, can easily outdo the Soulborn in combat with the proper soulmelds. And on top of this, the Soulborn's actual Incarnum-using abilities ''suck''; it doesn't get its first soulmeld until 4th level, its first native essentia points to do anything with that soulmeld until 6th, and its first chakra bind until 8th - all things its counterparts achieve at 2nd-level. Until then, the Soulborn is essentially just a worse version of the Paladin, and even when it's gotten its binds, it has so little essentia that it'll have a hard time doing anything with them. The Soulborn is intended to use its superior combat skills to compensate for its awful Incarnum abilities, but this just adds up for it being worse in combat than a combat-focused Incarnate or Totemist, far less versatile, and far less fun - most Soulborn guides amount to "play an Incarnate instead."
** Though not ''quite'' as bad as the monk, the paladin gets a fair amount of heat, mostly for requiring Strength, Wisdom, Constitution, and Charisma, being heavily front-loaded in design, and many of its class features being worse than they sound (a Smite that you can't use often and doesn't do very good damage, a magic horse for those cavalry charges you'll be making in claustrophobic dungeon labyrinths). You also have to deal with a rather strict code of conduct that turns you into a crappy fighter if the DM decides you did something bad, and is often an invitation for jerk {{Killer Game Master}}s to "test your morals" by setting up MortonsFork scenarios. Many players opt for a crusader or a [[ChurchMilitant melee-focused cleric]] instead. That said, a paladin does get some pretty good spells, a number of alternate class features, and the very useful Divine Grace.
** The fighter is a class that consists entirely of bonus feats relating to combat. Feats are certainly good, but anyone can take them, and even though the fighter gets more of them, most of the time a class can pick up the feats it needs if it's willing to wait or play a human, and they'll have their own class features to make those feats better. A fighter can try to mix together combat styles for the sake of flexibility (taking archery and melee feats), but by the time they've completed two feat trees, [[MasterOfNone both will have long since stopped being useful]]. The fighter also [[EmptyLevels notoriously doesn't get feats]] at odd-numbered levels, which means [[CrutchCharacter most people don't go past level 2]]. Capping it off is the fighter's poor skill points and skill list, which makes them DumbMuscle outside of combat - a fighter can be perfectly satisfactory at their fighting style, [[CripplingOverspecialization but that's about it]], and many classes can have that fighting style and either do it better (barbarians, psychic warriors, warblades) or do other things (rangers, duskblades, warblades again). Many fighter players use the otherwise obscure or setting-specific [[BullfightBoss dungeoncrasher]] or [[TerrorHero Zhentarim]] alternate class features, just so they can have ''something'' unique.
** 5th Edition kicked Rangers back down to this level. As demi-casters, their spell selection in combat is very limited. In melee, Paladins and Fighters generally do far better. When it comes to using bows, Fighters with the right build are better in combat while Rogues and Valor Bards are more versatile and in the latter case have better spells. The mechanics behind their animal companion are truly atrocious; the minions summoned by Druid and Wizard spells are often easier to use and more powerful, while Moon Druids are a lot harder to kill and Wizards are their usual GameBreaker selves. Really, there's not much a Ranger can do that another class can't do much better, so much so that Unearthed Arcana has focused a fair bit of effort on fixing it.
*** Special mention goes to the Beast Master. In order to get your animal companion to attack, you have to use one of your own attacks (which will almost always be superior to the animal companions unless you intentionally tanked your own character). Most of its other abilities are similarly underwhelming. And if your animal companion ever dies (which it will, because it's squishy and has a low AC and poor saves), you need to conduct an 8 hour ritual to get a replacement. It's telling that when Wizards of the Coast designed a second class with a "control a companion" gimmick (the Battle Smith Artificer), it was better in basically every concievable way than the Beast Master.
*** Fortunately, the Ranger and Beast Master got a bunch of buffs in ''Tasha's Cauldron of Everything'', so this isn't as bad of an issue anymore.
** Older than all of the above and going back to 1st Edition, you have the Thief-Acrobat, a Thief subclass intended to focus on mobility and... well, acrobatics. Unfortunately, the tradeoff for this was losing pickpocketing, trapfinding, and [[MasterOfUnlocking lockpicking]], which are the best reasons to keep a Thief in the party (and possibly more, the book suggests). In exchange, you got acrobatic tricks - and not even CharlesAtlasSuperpower acrobatic tricks, we're talking pole-vaulting, tightrope walking, and long jumping - that would probably be somewhat impressive in the Olympics, not so much in the dungeon where everyone has grappling hooks or flying carpets or winged horses or a magic-user with Fly. Their only particularly useful ability was a flat percentage chance to dodge attacks when they had the initiative, and considering they still had a Thief's hit dice, they'd better hope the rolls were in their favor.
** Really, the Thief in general in 1e and 2e fell into this pretty hard. Its hit dice were godawful, its armor wasn't much better, and in combat, barring a BackStab that it could use maybe once, it was about on par with a SquishyWizard. Its actual thieving abilities were certainly useful, if a bit situational, but they were based on rolls that could easily fail at the worst time, and if that happened, the Thief would almost certainly die in one hit. By 2e, [[JackOfAllStats Bards]] could do most of the same tricks while also having better fighting skills and access to magic, Mages could use spells like Knock, Find Traps, Invisibility, and Teleport to just skip challenges the Thief was designed for, and Fighters were infinitely superior in combat. At most, some people might multiclass into Thief very briefly to pick up the relevant skills, then [[CrutchCharacter abandon it forever.]] Thankfully, upon becoming the Rogue in 3.x onward, the class became significantly better, with its combat skills improving to the point of being a GlassCannon and it gaining many other useful tricks.
** While the Warlock is generally regarded as powerful, the Undying Warlock from ''Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide'' is a joke. While other Patrons grant Warlocks hard-hitting abilities, the Undying warlock just gets mild resistance to disease, is slightly harder for undead to attack as long as the warlock doesn't attack them first, and gets a couple of weak self-healing abilities and a dramatically increased lifespan. Cool from a flavor point of view, but quite underwhelming in their actual effect on gameplay.

* Most people who have played ''VideoGame/WariowareGetItTogether'' can agree that 9-volt is easily the worst character in the game, mainly because he’s the only character who cannot be moved manually. Instead, he rides around on a skateboard that dashes across the field, and the only thing you can do is use his yo-yo attack. The problem is, that 9-volt moves incredibly fast, which means that you need to have incredibly precise timing with mere seconds to react, or else you’re almost guaranteed to fail the micro-game. Although there are a few micro-games that he excels at, they are few and far between when compared to the other micro-games where he’s nigh-unusable.

It's worth noting that in {{RPG}}s and other sub-genres, characters that start off weak but ''can'' [[MagikarpPower get good and become powerhouses]] should '''''not''''' qualify for this trope, as Low-Tier Letdowns by their definition boast ''no'' MagikarpPower to speak of; they're bad from the start of when you get to use them, and they will [[CantCatchUp never get to a point where they can be of equal use]]. Even in cases where they ''can'' in theory get better stat-wise, they have to be [[InherentInTheSystem designed in a way that makes them borderline unplayable to work with even on the most casual level of play]], and they have to be a case [[MemeticLoser infamously known within the fandom of those games]]. Only then do you have a case of a Low-Tier Letdown.

* ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'' has the Undercover Brella. Introduced in ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'', its the lightweight member of the Brella class, and has the gimmick of not deploying its shield after holding the trigger for a prolonged period of time; meaning the user can continuously shoot while maintaining cover, rather than having to time alternating between an attack and defense mode like the other Brellas. This may seem overpowered at first, but the [[FanNickname Vunder]] has a lot of weaknesses that makes it widely-viewed as the worse weapon in the series by a wide margin. First, as a trade-off for being able to keep up a shield while always firing, said shield is very weak compared to other Brellas, having a mere 200 HP compared to the middleweight Splat Brella's 500 HP and the heavyweight Tenta Brella's 700 HP. Second, it has the worst DPS ''in the entire game'', needing three well-aimed shots to splat any opponent, with the fastest it can accomplish that task being two seconds; an eternity in [[RocketTagGameplay a game as fast-paced as]] ''Splatoon''. Those two things alone mean that a player is unlikely to splat an opponent before their shield is broken, but in addition, it has lackluster ink coverage for a ranged weapon (so tough luck making a quick escape route during an engagement) and poor synergy with its sub weapon, Ink Mine (the Vunder's low DPS means it can't combo the damage from an Ink Mine well). Things don't get much better with its special weapon. In ''Splatoon 2'', it boasts the Splashdown. To be fair, in low-level play, it's a good panic button that will splat anyone nearby. In high-level play, however? Splashdown is an utter joke, as anyone ranked S+ and above can react and take out the user during the brief vunerablity period at the special's start-up. In ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'', it has the Reefslider, but it is only a marginal upgrade so far that players can use it without immediately being punished; now they get punished afterward, for missing the Reefslider explosion means that they're now in ''very'' close proximity with at least one other opponent, which the Undercover Brella can't hope to fend off given all its listed problems.