Speaking of Omega, I think that how well he does/did with Zas says two things:
1. He's a really talented player that knows how to win
2. This game is a lot more balanced than people have given it credit for all this time.
That's why people have hard times rating certain characters place on tier lists and all that. A character doesn't suddenly jump up in ranking due to one great player's success. If Kura had beaten Thugish at Nationals with Talim, we'd have lots of people saying how Talim is suddenly mid-tier or better when that's clearly not the case. It just means the character wasn't
"impossible to win with" as everyone thought once someone was willing to put in some work.
Malek:
The key thing in ur statement that makes u able, me, and Belial to give Amy an uphill battle is don't freeze. People still don't get this.
Again, Amy can be beaten, but that doesn't mean she isn't tops in the game. The fact that both you and Malek have devised these in-depth strategies in the first place is a testament to just how good the character is. That's why I don't get the whole debate about her.
I think people, especially the people who think they're the best in the community, have a tendency to overlook the obvious a lot of times. This is likely because they travel, place well in tournies where they face many different players using these same top tiers. They figure because they can beat them, these top tiers must not be as good as everyone thinks. Understandable, I suppose. But I am asking all of you to try to look at things objectively.
With Amy....You have to play around Amy's style the whole time. You must. There is no way around it, her tools are just that good. Are there ways to get around her stuff?
Absolutely. But the key factor is that the only way to beat Amy is to take gambles and/or strategize around
everything she can do as best you can.
This is what makes her a top tier. Not her 6BB, not her 2B+K, not her wakeup, not her safety, not her aGIs, but ALL of these things combined that
you, as the opponent, must always keep in mind throughout the fight.
Ivy in a lot of ways is the same. I've always thought Ivy was top tier for these same reasons. Not just based on my own experience, but from seeing what it is Ivy has to work with while watching plenty of other Ivys.
She has the tools for every situation, just like Amy does, but Ivy requires a lot of work to play to her fullest, so people dismiss her from being that good. They look too hard into her minute weaknesses and bad frames. I wouldn't say she's broken, but she is so versatile that it can oftentimes seem that way.
Kilik has Asura. On it's own, it's beatable.... you can bait it, you can GI the second hit, step, use kicks, highs, etc.... But when you combine this move with his other tools (for example: WS B) you start to see how the THREAT of Asura becomes super relevant. Do you chance a high in anticipation of Asura? or do you chance a mid to thwart the TCs? With this said, is Kilik beatable? Yes of course. But again, you have to play around many tools of his in order to stand a chance.
See where I'm going with this?
As much as I like to discuss matchups and in-depth character analysis, (which is necessary when figuring advantaged/disadvantaged matchups), it's little oversights like this that make people delude themselves into thinking some of the established top characters are worse than they are.