High-Tier Scrappy

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Meta Knight's 4-year reign of blood.^note

Often in fighting games, there will be certain characters who are hated not out of a hatedom but for being overused and/or downright difficult to defeat due to their high power, gameplay-wise; understandably, those two points get on a lot of people's nerves and tend to be favored by other people. While some may be Difficult, but Awesome and can require skill, those who are disproportionately powerful can still qualify.

A typical High-Tier Scrappy is a high-tier character with next to no learning curve, though high learning curve characters who are unreasonably difficult to beat when played by a master (especially if they also happen to be extremely frustrating to play against and/or boring to watch) can and will earn this status. Stone Wall characters are the most common candidates for the high-skill version of this trope (especially heavy zoners), though touch-of-death rushdown characters (particularly ones with good approach options) also tend to earn the playerbase's hatred. Characters with massive weaknesses who are strong in spite of those weaknesses are also common targets just based off of principle; these characters are often powerful when they shouldn't be.

Boring, but Practical characters can easily propel into this; yeah, they might be the most optimal ways to play, but if they're not very interesting to use, then competitive players will grumble as they force themselves to use a dull character.

Another common example is "robbery" characters, or characters who are notoriously good at low-health comebacks and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, usually either by being good at abusing Comeback Mechanics or being able to easily create extremely damaging combos off of one lucky hit or mistake from the opponent. While the line between a quality comeback and robbery is often nebulous, a character who can consistently render life leads meaningless and pull off upset wins will usually gain this reputation.

In other genres than fighting games, such as MOBA or Hero Shooter, these high-tiers can also be hated for being extremely difficult to deal with (if you're the enemy) or making the game centered around them and them alone (thus making you feel pointless if they're on your team). And for single-player games, they can be hated for being so powerful that they remove all challenge from the game.

Metagames can evolve and updates can be made to balance out the characters, reducing the impact of Game Breakers.

See also Too Qualified to Apply. For those that are infamous for being in low tiers, see Low-Tier Letdown.

Note: Not every high tier character qualifies for this trope, especially if they're not quite top tier. This trope applies specifically to characters who are notoriously good and have accrued significant backlash for being that good. This trope does not apply to a Secret Character who is infamously difficult to obtain but notoriously powerful as the trope is about the character itself rather than the method to obtaining them.

Examples

Other Examples:

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Driving Games

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled has the Speed characters. Unlike in the original game, USF speeds are different for each character class, meaning Speed characters are faster than the other classes even while using USF. Additionally, due to the advent of U-turning (which allows them to change how fast they turn in an instant, allowing them to both drift in a straight line and make ridiculous turns while in USF, allowing them to keep USF for longer periods) the main weakness that Speed characters are supposed to have (poor turning) is completely negated. This technique alone makes them feel like they have stats equivalent to PAL Penta in the original game, only they can powerslide on straightways, something that OG PAL Penta couldn't do easily due to his maxed-out turning.
Each Forza Motorsport has at least one.
- Forza 3 has all-wheel-drive cars absolutely dominating every single online race. Going into a C-class online race, and 7/8 players would be in either an Audi A5 or an Audi A4. Go up to S-class and everyone will be driving Dodge Vipers with AWD drivetrain swaps. The problem stems from the game's Performance Index system (which rates how fast a car should go around an imaginary track) greatly exaggerating the weight gain from an all-wheel-drive drivetrain, causing the PI number to drop dramatically when you swap in AWD, with almost no real loss to acceleration, top speed, or handling.
- Forza 4 has more diversity in what cars dominate, but almost all of them are rear wheel drive due to AWD getting a massive nerf. RWD Honda Civics dominate most of the lower classes, because a glitch causes their PI to drop when a race transmission is installed, and the PI drops again when they're converted from FWD to RWD.
- Horizon 4 continued the trend, with two cars in particular absolutely dominating B-class and A-class respectively in the form of the Top Gear Track-Tor and the Hot Wheels Bone Shaker. The latter in particular had very high stats across the board for being just an A-class vehicle, largely owing to the fact it's a fictitious vehicle made fully drivable and as such it has no real-life performance equivalent to speak of. The Track-Tor on the other hand proved itself to be a Master of All in B-class - being an off-road vehicle modified to be a trackday monster. Predictably, the community's backlash over these two cars dominating online gameplay was so big that Playground Games decided to ban them from online use altogether in an update.
For many players of Burnout Paradise, the GT Nighthawk is this because it has the second-highest durability of any car in the game and yet is still rather quick, being a sports car at heart. This makes it the car of choice for trolls who like to ruin the fun by constantly driving into everybody, and a boost rating of 9/10 ensures that they'll be hard to catch.
Mario Kart:
- Mario Kart DS:
  - Karts with high acceleration tend to have better steering and drifting, along with mini turbos that last longer, than karts that are more about top speed. This is what makes snaking very common in online play and why people only use Dry Bomber to go a lot faster than normal.
  - However, even with snaking, top speed remains a good stat in time trial — this makes ROB-BLS the best vehicle for this mode, as it has the maximum top speed and a decent acceleration to spam boosts.
- Mario Kart Wii competitive play has a few choice characters being used above all others, namely Funky Kong, Rosalina, and Daisy, because they have slightly faster top speed. The average person not using any of these three generally loathes the sight of them.
  - These characters are often seen driving bikes like Flame Runner/Bowser Bike for the former two and Mach Bike for the latter. These vehicles have great turbo boosts, inside drifts to take sharp turns and a good top speed that can be amplified by doing the wheelie. Karts Can't Catch Up against them, whatever they do: their super mini-turbo is nothing against bikes' wheelie, meaning they can't take straight lines; and while they can still bump into bikes to exploit their low weight (while Flame Runner is a heavyweight, it's still vulnerable while doing the wheelie), bad off-road and lame acceleration, their stationary drift gives them a good recovery, making the weight advantage of karts as pointless as super mini-turbo.
- Metal Mario in Mario Kart 7 has become an eyesore to many non-competitive players. Metal Mario has great boosts in speed and weight when compared to Mario. Because of his stats, Metal Mario is used in almost every Time Trial record and many online races. A primary reason for his popularity is the fact that he has the same stats as the Heavyweight racers, coupled with the smaller hitbox of the Middleweights, with no added disadvantages to compensate. Like with the example in Mario Kart Wii, many consider Metal Mario to be a cool character, but it may fall on deaf ears for people who are just sick of seeing him.
  - A popular combination with this character is the B Dasher with Slick tires: with Metal Mario as the driver, this combo has the best top speed, a decent drift and a smaller hitbox than heavier vehicles.
  - Another one is the Zucchini with the Red Monster tires: while this combo has less acceleration and a more imprecise drift than the previous one, it also has one of the best off-road stats.
  - However, both of them have the Beast Glider, which gives an incredible air speed.
- In Mario Kart 8, mainly Bowser, Wario, Morton, and Heavyweight Miis flawed the weight system in the game and turned them into unstoppable Lightning Bruisers, and nearly all Time Attack records will have used one of the four. The Animal Crossing DLC pack adds Dry Bowser to the lineup, and he boasts the same stats as the aforementioned four characters.
  - The introduction of 200cc put down the heavyweights' supremacy: because of the (too) high speed you take, you need a controllable vehicle over a powerful one. The lightweights in Biddy Buggy/Mr Scooty with Roller tires and Paper Glider became the new champions for this category because of this and thanks to their good recovery. The players who still believed in heavyweights' supremacy still had to take these light vehicles to stay competitive.
  - Deluxe had a phenomenon who was comparable to the original at the early hours of the game with Wario and Dry Bowser (who still have the max top speed with more handling and traction than other heavyweights at the cost of some weight), making them monsters on the time trials. Lightweights took over after, but another combo made its place: Waluigi on Wild Wiggler^note with Roller tires and Paper Glider^note. More than a lightweight vehicle for a heavyweight, it has a great hidden turbo stat and is a fairly balanced and controllable combo with this character in particular^note and its small hitbox makes it easier to dodge opponents.
Need for Speed Payback has the Koenigsegg Regera, 1973 Porsche 911 RSR 2.8, and Volkswagen Beetle. These three cars have developed infamy in multiplayer due to their game-breaking stats when fully upgraded. Players who prefer to use other cars have no hope of winning online events whenever anyone fields one of them.
Shadow the Hedgehog is this in Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing. He has quick air tricks, fast boosts and wheelies. If he is in first, he stays in first. It doesn't help that items fired backwards home in on opponents. On the other hand, if he is stuck in a crowd, he'll probably not get far. Expect to see a lot of Shadow players online. (Considering Shadow is already a Base-Breaking Character outside of the game, it's hilariously fitting.)
Spectre from the Twisted Metal series has a reputation for being an absolute pain to deal with in multiplayer, as having missiles that go through walls combined with one of the highest speed stats allow it to play keepaway games like no other. This is most likely why the online focused reboot excluded the car despite it being a series regular.
Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune:
- The RX-7 Type R, known more commonly by its chassis code "FD3S" or simply the "FD". It's a Game-Breaker car that shines in virtually every aspect, resulting in Hype Backlash from players who prefer to use other cars. About the only place where it isn't that good is Time Attack on both directions of Wangan, where top speed is the most important aspect and the FD's is slightly slower than most others, but that's such an out-of-the-way use case that it doesn't really matter in the overall picture.
- The Nissan Skyline GT-R series, particularly the V-Spec II version. In addition to having excellent power and handling, it also has a large body which makes it great for the game's blocking-and-ramming meta, to the dismay of those who use other vehicles. As such, it's memetically referred to as the "No Skill GT-R".

Fighting Games

Killer Instinct:
- Eyedol unless you get used to him and sometimes even after getting used to him, the same for his successor which may be a worse offender.
- KI 2013 has Sabrewulf, who can apply safe pressure, pass straight through you with his forward dash, and can deal immense chip damage when Instinct is activated.
Capcom vs. games:
- In Marvel vs. Capcom 2, it's Cable getting slacked for his beam-happiness and perceived scrubbiness, being the easiest to use out of the four god tier characters. To put it in perspective, Storm, Sentinel, and Magneto got on the list by pure accident, whereas Cable was built with the intention of being an above average character, enjoying ridiculous priority and speed on almost all of his moves.
- Cyclops occupies a similar position in X-Men vs. Street Fighter and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, so perhaps, along with the above, it's hereditary.^note
- In Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generations of Heroes, various examples stand out:
  - Karas gets this due to his insane rushdown game and easy slide infinite making him not just a Fragile Speedster, but also a fast Glass Cannon. Needless to say, he got nerfed for Ultimate All Stars. This just happened, however, only In America though. Japan has pretty much gotten over it since SBO 2009.
  - Zero has taken the throne from Karas as the new Glass Cannon par excellence. It's gotten bad enough to the point that rookies can just spam his Sougenmu —> Z-Buster & Hadangeki combo, while the experts make him a nigh-untouchable combo fiend.
  - Tekkaman Blade, being something of a pretty lethal Lightning Bruiser and another popular choice for teams, isn't exactly a slouch in this department either.
- Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has a whole slew of them.
  - Perhaps the most infamous in the game, and even the entire series, was Phoenix. She's a massive Glass Cannon that dies to a mild breeze, but thanks to her Dark Phoenix Rising hyper that both resurrects her and gives her permanent buffs for the rest of the match, and Level 3 X-Factor, she became the most overcentralizing character in the game. There was never any reason not to pick Phoenix, and players either built up 5 bars of hyper and waited until their other two characters died for an easy comeback, or rushed to snap the opponent's Phoenix in and kill her ASAP. Things got so bad that, even at EVO, matches often came down to who got Level 3 Dark Phoenix out first. It didn't take long for both detractors and supporters alike of Marvel 3 to point to her as a symbol of everything wrong with the game. However, after Ultimate rolled around, both Phoenix and X-Factor in general received a few significant nerfs, and people were also increasingly diligent in performing setups that would allow them to kill Phoenix before she got 5 bars, so while still considered a solid character, she's nowhere near as hated as she was in 'Vanilla' Marvel 3.
  - Sentinel. His super armor frustrated newer players, his launcher with HYPER armor was even worse, and he's also REALLY easy to pick up. People rejoiced when he received a severe health nerf shortly after launch - but he was still hated. In Ultimate the hatred has died down quite a bit, being replaced by pity once most players realized how much Sentinel struggles against a wide variety of characters.
  - Wolverine used to be one of the best characters in the game. He's fast (and can make himself faster), very tricky to block, possesses a dive kick which starts a combo anywhere on hit, and does enough damage to kill an entire team in seconds. When Ultimate rolled around, many of his ridiculous stuff, such as his dive kick causing groundbounce while the opponent was on the ground was taken out, and he also got a new move to prevent mashing called Swiss Cheese, but he is still very powerful, and very much still despised.
  - Oddly, Amaterasu is getting this treatment from a small portion of the player base. Weapon Switch Cancels are difficult to master and necessary to use her to her full potential, but without it most of her damage output comes from spamming attacks with the Divine Retribution (the flaming mirror), and one of her hypers covers the entire screen. Her nerfs in Ultimate changed this, however.
  - None of these, bar Phoenix and maybe Wolverine and Sentinel, can compare to the one character people have bitched about since day one, and still bitch about in Ultimate - Wesker. He has, to wit, some of the easiest combos in the game, some of the most high-priority normals in the game, a full-screen projectile normal (the Samurai Edge) that leads into his many, oft-annoying teleport shenanigans, an OTG version of said projectile normal that pops up the opponent for MORE easy combos, his Rhino Charge hyper counter that crumples the opponent and leads to yet more combos, excellent speed, and excellent defense. Aside from Wolverine, Wesker is the perfect point character, and with the proper assists, he can easily obliterate many of his opponents' team members in about 10 seconds with just one combo. X-Factor makes him even worse because he is the only character post-patch with an infinite involving...you guessed it, his Samurai Edge. Wesker is so noob-friendly that he is actually the number 3 ranked most used character online, 2nd place being Sentinel and 1st being Dante. The changes listed for Ultimate nerfed his health to that of Ryu's and decreased the active frames for Rhino Charge...but he still has almost all of the same easy shit he had before, and more. That's right, Wesker was actually buffed for Ultimate.
  - The new hated character of the month is Zero, who has already been proven to be far stronger and worse than Wesker. He has long range normals, quick mixups, and is capable of killing entire teams with his infamous 'Lightning Loop' combo even WITHOUT X-Factor. This is because after killing one character, Zero players can use his Raikousen before the next character comes in, not only immediately forcing them to block but also to guess which direction to block; if they guess wrong, they get looped to death as well. What makes this worse is that even if Zero drops the lightning loops, he can continue attacking for an ambiguous mixup and start an even more damaging combo because it resets the damage scaling. Guess he didn't escape his fate.
  - Morrigan has been receiving this treatment, due to a new keepaway tactic developed with her. Basically, she can flight cancel her projectiles and fire a second projectile almost immediately after. Combined with her Astral Vision super, which creates a double of her on the other side of the screen that mimics her movements, this leads to insane keepaway as it essentially fills the entire horizontal area with a truckload of projectiles in a span of a second. But you can just superjump over that right? wrong. Combined with assists that cover the air like Doom's Hidden Missiles or Strider's Vajra and it becomes literally impossible to even get close to Morrigan. However, most of this came about after pro player Chris G started using Morrigan in tournaments and cleaning up with her. Players in general were more focused on Phoenix, Wolverine, Wesker, etc. and even other competitive players who used Morrigan didn't have the sheer overwhelming, oppressive presence with her that Chris G did. This makes Morrigan an interesting case in which, while many tournament-watching players hated when this tactic was used as they found it incredibly boring to watch, the hate only really came about during Chris G's matches.
  - The real problem is the Hidden Missiles assist itself. It is an assist of Dr. Doom (a Tier Induced Scrappy in his own right thanks to his amazing combos and nice set of assists), and considered one of the more dangerous assists thanks to its ability to OTG and break combos. While Morrigan is the centre for the bullet hell tactic, it is Hidden Missiles that makes the whole tactic work on a new level, while being an awesome assist in its own right.
  - Doom also comes with the unique ability to have insane Pringles level combos when you hit a TAC. Unlike the other characters where they need to knock them down to the ground, Doom's attacks have the unique ability to bump them into the air, making it so that he can slowly combo them right back down to the ground. Along the way, both players get a ridiculous amount of meter, but by the end, Doom has 4 bars and the opponent can just be baited into a situation where they can be tagged. This has since become a staple of Doom players' repertoire, which is unusual because of how this is normally considered a styling combo. Of course the creator of the combo simply ups the ante by making up variations that can hit from any position that the TAC comes from. This alone was what launched Doom from being high-tier to borderline god tier.
  - Vergil is considered this due to an extreme amount of Complacent Gaming Syndrome. Vergil is what happens when you combine the complexity and stamina of Zero with the speed of Wesker and the attack range of Dante. He has extremely good priority on all of his attacks, can teleport, and can set up extremely damaging loops and combos with his Spiral Swords super. He can be used on pretty much any position of any team. To truly master him, though, you need to have the right assists and be able to do his Round Trip loops which lead into Spiral Swords.
- Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite:
  - Dante: If you play online, you'll run into him 90% of the time because he's just as good as he was in the last game thanks to his easy chain combos, lockdowns, and ability to respond to just about everything. In fact, he was so good that the December 5 patch gave him some serious nerfs, from decreasing his health, overall damage, and jacking up the recovery frames on his moves.
  - Zero: He's even better than he was in the last game, gaining a variety of new moves that let him fill the screen with projectiles, on top of retaining the ability to cancel his Z-Buster into attacks from Ultimate and his Level 3 super that's practically invincible.
  - Gamora: Her basic gun projectiles hit fast, go through just about every other projectile, and she can chain the Arc Fire leaping shot into itself multiple times, giving her a nigh-invincible approach game.
  - Dormammu: In addition to all his projectiles from the previous game, he has a new move (nicknamed "The Carpet" by players) where he causes burning vines to appear on the ground. It hits the entire screen, and even if you block it you'll still get pulled into melee range very quickly; for this reason you'll see Dormammu paired with Dante a lot, since the Carpet can be used to set up Dante's combos.
  - The Reality Stone: Its Game-Breaker Surge and Storm make it the Stones' biggest offender in terms of Complacent Gaming Syndrome online. It did get nerfed quickly after Infinite's release and reality stone fell out of flavor.
  - Space Stone: Probably the most used stone because of its infinity storm, which puts the opponent in a box, severely limiting their movement. Basically every character can make use of this ability and it can instantly change moment of the game.
BlazBlue:
- Jin Kisaragi◊ — a proud owner of shiny leather pants. Even when he's a total asshole, people still think of him as an interesting character and is welcomed warmly in the story. In casual matches? People DREAD him because these two words makes him quite the cheap character: Ice Car. He only gets worse in the hands of someone who knows where the invincible frames in his other moves are... And to make matters worse, the console ports have an achievement for riding the Ice Car 20 times in a single round and then winning.
- The hate also extends to Nu and Arakune, both of whom can hit you at ridiculous distances with little warning and have hugely damaging combos. However, you'll never see anyone rooting for Nu at a tournament, especially considering she's the final boss, and using bosses in ANY fighting game is generally frowned upon.
- Cat Girl Taokaka is sometimes treated as this because of her ability to jump around really fast. Specially if whoever is playing her actually knows what to do with that ability. Particularly her *ahem* Taunt Loop.
- As of Continuum Shift 2, Noel Vermillion is vilified for their 5k-7k damage range and insane options and perks. Things have dialed back quite a bit since then, but her reputation hasn't changed... much.
- Before Continuum Shift 2, Litchi Faye-Ling was a dreaded character to face despite her status as Difficult, but Awesome, since the awesome takes form in 'overpowered beyond reason'. However, over time, with nerfs from Continuum Shit 2 (and probably further in the wake of Extend), she's recovering from this status (although there are still some extremely bitter at her high-tierness from the first CS previously).
  - Ultimately, as of Extend the game is balanced enough that nobody has been put into this category as of yet.
- Chronophantasma has Azrael and Kokonoe as the bane of most players' existence. Azrael earns this distinction due to dealing insane damage meterless, his fantastic backdash and reversal options as well as an excellent fireball and the ability to special cancel his forward dash. DLC character Kokonoe on the other hand, became derided as rendering the game pay to win because of her powerful setups, insane pressure and mix-up game, and ability to keep and hold combos a good, long while- Within 24 hours of her release on PSN, SEVERAL Touch of Death combos where discovered for her! Kokonoe has become so far the only character in fighting game history that made the Japanese fighting community store PSN ID's of those who use Kokonoe... to be blocked or avoided. She almost ended up banned from tournaments until people figured her out and the 1.1 patch fixed her. Azrael, however, was buffed in the 1.1 patch.
  - And now with Chronophantasma Extend (the 2.0 arcade update), Nu-13 has reclaimed her top tier throne with insanely damaging combos and excellent neutral control with her new sword attacks. 2.0 Nu makes CT Nu look like a harmless kitten by comparison.
  - With Chronophantasma Extend out on consoles, Nu's strength was actually found to be greatly exaggerated by Japanese players, though she is still considered very good. In her place, however, Jin and Hazama are now considered this. Jin because Arc Sys buffed him too much and made him a Master of All again, and Hazama because the nerfs he got either didn't hurt too much, or had a side effect that actually helped him.
- Central Fiction isn't exempt from this trope. Meet Nine the Phantom, mother of Kokonoe and one of the legendary Six Heroes. Ever since her timed release on December 2015, she has solidified herself as a high-tier contender thanks to her incredibly versatile gameplay. Her long-ranged normals give her a very potent neutral game, her 'magic' ability (which is not a Drive) gives her a multitude of options at her disposal, with a grand total of twenty combinations (the most common one you'll see being a fast, overhead combo-starter), and her actual special attacks are also very impressive (one of which is a safe Dragon Punch-esque move), especially when used in tandem with her spells. She can leave the opponent in a dangerous guessing game if she has them pinned down in an advantageous position. The opponent guesses right, they get out scot-free. Guess wrong, and they're trapped in a vortex of projectiles. The only downside to Nine is that her otherwise amazing normals have slower frame data than the rest of the cast, and her movement, while also good in its own right, requires some getting used to. Nevertheless, she has a sizeable playerbase, and for good reason.
The spinoff game BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle features:
- Gordeau, who has regained his title as a cheesy character due to very fast and long-reaching attacks and incredibly unga damage potential plus his notorious Grim Reaper attack (an attack which practically fills the screen) being an assist now. Gordeau also has two of the game's known touch of death combos with Azrael and Makoto for double the unga.
- Jin, with his ability to spam near-instant screen-filling supers (especially during Resonance Blaze) that do absurd chip damage even when blocked.
- Hyde Kido, also of Under Night: In-Birth, who has a lot of reach and little wind-up, and the ease of which to execute combos with him lets him pump out damage easily. He also has a very safe poke tool in Dark Lotus, both the special move version on the ground and the jumping C version (which was originally a special move in his home game), which allows him to zone/strike an enemy from their respective angles without getting up in their face for a free combo if he whiffs it.
- Ruby Rose combines Hyde's extreme combo potential with long standard reach on her hitboxes, unmatched mobility, multi-projectile special moves, and attacks that are very unsafe to switch into while being combo-ed. Her English voice acting also makes her even more obnoxious to fight.
- With subsequent DLC added to the game, Yumi from Senran Kagura ended up being the undisputed best character in the game. On point, she can easily carry her opponents to the corner where she can dish out obscene damage. She also has Jin's freeze mechanics which not only extends combos but also allows for nasty reset options. As an assist she can lock her opponents down in long blockstrings to allow mixup potential. And on top of this, she's one of the easiest characters to pick up. She pairs well with nearly every character in the game and she's guarenteed to appear at any high-level tournament with her in it.
Granblue Fantasy Versus has Gran himself. As a true Jack of All Stats and example of the Shoto Clone archetype, he is easy to pick up and has no obvious weaknesses. In addition, he possesses a long-ranged lunge attack with a very short startup time, making it extremely handy in many situations both for surprising an enemy as well as punishing them during recovery from a whiffed move. His most contested ability however is to pull off a juggle combo that does around 60% damage - with just normal attacks and skills. Other characters need to use their Skybound Art or Super Skybound Art to achieve that much damage with one combo. That said, Gran is usually rated as top-tier, but still not strong enough to be considered truly overpowered.
- A portion of players dislikes fighting against Ferry, as her neutrals possess very long range, come out quickly, still do decent damage and can be cancelled into any of her skills and supers upon connecting (this includes being blocked). This is in addition to her possessing what's arguably the best setplay tool in the game: Geegee, her rabbit-like ghost companion, who stuns and deals damage to opponents, allowing Ferry to follow up with some impressive combos. All of this can make it very difficult to approach a skilled Ferry player, and even then, her arsenal includes an invincible uppercut that leaves her standing in place but launches the opponent far away from her, unless it is dodged or blocked. As of a balance update, it is possible to punish some of Ferry's long-ranged attacks by countering with an attack of equal or greater strength, but this requires fairly precise timing.
Guilty Gear has Zato-1/Eddie for much of the series. He has always been considered one of the best characters in the game and very difficult to deal with for much of the cast due to his Puppet Fighter mechanic, as well as his superior air and ground game, while also being among the most dreaded despite his status as Difficult, but Awesome, since the awesome takes form in 'overpowered beyond reason' due to his godlike unblockable setups dominating much of the cast. This ultimately culminated in the "Eddie Tier" in #Reload, where it proved very easy for him to get his opponent into a situation where he could simply trap them in the corner and give them an unblockable series of hits that stripped away a lot of their life... and left them in the corner. After a series of tweaks, Xrd largely returns him to his #Reload status, with good Zato players being able to solo entire teams of well-played opposition by themselves.
- Millia Rage has usually been very strong throughout the series' history, but her Xrd incarnation is easily the strongest version of her yet. She is infamous for her Tandem Top special move, where she summons a disc around herself using her hair. Seems pretty simple at first glance... until you realize that it's an excellent tool when her opponent is knocked down, forcing them to block while she can go for whatever mixup she wants. If the opponent blocks low, she can choose to perform Bad Moon, which is an overhead air-only attack with extremely fast startup that can be done the instant she leaves the ground via a Tiger Knee motion and is completely unreactable (you MUST predict that she will do it, NO EXCEPTIONS). What really makes her potent in Xrd, however, is the new YRC system (which adds to her already-deadly mixup game) and a new move that she can do from her command roll called Digitalis which stuns the opponent momentarily so she can set up a combo and crosses up.
- As of STRIVE, one character dominates every tier list: Sol Badguy. Unanimously agreed to be the best character in the game, Sol has an answer for every situation you can throw at him. He has multiple buttons and moves that are positive on block and can be spammed so his pressure is quite easy to use and can utilize frame traps with ease, he can close the gap with Bandit Revolver and can dive in from the air with Bandit Bringer, Night Raid Vortex can low-profile attacks until the move itself comes out, and has a command grab in Wild Throw. On top of all of that, his damage potential is massive, meaning a single mistake can be the choice between life and death. The 1.09 patch finally sought to give Sol a few nerfs, such as making his far slash easier to punish via Faultless Defense and Bandit Bringer having more recovery on landing, but nothing nearly enough to take away his top tier status.
Kurtis Stryker from Mortal Kombat 3. At first, he was a regular Scrappy because he looks like Woody Harrelson, he's a cop in an era of "Fuck Tha Police", he has no backstory to speak of and he has a gun that he rarely uses. The developers eventually proved that they saw him as a Creator's Pet when they responded to the players by buffing him into a borderline Game-Breaker, earning him a spot in this category as well. It took until Mortal Kombat: Armageddon for Stryker to be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap. Sort of.
- Kung Lao's Mortal Kombat 9 incarnation left a bad taste in the competitive scene's mouths. With a multi-purpose projectile in the form of his hat, a range of very fast moves including a spin attack that easily sets up his fairly simple yet effective combos, he got nerfed in subsequent patches.
  - Unfortunately, that only allowed other characters to claim the spotlight. The most notorious? Kabal. He is blessed with absurdly long range normals, excrutiating zoning tools, incredible mixup game and a dash attack that is not only projectile invincible and can start combos from half the screen away but is completely cancellable. It can lead to block spring pressure that seems impossible to escape. Some players even claim to have block string infinites with him, and with a game where normals can chip, some people have no choice but to block and die.
  - In the later meta, the other character that proved to be a problem was Kenshi, possibly the best zoner in Mortal Kombat history. He can deliver pressure from full screen with overheads and blockstrings. Any projectile thrown at him can be reflected back. And if you do manage to get within neutral range? He has long-ranged normals and a shoulder charge that has armor, pushes you away on hit and is completely safe on block with meter. All this while being one of the easier top tier characters to pick up in the game.
  - Cyrax also gets a lot of slack, but mainly due to his bomb resets. Once it is set up and with enough meter, no one can hope to escape from it. His other tool kit isn't that impressive, but it can be frustrating with now easy it is to set things up.
- Mortal Kombat X gives us Lao's cousin Kung Jin, armed with a very fast projectile which also has an anti-air version, safe combo strings that double as easy 50-50 mixups, and the signature divekick of the Kung family. Already sounds pretty daunting, right? It gets worse. A good percentage of Kung Jin players use the Bojutsu variation, which gives him another projectile, the ability to deal absurd meterless combo damage, insane reach on his jumping attacks, and a special move that deals absurd damage when it hits and is one of the best wake-up attacks in the game if you use the EX version, which gives it armor.
  - As of the 1.05 Patch, the nerf hammer has fallen pretty hard on Kung Jin, but he is still very much a major threat. Try to look at the patch notes and you'll see that the devs themselves haven't bothered messing with Kung Jin anymore.
  - There is also Inferno Scorpion, who has high-damaging meterless combos, as well as both an extremely strong zoning game and mixup vortex thanks to his Minion Summons, two of which are a very fast low grab that stuns you and an overhead divekick.
  - Jacqui Briggs in her Full Auto variation. Remember Deathstroke from Injustice: Gods Among Us? She has the exact same spammable machine gun attack that he has, complete with the ability to Meter Burn the attack to fire a missile that hits crouching opponents who aren't blocking, and ducking under the bullets is the only way to get around it, as the bullets can hit jumping opponents. She also has an anti-air rocket launcher attack and a low-hitting ground version of said attack to knock the opponent right back.
  - To be just a wee bit fair on Jacqui, a good Delayed Wakeup can throw off her zoning, along with some well-placed armor moves.
  - Pity the person who has to fight Shirai Ryu Takeda. Remember those times you got your ass handed to you because of some character with ridiculously easy combos? Yeah, that's Shirai Ryu Takeda in a nutshell. Apart from having the easiest combos in the game, almost as easy as Inferno Scorpion, his Spear, while on ground doesn't have the same reach as Scorpion's, can be used in the air. His EX teleport hits once in mid, then twice below, it can throw you off the first few times it happens. The best part about this guy? THREE of his EX moves can combo, and if you have a full bar, then fucking go right ahead and use it all on a 43% combo. Why not. Oh yeah, he also has a projectile in the form of Kunai, which you can throw right at your opponent's feet right when they get up, fresh from the last combo. Chip Damage guaranteed.
  - Tanya was this for all of one month before she got nerfed via an emergency patch. Prior to this, however, her tenure was legendary. She had fast fireballs in her Pyromancer variation that arced similar to Johnny Cage's fireballs, making them extremely difficult to avoid, safe strings, and 50-50s for days. That's not what made her cheap. No, the thing that made Tanya universally hated amongst the competitive community was her teleport. Her completely invincible and safe teleport that not only allowed her to get away and spam fireballs with impunity, but also instantly extend her jump and allow for easy mixups that led into absurd damage. She was so broken that the top 8 of the Community Effort Orlando tournament consisted of nothing but Tanyas...and counter-picks for Tanya. There was much, much booing from the crowd, and Ed Boon himself was there to witness it all. It got so bad, everyone in attendance started counting the number of teleports done in the mirror match (hint: it usually hit around the 40s and 50s). The only reason she wasn't in the Grand Finals was because the last two players were on the same sponsored team and they were going to split the prize money so they just screwed around in Grand Finals.
- Early examples in the Mortal Kombat 11 meta include Geras and Erron Black:
  - Geras, particularly his Infinite Warden variant, has easier access to Krushing Blows than a majority of the cast, with Infinite Warden having access to a sandtrap that rewards both mix-ups and zoning better than the other variant dedicated to mix-ups. His command grab also makes him incredibly dangerous in the corner. His Fatal Blow is full screen and comes out incredibly fast as well. The only thing keeping him in control is his relatively large skill floor compared to the rest of the cast, but top players who do learn him are very dangerous.
  - Erron Black's 52 Kard Pickup has a lot more safe options for combos as he can cancel into his gunslinger stance to do so. This doesn't cost any meter either, as opposed to his other variant which does. The stance also lets him shoot projectiles to cancel them giving him massive control against zoning, while his Rifleman stance gives him potent zoning of his own. Rifleman stance also gives him a great launcher once enemies do manage to close in as well. also His dropkick is also notorious not only for its large hitbox and being safe on its own, but can be meter-burned to guarantee further safety. His slide kick is good for mixing up between dropkicks and can be enhanced to follow up with throwing acid which, when combined with his long throw animation, racks up damage quickly.
There are quite a few of these in the Street Fighter series:
- Guile in the original Street Fighter II had a near impenetrable defense between the Sonic Boom and the Flash Kick, combined with overall strong moves and excellent priority. It really says something when Guile hasn't gotten any new moves (barring supers) aside from the Sonic Boom and Flash Kick; they're the only two moves he ever needs.
- Also Sagat. Most people like his character, but there's often a few groans going around whenever Old Sagat (a version of him without super meter support; the one with it were considered to be nerfed) gets picked in Super Street Fighter II Turbo (the Japanese competitive scene does NOT want to see anyone pick O. Sagat, period), or if he's selected in Street Fighter IV (prior to Super). In the former, while he isn't the highest-tier character, the recovery on his Tiger Shot is so fast that he can basically spam it endlessly, which makes for boring fights and destroys a good number of matchups. In the latter, he possesses two highly abusable fireballs, a vicious uppercut, an incredibly good standing roundhouse, and an array of highly damaging combos.
- Even better than O. Sagat in Super Turbo was Vega. The main reason why he is so hated is Flying High Claw, which is a borderline Luck-Based Mission on if you can block it. Getting knocked down once against a competent Vega can mean the round is as good as over. Even with that, he still boasts a fantastic ground game, mobility, and positive matchups across the board.
- Chun-Li in Street Fighter III: Third Strike is similarly often reviled. The main problems come from her great range, safe moves and overall damage.
- As is Yun, thanks to his Genei-Jin Super Art, which enables Yun to do twice as many hits and can easily be comboed into. If someone complains about SF3, Chun-Li or Yun are probably going to be on top of their things to gripe about.
- Zangief has historically had terrifying range on his command grabs, near infinite priority on his lariat, and his trademark heavy damage. He's so notorious for this that it's the reason he has a cameo as a "bad guy" in Wreck-It Ralph—he caused the screenwriter that much grief in SFII. The cries of players were heard, though, for as of Super SFIV he's been significantly nerfed, but is still very playable and far from low tier.
- Rufus was hated for much of the meta game due to his quick sidekicks, deceptive speed and absurdly easy confirms into Ultra I, often with no need for meter. And unlike other rushdown characters, he has above average health that allows him to outlast his peers.
- Yun, Yang, and Fei Long in Super SFIV: Arcade Edition. Though Yun receives the most hate by far due to how easy to use he is. It probably doesn't help that Word of God has stated that they were Purposely Overpowered.
- In 2012, Seth was hit with this because of Poongko's perfect 4-0 against Daigo. Seth was actually at one point considered to be a skill character, someone who needed to be played very carefully. Then Poongko made his debut and completely shattered that image by showing just how strong Seth really was. Because of him, players found out that his Shoryuken is extremely safe against pretty much everything, he can apply stupidly easy pressure and mixup, and his combos are so long that they cause stupid damage and with the proper application can instantly dizzy the opponent.
- Many players derided the emergence of unblockable crossups (crossups set after a throw that are a true 50/50 on whether the hit will be in front or behind you) and Cammy used this exploit to the fullest. Her fast normal and above average walk speed allows her to keep pressure on her opponents at all times, and she can also rack up damage quickly with each combo. That and she also has a divekick, including an EX one thatil instantly blows up low attacks and throws as well as deliver ridiculous hitstun. Even the highest ranking American players were terrified of her, most evident of the reverse OCV of the country's best players in Canada Cup 2013 by a Canadian Cammy player. However, international players had better success against yet, limiting her tournament success.
- And thanks to the Ultra Street Fighter IV update and the new Red Focus mechanic, Yun is back. He no longer has to even think about using Genei Jin with the new Red Focus, since he can now simply hitconfirm into his Tetsuzanko, then Red Focus Cancel into Ultra 1 for a max-damage combo. His only real saving grace is that he still has a rough time with the three main grapplers (Zangief, Hugo, and T. Hawk).
- Evil Ryu has also become this due to getting massive buffs in Ultra, including Red Focus. The reason why he tends to be hated is twofold: his offensive pressure is absolutely brutal without being overly reliant on meter, with half-life combos being commonplace, but he also has the footsies and defensive tools of vanilla Ryu. The result is a rushdown monster who hits like a truck and is incredibly difficult to force off of you once he gets going, but can also play a solid defensive game when the need arises. Aside from Dhalsim and Rose (who he has terrible matchups against), even his worst matchups are extremely even, and his best are absolute landslides.
- The most hated character in Ultra is probably Elena, mainly due to her small hurtboxes and healing ability. During Canada Cup 2015, which saw 3 Elenas make top 16, Tokido (who later took 1st place with Akuma) reportedly stated: "I will never play Elena, she's too easy and I won't improve as a player."
- Luke Sullivan has this reputation across two games:
  - In Street Fighter V: Champion Edition, Luke's V-Gauge does not follow the rules that the other characters' V-Gauge follow. It instead follows a strange hybrid of the rules for the V-Gauge of Street Fighter V and the Drive Gauge of Street Fighter 6 where it automatically fills, and taking damage will drain it. Other characters' V-Gauges fill when the character takes damage. This forces opponents to become overly offensive and play a strange hybrid of V and 6 to keep Luke from building his V-Gauge, opening them up to Luke's attacks.
  - In Street Fighter 6, Luke is widely considered to be one of the best characters in season 1. He has it all; a solid projectile, great anti-airs, a strong throw loop, solid damage (meterless or otherwise), and the ease of use to go with it. He also synergizes well with the Drive System, and can spend his Drive Gauge however he sees fit. Luke doesn't have many exploitable weaknesses, so it's just a matter of skill when fighting against a Luke player. Luke got nerfed as part of the February 27, 2024 balance patch.
- JP is another one in Street Fighter 6 because he is a zoner that is more typical of Marvel vs. Capcom or Guilty Gear than of Street Fighter where he fills the screen full of Psycho Power to zone someone out. This fills the screen full of his hitboxes without extending his hurtboxes. This is unlike Dhalsim or Necro, both whose hurtboxes extend when they zone someone out because they extend their limbs to fill the screen with their hitboxes unless Dhalsim is using his fire attacks for zoning. JP got nerfed as part of the February 27, 2024 balance patch.
- Ken ended up being another character that was overtuned in the early run. He has powerful normals both on the ground and in the air that make it easy to confirm and difficult to keep out. He also has supers that are easy to confirm to and can lead to some of the highest combos in the game from any amount of super meter or Overdrive gauge. Both Ken and Luke have become the most used characters in tournaments and he ended up being the character to win EVO in 2023.
People who play Dissidia Final Fantasy often sigh whenever they find another player using Squall, as they know that the Squall will often do little more than use Beat Fang over and over again. While not top tier, his ability to make your Bravery disappear with little effort gets on the nerves of people who try to avoid such play. Also, Squall is one of the few characters who can overcome any and all of Exdeath counters (specially while in EX Mode). And when the game was released outside Japan, he got a new aerial attack that doesn't make sense with his abilities (from the original game) nor did he need it as much as Firion (whose abilities better fit that type of attack). Thankfully, Duodecim nerfed the Beat Fang's ability to be spammed over and over, moving Squall away from Scrappydom.
- Squall's villain counterpart, Ultimecia, is also considered to be one. Her magic not only hits from long distances, but it hits fast, making it harder to block since deflecting one projectile only sets you up to get hit by another one (have fun, Exdeath). Knight's Arrow can be delayed for five seconds to trap you while you're distracted by Ultimecia's other attacks. And if you're playing on a large map, like Order's Sanctuary (or worse, Orphan's Cradle in Duodecim), she can just keep her distance and poke at you with impunity.
- Exdeath is another one; mastering him means you can block almost any attack in the game and counter instantly for critical damage. He takes real skill to master, though, so he isn't too hated.
- From the good guy side, Tidus is up there on the top tier with Exdeath. Tidus has many of his Bravery attacks dodging before attacking, so with the proper timing, it's possible to avoid getting hit by an opponent's attack and strike back almost immediately, with his EX Mode making this timing even more lenient. And all of these dodge-and-counter moves link to the HP attack Quick Hit, making Tidus capable of some very easy punishes. While Tidus's attacks have a long recovery time if he misses, and he can only hit short-to-mid-range, his dodge-and-counter moves mean even with the long recovery time, most other characters have difficulty just hitting him. On top of that, his ground speed is very high, making him able to avoid most long-range attacks by simply moving out of the way. Couple that with his EX Mode doing more damage the higher his HP is, along with an EX Burst that's very easy to pull off, and it's no wonder Tidus has hovered around the top of every Dissidia game's tier lists.
- Since the release of the sequel, Duodecim, another such Scrappy has emerged: Sephiroth. Because of the general overhaul of the game and the addition of the assist system, he's suddenly emerged as a very powerful character, all because of Shadow Flare. It was a good move to start with—fast, pressuring, little lag, great range, so on and so forth. But with the assist system introduced, Shadow Flare now has all of those things and will build assist gauge easily and quickly, even with whiffs! The practical upshot is that matches with Sephiroth tend to involve the Sephiroth spamming Shadow Flare until his assist gauge is full (if the opponent tries to rush or punish him, well—that's what the character was originally designed to deal with), and then Sephiroth uses that assist gauge to land a combo—rinse and repeat. Even if this strategy weren't so effective, it would still be scrappifying, as Shadow Flare is an extremely boring move.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
- Pet Shop in Heritage for the Future is unanimously banned in tournaments for a number of reasons which imply that Capcom made him that way in purpose. First off, he's a small target and can fly, meaning he doesn't need to block low at all. Second, he also has insane recovery from supers, meaning you can combo the hell out of people before they even have a chance to attack. Third, all of his normals create icicles with stupidly-good range and priority that can utterly shut down an opponent. And here's the best part: combine the second and third bits and you have access to not only infinite combos, but blockstun infinites. You can keep the opponent trapped in blockstun until time is up. Let's just pray the HD port has an option to disable him...
- All Star Battle has Diavolo, Josuke, and Iggy. Diavolo because of his relatively easy infinites when the game was first introduced which mean that if he hit you once, then usually the only way you'd have a chance is if for whatever reason he decided to drop his combo. Josuke has a highly abusable countertaunt that grants several of his moves super armor, and Iggy has - like Choi Bounge from King of Fighters - a very small size that's difficult to hit, as well as insane damage output.
At one tournament for Naruto: Ultimate Hero 2, Itachi was outright banned for having a game-breaker special move which slowed time down for the victim and made them take much more damage for about a minute.
- Itachi was elevated to down right broken in Ultimate Hero 3. He's the second fastest character in the game, one of his jutsus creates a clone next to the opponent no matter where they are which then explodes, he still retains his time manipulation, and just to add a cherry on top, he has an infinite. If the opponent is out of chakra he can spam his air grab over and over again without the opponent being able to ever tech out of it. The Fourth Hokage, the fastest character in the game, also gets this for being down right untouchable in the hands of a good player.
Soulcalibur IV:
- 90% of your online games will match you against Cervantes or Kilik, which are very effective even when pushing keys at random. Even if you know how to get by, it's still quite annoying to see 50% of your life go away because you slipped up and got hit by the same attack they've been effortlessly spamming the whole match. The best part? Give one of those characters to a skilled player. They're beasts.
- You WILL hate Hilde on higher levels of gameplay. While she may have traces of Difficult, but Awesome syndrome, it only takes a combo or two to end a fight via ringout, AND fast. Here's an example at Evo2k9. As of this writing, the community decided to just outright ban her.
  "Step one to having no friends."
Soulcalibur V
- This time around, a majority of your online matches will be either against Natsu, Xiba, or Nightmare. Natsu is basically Taki, but 10 times better. Her combos and juggle ability do a ridiculous amount of damage: all reward and no risk. Nobody liked Kilik, so nobody likes Xiba either. When Nightmare players in IV grumbled that their character was terrible, he came back with a vengeance thanks to the Powers That Be. Now he can deal up to 50-70% of your lifebar's worth of damage with just one bar of meter, and his ring-out game became even better. Oh, and if he gets a Counter Hit off of a Critical Edge it takes down half your health.
- One could make a case for Mitsurugi as well. Fast moves, good pokes, great mixups, and nice damage all in one package, and makes up one of the three most common characters online (Mitsurugi, Nightmare, Xiba).
- Viola gets a fair bit of hate for her ability to juggle you for days with her orb, from a distance.
Soul Calibur VI is a game where the Long-Range Fighter is king. There's also the matter of how certain stages like Indian Port and Ostrheinsburg Castle place the characters very far away from each other at the start of the fight, giving Ivy an immediate advantage. Three characters stand out:
- From the first week of release, Ivy gained notoriety for her fantastic arsenal of moves to keep the enemy at bay and force them to play to her rhythm. Having slightly slower close range moves doesn't matter too much when she has two highly spammable Lethal Hit moves with impressive damage, and her signature Summon Suffering and Calamity Symphony throws, the former of which is Unblockable.
- Azwel, a newcomer with fantastic zoning potential and versatile, difficult-to-read attacks because he uses magic rather than a physical weapon.
- Seong Mi-na may have been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap with her newest appearance giving her a major overhaul, but many argue it's worked too well. She hits incredibly hard for a zoning character and has third-best weapon reach besides Ivy and Azwel. Combine with a Sophitia-esque mixup game and attacks that hit across multiple zones, and you have a deadly fighter.
Tekken:
- Jin Kazama got to spend some time as the Tier Induced Scrappy when Tekken 4 was the current game. His Lazer Scraper mixup game just pushed him far ahead of the competition, to the point where he was the only top-tier character and "Jin vs. Jin" final matches at tournaments was a common sight. People were understandably tired of it (though ways were discovered to beat him, but they weren't consistent methods). It didn't stick with him as later installments put him more in the middle tiers and the hatedom he generated seems to have blown over.
- In Tekken 5, it's Steve. He has an infinite with his left weave stance body blow, which can be used repeatedly to stun the opponent until they die. It's also ridiculously easy to land after a sidestep. Thankfully gone as of Dark Resurrection.
- In Tekken 6, it's Bob. He's fat and seems to actually be an unsubtle Take That! at the fanbase, his moveset is fast and strong but repetitive and frankly uncool-looking, and he utterly swept Evo 2011.
- In Tekken Tag Tournament 2, the Mishima clan (except for Jinpachi and "normal" Jin) now takes center stage as the top tier: Lars, Kazuya, Devil Jin, and Heihachi. With the Tag system, they have access to numerous touch of death combos and juggles.
- Tekken 7 introduced Leroy Smith in Season 3, and the hype surrounding his cool design and fighting style were off the charts. Once he was released, this hype turned into dread as his moveset was revealed to be an amalgamation of other character's best moves and improving them, complemented by one of the best parries in the game. His overwhelming advantages were fully revealed during EVO Japan 2019, where top-tier players were knocked out of the tournament by this character, and out of the eight players in Top 8, six played Leroy^noteOne of those Leroy players had only a few minutes of prior practice with the character. Book, who won the tournament and usually mains Jin, finished his closing message to the crowd with the almost sardonic advice, "Just pick Leroy.". Even after a slew of nerfs, he's still an incredibly strong character.
  - Fans endured suffering with the very next character with Fahkumram, a new Muay Thai fighter from Thailand. His long limbs made it easy to out-poke any challengers and deal mix-ups to boot, had guard break moves to crush defensive players, contained other moves to snuff out any attempts at sidestepping, and he had incredible damage to boot. To make matters worst, he had evasive mobility options despite being one of the tallest characters in the game and certain moves that should hit him simply didn't due to his wonky hitboxes. Many top players switched over to the character during that patch and Pakistan, the strongest region in the world, seriously considered banning him from competition. Subsequent nerfs made him more managable, but he remains a strong character.
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale
- Gravity Rush's Kat has become the first character on the roster to be given her own tier, and some in the PSASBR community have called her "The Meta Knight", after the Super Smash Bros. Brawl example where Meta Knight was literally in a tier of his own: the very top. The developers themselves called her broken before she even arrived as DLC, and they had to par her down in order to even be released; apparently it wasn't nearly enough parring down. She was the first character to have a touch-of-death combo discovered for her and her mere speed, ability to stay in the air for so long, 8-way directional air-dash (something otherwise foreign to All-Stars) and a slide that passes under many of the game's projectiles makes her incredibly hard to pin down. Should she land a hit, don't expect her combos to end any time soon; at most, the rest of the cast can start combos from only certain attacks whereas nearly everything in her arsenal can become and subsequently link into an AP-Burst combo (her combos aren't quite as brain-dead easy as Raiden's, but still kind of simple). Pair that with the massive hitbox to her Gravity Attract, her unnaturally safe debris throw, ungodly long list of kill-confirms, and generally glitchy gameplay makes for a deeply broken 1v1 monster.
- Kratos is this. While he's meant to be easy to access and is wildly popular his moves are a little TOO easy to use. Kratos enjoys homing grabs, great range on his chains with excellent hitboxes that surround his entire body. He has great range, speed, and even a counter attack with many setups and some good supers. Due to his popularity, he's also very common which has caused countless players to beg for him to be nerfed to a reasonable level.
- The biggest example in this game is without a doubt Sackboy considering that he gets a huge boost to his super meter with most of his attacks, and especially his throws. This was so bad that when people asked for him to be nerfed, PlayStation immediately responded by forcing a patch onto Sackboy considerably reducing his super meter boost.
- Coincidentally, in an advertisement for the game, Robot Chicken had Nathan Drake and Kratos complaining about Sackboy's beating them.
- Evil Cole was generally hated for his cheap Kill Confirm, Max Giga-flame Punch to Level 1. Radec was also hated for being a 'camper' type of character that earns ludicrous amounts of AP with his sniper rifle.
In Injustice: Gods Among Us Aquaman is shaping up to be this, with his ease of use, excellent zoning tools, and fantastic normals. Conspiracy theories that Tom Brady, a tester for the game and a tournament player who bodied a tournament with Aquaman, deliberately molded him into this during testing don't help any. Subsequent patches nerfed Aquaman, particularly increasing the cooldown on his Combo-Breaking trait, but he is still very viable.
- Aside from that, Deathstroke is hated for how easy it is to abuse his gun specials, constantly pressuring the opponent from full screen, and for being one of the most overused characters by noobs who do nothing but spam and then ragequit once the opponent does get past their zoning. In the hands of a good player Deathstroke is one of the best characters in the game. Patches have nerfed this, but it's still easy to abuse him.
- Raven is building something of a hatedom for being too overpowered (like a full screen grab) among lower-skilled players, who tend to have difficulty fighting zoners. At higher levels of play, she wasn't really that notable, as her grab has startup and can be blocked and is otherwise a typical zoner, and she ended up being only good, not great.
- Green Arrow is also considered this by some, with good Combos, easy zoning with his arrows (Not as cheap as Deathstroke's, but they can actually hold from pretty much any direction) and being just quite easy to spam. His Super is also one of the few with a range longer than Aquaman's.
- Superman has gotten a lot of hate as well. He has full screen lasers that can also be performed in midair, a trait that allows Supes to ignore armor, and a supermove that is ridiculously fast. He could also spam his two-hitting launcher safely while causing chip damage if you blocked, and a painful combo if not. The champion at EVO 2013 for Injustice was even booed for using Superman! Like some of the above characters, patches have remedied this, leaving Superman as a mid-tier character in the Complete Edition.
- DLC Character Batgirl because she is just plain annoying to fight against. In fact, Batgirl only just barely avoids being a Game-Breaker; her specials leave her wide open for counter attacks that skilled players can easily exploit. Batgirl's win quote pretty much lampshades how most players feel about her.
  Batgirl: I'm a real pain in the ass, huh?
- Martian Manhunter was the second to last DLC brought into the game and he ended up one of the most excrutiating characters to face. His Psychic Orb, Telekinetic Strike and Alien Pillar makes it damn near impossible to approach. Phase Charge and Phase Assault are the perfect moves to punish any unsuspecting opponents who do anything unsafe anywhere on the screen. And to top it all off, his trait increases the range of his normals to where even if his opponents can get within range, he can keep them out once more. His toolkit absolutely smothers any semblemce of offense making him and Batgirl the undisputed best characters in the game.
- DLC Character Scorpion also garnered hate, besides for not fitting in the game's cast of DC Heroes, for being ridiculously overpowered and hard to block on release. Patches have nerfed him to near uselessness, though.
- Injustice 2 gave us another early meta zoning terror in the form of Deadshot. Much like his predessor Deathstroke, he posesses strong projectile tools that most characters can't get through. And even if they do manage to get past his array of bullets, he can push them away with his anit-air move that is invincible on block. Subsequent patches made him easier to manage, but he still gets hate from online fans.
  - DLC also ended up introducing the strongest character in the game, this time in the form of Starfire. She boasts a trait in the form of a full beam super, making it ridiculously easy to use. The normal version can be ducked, but she can enhance it to make it a mid while only using half a bar of the trait. And said beam can be canceled with most moves to put you back at full screen. She can avoid projectiles of her own with a full screen charge move that can be made safe with meter. Most of her normals are safe on block as well. And she has one of the best anti-airs in the game which can be converted to even more damage. Basically, she is impossible to either approach or keep out and can be seen dominating tournaments around the world.
Touhou Hisoutensoku ~ Choudokyuu Ginyoru no Nazo o Oe:
- Sakuya Izayoi, the former sole occupant of the top tier. Her thick and fast knife volleys let her both easily win long distance battles by defeating other bullets with sheer density and set up wide bullet cover to approach. But her real strength is her ridiculous ability to utterly dominate the enemy on knockdown in the hands of a skilled player - her melee kicks are surprisingly safe and tricky to deal with and her slow knives keep an enemy pinned down in the corner at her mercy, making low damage output a non-issue as long as she can keep the opponent in a perpetual block. She can also easily catch air rolls with her ↘+melee move, which is airunblockable. And she has a slew of additional tricks up her sleeve that make her so infuriating:
  - Her default →↓↘ special move, Close-up Magic. It's a shoryuken-style move that immediately propels her into the air surrounded from both sides with spinning knives. Even though it doesn't look like a melee attack, it cannot be grazed (passed through) like bullets, and she can cancel almost everything into it to punish the opponent trying to escape her pressure at any time. It comes in two flavors: a fast and unpunishable B button version (she can recover by shooting anything) and one that lets her graze bullets herself when active and goes as far as the top of the screen (C button version). Neither disappears when blocked and both stay active for a good moment. And to add insult to injury, she can use it mid-air and cover herself with knives on demand, flat-out denying any short melee attacks on her while she grazes the bullets with the C version or/and lands on the unexpecting opponent, giving her a quick surprise slap.
  - Her Time Sign "Private Square" spell card. A fairly inexpensive (3 cards) super that gives her a moment of invincibilty followed by 5 seconds of total dominance on the opponent by making her movements really slow. She can activate it after knocking the opponent down, then easily break the poor girl's block or inflict stupidly easy combos on her, since both hitstun and blockstun are highly increased as well.
  - Her Illusion Sign "Killing Doll" spell card. An extremely inexpensive (2 cards) super that launches a volley of knives into the opponent's position after a second. Sakuya can move after the activation, so all she has to do is to knock the opponent down, launch Killing Doll, force her into block with melee (so she won't graze away) and break her guard with combined force of the spell card and her pressure (high/low attacks and knives). And the worst thing is, the opponent cannot use the Border Escape technique (which lets her escape blockstun by sacrificing a part of the spirit meter) when a spell card is active, so she won't escape the damage, will be guard broken and thus will lose one spirit orb anyway (limiting her capability to shoot bullets, fly or block further). Witness the ridiculous effect of both of the spell cards in action here (and keep in mind that the Sakuya player actually fails to capitalize further on a Killing Doll and break her guard again before Sanae manages to Border Escape by a narrow margin).
  - Her Speed Sign "Luminous Ricochet" and Conjuring "Eternal Meek" spell cards are also rather nasty. The former is an extremely quick bouncing and universal knife that lets her punish enemy at a distance, combo from slow hits or pin her down on block up close for further pressure, and costs 3 cards. The latter is a knife spam that costs mere 2 cards and deals ridiculous spirit damage point blank, to the point it can almost break the guard by itself!
- Yuyuko Saigyouji is no slouch, either. Even though she's not as fast as Sakuya, she doesn't need to be. Her C bullets, such as 5C, 6C, and J.2C, don't interact with most bullets, going through everything (except your opponent), and she has some of the best aerials in the game, such as j.6a and j.2a, which have huge hitboxes and, much like all of her other moves, hit like a truck. Her 2-cost Death Sign "Ghastly Dream" spellcard is a fantastic okizeme tool and reversal, and her 4-cost Life Limit "Ticket to the Netherworld" spellcard takes away half of the opponent's lifebar if Yuyuko isn't hit during the 6 seconds that the wisps are active. Oh, and while she's quite slow on the ground, she's capable of perfect flight, and is able to maneuver in the air with much greater accuracy than the majority of the cast, making her deceptively mobile. Like Sakuya, Yuyuko also has the honor of being top-tier in most Hisoutensoku tier lists, and has even stolen the top-tier spot from Sakuya as of 2019!
Although The Simpsons Wrestling isn't particularly well-balanced to begin with, Ned Flanders is infamous for being brutally overpowered. Most of his melee attacks both come out quickly and hit surprisingly hard, his bible projectiles home in on enemies, and his heavy attack involves him summoning God to repeatedly attack the opponent with lightning strikes; while said attack has a long startup, each strike does ludicrous damage to the point where it's possible to deplete an opponent's entire health bar before the move ends. What truly tips him over the edge, however, is his Auto-Revive ability; after being pinned once, Flanders will revive with full health, meaning you have to pin him twice to actually win against him. Flanders is so utterly broken that he's actually considered stronger than Burns & Smithers or Kang & Kodos, both of whom were designed to be Purposely Overpowered SNK Bossses.

First-Person Shooters

The Call of Duty series is home to a few Equipment examples:
- The grenade launcher in the Modern Warfare games, which is nicknamed the "noob tube". One good hit in the general vicinity of your target is basically a free kill, and since it's an attachment to your standard rifle, it's not even much of an opportunity cost, since you can still gun people down the old-fashioned way. Later games took pains to reduce its effectiveness - in particular, the "Scavenger" perk that lets you replenish ammo by picking up ammo bags from dead players, doesn't replenish grenade launcher ammo starting from Call of Duty: Black Ops, except in Modern Warfare 3, where it does so only if the player that dropped the bag had a grenade launcher himself. By Call of Duty: Black Ops III grenade launchers don't exist as an attachment anymore - you can only use a separate one as a secondary weapon with a specific Specialist in multiplayer.
- The M1887 from Modern Warfare 2 is a lever-action shotgun that once had the best accuracy and one of the longest ranges of any shotgun in the game which, shotguns being as they are in the game, meant that it could One-Hit Kill from further distances. Its main drawback is its slow rate of fire, though this is easily overcome with the Akimbo attachment. It was later nerfed in two successive patches, one of which greatly reduced the range of the weapon when paired with Akimbo, and another to fix an oversight whereby adding the FMJ attachment would restore the weapon's range back to its pre-patch levels.
- The most powerful (or at least the fastest-firing) submachine gun in a given Call of Duty tends to fall under this, such as the P90 in Modern Warfare, the UMP 45 in Modern Warfare 2 and the PPSh-41 in the WWII installments.
- The console version of World at War garners more hate for the MP-40 than the PPSh-41, since it deals 50 damage (read: half of your health) without Stopping Power, as opposed to the 40 it does on PC. It is the only non-sniper rifle capable of 1-hit kill headshots.
  - Call of Duty 4's Skorpion garnered similar hate early on, due to having the same damage without Stopping Power, plus no noticeable recoil and a bug where that damage was not affected by the silencer - in Hardcore mode where health is dropped by 70%, this equated to 20 free, totally-undetectable kills.
  - Call of Duty: Black Ops II has every SMG fall into this category. The relatively small size of most of the maps, on top of the expansion of Create-a-Class (in particular the ability to have two attachments on a primary weapon out of the gate) and the fact that Modern Warfare 3's excellent MP7 is now the first of its class, means that hipfire spraying from almost every SMG, particularly if they have a Laser Sight and Foregrip attached, is often more effective than aimed fire from heavier weapons.
- Modern Warfare 3 has akimbo FMG-9s, derisively nicknamed the "double FAGs." No skill involved, just hose your enemies down with a spray of bullets and watch as they die before they can even react. The Type 95 was another one, being a highly-accurate burst-fire weapon that would instantly kill anyone at nearly any range if all three bullets hit.
- In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, the TAQ-56 (an A.K.A.-47 version of the FN Scar-L) and the Vaznev-9K (PP-19 Vityaz) were the meta weapons for almost the entire game's lifecycle. The TAQ didn't have the best rate of fire or range, but it had low recoil and could lower its number of shots to kill by one with a single head/neck shot, and the Vaznev was the fastest killing full auto weapon in the game at close range. They were a staple of competitive leagues, which contributed to them being overused for most of the time the game was active. High level players constantly complained about those two weapons being the only ones being used at those skill levels thanks to "Stop Having Fun" Guys using them either as a crutch for their bad gunskill or as a way to stomp noobs, and thanks to Infinity Ward's refusal to nerf those guns in meaningful ways, the game struggled to keep its playerbase after Season 2.
- In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, the MCW ^noteBushmaster ACR and the Rival-9 ^noteScorpion Evo III were the guns to become the metagame, to the point where the MCW is the only assault rifle allowed in competitive. The MCW was chosen as the go to for tryhards for similar reasons to the TAQ-56 in the previous game, namely having low recoil and its time to kill lowered by a single head/neck shot. Except, somehow, the MCW manages to have even less recoil, leading to jokes about it being so easy to use that someone without two hands could use it. The Rival-9, on the other hand, has a fast rate of fire and decent range, and even good iron sights compared to most guns in MWIII. The MCW however was much more overused than the Rival, and repeated attempts to nerf it didn't hamper its usage to the point that in Season 3 Sledgehammer Games gave it the nuclear treatment and completely removed its headshot multiplier, finally killing it for good. Although, it is likely to be an oversight that will be corrected later, since the patch notes mentioning reducing the headshot multiplier instead of removing it.
Despite a constantly evolving metagame Rainbow Six Siege has some consistent examples:
- Operators with One Armor, the lowest in the game but granting the highest speed continue to dominate due to the discrepancy between where they appear to be and where they are while moving. A recent patch addressed this somewhat by making them slower, but One armors remain consistent picks in the pro-league.
- Ash, one of the aforementioned One Armors, remains broken to this day as a result of her personal unresolved hitbox issues coupled with a powerful gun with a high rate of fire and a gadget that opens holes in doors and walls for her to sprint through and catch opponents by surprise.
- Jaeger, a defensive One Armor, is one of only three defenders with a "true" assault rifle, offering enormous damage at long range. Back when he had access to an ACOG scope he was a notorious spawn killer, but even after half a dozen nerfs, including being moved to Two Armor, he's seen as a must pick for his ability to catch grenades and damage output.
- Blackbeard is a rare Two armor example, as his gadget (a bullet resistant shield attached to his rifle) allows him precious seconds of safety while peeking around corners or through holes to shoot at defenders, cancelling latency, Hitbox Dissonance, and basically any advantage a defender might have to shoot him. This is after dozens of nerfs have seen his shield become more and more fragile.
- Lion was completely broken upon release, due to a combination of a powerful and fast-reloading LMG and a gadget that forced defenders to sit still or be identified through walls anywhere on the map. Even after reducing the amount of information he gets out of his gadget, he remains a consistent top pick.
- Ela, yet another One armor example, upon release had access to mines that would blur the vision and slow the movement of enemies, as well as a gun that had no recoil and a 50 round magazine. This made her an unstoppable ambusher capable of simply out-firing opponents, who would run dry and have to reload before she'd emptied half her magazine. Nerfs to her recoil and magazine capacity mean she's merely "incredibly popular" instead of a guaranteed pick every round.
- Vigil, of course a One Armor, has access not only to one of the other defender assault rifles, but a secondary machine pistol with the highest DPS in the game, and a gadget that lets him turn invisible to cameras and drones that people might use to suss him out before he can flank and murder them.
- Maverick, released in Grim Sky. He experienced nerfs before even leaving test servers, and upon release could make instant murder-holes through any breachable surface, even armored ones, and do it in near silence. He also has access to a .50 caliber DMR and a powerful assault rifle, and is, surprise surprise, a One Armor. On top of that, his gadget effectively counters many Operators (Mute, Jaeger, Bandit, Mira, Maestro, and Kaid) while itself having no counters (outside of simply killing him).
- Melusi, a One Armor defender in Steel Wave. She has three bulletproof noise projectors that are effectively super-barbed wire that also function as proximity alarms, allowing defenders to swing at their leisure on attackers caught in it. Attackers have to expose themselves to destroy it with melee or use their precious explosive utility. This is on top of her easy to use weapons and explosives that make her a menace on the roam.
- Jackal, a Two Armor attacker introduced in Velvet Shell, has a HUD that reveals defender footprints and can scan them to ping their exact location. Repeatedly. Gaining intel for free with little counterplay can make a roaming defender's day hell, especially since he has really good weapons. This made him an extremely frequent ban in competitive modes.
Halo 4 has the Boltshot, a Forerunner pistol with a Charged Attack that has the firepower of a shotgun and a huge effective range. Because of the game's otherwise-balanced custom loadout system, players can spawn with a Boltshot as their secondary, making it a Game-Breaker on small maps. It was so loathed that there were popular petitions to get it nerfed (such as the "Boltshot Revolution"); 343 eventually relented, halving the weapon's effective range.
Oddjob from GoldenEye (1997), whose short height makes him difficult to hit without aiming downward, which you can't do while moving. The "No Oddjob Rule" has become memetic for how common a house rule it is.
Halo: Combat Evolved had the plain old pistol (or "M6D Personal Defense Weapon", to give it its proper UNSC designation). Every other weapon had varying effective ranges but the pistol's, for whatever reason, had a completely flat effective range that basically made it powerhouse from anywhere you could put a crosshair over a foe. This was one of the OG Masters Of All.
Paladins
- Azaan was infamous upon release for his Lightning Bruiser kit that borders on Master of All. Hitting weapon shots or taking damage will fill his unique Ire meter, triggering his passive that gives him Damage Reduction, extra damage, and AOE explosions on his normal attacks. His first Talent gave him 40% lifesteal and even more Damage Reduction (later nerfed to 30% lifesteal and no Damage Reduction), and he can also summon walls to block enemy attacks and movement. For mobility, he has a dash that can be buffed to go absurdly far and fast, and it also cleansed debuffs (thankfully removed in a Nerf), including Cauterize, pairing up well with some of his Cards that heal him when Ire is consumed by ensuring that he always gets the full heal.
- When she was released, Kasumi quickly became the most hated Champion , with tons of comments demanding that she be completely reworked or outright deleted from the game. This is due to her main weapon, the Yokai Doll, which locks on to enemies and can damage them as long as Kasumi is just looking vaguely in their general direction. It's her normal attack, so it has no cooldown, unlike other auto-aim attacks, and it has no ammo limit either. Being damaged by the Yokai Doll also inflicts a debuff that makes your attacks weaker and further Yokai Doll hits stronger, and she can consume these debuff stacks with her alt fire to inflict massive burst damage.

MOBAs

League of Legends:
- Any champion to get a long period of time in professional play (especially to the exclusion of other champions) will get this. Strong champions in non-professional play with frustrating mechanics (such as Vayne, Kassadin, Elise, Tryndamere, Nunu, and Zac) tend to get this even if they're balanced or nonviable in competitive play.
- Many Ranged top laners are this - Not only do their pokes hurt enough even early on, the best ones tend to have equally absurd mobility, making it nigh difficult to ever engage on them.
- Jax was an in-universe example, being totally unbeatable. This threatened the very existence of the League, and led to increasing sanctions being placed on him. To mock these sanctions he started fighting with a lamppost and kept on winning anyway.
Dota 2:
- A sub-genre of playable character in the game, known universally as 'carries,' excel at biding their time and amassing items until they are capable of destroying the entire opposing team by themselves. Games are often played with teams making great strides to stop these heroes from ever becoming powerful (usually by cutting off their flow of earned gold.)
  Anti-Mage, for instance, makes heroes individually worthless by burning away their mana with every attack (which is vital for casting spells.) Items increase his attack speed, health and damage done, allowing him to make an enemy powerless in mere seconds.
- Many heroes are capable of "split-pushing," or attacking vital enemy structures and avoiding any direct contact with the enemy, leading to a slow but efficient means of weakening the opposing team. To combat this, someone has to hang back far from the action to ensure split-pushing heroes can't destroy the whole base while everyone's gone.
  Nature's Prophet is notorious for this tactic. His ability to quickly amass gold, teleport anywhere on the map and attack enemy buildings makes him not only hard to catch but also very difficult to out-maneuver; teleportation scrolls in the game only allow heroes to teleport every minute, and only lead to select locations.
- Newer players often have difficulty with heroes who have innate invisibility skills, which are useful for both starting unexpected fights and escaping from them. Certain items in the game may also be purchased to give any player a brief duration of invisibility, which on the right hero can lead to devastating ambushes.
  Riki is perhaps the best example of this trope, as he is totally invisible whenever he isn't actively attacking someone. Few players know what items to buy to reveal invisible units, making Riki seem like an impossible hero to attack or escape from. It doesn't help he has a smoke bomb that stops enemy spells.
- The most Egregious of these however, are usually temporary, the hero Sniper for example, quickly became this in 6.83, now commonly known as the "HoHo HaHa patch" after one of Sniper's more common and more annoying voice lines. These tend to be both short lived and very uncommon, as the game lives on its balance.
Heroes of the Storm isn't as bad as some other MOBA's since it constantly has its characters being patched and balanced but Nova consistently is cited as being way too overpowered by players. While yes a bad Nova dies easily, Nova is fairly use to use and has some of the best burst damage in the game, invisibility, and a clone ability. Her Triple Shot Heroc is a One-Hit KO when separated since it's super strong and she's usually hated for the sheer cheapness of her character. While she is a Glass Cannon her ability to escape easier and use clones simply makes her hard to keep track of.
- Kael'thas has reached meme levels due to being on both sides of this trope. He makes an appearance in balance patches every 2-6 weeks and inevitably ends up in either the top 5 or bottom 5 characters in the game every time. This peaked in an official patch note that commented Kael would probably still wind up OP, since he always seems to. In draft play, particularly in the lower skill level leagues, it is highly unusual for Kael to avoid the first ban cycle (making him inaccessible before any player has had a chance to pick him).
- The early arrivals from Overwatch saw an overrepresentation of hyper-mobile damage dealers, with Tracer, Genji, and Hanzo most emblematic. These characters combined high damage potential with multiple options to escape danger, making them simultaneously brutal at punishing enemy mistakes and very forgiving of their controller's mistakes. This led to the franchise as a whole being disliked by the Heroes player base. It wasn't until many successive nerfs of the offending heroes and a broadening of the Overwatch roster to include healers, a tank, and a support that the stigma ended.

MMORPGs

In the PvP modes of Final Fantasy XIV, three particular Jobs have gotten the ire of the playerbase for being too good. God help you if you meet all three of these in a fight:
- Warriors have been high tier since the PvP revamp of 6.1; as Tanks, they have very high HP by default, and their moveset is focused on regaining HP by attacking enemies. This would already be strong enough, but Warriors have three moves that make them ridicolously strong: Blota, which pulls an enemy towards the Warrior and applies Heavy to them, which can be a death sentence if the Warrior's other teammates are nearby, Primal Rend, a gap-closing AoE attack that does good damage and also stuns everyone hit by it, and their Limit Break Primal Scream, which empowers themselves and removes any nearby enemy's abiltiy to Guard. A good Warrior can completely cripple an enemy team, stun them and leave them open for the rest of the team to sweep. Even after being nerfed, Warrior remains extremely high tier.
- Paladin, another Tank Job, is annoying to fight against for a different reason: Being the de-facto protector Job, they don't have the ability to deal as much damage as Warriors, but they make up for that by being damn near unkillable with abilities like Holy Shelltron creating a very strong barrier that also reduces damage by a certain %, and attacks like Requiescat that heals them. But what makes them truly dangerous is their Limit Break, Phalanx: it turns them completely invulnerable for 10 seconds, and reduces the damage taken by every nearby teammate by a whopping 50% for the same amount of time. A well timed Phalanx can completely turn the tide of a fight and there's not really anything the opposing team can do other than wait out the buff's time.
- White Mages are by far the most used Healer in PvP and for good reason: Their healing is much more consistent than other Healers, with abilities like Cure II and Cure III capable of upkeeping the entire party for a decent chunk of health and having a relatively low recharge, and their damage output is respectable. However, what pushes an already strong Job into absolute annoying territory are two abilities: Miracle of Nature, a spell that turns an enemy into a critter for a few seconds and basically acts as a Silence; however, what makes it different from normal Silence and Stun is that there is no way to cleanse it before it runs out and leaving the transformed player very vulnerable. Then, there's their Limit Break, Afflatus Purgation, a beam of light that hits every enemy in a huge line, dealing big damage, stunning them, and putting a regen on the White Mage's teammates for good measure. There's a reason why if there's a White Mage present in an opponent team, the best strategy is to kill them as soon as possible.
In World of Warcraft, each expansion tends to start off with a single class being ridiculously overpowered. In early Wrath of the Lich King this was the Retribution Paladin, in early Cataclysm it was the Fire Mage, and in early Legion it was the Havoc Demon Hunter.
- One case of this put Hunters in an unusual bind balance-wise. They got nerfed several times due to complaints that they were overpowered in PvP play, which ended up making them all but useless in PvE raids while still getting complaints of being overpowered in PvP. For example, in Mists of Pandaria Hunters could effortlessly go through the Timeless Isle. Most enemies have very powerful, but avoidable area of effect attacks. The Hunter's pets have a 90% damage reduction against AoE attacks.
- Warlocks became this in Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria due to the way their spellpower scaling worked (in BC) and numerous mechanical changes and overpowered trinkets (in Mists). This got to the point where it wasn't uncommon for there to have numerous warlocks per raid in those expansions.
- Special mention should go to the Priest class, which used to have this symptom within its own races. Priests used to be the only class in the entire game that got racially exclusive spells. While Humans and Undead got spells that were decent at best, and Night Elves and Trolls got spells that were completely useless, Dwarves hit the jackpot with Fear Ward, a spell that could prevent fear effects. Fear, in the earliest days of World of Warcraft, was an extremely dangerous effect that could lead to wipes if allowed to go off (especially on the main tank), so this was significant. Fear Ward became so powerful that many Alliance raiding guilds refused to accept Human or Night Elf Priests. It only got worse with the release of The Burning Crusade. Both of the new races could be Priests, but only Draenei got Fear Ward. Needless to say, many Horde players were less than pleased with this. Eventually, Blizzard gave Fear Ward to all priests, and later scrapped the racially exclusive spells.
- Tier 7 Death Knights were easily the most stupidly powerful and over-scaled class in the history of the game. With the best stuns and self-heals that could rival dedicated healing spells, they were basically invincible to magic damage, could revive themselves (and their allies) immediately as ghouls, and they could remove healing spells from their targets. It wasn't unheard of for entire raids to be made up exclusively of DKs and still easily down bosses. How broken were they? Blizzard nerfed them into the ground within short order - and they were still the best tanks in the game with quite reasonable DPS to boot.
  - Death Knights were completely absurd right after WotLK released, putting out meter-topping DPS while tanking, making most of the other melee classes in the game look like chumps in PvP, and generating videos of Death Knight players dominating PvP or raid damage meters by spamming macros that just used abilities at random without any gear on. They did eventually get toned down, but during their ridiculous OP phase, they were the only class the game's ever had where the player could literally roll their face across the keys and still perform well. This was partly because Blizzard intended them to be a special "Hero" class, only available to higher level players. Later on, when Monks were released in Mists of Pandaria and Demon Hunters in Legion (disregarding Havoc initially being overpowered), they were balanced alongside the other classes from the outset to prevent repeating the Tier 7 DK infamy.
  - To put it into perspective, it got so bad that Death Knights are still considered The Scrappy by some players to this day several expansions later (long after they were properly balanced) simply because of Tier 7. The class also got plenty of derisive nicknames that have lasted to the present, like Death Knoob or Donkey Kong.
- In Warlords of Draenor, Arcane Mages were on top of the meta in terms of damage, to the point that stacking enough of them allowed for a seventeen second boss kill on Mythic difficulty. In Legion, both Arcane and Fire were grossly outclassed by Frost, while Fire dominated during Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands.
- With Covenants in Shadowlands, Night Fae at launch ended up being the go-to choices for the majority of specs, with Kyrian not too far behind, due to both Covenants' first Soulbinds being absurdly strong, both having great Signature Abilities in Soulshape and Phial of Serenity, and both having some insanely good, sometimes Game-Breaker-level Class Abilities (Convoke the Spirits, Wild Spirits, Shifting Power, Death's Due, Spear of Bastion, Divine Toll), with Necrolords and Venthyr comparatively much weaker. This led to heavy criticism of the whole system from people upset over having to go Night Fae on most of their characters to stay competitive.
MapleStory has the Mercedes and Demon Slayer classes, both released in the Legends patch in December/January of 2011/2012. Both classes have skills which are significantly more powerful than those of older classes and special beginner skills that increase damage, restore health, and provide 10% extra EXP among others. It's at such a point where one of these classes can out-damage older classes 20-30 levels higher than them. Playing one of these characters will sometimes cause you to be ridiculed for taking the "easy" way out.
Star Wars: Galaxies had the Jedi class, long The Scrappy for various reasons, but its tier was definitely considered a major argument against it. Jedi was a class that had to be unlocked (through large amounts of tedious grinding) but once a player achieved Jedi status, they were rewarded with the best class in the game (arguably justified, given the setting). A talented Jedi was a one-man wrecking crew, with a wide range of abilities that allowed them to operate independent of party support, defensive boons that made attacking them at range almost completely useless and attacks that ignored armour. It wasn't impossible to take down a Jedi one-on-one, but you basically had to design your character around it (and also have luck on your side).
- Made worse with the Force Ranking System, when Jedi could rank up and gain even more ridiculous benefits by fighting other Jedi and Bounty Hunters.
For Star Wars: The Old Republic, we have several companions. Pre-Knights of the Fallen Empire, companions served one role (tank, melee damage, ranged damage, ranged tank, healer). For some people, Khem Val, Qyzen, Bowdarr, Mako, Malavai Quinn, Corso, Doc, and Kaliyo could fall into this role for simply being too good at their jobs. Given the nature of the tank and healer companions, it's often impractical to swap them out for anybody else. And sure, they are for the most part likeable characters and there's nothing wrong with a tank or healer too good at their jobs, but sometimes people want to use different companions, having gotten bored of using the same companion since the starting planet for almost the entire game. Knights of the Fallen Empire has changed this, as anyone can be made into a tank, damage, or healer.
- Khem Val and Qyzen are the first companions to join the Sith Inquisitor and Jedi Consular, respectively - and were the melee tanks. Given that they are both extremely squishy and Sith Assassins and Jedi Shadows would have to be behind the target to be most effective, it's hard to not drop them.
- Bowdarr or Corso for smugglers and Kaliyo for Imperial Agents. Either you are playing a ranged character who needs the heat taken off of them or a rogue-like character who needs the enemies facing away from them - and those companions are your ones for it. For Imperial Agents, Kaliyo is also your only choice for pretty much all of Chapter 1.
- Malavai Quinn, Dorne, Doc, and Mako because healers are useful. The classes they accompany are also bulky as well, making an extra reason to use those over a tank.
- Treek is available to all classes, and before Fallen Empire, could fill both healer or tank roles, and was better than existing companions at both.
- Post-Fallen Empire, healer companions were overpowered, to the point where there were reports of flashpoint groups opting to kick a human member out and running with three player characters and a healer companion and being better off for it. Even after a slight nerf (originally a larger nerf that was partially rolled back), healer companions trivialize any single-player content, and at upper influence levels, most Heroic content as well.
Ancient Magicks in Old School RuneScape, at least in minigames and deep wilderness, where you can't teleport out. Specifically, the Blood and Ice spells, which heal the user for half damage dealt and freeze those hit by it for up to twenty seconds, respectively. Blood is mostly pointless in deep wilderness, but it's incredibly powerful in minigames due to being able to hit up to nine targets at once, with most wearing melee armour and being especially vulnerable with it, letting it function as a superior source of health. Ice is self-explanatory, especially since the cooldown between being unfrozen and being able to be refrozen is approximately two casts, meaning odds are you won't be able to travel much distance before being unable to move for twenty more seconds. This is subverted in low or mid wilderness, as anyone who's unfit to fight it can just teleport out due to the teleblock spell being in the normal spellbook, but it's still an annoyance.
Guild Wars enjoyed one by the name of "Touch rangers". Rangers would pick Necromancer as their secondary profession, then stack Expertise and blood magic to reduce the skill cost and learn life-stealing attacks respectively. Touch skills were pretty tough to defend against since they would almost never miss, and Blood Magic would often bypass armour and resistances. Rangers could combine this with stances to make them hard to hit at range or increase their movement speed to keep up with people moving away. Very few counters, and the build was very easy to play only needing a rotation of just Vampiric Bite and Vampiric Touch. This was also just as effective in PvE as it was in PvP Along with Wammos (Warrior/Monks) they were easy to mock.

Puzzle Games

Marvel Puzzle Quest has cases who are easily identifiable because seemingly every team on PVP is using it. Bishop, who jumped in front of attacks and responded with a strong attack once damaged enough, wound up Nerfed for it. But on the same year he was weakened there was a huge replacement in Polaris, who spams special tiles when they're destroyed, and downright starts rounds with an attack dependent on how many friendly specials are in place. A later case that also spread fast was Chasm, who drains enemy power, can strike hard, is easy to heal, and has an automatic revival.
Meteos featured a few of these in the form of gimmicky or otherwise overpowered planets. The most notable example is Brabbit: on the original DS version, the wonky gravity physics on the planet meant that a player could hold a single screen wide stack in the middle of the screen for minutes on end while launching an endless rain of black meteos on the enemy. It's near impossible for anyone but another Brabbit player to survive such an onslaught. The Xbox 360 version attempts to provide a counter to this with combo breaking powerups, but the planet is still incredibly powerful in the hands of a skilled player.
Arle and Carbuncle in Puyo Puyo's "Fever" ruleset; in fact, their reputation alone is a not-so-insignificant reason why the community almost exclusively sticks to "Tsu" rule. Arle receives the fewest number of pieces among the games' characters, giving her the same amount of chaining precision that one receives in Tsu rule. Carbuncle on the other hand receives the most, making it nearly impossible to attack him. (As players do not receive garbage until they fail to make a chain.)
Death's ruthless attack pattern landed her this status in the initial version of Magical Drop V, though she was eventually nerfed.
The "heart cross" meta in Puzzle & Dragons led by Kaede, Ronove, Gremory and Myr has come to dominate the tier lists, much to the chagrin of many who wish for more diversity, as new high end dungeons have typically been created with the top tier of the meta in mind. That's not the worst of it; only Myr (and if you're talking about her original light release and not her Summer water variant) is farmable, and the other three are Godfest exclusives, are 6* at base with the exception of Ronove, and are heavily reliant on other 6* base GFEs to create optimal teams. The 6* base Kaede is infamous for the "system team" that relies on owning 3 or 4, and Ronove, despite starting out at 5*, is even more reliant on 6* GFEs including Dark Kali.

Real-Time Strategy

Hearts of Iron II, playing as the Soviet Union in multiplayer games is generally considered unfair unless certain house rules are followed. This is because: 1. The Soviet Union is almost completely self-sufficient and needs no trades to function. 2. It has a huge manpower reserve for creating an army. 3. Assuming the game starts in 1936, it has about five years to prepare for a historical war with Germany. 4. A smart USSR player will invade Germany when it tries to invade France, and most experienced players will reach Berlin no matter what the German player does. 5. The USSR's industry is spread out over a very wide area, meaning there's no way to cripple it by seizing its main factories right away. House rules generally include for Germany and the USSR to only go to war when they did historically, to limit the number of soldiers the USSR produces beforehand, and to force the USSR to trade with Germany (Germany needs a large amount of resources the USSR has that it can't easily get from other countries, so one strategy is for a USSR player to refuse to trade anything with Germany, crippling their industry). In contrast, an AI-controlled USSR is relatively easy to conquer for most experienced German players.
Age of Mythology:
- The Gastraphetes (special archer available only to Hades-worshipping Greeks) outranges everything else (including defensive towers) and takes down buildings and ships easily with an upgrade every player gets. A player choosing Hades basically means that they win any game that lasts until late-tier. The only defense is an exercise in Crippling Overspecialization via an army of cavalry - and if there's a wall to slow them down, even that's sketchy.
- Having Loki as your "main god" is very popular in the competitive scene due to their Hero Units being able to instantly summon a random Norse Myth Unit (powerful mythological creatures) for free. The only requirement is that the Hero Unit in question be in combat. Even worse/better, Loki is the only god who has access to the Rampage upgrade, which allows Myth Units to be trained the normal way near-instantly.
Dawn of War:
- The Necrons in Dark Crusade play mechanically very different from the other races in the game. They do not need Requisition, and their Necron Warriors are free, albeit slow to produce. Necron units are all tough as nails and have a resurrection ability, which allows Necrons to go over their unit Cap. The Necron Lord, their hero unit, is a monster when fully upgraded: he'll win in melee against nearly anything in the game, can teleport, can resurrect units en masse, and temporarily turn into an invincible C'tan. The icing on the cake is that since destroying the enemy's HQ is an Instant-Win Condition and the Necrons can place five Flayed Ones in any area of the map not covered by the Fog of War, you can rush the Lord into the enemy base, drop in all your Flayed Ones and wail on the HQ for an easy victory. This works just as well in multiplayer as it does in the campaign.
- The Tau, also added in Dark Crusade, have extremely powerful ranged weaponry that makes it very difficult to even approach them. Tau players have a sardonic motto: "We suck at close combat, too bad you'll never get there". They also have access to a lot of stealthy units, which are impossible to target without detector units (which are rare in the early game - the Orks for example have their two heroes as their only available detectors). Barracuda Bombers, added in Soulstorm are extremely overpowered in campaign, though a good human player can manage them; imagine a flying tank with absurd firepower and armour with a build Cap of 5. This is especially telling in Strongholds, where the maps are often designed to funnel your army into enemy defences; send your Barracudas over the terrain and strike the enemy at the heart of their base, wreck Chaos shrines and Necron monoliths and run down Vect's Dias of Destruction without a single footsoldier ever leaving the base.
- The game earned the infamous title "Dawn of Eldar" to describe the borderline Creator's Pet treatment that the Eldar received over the years of the game. Merely good in the base Dawn of War because they had strong options for killing heavy infantry (which two of the games' factions relied heavily upon), Winter Assault and beyond buffed the Eldar several times and some consider them the most flagrantly overpowered and aggravating faction in RTS history. In short:
  - Fleet of Foot, a no-cost, no-cooldown speed upgrade that nearly every Eldar unit had. Dark Crusade's infamous fire-on-the-move accuracy "fix" rendered the downside of Fleet of Foot (reduced accuracy on the move) moot, so Eldar units became nearly impossible to catch and incredible in the hands of a player with good micro.
  - Pretty much all their units are among the best. Howling Banshees are one of the best melee units in the entire game when fully upgraded because they put out disgusting damage while also being more resilient than Khorne Berserkers, Assault Marines and Wyches, and will even beat down dedicated elite assault units like Sisters Repentia and Assault Terminators, while costing only a fraction of the price. Fire Dragons have more HP and armour than Terminators while also being immune to knockdown and knockback, and melting buildings and vehicles in mere seconds with their meltaguns, and they get Fleet on top which means they will easily escape their counter units (melee specialists and walkers). Harlequins are excruciatingly good at keeping high-tier melee units tied up and on their arses for most of the fight, and their Harlequin's Kiss power can instagib high HP infantry and commanders in squads, while not actually being that fragile - 900 HP and Commander-class armour when fully upgraded is nothing to scoff at.
  - The Seer Council, the second-most complained about unit in the Eldar roster, is a 9-elf squad of elite infantry with 600 HP and Commander-class armour, with Conceal, an ability that cuts ranged damage against them by 50%. In addition they can cast Embolden which makes them nearly immune to morale shock. You can also attach a Farseer to the squad which doubles the effective HP of the Council, while also reducing the cooldown on all the Farseer's formidable powers by 15%, making them notably more spammable.
  - The Avatar of Khaine, the single-most complained about unit in the Eldar roster and their Relic unit. 15000 HP behind Daemon-class armour, the highest melee damage of any unit in the game (more than the Bloodthirster). But this isn't why players use and hate him, because the Avatar massively buffs the Eldar player by merely existing - the Avatar of Khaine increases the Cap on Infantry and Vehicles, allowing the Eldar (a Dying Race) to field more units than the Orks and the Imperial Guard, makes all nearby units immune to morale damage, and doubles unit build rate at the Webway Assembly and the Aspect Portal.
  - All Eldar vehicles are faster than their equivalents in other armies and often more powerful too, and with the exception of the Wraithlord they have the ability to jump like assault troops can. The Vyper comes with a missile launcher and twin shuriken catapults that make it really quite effective against everything, it is entirely superior to the Imperial Guard Sentinel in terms of speed, armament, HP and armour. The Fire Prism, an Eldar hover-tank with the highest movement speed of any tank in the game and also considerably more HP than both the Chaos Predator and the Imperial Guard Leman Russ Battle Tank and even more armour than the Space Marine Land Raider which, it bears noting, is the Space Marines' Relic unit so the Marines can only produce one to match the Eldar's two allowed Fire Prisms (and their Avatar of Khaine and whatever else they have), and it has a powerful laser cannon that always hits and does area of effect damage with knockback too.
Crusader Kings II, back in the day realms ruled by the same dynasty were automatically in alliance, which made houses like Karlings and Rurikids extremely powerful. It was fixed later, but Karlings are still hated in the community.
Kingdom Rush Vengeance: Eiskalt is widely considered by most players as the most overpowered hero in the series to the point where he destroys any difficulty the game had. As a dragon, he flies around quickly, and his entire kit is based around high damage, area hitting and stalling, with every attack of his capable of slowing enemies. His basic attack is a True Damage Herd-Hitting Attack that fires much faster than any artillery (which only do physical damage), his Ice Peaks deals a huge percent of enemy HP to off Giant Mooks quickly, and his Hero Spell is basically a "turn the tide" button by freezing all enemies for a good amount of time and allowing them to be picked off.
Total War: Warhammer, Total War: Warhammer II, and Total War: Warhammer III got into this from the second game onwards, with players generally agreeing that factions/races recieving DLC and reworks often leave them too easy to be fun:
- Clan Skryre, from the second game's The Prophet and the Warlock DLC. Their Forbidden Workshop mechanic is criticized by many players not just for how good it is but for having no real cost. Skryre gets the resources they need for the Forbidden Workshop just by doing the same things every other faction does and there's no penalty if they don't use it since they'd still be just as good as every other Skaven faction. They're also generally blamed for the Power Creep present in the unique mechanics of nearly every DLC faction that followed, especially other Skaven.
- Clan Moulderalso from the second game wit hthe The Twisted and the Twilight DLC, for the same reasons as Clan Skryre: their unique campaign mechanic comes at no real cost to the player and are incredibly powerful. At least Clan Moulder's Flesh Lab has a chance to cripple a unit if too many augments are applied, but that's not a huge cost compared to the bonus they can get.
- The Beastmen, following their rework with The Silence and the Fury. even discounting Taurox's "Rampage", every Beastmen faction is incredibly powerful, with good units that can be made much stronger very quickly. So quickly that none of the A.I.s can follow suit and which make them wholly unprepared when a Beastmen player will start destroying their territories before even turn 30. As such, the Beastmen post-rework are generally seen as being too easy to be fun.
- The Warriors of Chaos were seen as underpowered Memetic Losers in the second game, with the Champions of Chaos DLC for the third one aimed to rectify that. And it succeeded beyond expectations. The new tech trees and factions buffs allow the Warriors of Chaos (any of its eight factions) to become incredibly powerful extremely quickly, fielding armies that are able to easily beat anything the game throws at them, even the supposed units that should pose a problem to them (for example, a Dwarfen gunline downing half your Khornate units before they get in melee doesn't mean much when the remaining half will be able to easily destroy the entire enemy army). They make great amounts of money from their Dark Fortresses and battle loot, said fortresses are very easy to defend, and the way Warriors of Chaos can now recruit and upgrade units mean that they can get high-tiered units easily.
- From the Shadows Of Change DLC for the third game:
  - Akshina Ambushers were quickly reviled for being a tier 2 unit that could easily beat a good chunk of the games' units (being archers that fire armour-piercing projectiles, have good melee stats that are also armour-piercing, have Stalk by default and having the same range as normal archers, making them better than Dark Elves' Shades (themselves a contender for Game-Breaker in the previous game) in every way), rendering nearly the entirety of the Kislev roster completely redundant. even after a nerf that all but removed their armour-piercing capabilities, they are still considered very good.
  - The Incarnate Elemental of Beasts and Mutalisk were also hated for being monsters that have no real weaknesses (having good stats, anti-large attacks and a Area of Effect damaging aura that also made them easily deal with infantry units).
  - The Changeling is considered one of the worst Legendary Lords in the entire trilogy since his gimmicks (of cults that are hidden from the AI and are almost impossible to discover, armies that are hidden if they're in the same region as a cult, said cults remaining even if the cities they are in is razed, having no actual settlement to speak of) completely break the game's AI and makes his campaign literally impossible to lose.
  - Yuan Bo and Mother Ostankya were likewise disliked for being, like Ikit and Throt in the previous game, straight-up upgrades to their respective races without any downsides ^note. Of particular scrutiny were Yuan Bo's "Matters of State" actions, which confer very powerful boons (some of them permanent and faction-wide) at no particular cost.

Rhythm Games

In Arcaea, Tempest Tairitsu is by and far the best Partner for World Mode grinding; while her base Step stat tops at 100 at level 20, she also has a Step bonus equal to the sum of all Partners' levels divided by 10, capping out at 60, thus her Step stat can go as high as 160, or 50 more than the next highest-Step partner, Summer Ilith. The catch is that Temptest Tairitsu also has a special Hard gauge that is extremely punishing on multiple misses in a short period of time (even missing just five notes is enough to trigger a Track Lost if it happens in all but the densest of patterns). This creates headaches for those trying to grind event maps, as players have to pick easier charts if they want to min-max their grinding, instead of improving themselves on more difficult charts. Her very existence devalues older Step-focused partners; when the CHUNITHM event was reran two months after Tempest Tairitsu's debut, Regulus, who previously had the highest Step stat, ended up feeling like a Cosmetic Award at best; not helping matters is that the rerun had a shorter time frame than its original release, as if the developers expected players to have a maxed-out Tempest Tairitsu this time around if it was their first time playing the event.

Role-Playing Games

Mass Effect 3 has a few in Multiplayer:
- From the game's launch, the default Human Vanguard has been hated by a huge section of the fandom. Its unique combination of Biotic Charge and Nova, which are designed to work together, mean a Vanguard with low power cooldown can constantly spam Charge-Nova-Charge-Nova and wipe out whole troops of enemies singlehandedly; with good dodging, they can even solo kill most heavy units (Banshees and Praetorians excluded). It's a very low-maintenance character class, and extremely effective in the hands of a master, but that same ease of use makes it the object of scorn for players who deem it too noob-friendly.
  - Nowadays "Manguards" are out of favour for other reasons. Their up-close combat style is very-high risk and requires a lot of skill to pull off on higher difficulties (where enemies do more damage and a single mistake means death). Charge also often takes them away from the group (making it tricky to revive them when they inevitably die) and Biotic Charge refilling your shields isn't that great a defence since Charge is laggy when not hosting. Finally, their damage drops off on higher difficulties where enemies have too much health, meaning they aren't even an effective Glass Cannon.
- The Geth Infiltrator, prior to being heavily nerfed, was the epitome of this trope. By using Hunter Mode to turn itself into a Glass Cannon, Geth Infiltrators could abuse Tactical Cloak and the weapon damage bonuses of their passive class power to nearly triple the damage output of any geth-designed weapon (including the most powerful sniper rifle in the game) without gear bonuses factored in. Their damage output was so tremendous that it became common to get kicked from random Gold matches if you didn't play as a Geth Infiltrator. As mentioned, Hunter Mode and Tactical Cloak have both been nerfed since then, but the class is still one of the strongest.
- After the Earth expansion, the N7 Shadow Infiltrator and Slayer Vanguard started getting the hate because of Electric Slash and Biotic Slash, respectively. These two powers are high damage, low cooldown, have a huge range and radius, and are oh so spammable. Furthermore, they actually harm other members of the team by shaking around allies' sniper scopes. Combine that with the Shadow's signature move, Shadow Strike, the Slayer's ability to Charge and teleport short distances and even through walls, and their mutual access to extremely powerful sword-based melee attacks, and it wasn't long before they started getting the hate of scrubs everywhere. The one thing that keeps the higher-level players from hating them is that fact that they've got a bit of a learning curve. Like the other examples, the slash attacks were later given a longer cooldown and they do not garner as much hate.
- In the Reckoning expansion, the new Geth Juggernaut became one within the first week of its release. The reasons being that it's the only character who cannot be sync killed due to its size, its incredible weapon damage output and ammo bonus, being the most durable character in the entire game, and on top of all that, having a melee attack that heals itself. The only downside is that it can't run and moves at a snail's pace, but that doesn't matter when it pumps out 300+ rounds from its signature weapons, the Geth Spitfire, and the three-hit killer Siege Pulse.
Morrie in Dragon Quest VIII's 3DS remake can easily veer into this. Once you have gotten his passion skill up, he will be able to practically spam full-tension attacks. He also comes with what is essentially an endgame piece of armour for him - which will make him have higher defence than the damn hero. He can also be recruited quite early (after Evil Jessica).
Diablo III: The Witch Doctor class is infamous for being the hardest hitting class overall while being tankier than the Glass Cannon classes, the demon hunter and the wizard, solely due to how pets in this game work. The fact that all they really have to do is sit back and spam signature spells does little to nothing to help.
Diablo II has the Assassin: She gets the best of all worlds: High base damage, ranged and elemental attacks, and her martial arts give large, percentage-based, damage boosts.
In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, the Monado gives Shulk access to many useful abilities, including some that none of the other six party members can replicate, and that many bosses and Unique Monsters practically require you to have in order to stand any chance against them. He's the only reliable defense against area attacks with Monado Shield and Monado Armour, and Monado Purge is the only reliable way of removing Spike or other active Auras. Worse, just having Shulk in the party isn't enough because the party AI doesn't know what to do with him and he becomes a Low-Tier Letdown as a result. You have to have him be the player-controlled character to get the most use out of him, further limiting your options, especially if Melia is in the same party, as she has the same disparity between AI and player control and you can only control one at a time.
Cloud in Final Fantasy Record Keeper was so obnoxiously dominant at first that fans gave the game the derisive Fan Nickname "Cloud Keeper". He had excellent Soul Breaks, a Master of All stat sheet and weapon use, and due to his fan-favourite/Creator's Pet status he was given some incredible Relic every time he started to lag behind the new characters. This isn't helped by the fact that he's the first hero you obtain, given to you as part of the tutorial level. He's fortunately been Nerfed as the game has been updated, and while he remains good enough that people who like the character won't hurt their party by keeping him, he is no longer so overpowering that people who don't like the character will hurt their parties by leaving him behind.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
- There's an art called Chrono Burst that allows players to get an extra turn for the character using it and it can be cast over and over as long as the player has enough MP to cast the art. Gaius is usually at the top of the tier lists thanks to his craft skill "Wild Rage" where he sacrifices some of his HP to gain massive amounts of craft points. Loop that over and over and he can just S-Craft bosses to death. He did go to the lower end of the tier list in Cold Steel III but that was only because he didn't have his S-Craft available plus he joins for a limited amount of time but Cold Steel IV rebuffed him to insane levels.
- Rean's Arc Slash is cheap to use, is learned early and inflicts Delay with high probability. With the right setup (which usually includes the aforementioned Chrono Burst), Rean can prevent most bosses from ever getting a turn.
Serge in Chrono Cross is another Master of All example. Chrono Cross has many characters, most of which are useless, and the ones that can be useful tend to have either high attack power and weak magic, or weak attack and strong magic. Serge, however, has S-class attack strength and magic power. Granted, he's the main character, and as for the third of the game where he ends up switching bodies with Lynx, The Heavy, it's just exchanging a white innate double-S-tier character for a black innate double-S-tier. Even by main character standards he's ridiculously overpowered.
- In general, Blue Innate seems to have a better selection of characters than the other colors. Orlha's got one of the best physical attacks in the game and, unlike most other top-tier attacks, at no cost to her speed. Fargo's physical attack is almost as good as Orlha's, plus he's one of the three characters who can Steal. Marcy has above average attack and magic. Leena and Irenes both have high magical power, and you get them at different points in the game so they mostly don't have to compete with each other. Korcha and Nikki only have the problem of being a Master of None with near average attack and magic. Last but not least, Pierre's a funny case - he spends most of the game as a deliberate low tier Scrappy, but a late game quest to obtain the Hero Artifacts turns him into a powerhouse if he finds and equips all three of them.
Might and Magic series has sometimes serious problems when it comes to balancing the classes:
- In VII, there are Clerics and Sorcerers. The first is basically a necessity, since it is the only class that can Grandmaster Self-Magic (Body, Spirit, Mind), and therefore cast Grandmaster Protection from Magic, which nullifies instant death and Eradication. Such attacks are very frequent late-game, making Cleric a must. Sorcerers are not necessary but are the only class that can Grandmaster Elemental Magic, giving you not necessary but nonetheless very useful abilities like teleport to the town in the middle of battle or flying without draining your MP. To top it off, these two are also the only classes that have access to every spell of advanced magic (Light or Dark).
- In VIII, the Dragon class really ridiculously overshadows every other class by combining high natural stat growth with an extreme case of One Stat to Rule Them All. Dragons can't have any equipment besides amulets and such - the damage of their attack - which is by default ranged, something that no other class has - and their defense is determined by a specific Dragon skill. Said Dragon skill also unlocks magic spells - at mere level Expert, you get Dragon Breath, normally an endgame spell, and level master, which can be attained before the promotion to Wyrm, the most useful spell for exploration - Flying. There are very few skills a Dragon can learn, but two of them are Learning (XP bonus) and Bodybuilding (raises its already high HP to truly insane levels). Put most points in Dragon skill, the rest in Learning and Bodybuilding and you'll have Lightning Bruiser that can clear an enemy group by himself. And no, the first Dragon is not behind some Beef Gate and it is not even a Guide Dang It!, it can be found in dragon caves in Garrote Gorge where you would expect a dragon to live, just waiting for you to recruit it.
Monster Hunter: Rise: The Long Sword has been garnering this reputation. The weapon's schtick had always been an incredibly versatile damage-dealer that was held back by some resource management in the form of the Spirit gauge. In Rise the weapon has so many ways to auto-generate Spirit and multiple ways to improve the gauge level safely. The result is a powerful, versatile weapon with trivial upkeep and an incredible amount of options, putting it in Game-Breaker territory for a game where weapons are balanced around their restrictions. The Long Sword's enduring popularity, promotion to default weapon in the setting, and habit of frequently knocking other hunters off their feet in multiplayer quickly add to its negative reputation.
In Final Fantasy X: Tidus, Wakka, and Rikku sit at the highest tier due to having amazing stats, abilities (some of which can make the niches of other characters irrelevant) and Overdrives, to the point where pretty much every fight that doesn't force a specific team loadout can be handled just with these 3 characters, despite the game being focused around swapping between the entire cast depending on situation. Yuna isn't far behind due to making Lulu completely redundant in the late game where she gets all of her Black Magic, as well has having a niche in being able to summon an aeon to tank a huge hit for the party.
The Moonveil Katana in Elden Ring is often used as the poster child for overpowered weapons. It deals bleed damage like all Katanas, and has scaling in Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. However, none of that is why it's hated or considered overpowered. The hate for this weapon falls solely on its Ash of War, Transient Moonlight; an extremely spammable and high-damaging magical Sword Beam that comes out in either a horizontal or vertical slash depending on the input used, makes mincemeat out of most enemies and bosses in PvE, and is infuriating to deal with in PvP, especially when an entire 3-man gank squad is spamming it at you all at once. Unlike some of the other high tier weapons, the Moonveil can be found relatively early in the game and has modest stat requirements to wield.
There is a whopping 30 party members available in LISA, and of all of them, two tend to not be looked positively on thanks to them breaking the game a bit too much: Birdie Hall and Fly Minetti. Birdie Hall is a powerful support/DPS hybrid thanks to his Secret Stash ability healing for a respectable amount and giving the whole party Drunk, he hits hard, and can boost the fire damage of just about everyone who has those attacks by a whopping 300% (pairing well with Brad, Mad Dog, Jack and of course, Terry Hintz). Fly Minetti also possesses a stupidly powerful stun that piles on tons of status effects thanks to his puke skills and has plentiful AOE attacks all around. A party consisting of those two and someone like Terry Hintz is a common Cheese Strategy that gets scorned by most fans of the game.

Shoot-Em-Ups

The Field and Variable ships in Space Invaders Infinity Gene, both of which are hilariously broken. The Field ship has an "Instant Death" Radius that zaps enemies that come inside of it until they die, and the Variable ship uses four beam swords that inflict extreme damage. Since there's no way to sort rankings by leaderboards, there's absolutely no point in even looking at them if you prefer to use other ships.
The Raiden Fighters features a large variety of ships, each with their own unique attacks...but try the Slave fighter (a player version of the Attack Drones you get for picking up 'S' powerups) with its rapid-fire, high-powered Spread Shot and all of these distinct ships just feel pointless to use. If it's any solace, the series' various ports' leaderboards allow filtering by ship.
In Dangun Feveron high score competitions that don't segregate ship types, the Secret Characters Uo (if playing on 1P) and Poko (2P) are hated by many players. They have the fastest movement of any ship in the game, outpacing even the regular ships at speed 4 (the maximum for those ships), can change their shot spread by pressing the bomb button, and they don't follow the Power-Up system, so they always gain +5 to their Score Multiplier from picking up power-up tokens, while the regular ships only get that benefit when they're at max power already. On top of all this, they make a distinct "meow" sound any time any directional input is performed, which can get old real fast, although the M2 ShotTriggers release allows this sound to be turned off. Their only real drawbacks are that their high speed might make them unpalatable to players who can't quite muster precise movements and they don't have bombs, but even then, they still outscore the regular ships since bombs have no direct scoring benefit (outside of Fever Arrange, anyway), only providing an indirect one by freezing on-screen cyborgs to prevent them from leaving the screen, but Uo's and Poko's Super-Speed allows them to make up for that by quickly sweeping the screen for cyborgs. Thus, if you're playing for score in an environment where scores are not separated by ship, you have to abandon the game's signature ship customization mechanic and use Uo or Poko, or else you're effectively handicapping yourself.

Simulation Games

X3: Terran Conflict:
- The OTAS Boreas and Terran Osaka destroyers get some hate for being functionally indestructible under a particular set of circumstances, i.e. when flown personally by the player against the AI. They're so tough and well-armed^* that the AI just plain can't counter them. Albion Prelude fixes this as a byproduct of making AI missile frigates actually use their weapons the way they're meant to be used.
- The OTAS Mistral Super Freighter in a roundabout way. It's the toughest TS-class freighter there is, it's reasonably fast, and it also has the biggest cargo bay of any TS. Unfortunately a fully equipped Mistral SF will run you 2 million credits easy, and since under most circumstances the AI won't make effective use of its cavernous cargo bay many players don't consider it cost-effective.
The Spitfire Mk.XVI, La-7, and P-51 Mustang often attract this in Aces High. The Spitfire is extremely easy to fly, has a good gun package, accelerates and climbs at will, is highly maneuverable, and has few real vices. The La-7 has a three-cannon armament option that was very rare historically but is almost ubiquitous in the game and is one of the fastest aircraft at typical engagement altitudes, with excellent acceleration and rate of climb. The P-51 lacks this armament, but is just about as fast with the additional advantage of excellent high-altitude performance leading to high Mustangs picking through low and mid-altitude furballs a common sight. All three aircraft are extremely easy for poor or inexperienced pilots to rack up large numbers of kills in, and thus take a lot of heat on the forums. If there's a "Perk the X!" thread, chances are one of these three aircraft are the subject.
Even Ace Combat isn't immune to this trope in its online play.
- Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation had the CFA-44 Nosferatu, the resident fictional super plane of the game. While its defense and stability wasn't anything to write home about, one of its weapons, the Electro Magnetic Launcher, could One-Hit Kill most aircraft in the game save for some of the most durable aircraft. Also, the myriad of aircraft that could carry the QA AM, which was a missile that was an instant kill on any aircraft it hit and had extreme maneuvering, insane persistence, and the ability to become invisible on radar. One aircraft in particular was the Su-47 Miki-EX, which had extreme maneuverability when at speeds of over 600 miles per hour, allowing it to bag up kills at an extreme rate and avoid fire like it was nothing. These aircraft turned multiplayer into a contest of who could press B first.
- Ace Combat: Joint Assault's multiplayer. Whoever thought it was a good idea to make the ADF-01 FALKEN and its Tactical Laser System legal for multiplayer probably never took into account the potential this plane had in such a mode. Cue ragers about the overrun of noobs and spammers in multiplayer.
- Ace Combat Infinity has had many of these over the course of its life, with patches usually nerfing one set only to introduce another. The most notable are probably the Su-47 and F-15 S/MTD introduced in the July 2014 patch, which were mid- to high-tier Multiroles that had what quickly became the best air-to-ground weapons in the game (respectively the Unguided Bomb and the Long Range Air-to-Ground Missile) on top of high speed and maneuverability - pretty much anything else that didn't come with one of those two weapons wasn't even worth flying outside of the rare Team Deathmatch event until the weapons were nerfed a few months later (and even then, while the Su-47 quickly fell by the wayside, the S/MTD is still pretty common because it also gets the Fuel-Air Explosive Bomb, an unguided weapon with the largest blast radius in the game and comparable power to the pre-nerf LAGM with the right upgrades). As of its introduction the fictional X-02 Wyvern is another one, being a superfighter that only costs as much as a real-world high-tier aircraft (i.e. the four million needed to simply purchase comparable superfighters like the above CFA-44 or XFA-27 can bring the X-02 to level 10 of 20) and is a multirole with powerful weapons for both roles (it gets the Stand-Off Dispenser for ground work and then the aforementioned QAAM for air-to-air). The ADF-01 FALKEN is a lesser one, being one of the other superfighters that costs noticeably less than the others, on top of being the only pure Fighter among them, but which nevertheless gets the aforementioned Tactical Laser System that is good for ground work as well.
MechWarrior Living Legends has had several over its history, though most eventually get guillotined in the meta by game mechanics changing.
- The Mad Cat "Bravo" is fairly well armored, has long-range direct-fire weapons that are either hitscan or very fast, does monstrous amounts of damage with an Alpha Strike and isn't that slow, to boot. Provided one could control its tendency toward Over Heating, it could reliably nuke most enemies and then flee to repair and reload. The Novacat is likewise a long-range murder machine that had infinite ammo at the cost of being slightly slower. Indirectly both were nerfed to normal/good-tier when overheating mechanics made them more difficult to pilot and pricing made them less viable.
- The Owens "Bravo" and "Charlie" variants were top-tier starting mechs, providing Macross Missile Massacre or Beam Spam, respectively, on a chassis that was extremely agile, had not-to-shabby armor, and great hitboxes. The Charlie could reliably snipe the arms off of other starting mechs, and the Bravo would maul tanks and was great for late-joiners as its missiles were more effective against medium and heavy mechs. Both are still around, but pricing changes no longer puts them in the starting price brackets.
Due to the battle rating system, in War Thunder vehicles are paired with opponents that are inferior or superior, although in theory still being competitive. In reality, often there are cases of blatant disparity that leads to hatred for said vehicle.
- For example, when the Italian aircraft Sagittario was released at 8.0, it was a Demonic Spider that outrun and outmaneuvered almost everything it faced, that is, early jets. The F-86 was slightly faster but had less energy retention and was much less nimble. The Mig-15 was slightly more maneuverable in vertical turns but had worse acceleration. All other planes like the Me-262, the P-80, the F-80 or the Ouragan had no hope of competing. The Sagittaio had also a powerful set of cannons and a broken damage model that could sustain hits that would destroy opponents while still being capable of decently flying, it completely ruined that bracket of games and reached above 90% of victories in game stats. Came an Obvious Rule Patch two weeks later and the Sagittario became a more balanced 9.0 plane, even facing early supersonic jets during uptiers.
- Let's talk about high-tier helicopters like the Premium Ka-52, which are basically untouchable unless they play idiotic but can easily target at you with their guided missiles from kilometers in ground battles.
- Premium Harriers have a battle rating of 9.7 or 10.0 due to being subsonic and turning like bricks, but they have a terrific acceleration and all-aspect missiles that can't be avoided without countermeasures (most aircraft at that bracket don't have them). They can face jets from the 50s like the Hunter or later F-86 variants that struggle a lot to compete, not counting bombers like the Vautours which are designed victims. It's really frustrating to have to deal with their missiles, even early supersonic jets struggle because they often lack flares.
- The same for modern close air support aircraft such as the A-10 and the Su-25: they have much advanced weaponry, all-aspect missiles that can be shoot frontally, tons of flares to neutralize any poor early missile they could face, all while fighting jets from the 50s and 60s. In downtiers, they are overpowered as hell. And yes, they are drastically subsonic in a bracket where fighters are transonic or early supersonic, but they don't need to catch you, their missiles can do the job easily; and they are really nimble, anyone who tries to turnfight them (bar a few exceptions like the Sagittario) will quickly lose speed and become a brick. If you try to run away and accelerate, their missiles will still lock on you. It is no fun at all to fight them without countermeasures while flying a Hunter, an F-86K or a Cl-13, but also a much much much faster F-104 that can't turn at all and is forced to commit into risky head-ons or diving on occupied targets hoping to aim good.
- Other high-tier premiums such as the Turms tank are instead hated because noobs buy them to instantly gain access to top tier battles, only to be curb-stomped and leave after one death without even respawning, thus crippling their teams.
- The F-14A, introduced in June 2022, at that moment was the best aircraft in-game, totally unopposed. And people spammed it because of its iconic status. Ditto, players flying other jets didn't enjoy at all its unbalanced appearance.

Sports Games

Madden NFL at least one team a year is lambasted by the fanbase for being the "cheese" team - basically, whichever team runs the Game-Breaker play of that year most effectively. Common candidates are teams with a fast, mobile QB and a monster defense that doesn't require much strategy to run well. This is doubly annoying to fans of that team, who are excited to play as their guys online, only to be mocked for it.
Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 had Brazil and (to a lesser extent) Manchester United as the upper-tier scrappy teams. Those two teams were among the best overall AND had a player with all dribbling stats on the 95 to 100 range, coupled with the fact dribbling was overpowered in that version. Most players let out a sigh of frustration when their opponent picked Brazil, mainly because they were certain said opponent would just pass the ball to Ronaldinho and run circles around their defence for the whole game.
FIFA games have had, for the past few years, Barcelona. Chances were if you wanted to play online (before Seasons mode kicked in), you would be against Barcelona. It seems for the past few years, regardless of season-by-season performances, they have been the go-to team for easy wins. One could argue it's justified, as Lionel Messi has always been a household name, but with every player in the high 80's and low 90's, some fans of the series are calling bias on the FIFA games poster team.
- In FIFA Ultimate Team several Gold-tier players have earned the ire of fans for being incredibly overpowered.
  - Tall, physical forwards are a nuisance due to their ability to easily outmuscle defenders, thus rewarding those who play simplistic long-ball/crossing tactics. Examples include Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Andy Carroll.
  - Pacey players have become a must-have for FUT teams, due to their ability to make one win just by outrunning the opponent's defense and scoring "sweaty goals" ^note. While traditional speedy superstars (e.g. Lionel Messi, Gareth Bale, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Neymar, Sergio Aguero) are feared and despised, the most dreaded players are underrated non-rare golds such as Victor Ibarbo, Leroy Fer, and Keita Diao.
  - Having a good goalkeeper will ensure that one will give up almost no goals with almost no effort. While it can be frustrating (yet expected) to find it hard scoring against well-known star keepers (e.g. David De Gea, Manuel Neuer, Hugo Lloris), it is extremely infuriating to see a hidden gem like Idriss Carlos Kameni block all your shots while your opponent uses Neymar or Ibarbo to score sweaty goals against your side.
RBI Baseball (1988) has Detroit. The lineup, besides Larry Herndon, have home run potential and will homer against you. Players will often substitute Larry Herndon with a bench player to amplify an already power-heavy team. Since this game has the mercy rule, playing against a player who knows the hitting potential Detroit has, the game will be over by the second inning.
We dare you to play online as the Golden State Warriors on NBA 2K17 without getting cursed at by your opponents. Thanks to the ungodly shooting of Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, and Klay Thompson, plus the versatility of Andre Iguodala and Draymond Green, the Warriors are essentially the 2K equivalent of Brawl-era Meta Knight, Aegislash, Widowmaker, or Lee Sin. Not helping is that fact that four Dubs players have ratings in the 90's range ^note.
The original Tecmo Bowl had Los Angeles and Bo Jackson. Bo was the fastest runner in the game, and had high hitting power as well. Especially if playing against the computer towards the end of the season, a player's only option was to call Bo's running play every single time, because if his play was called and the defense didn't blitz him, he was scoring a touchdown. Period. There was also New York and Lawrence Taylor, who was one of the strongest defenders in the game and could regularly deny opposing teams a point after touchdown.

Survival Horror

In Dead by Daylight, the Trapper was for a long time considered the strongest killer in the game. While lacking in flair, he made up for it by his ability to secure kills. Most trappers would place a beartrap right underneath a hook, meaning another player had to disarm it before they could rescue the victim; so if the Trapper is remotely close by then saving will be very hard. However his feature has been soft nerfed by allowing hooks and other objectives to be approached from three sides, making it no longer possible to "set an alarm".
- Current standouts are the Nurse and Blight, both capable of crossing the map at high speed and thus jumping between multiple survivors to pester large chunks of the team at the same time. The Nurse is especially dreaded because her teleport ability directly counters the main survivor strategy of running circles around debris. Against both killers, the main counter is being as unpredictable as possible in hopes of them committing to a Blink or Rush that carries them in the wrong direction.

Tabletop Games

Daemons of Chaos and Vampire Counts in Warhammer. In the case of the Vampire Counts, the Counts were overpowered but then the Daemons came along and utterly destroyed 7th Edition. It was so bad that there's been some speculation that the Daemons book alone was enough to force Eighth Edition and its changes to Fear and Psychology. The Counts and Daemons are now (Fall 2013) considered "good," not gamebreaker, armies. Skaven, on the other hand, can be a fun army or can have cheap, cheesy tactics sure to make anyone else hate the Skaven player. And it can all change with the next army book or expansion.
- To give some perspective here: if you ranked all the 7e fantasy army books from 1-10, Dark Elves and Vampire Counts were in the 8-9 range, but Daemons were a 17. The majority of armies were completely outclassed by them, and even the previous top-tier books struggled mightily just to put up a fight. A lot of players credit the 7e Demons book with killing the competitive community for Fantasy entirely and causing a lot of people to just quit the game in disgust.
Warhammer 40,000:
- Chaos Space Marines with Daemon Princes and Obliterators (2011 and early 2012). Obliterators are overused, extremely versatile, heavy weapon platforms armed with a wide range of weapons that allow them to take on just about anything. Daemon Princes are better than any other HQ choice with a fairly small increase in cost. Slaanesh Princes with Lash Of Submission are especially hated as they can move enemy units 2d6 inches, pulling them out of cover, into charge range or under templates. Add to the fact that the Chaos codex has very limited options when it comes to good builds, and you get a situation where 90% of tournament armies consist of 2 Lash Princes, 9 Oblits and as many Plague Marines you can get with the remaining points.
- For the marginalized part of the fanbase who didn't play Space Marine or Marine Equivalent armies, Land Raiders acting as dedicated transports for Thunderhammer/Stormshield Assault Terminators were nearly impossible to break and filled with melee troops just as hard to crack and pulverized most units in 1-2 melee turns. This was much less the case in 6th edition (2013), where they were merely good.
- All discussions of Tiers in Warhammer, whether Fantasy or 40k, probably should mention the edition and time when they were written. For example, the 40K's Orks were briefly a Game-Breaker with the infamous Nob Bikerz, but within months a new Imperial Guard codex took them right down. As of early 2012, the Grey Knights are a high-tier scrappy with some awful fluff as far as a large section of the fanbase goes. However, this could change with just one codex rattling the metagame. Likewise, Vampire Counts and Daemons of Chaos lost a lot when Psychology (and their key rules, Fear and Terror) were nerfed in 8th Edition. The Counts are about to get a new Army Book; how this changes their status has yet to be seen.
  - A particular Tier-Induced Scrappy unit was the Dreadknight — not just because it was rather powerful and the main hitter for a dominant army, but also because of its looks◊, which many players describe as looking less like an awesome Humongous Mecha and more like a baby carrier.◊
- One problem with Warhammer and 40k is that there simply isn't time to update every Codex within the lifetime of one edition, so, general Army Books and Codexes designed for that particular edition will outperform those that were not. The fairly rigid release schedules also mean that several armies (notably Dark Angels and Bretonnians) end up getting shafted because they are released near the tail-end of an edition.
  - This seems to be changing as Sixth Edition Codex updates have been coming in fast and furious. Between the release of Sixth Edition in Summer 2012 and December 2013, the Space Marines, Chaos Marines, Chaos Daemons, Tau Empire, Eldar, Adeptus Sororitas, and Dark Angels all getting new books. That's about one new full Codex every two and a half months, with armies that received new codices late in Fifth Edition seemingly on the back burner.
  - Should be noted, that what many players believe that what made the late fifth edition armies (namely Grey Knights) this trope was because they were designed with Sixth Edition in mind. Grey Knights went from Game-Breaker to fairly balanced.
- Sixth Edition lasted all of two years, and at the start of the summer of 2014 we have Seventh edition. Chaos Daemons currently have an absurd ability to continue summoning more and more and more units which seems to be completely broken, but as the ink isn't even dry on this edition, a FAQ, a new book, or an alteration in the meta could shoot it down. As it stands, Frontline Gaming showed how incredibly broken this seems here.
- As of early 2016, The Tau Empire generates some hatedom, the Imperial Knights generate a bit more, and the Eldar generate plenty for being broken. The Tau have a codex full of good options. In the hands of a ruthless player determined to win, the Tau can be full of cheese, but a less ruthless player can make fun, varied armies out of the codex. The Eldar have a small smattering of completely broken options coupled with an otherwise underwhelming book. This leads to them having very boring, very predictable builds that are about as much fun to play against as smashing headlong into a brick wall. The majority of the Eldar codex is sub par, so the units players actually use are insanely overpowered, and the remainder are underutilized and rarely see any action. The Imperial Knights, consisting of giant super-heavy walkers, would be a wonderful addition if taken sparingly as allies in larger games, but armies consisting of nothing but Imperial Knights show up at low-point games and are virtually impossible to defeat. In casual play, none of these armies are a problem. In tournament play, or when playing against someone who values their victory over any sense of sportsmanship, all three armies can be nightmares.
  - A particularly infamous example for Tau being the notorious "Devilfish Bunker" or "Fish of Fury" tactic, one of the most broken Loophole Abuse Game Breakers in the history of the game.^note The tactic was so dominant and annoying that even many Tau players removed Devilfish transports from their army lists entirely just to distance themselves from the tactic (even though the Tau kind of needed these transports to work, Fire Warriors aren't meant for footslogging).
  - This is in part due to Games Workshop having tossed Competitive Balance out the window, at least for now (early 2016). Sister game Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, for example, lists stats for all armies and then does nothing to determine what you can and cannot field in any given game. Such a game cannot be competitively balanced in any way, so only a casual environment can exist. (Basically, players must look at each other's list, figure what makes for an interesting game, guess if it seems fair, and then play.) Warhammer 40,000 has started to go that way with alternative formations that allow broken lists as well as doing in most rules of force organization, but there is still a points limit and active tournament scene, which means non-casual play is always subject to the next big Game-Breaker.
  - As of early 2016, some very dull, static, and almost unbeatable Astra Militarum formations can also generate this hatedom, but they see less play and get a bit more of a pass since the Imperial Guard were underdogs for such a long time. Fortunately, the army book does allow many fun builds, so players facing such a formation usually are more annoyed with the Guard player than the Guard themselves.
  - Adding insult to injury, Games Workshop rarely avoids Power Creep in new Codices, which the fans usually attribute to a desire to sell the army with the new book. The Imperial Knights are a recent addition to the game (2015), and the Tau and Eldar recently received new Codices as of 2016, so of course they're selling well and getting a big push. Unfortunately, plenty of other armies which need some love to shake up the competitive meta aren't getting it.
  - Another really annoying one from 2016 was the "Superfriends" Space Marine list. This abused the allies rules by bringing in special characters that granted bonuses to other units from four or five different Marines armies, which stacked absurd bonuses on everything in the force. This was specifically killed in the next official FAQ release.
- Surprisingly Necrons turned out to be this. Despite receiving a minor nerf to their codex (removing some of the broken rules and options, and generally cutting out a lot of previously-available options altogether, such as Cryptek Disciplines) the army became one of the most loathed ones to play against. This is not because of how easily they win, but how hard it is to kill them; the new Decurion Detachment grants extra Reanimation Protocol bonuses, making even the cheapest Necron Warrior just as durable as a Space marine Terminator. The end result is an army that is above average in shooting, but utterly impossible to put down, which devolves most games into one huge waiting game.
Cryx in WARMACHINE is infamous in the tournament scene. With cheap nasty horde units, debilitating debuffs, and hard to counter abilities Cryx is a very powerful faction in competitive play. Cryx's tournament presence is so large that it's all but required that everyone bring a "normal list" and an "anti-cryx" list designed just to fight them.
Magic: The Gathering has had a number of cards that were both annoying to play against and high-tier (which translated to seeing them a lot, which made them even more annoying). Morphling could attack and block in the same turn, protect himself from kill spells and fly over your blockers, and generally appeared in decks that could Counterspell the few things that would try to stop him. Disciple of the Vault caused a lot of unstoppable life loss. Psychatog was part of a two-card kill with Upheaval and could make himself almost arbitrarily large for cheap (this one was given a nod in the next block's art). Ironically, Psychatog was based on Atog, a creature that was a Tier Induced Scrappy in the other direction until Mirrodin and the affinity deck.
- Jace, the Mind Sculptor's unprecedented price tag (about $100 at its peak), combined with his status as a staple in multiple formats, has earned him a lot of unpopularity among some segments of the player base. The anti-Jace sentiment got to such a point that Wizards was forced to ban the Mind Sculptor from Standard tournament play. He is still allowed in Legacy and Vintage, as the power level of these formats are a little higher than that of Standard.
  - Jace's power level was so notorious that when the Modern format (all cards from 2003's 8th Edition and later are legal by default) was created, Jace was banned before the format had its first game.
- Another example of an entire element being a scrappy for doing too well was the M11-M12 "Titan" cycle, creating a 6/6 for 6 mythic giant for each color with a color-appropriate ability and another one that activated whenever they entered the battlefield or attacked. Even the worst of them by a long shot, Frost Titan, was considered above curve for Blue, given its size and relative protection from targeted removal, while the best of them, Primeval and Sun Titan were considered borderline broken in Standard play. Part of the general hate for the cycle in general is the "Titan effect" that has taken over Standard, where just about any large creature must be compared to the color-relevant titan while being assessed, and regularly found wanting in comparison. Wizards admitted they considered printing the Titans a second time in a core set a mistake, as they tended to crowd out most of the big creatures in the surrounding blocks.
- Primeval Titan was a key card in the Valakut Ramp (and to a lesser extent, Eldrazi Ramp) decks. The sheer card advantage it gives (a 6/6 trampler for 4GG— a good card if there ever was one— and two lands every turn) led to calls for the banning of the Titan and Valakut (and the Eldrazi). Jace and Caw-Blade eventually overshadowed the Titan, though... until Caw-Blade rotated out of Standard and the Kessig Wolf Run Ramp deck came to prominence, bringing the Titan yet another round of heat.
- This has been a feature/problem of Magic Tournament Play since Channel-Fireball. The larger tournament scene is very well tracked and documented, and people want to play the "best" decks, leading to obnoxious levels of Follow the Leader in local tournaments which inspires most of the hate.
- If you want to try something fun, how about winning the game before anyone even has the chance to draw for their first turn? Granted, this is Difficult, but Awesome, but it's still something every Magic player dreads could happen.
- The Ferrett's summary of PT: New Orleans in 2003: "Pro Tour: Tinker is held in Tinker Orleans. Tinker Mindslaver Tinker, Rickard Osterberg, Tinker Tinker ban that f**king card Grim Monolith Tinker." It's still arguably the second most broken card in Vintage, a format that never bans cards for power level.
- The "Delver" decks are tempo-control aggro decks that run the blue creature Delver of Secrets, a card that starts out weak but turns into an aggressive flying beater if the top card of your library happens to be an Instant or Sorcery. By itself the card is generally too unreliable to be particularly powerful, but in formats where you have access to cards like Brainstorm or Ponder to help stack the top of your library, it becomes extremely fearsome. The kicker is that Brainstorm and Ponder are both Instants/Sorceries themselves.
- Thragtusk became this for the first few months of Innistrad/Return to Ravnica standard for being an auto-include 4-of in every deck that wasn't aggressive, being the best midrange value creature, the best control finisher, and the best reanimator target. Further contributing to its status was that it was impossible to remove without a loss in card advantage, could be made uncounterable very easily, and comboed very well with already good creatures with blink effects. Eventually, decks accepted the fact that a Thragtusk would hit the table at some point and resorted to gaining control of it and simply flying over it with equivalent power.
- In 2019, Wizards announced "FIRE" design philosophy, an acronym for "Fun, Inviting, Replayable, Exciting." This philosophy resulted in:
  - A peak of 10 cards banned in Standard simultaneously, the greatest number in the game's 27 year history.
  - Two cards meant specifically for Modern (Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis and Arcum's Astrolabe) getting banned in that format.
  - Oko, Thief of Crowns progressively overpowering and being banned in Standard, Pioneer, Modern, and finally, Legacy. In one weekend, Oko appeared in a top deck of every competitive format. This includes Vintage, a format predicated on the idea of never banning a card for power level reasons.
  - Or more accurately didn't used to ban cards for power level reasons. A different FIRE card, Lurrus of the Dream Den, became the first power level ban in Vintage's history, though the ban was rescinded after an unprecedented power level errata (see below).
  - Lurrus was the poster child for the "Companion" mechanic, which received the first power level errata to add restrictions the cards didn't originally include (previous power level erratas used very specific wording on existing mechanics to prevent abuses; the Companion nerf added a cost of 3 generic Mana as a special game action), which was applied to all ten Companions. Even so, the ten Companions have a higher number of bans across Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, and Commander than any other ten card cycle.
  - A different Companion, Lutri the Spellchaser, being banned in Commander before the card was released. This ban was not rescinded after the above errata, because there would still not be a reason to not run it in literally every red and blue deck if it were legal.
  - Omnath, Locus of the Roil being banned in Standard less than three weeks from release. Notably, another card (Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath) had been banned two weeks previously in an unsuccessful attempt to make any other deck competitive with Omnath decks.
  - Teferi, Time Raveler being banned from literally every format offered on the Magic Arena client. This includes Singleton and Historic Brawl, formats that are only playable during specific events.
The Tome of Battle for Dungeons & Dragons introduced fighter type classes with powers. They're very powerful classes, attributed to the fact that this 3.5 class book gives the most obvious preview of what would eventually be 4.0 game mechanics. It's a very popular book, but it has become divisive due to a vocal minority who believe the book is overpowered. Even without their maneuvers, the three main classes of the book boast better skill points and in some cases better HD than the classes they're meant to represent, and have a couple features on their own terms - meaning even without their signature maneuvers, they'd still be somewhat viable.
For those not in the know, the Character Tiers for DnD are divided into 6 groups (Tier 1 being the strongest, filled with classes able to end the entire campaign solo unless the DM actively screws them, and Tier 6 being classes that are deemed largely unplayable as written). The classes of the Book of Nine Swords (Swordsage, Crusader, Warblade) are sitting pretty in Tier 3 (considered the most balanced classes in the entire system). They are sometimes considered overpowered because they are much more powerful then the classic fighter, monk or paladin, while still being flavoured similarly (they're big guys with swords that hit stuff); essentially making these classes obsolete. Not very powerful when compared to the big 3 of the original books (wizard, cleric, druid), but still high for their numbered tier and better than the classics of that tier. However, the corollary to this is that the classic fighter, monk, and paladin were considered really bad, and proponents of the three classes suggest that this effectively makes them an actually viable substitute that allows players to play a classic archetype without being basically useless.
- As for the big 3, Wizards are Monte Cook's favorite class, and the incredibly overpowered Clerics and Druids gained the Fan Nickname CoDzilla (Cleric or Druid zilla) because they can do anything the run requires extremely well. The Druid's pet is considered better than Fighters, one of the basic classes!
  - Of the Big 3, the Druid seems to be the most disliked for its power. This is because, similar to Cable above, the Druid is both incredibly powerful and incredibly easy to master. The Wizard takes some time to get rolling, and the Cleric needs careful selection of their domains and feats to pull off their really broken tricks. Meanwhile, the Druid is one of the strongest of the core classes from Level 1 (with a well-rounded spell list, decent physical stats, and an animal companion competitive with a fighter), and they need only two abilities to break the game: the Wild Shape ability, which allows then to turn into an animal (like a bear) and gain its combat ability, and the Natural Spell feat, which allows them to retain their spellcasting ability in this form. By 6th level, the druid has essentially no reason to ever not be an animal 24/7, making them one of the best melee classes while also being one of the best casting classes and still having their powerful animal companion. It's quite telling that most fixes for the druid involve chopping off at least one of these features and nerfing what remains, and the class still manages to stay relevant.
- The Sacred Vow Feat chain introduced in The Book of Exalted Deeds allow for some pretty bonkers characters.
  - Vow of Nonviolence requires the character to never deal lethal damage (including to ability scores) to humanoids or monstrous humanoids, though nonlethal damage is allowed. In return, your spells and abilities that don't violate the vow have their save DCs increased by 4. Not great if you're throwing fireballs, but the equivalent of increasing your Intelligence by 8 if you're an Enchanter or Beguiler.
  - Vow of Poverty forces the player to give up essentially all of their gold. In return, they're granted buffs that replace the effects of normal equipment. A pretty even tradeoff for martial classes, a good deal for Sorcerors (a Wizard's spell book is too valuable to take the Vow) and extremely powerful for Monks (who already can't wear armor and deal more damage with their unarmed strikes than most characters will with two-handed weapons) and Druids (who can Wild Shape into a form that has natural defenses and stack their Vow bonuses on top of it). Vow of Poverty Druids were particularly loathed because the Feat gave such a significant power boost to a class that was already widely considered the best in the game.
- With 5th Edition, Hexblade Warlock has been criticised for basically rendering all other patronages obsolete. Hexblades get medium armour as standard, a single target hex buff and they add Charisma to attacks and damage - completely negating the MAD issues that other Warlock patronages face. And they get all this at 1st level, which means for other Charisma-based classes like Sorcerers, Bards and Paladins, a mere one level dip in Hexblade Warlock will see an exponential power increase.
Pathfinder:
- The Summoner class rapidly became problematic. Although it's not a powerful spellcaster (it's about on par with the bard), its fully customizable eidolon more than made up for it. The eidolon functions similarly to the druid's animal companion, but it's strictly better in every aspect: more health, a better base attack bonus, more skills, better ability scores (including human-like intelligence), an alignment and a nature that always align with its Summoner's, unkillable (it just goes back to its home plane and waits to be summoned again the next day) and, above all, fully customizable with "evolutions" that give it extra abilities; the most common strategy is to give the eidolon as many natural attacks as the rules allow (up to 3 at level 1 and can have 7 at higher levels!) and get the pounce evolution (available at level 1) to create an absolute monster that rushes and instantly tears enemies to shreds unless they have an absurd AC or damage reduction that works against magical attacks. And this leaves enough evolution points to give it spells of its own, or make it harder to take down. Add to this the Summoner's ability to summon more creatures like a wizard using his most powerful summoning spell available, but strictly better, and other class features to interact with the eidolon, and you have a Game-Breaker that even antimagic cannot fully shut down. The Unchained rules (the ones that also buffed the sub-par Rogue) hit the Summoner with a significant Nerf both to spellcasting and to the eidolon, increasing the level of a lot of spells on this class's spell list, removing a few more, and making the eidolon globally less strong, much less malleable and with more constraints relative to character alignments and general nature.
- While the base Summoner was bad enough, the Synthesist Summoner was even worse. Rather than have the eidolon as a monster, the Synthesist essentially wore it as armor, using its physical stats instead of their own. This alone would be bad enough, but the Synthesist got to use the better base attack bonus of the eidolon, got a scaling bonus to Strength and Dexterity, got a scaling bonus to AC that can be shifted between armor and natural armor depending on which is better for them, total access to the evolution pool to buff themselves, and the ability to essentially get another d10 hit points each level. This led to builds where a Synthesist would dump all their physical stats and play the weakest, clumsiest, frailest character possible but still be able to suit up at a minute's notice (assuming they didn't do it at the start of the day; eidolons have no duration) and be a better fighter than an actual fighter while still having all its spells and special abilities ready at a moment's notice. There's a reason they're banned in official Pathfinder Society play.
Pokémon has had several over the years, but the most recent and infamous is likely Arceus & Dialga & Palkia GX TAG TEAM. A 280 HP Basic Pokemon is already alarming enough, but it also comes packed with two disgusting attacks of its own. Its first attack does 150 damage - not a bad number - with the upside of letting you search 3 energy directly from your deck and attach it to any of your Pokemon. But the real power is its Altered Creation-GX attack. You could only use it once per game, but all of your Pokemon would do 30 more damage for the rest of the game, and any knockout your Pokemon take gives you an additional prize card. Not just the Pokemon that used the attack, all of your Pokemon. Games are often decided in two turns after an Altered Creation, since ADP can set up a Benched Pokemon, use Altered Creation, and then win in two knockouts. The card instantly took over both formats and is near-universally requested to be banned by the playerbase, but no action has been taken yet.
The engine building game Wingspan has the Raven and Chihuahuan Raven. Their ability is that, when activated, they discard an egg and let you pick any two food from the supply without being restricted by what's available in the birdfeeder.^note This also means you can get away with neglecting or completely ignoring the Forest (generally considered the weakest habitat) unless bonus or round objectives require it, as you can easily lay more eggs than you'll discard by just placing a Raven in the Grasslands and activating it. Their only weaknesses are that they can only discard eggs from other birds, and that they have a rare rodent in their cost, but both of these issues are not that hard to work around.

Third-Person Shooters

In Gears of War 2, both of the starting rifles to choose from are a Tier Induced Scrappy to at least one section of its very, very Broken Base. You have the Lancer users who think that the Hammerburst is the overpowered noob weapon because of its incredibly powerful and accurate semi-automatic fire (with almost no recoil with actives). You have the Hammerburst defenders who say that the Lancer is the overpowered noob weapon because of its one-hit-kill chainsaw bayonet (which tends to either let you tank bullets without flinching and suck people in with a vacuum or not work at all and get you killed), and then the third group who agree that the Lancer is underpowered and use the Hammerburst anyway.
- Every weapon in the entire Gears Of War series gets this. On the one hand, you have the people who think that the Gnasher Shotgun is overpowered and revile it for turning Gears into a one-weapon game. On the other, you have the people who exclusively use the Gnasher, insist that it's the only weapon that takes any amount of skill to use, and think everything else is too overpowered. The latter group make up the majority of the player base. It was not uncommon to get kicked from matches in the first game if you used anything but the Gnasher.
In the first Star Wars: Battlefront game, the Super Battle Droid's bombs had overwhelming speed and precision, at the cost of greatly reduced damage, which in practice amounted to little more than a slightly higher ammo cost. So the second game nerfed them all the way down to basic infantry, but had its own OP class in the form of engineers that (among other things) dealt virtual death blows at close range and recovered health with ridiculous ease, making them a serious threat even to the hero characters that were overpowered by design.

Turn-Based Strategy

Civilization:
- Civilization V
  - How to win as Babylon: Research Pottery. Research Writing. Obtain free Great Scientist. Build Academy, essentially multiplying your Science production for the start of the game. Add in the 50% production on other Great Scientists, and Babylon can merrily snowball to victory on the backs of dozens of Academies. And since their unique unit and building, available in the Ancient Age, are an improved wall and an improved archer, they can easily weather the early rushes that might otherwise knock them off-kilter. By the time the enemy's developed the trebuchets and crossbowmen necessary to knock down the Walls of Babylon, they'll be confronted by cannons and gatling guns, and by the time they've caught up to that, they'll be going up against stealth bombers and nukes. Babylon is the most commonly banned civ in multiplayer for this reason.
  - Korea tends to be placed on the same level as Babylon, and for the same reason: its schtick is Science, and Science does everything well. It doesn't snowball as early as Babylon, but when it does, it snowballs even harder. Every specialist and Great Tile improvement on Korean soil is another +2 to Science, and every science-making building or Wonder in the capital is a boost equal to a Research Agreement. Add in the Hwach'a and Turtle Ship, two rather nasty defensive units that become available right when these bonuses start coming into play, and Korea can easily survive that crucial period and emerge with nuclear power plants and a space program. The only reason Korea isn't as widely-banned as Babylon is that it lacks Babylon's defenses against early rushes, meaning that shrewd players can circumvent Korea's strengths by bumrushing it with everything they have the moment they make first contact, and not stopping until Korea is gone from the map - if this fails, start praying.
  - Hoo boy, Poland. Ironically for a nation historically regarded as a Butt-Monkey, Poland has the fantastic ability Solidarity, which tosses them a free Social Policy every time they advance an Age. Since social policies are meant to push a player in the direction of a given playstyle, this means Poland is basically a Master of All, able to finish policy trees faster than anyone else and have enough left over to key their playstyle for the situation. Get them in a war and they have all of Honor, try dominating them culturally and they just nabbed all of Aesthetics, try to use Religion and they're already three deep in Piety, and they also have something you didn't. A Civ with no other abilities and Solidarity would be top-tier - so just to sweeten the deal, Poland also has the Ducal Stables, one of the best cavalry-boosters around, and the Winged Hussars, the strongest unit of its era (mathematically, only one unit available at the same time as the Hussars can beat them - the Spanish Tercio, and that's only thanks to Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors).
  - The Mayans have Long Count, which gives them a free Great Person at fairly regular intervals upon researching Theology. Similar to Poland above, this means they can key themselves to basically any situation, and similar to Babylon, this means they can nab Great Scientists very early. If that wasn't enough, they also have the Pyramid, a shrine that in addition to twice the faith, also gives a small Science boost at the very start of the game, giving them similar advantages to Babylon and Korea. To cap it off, the Atlatlist gives them a ranged unit from the get-go without needing Archery, ensuring they can weather barbarians long enough to rush Theology and enjoy their Great People.
- Civilization VI
  - Gran Colombia was almost immediately subject to this kind of criticism upon release. Common concerns included +1 Movement to all units regardless of circumstances and the fact that their Llanero (a fairly unimpressive-looking mounted gunner carrying a guitar, unique to Gran Colombia) could combine various bonuses to out-damage a Giant Death Robot.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance:
- Three of the playable races in this game can be pretty broken for one reason or another:
  - Vieras are downright game-breaking with their ability to combine Summon Magic with Doublecast. What's more, Assassins and Snipers can learn Last Breath and Concentrate respectively, which basically means a guaranteed kill every turn.
  - Humes are the most balanced race, and have access to such jobs as Ninja, which gives enough of a boost to speed (along with access to Double Sword) that you've effectively won every fight if you put in enough levels as this job.
  - Moogles, despite being the weakest of the five races, have a number of abilities that can break the game in half if used right. Gunners can hit you with Charmshot, Confuseshot, Stop, Silenshot, or Ultima (though you'd have to learn it as Mog Knight first) from 8 or 9 panels away with an almost guaranteed hit rate thanks to Concentrate, Gadgeteers with the right party equipment can basically sleep and doom the entire enemy party with little to no risk of being on the receiving end of the RNG, and the range and free cost of Juggler's Smile ability — which essentially acts like Quicken in that it gives another character a free turn, so you can just move your entire army anywhere on the map in one turn by having everyone Smile each other.
- Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has Assassins, Ninjas (as mentioned earlier), and Thieves at the high-tier since they get both a massive boost to their speed stat at each level up and high movement, allowing them to traverse across the battlefield quickly. This means that in most battles, you will go first and should you cast Haste on them, their turns will come up so frequently that you can curb-stomp the entire enemy party before they know what hit them.
  - Thieves are high-tier for having naturally high evasion. Combine this with decking out the Thief with every possible evasion-boosting gear and it's entirely possible to have an evasion stat of 100, effectively making enemy attacks miss half the time or more! If that wasn't overpowered enough, equip your Thief with Concentrate as their S-Ability and watch them successfully steal weapons, armor, accessories, shields, gil, JP, and even experience points!
  - Ninjas are high-tier not just for their speed, but also their ability to learn Double Sword, which is a S-Ability that lets the unit wield two one-handed weapons at the same time, as well as learn two different abilities at once or one ability at double the normal rate if both weapons are identical. Not only will dual-wielding let you attack enemies twice, but if you do a combo attack, you will hit them twice as well for even more damage!
  - The balancing factor on Ninjas is that katanas, while nothing to scoff at, do considerably less damage than tanky Hume jobs like Fighter or Paladin, meaning that even with dual-wielding Ninjas do significantly less damage than Fighters. However, since S-Abilities can be transferred between classes once mastered, it's entirely possible to create a dual-wielding Fighter capable of dealing more damage than any other job in the game, with 1-hit KOs being common even against units around the same level.
In the third installment of Heroes of Might and Magic, the Conflux town is widely despised simply because it's game-breakingly powerful — good early shooters that are easy to get lots of, and late-game extremely nasty meleers — including their tier 6 Magic Elemental which is immune to magic, attacks all adjacent units at once, does not allow enemy retaliation, or their tier 7 Phoenixes which are the fastest unit in the game and occasionally revive themselves. Notably, the upper half of their units, when upgraded, are immune to fire — which makes Conflux the perfect town for running the normally Awesome, yet Impractical spell Armageddon. This spell deals extreme Fire damage to everything on the battlefield, including allied units, but only the first three units of the Conflux castle are actually affected.
Master of Orion II has almost exactly the same problem in the form of the Psilons. Physically frail brainiacs, the Psilons are the only non-custom species with the "Creative" advantage. Creative means that when Psilons research something, instead of choosing one of as many as three possible technologies, they just get them all. As a result, Psilons will snowball into a more and more powerful empire over time as they become progressively better at everything, rather than specializing into a niche. Oh, and their other advantage is producing more research points than any other species, meaning that their tech will go more places faster than anyone else. It turns out being a fragile species native to low gravity doesn't matter when matching anti-gravity adamantium power armor against hardier opponents armed with basic phaser rifles.
- Custom species can get even more egregious, keeping the Psilon Creative ability and research bonuses, but shifting their disadvantages to less relevant areas like ground invasion penalties (which your tech will easily make up for), ship defense weaknesses (which don't count when you're the aggressor), and disinterest in diplomacy (which doesn't matter when you can kick the asses of any two rival empires and also don't need to trade technologies because you already know everything your enemies do and more).
Mordheim: City of the Damned: Most players loathe the Skaven when playing against the AI. Against human playes the Skaven's whopping melee damage and great movement are balanced against their poor morale and low HP making them easy to kill, but because The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard, AI Skaven are a faction of Lightning Bruiser Masters of All who will often all have more HP than your own dedicated tanks, dodge two-thirds of your attacks and practically never fail psychology or rout checks. A warband who has thus far had a perfect playthrough can be easily Curbstomped by AI Skaven of a supposedly comparable rating who will cut through your best troops like a lawnmower and to add insult to injury steal all their equipment too.
Nintendo Wars has a few COs fans hate playing against, even beyond the Purposefully Overpowered ones like Sturm and Hachi.
- Advance Wars has Max, who here gets a whopping 50% firepower on direct combat units. His weak indirect units don't matter, as any units going up against him might as well be made of wet tissue paper. He gets even more firepower when using his CO Power, which also gives +1 movement, and is one of the cheaper ones. Sequels toned down his direct units to +20% firepower and he's still considered fairly strong there, which should give an idea of the monster he was in the first game.
- Kanbei from both GBA games, but more notably Black Hole Rising. His units have huge bonuses to firepower and defense. Sure they're 20% more expensive, but this hardly matters when he rarely needs to replace them. In the first game he was held back slightly by a slow-charging, underwhelming CO Power, but the sequel not only upped his day-to-day bonuses to +30% firepower and defense, it also gave him the Samurai Spirit Super Power, which raises his defense so high his army might as well be invincible for a turn. And they counterattack with 1.5x damage if you're stupid enough to attack them anyway. Kanbei is widely hated for requiring little skill to use and being near-impossible to beat outside of using an equal Game-Breaker.
- Colin, introduced in Black Hole Rising, is the opposite of Kanbei and just as broken. His units are 10% weaker, but 20% cheaper. This means he both floods out troops faster than you and gets strong units like Bombers and Neotanks long before you can. His troops aren't any weaker defensively, making his lines incredibly hard to break through. But what really clinches his cheapness is his Normal CO Power, Gold Rush, which multiplies his funds by 1.5x, allowing him to afford even more units, and only costs two stars of power meter, the same as Adder, a CO whose entire gimmick is spamming his Powers. Even worse, Dual Strike didn't nerf him at all, and in fact indirectly buffed him by adding new expensive units like Megatanks and Black Bombs (as Black Bombs deal fixed damage, Colin's are objectively better than anyone else's simply by being cheaper). Finally, Colin's brokenness gets even worse in "High Funds" matches, where the exponential nature of his abilities becomes truly insane. Not only is he getting many times more value from Gold Rush, but his Power of Money (increases attack power based on how much money he has), which is normally considered a bit of a joke, becomes incredibly dangerous. It not only charges up much faster due to the increased unit value in play, but the amount of money he'll have will turn his units into walking nukes, flat-out deleting enemies that normally hard counter them.
- Sensei is a Lethal Joke Character, but top-level players feel the "lethal" part goes way too far. A bonus to only two unit types, foot soldiers and copters, doesn't sound like much, but his Infantry and Mechs are even stronger than Sami's, making him terrifying to go up against in the capture game, and Battle Copters are cheap for their power and one of the most versatile attackers in the game. The worst part is his powers though, which spawn 9 HP Infantry or Mechs (depending on which power he uses, Normal or Super) in all his cities. Being able to summon 10 or more units out of nowhere, in a game where the unit cap is 50 per side, is almost impossible to counter, and even the above-mentioned Kanbei and Colin struggle against him. Sensei can even join the 9 HP units together for extra cash, something the single-player campaign actually encourages. His Normal Power is yet another 2-star one like Colin's, too. Overall Sensei is considered almost as much of a Game-Breaker as the Purposefully Overpowered Final Boss.
- Grit in Black Hole Rising has a good number of scenarios where he becomes virtually impossible to beat. He is widely disliked for slowing things to a crawl, while also demanding extremely aggressive play from his opponent - most COs' only hope is to beat him before he builds up an unstoppable mass of artillery (and with how cheap they are, this is not such a difficult task for him). Thanks to his long-range indirects, any chokepoint or small map in general can be completely locked down, while he slowly creeps forward to wipe out the opponent at a comfortable pace - unless there's a turn limit, very few things can counter this strategy. The other games he was in had something major that kept him in check: his weak Infantry in Advance Wars (he can be outmatched in the capture game), or the presence of Black Bombs in Dual Strike (splash damage is devastating to his slow, clumped-up units).
- Eagle is infamous for his Lightning Strike that lets him take a second turn - an ability so powerful that being fairly ahead of the Eagle player before it activates is still considered "losing", and it's the sole reason he ranks so high in 2 out of 3 games. While its slow charging speed is a weakness, Dual Strike adds a smaller version that charges 3x faster - it halves his attack power in the process, but the sheer mobility it offers is insane, and no other CO has anything like it, putting him firmly among the top tiers. Another big contributor to his infamy is the fact that he's the enemy in "Rivals!", which is widely agreed to be the hardest, most unfair mission in the series by a landslide, and the endless Lightning Strikes you'll face are no small part of it.
- Javier is an unusual character who can be in practically any tier, depending on the map. His main gimmick is gaining +10 defense for each comm tower he owns, in addition to the +10 attack they normally give; defense, however, is far more powerful than attack as it reduces all damage by a flat amount, down to zero if you reach +100. He also has further increased defense against indirect attacks, which just reduces the strategy for COs that rely on them to "Don't play against Javier, ever". Javier's defense is so effective that gaining as little as two comm towers instantly makes him a god tier CO, and he's almost always banned in maps where this is a possibility. Any more than that is like turning on cheat codes.

Examples

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Meta Knight is SS Tier

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Meta Knight is SS Tier

High-Tier Scrappy

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Meta Knight is SS Tier

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Meta Knight is SS Tier