[Tier List and Guide] for Phobies - By ManInYellow

[ManInYellow]

Hi there! Over the last couple of weekends I’ve been making a bit of a tier list + a small guide for the game.
I know that most people probably won’t read the entire thing, but the tier list part should at least be good for choosing which units to focus resources on for anyone in doubt about that.
The actual guide part isn’t that broad (it’s probably like 7 pages in total) so most of the document is just the tier list.
I will apologize for any grammatical errors in advance since it’s just something that I typed out on my second monitor while doing other stuff (and English also isn’t my first language)
Link: @ttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1-Jnh1qayPe7JIxtFvTd4bSfuU-2rAmeeqUSaYbfzWkU/edit (replace the @ with a ‘h’)

Feel free to share your thoughts about anything you disagree with in here since I’m not a perfect player by any means and may be under/over rating certain things.

[Rem04]

Looove the effort you put into the tier list! Looking forward for more of this content in the future and eventually playing with ya

[LazyHippo]

This is probably the best guide i have ever seen. What’s important is that you have a separate ranking for Small maps and Big maps.
I was quite surprised for some people to put 9 cost keys as S tier on other tier lists… I guess those ppl haven’t considered that 9 cost keys could be a liability playing on small maps.
WELL DONE MAN IN YELLOW!
Btw, if some Nerfs do come around (E.g. Beauty), please do update this list!

[ManInYellow]

I very much plan on updating it if they begin buffing/nerfing any of the phobies in the game.
I will also be updating it once the upcoming ‘Full Disclosure’ update has been out for a while (which I’m rather excited for).

[SebTheOrk]

This is a really good guide, good work.

However, I think I would have to disagree with Charon and Honey Bear. Though I used to think Honey Bear was worthless, recently I’ve been winning a lot of games with him. And because of how you can win with Honey Bear, the best counter for it is Leprechaun, which should also not be so low in the tier chart because of that.

[ManInYellow]

I might have underrated Honey Bear, its ability is pretty decent and it has a lot of health (the attack power is still rather low though). - Might consider raising it a bit when I update the tier list (post the ‘Full Disclosure’ update).
Charon I personally don’t think is very good (just haven’t seen it be good when played against me, and its stats feel underwhelming).
Furkin Leepricarn just loses too much health compared to other units at the same cost IMO (even though it’s ability is actually pretty powerful).

[Nihgo]

Very much liking this effort, there’s tons of insight for new(ish) players in here.

I don’t want to be so tedious as to talk about why i think a phobie should be rated a tier below or above, but the few things that felt off to me I’ll mention:

Scritch vs Gonzo: Gonzo is the better one of the 2 because these attack buffs are primarily defensive. You want them on a phobie that can attack twice (meaning your opponent must’ve already placed sth in range) and for that purpose Gonzo’s lack of mobility isn’t much of a detriment if it’s placed well. With 1 move + 2 tile ability range it still has a very decent reach, so you’d really rather take the 2 extra keys. Even for offensive uses, it’s not that hard to place Gonzo within 3 tiles of a phobie you want to (threaten to) make a massive aoe attack next turn.

Paddles: It’s pretty bad right now, to the point where you like, feel pity for the player busting him out. The ability is nice, nothing more, but Paddles’ stats are so low you’re basically playing the match with 4 keys down in exchange for some limited extra mobility (2 turns cooldown to boot, jesus fc).

Brony and Heartbreaker: Don’t disagree with their general assessments, but it’s weird to distinguish between usefulness on large and small maps here. That’s not what matters since they’re all about the terrain, i.e. pits, obstacles and lines of sight. If they tend to be played more on big maps, that’s only because it’s generally hard to find an opportunity on the small ones to save up 7+ keys.

1-key units: Imo these should only be rated amongst themselves since they often serve a completely different purpose than the rest of your line-up. You want them to recapture panic points, ideally while getting a free attack in and being able to take more than 1 hit to be removed (which is why awol is the worst of the bunch in many situations).

Spud and Heavo: Rock solid mobility and harassment units imo, esp. on maps with lots of obstacles to cover behind. Esp. Heavo is easily B, not D.

Barzilla: You compare it to Boss, an A-tier phobie, and put it in D-tier because it has 1/3 more health with almost the same damage output, but no ability (dimensional tag doesn’t count as a general pro or con imo). I’m not saying it’s on par with Boss, 'cause that ability is indeed amazing, but Barzilla still has a lot to offer: Ranged, almost-Doughzer amount of hp without being so damn slow, hits quite hard with extra damage if they elect to hit back twice and stay in the fire. That’s more than enough to place it in B-tier imo. It’s the only common high-cost unit too, so suggesting that it’s a rather bad investment potentially misleads new players who only have this one.

Honey Bear: Like Seb said, def. not an E-tier. On some maps it can conveniently shut down both a panic point and a healing pool for 2 turns, which translates to like (up to) 4x235 extra heart damage and (up to) 4x235 damage an opposing phobie couldn’t heal (not to mention denying the free poison counter).

Maggie: I regularly find this one useful. It hits decently hard and that can help a lot when you want to set up a counterattack against certain tiles, but need to occupy a pit or obstacle in order to do so. More like a C for me.

BOOM: Of the 3 suicide bombs, this one is easily the best, because these unit are deterrents. You place them in the back of your formation (be mindful of aoe though) to prevent a potentionally devastating attack on a more valuable phobie where your opponent can only do it from tiles that are close to each other. They’re not about “reaching your opponent” in that sense, more about “not letting them get to phobie x without a significant price to pay”. It’s just that once you successfully deterred, the 2- and the 3-cost phobies are kinda useless for the reasons you mention whereas the 1-key can just be traded in for a panic point. You won’t feel stuck with it.

Lastly, I’d mention somewhere in the strategy section on win conditions how crucial taking and defending panic points is for all playstyles, not even necessarily to be aggressive, but because if you hold an advantage long enough, it eventually forces your opponent into bad trades.

[SebTheOrk]

@Nihgo

(which is why awol is the worst of the bunch in many situations).

What i like about Awol is that people tend to ignore it due to being 1 key, but he does the same damage as a 3-key, or they don’t ignore it because of the damage, and I can use to bait away from something else. To me he is a lot the same as the 1 key bomb, and I’ve used him often to kill the 2 key ghost guy (forgot name)

@Nihgo

Lastly, I’d mention somewhere in the strategy section on win conditions how crucial taking and defending panic points is for all playstyles, not even necessarily to be aggressive, but because if you hold an advantage long enough, it eventually forces your opponent into bad trades.

This, very much this! The reason why I changed my mind with Honey bear and charon is really because of the panic point advantage they can give me. Many units are really map specific on how they can give you an advantage. It’s really important to not always compare units, 1 vs 1, as if they are always on the same playing field.

I think an issue here too, is that some units are easier to learn how to make them useful in specific situations, while others are really not so obvious (e.g everyone knows that a pulling unit works well around pits, but honey bear’s potential was not obvious at first). Give it a few more months and some new player will figure out how to auto-win with some even more obscure tactic.

[ManInYellow]

I decided that instead of doing another full write-up I would just post the tier list with some notes on what I changed and why (since the other way would take a lot of time, and not enough stuff has changed to warrant it)
The units that haven’t been added to their tier list maker yet looks a bit weird btw since I just threw in square pictures of them.

First change; Full Disclosure (Patch 1.4) is out and thus we have a bunch of new phobies (these are just my initial impressions, so rankings might change in the future):
Boomer:
1 key, dimensional, no attack, 1000 health, 2 movement, ability that makes it immune to push/pull effects and so on.
Very tanky, but has no offensive power, most of the time this will be used either to block enemies from your more important units like Jar Cannon or In-Oculus, or it will be used for it’s dimensional effect.
I don’t recommend opening the match with this guy since he can’t actually fight the enemy (he’s more of a mid or late game 1-key unit which you use for the dimensional effect IMO as weird as that sounds)
Ratings:
General Rating: C
Small Map Rating: C-
Large Map Rating: C+
Tickles:
1 key, monster, 200 attack damage, 1 range attack, 750 health, 2 movement, ability removes traps it stands on.
Very tanky for a 1 key but has rather sad attack power, it’s ability can be useful in some situations but it’s mostly a small upside to the unit.
Ratings:
General Rating: C-
Small Map Rating: D+
Large Map Rating: C
Squiggles:
2 keys, dimensional, 280 attack damage, 1 range attack, 950 health, 2 movement, ability deals 500 bonus damage when attacking the enemy heart.
Good with Brony when rushing the opponents heart (often paired with Hi-Five too - In this kind of playstyle it’s more like a B-Tier unit), outside of that it’s not very useful (if you want a tanky early game unit with some amount of offensive power you should go for K-9000 instead)
Ratings:
General Rating: E
Small Map Rating: E-
Large Map Rating: E+
Jammy Fish - Stress Level 110:
3 keys, dimensional, 300 attack damage, 2 range attack, 650 health, 2 movement, flying, ability grants a key to spend from your reserve pool. (doesn’t actually create keys, just takes them from the ones you would get in future turns), 1 turn cooldown.
It’s decent for tempo (since it can allow you to summon some bigger units early and it only costs 2 keys as far as tempo goes as long as it gets to use it’s ability just once).
It’s not that good for value (it’s actual body is probably worth something like 2,3 keys) so you kind of have to use it’s ability to get ahead for it to be worth it though.
Ratings:
General Rating: C
Small Map Rating: D+
Large Map Rating: B-
In-Oculus:
4 keys, mechanical, 400 attack damage, 3 range attack, 800 health, 1 movement.
Like a big, but slower Jar Cannon. The extra health actually matters a lot since it means it won’t be getting killed unless your opponent commits multiple units (which will often lead to a favorable trade for you)
It’s main weakness is obviously that it’s only got 1 movement, so it needs to be positioned correctly and have some amount of protection. (and it also doesn’t have lobbing attacks when compared to Jar Cannon)
In my opinion this is actually the best of the new range 3 units since it’s very cheap and has better attack power than the others (although the crowd control abilities of the others can be game-winning given the right situations). What I’m trying to say is that this is more ‘generally good’ where as the others take a bit more commitment.
Ratings:
General Rating: A-
Small Map Rating: A-
Large Map Rating: A-
Bluelien:
5 keys, dimensional, 450 attack damage, 1 range attack, 1800 health, 2 movement, bypassing/burrowing, ability creates a healing pool for 4 rounds at range 2 (218 each turn), 1 turn cooldown.
Seems very good IMO - Can create a bunch of healing spa’s on your side of the map which makes it hard for your opponent to engage you in a favorable way, it’s stats are about what you’d espect from a 5 cost unit with a decent ability (maybe even slightly above, compare it with Woolly Bully)
Especially good against AOE poison units since it can cure multiple units with it’s healing pool (obliterates Russell unless you’re full undead). In addition to this it also allows you to keep up with disease effects if one of your monster type units gets targeted by that.
His ability is also ranged and his movement is burrowing so he can very easily cure one of your units on the turn that he gets summoned if that is needed.
Just seems like a great overall unit.
Ratings:
General Rating: A-
Small Map Rating: B+
Large Map Rating: A
Repeller:
5 keys, mechanical, 320 attack damage, 3 range attack, 750 health, 1 movement, ability pushes an enemy and all adjacent enemies 1 tile backwards dealing 320 to the main target and 50% to everything else at range 3, 1 turn cooldown.
Seems pretty damn good, displacement at such large range can be very hard to deal with.
Only has 1 movement though so has to be kept safe by other units or it may die before it gets to do much.
Also just a decent body (pretty much just a slightly weaker In-Oculus, but for 1 more key and with the push ability).
Probably best on maps with pits or lots of Lava since it can push enemies into the bad terrain - On these maps you can use it with Ramboline (if you have both) to really make it hard for your opponent to play the game)
Ratings:
General Rating: B+
Small Map Rating: B+
Large Map Rating: B+
Attractor:
6 keys, mechanical, 320 attack damage, 3 range attack, 900 health, 1 movement, ability pulls an enemy and all adjacent enemies 1 tile towards you dealing 320 to the main target and 50% to everything else at range 3, 1 turn cooldown.
Rather similar to Repeller except it pulls instead of pushes and has more health for 1 more key (and it has more health). Pulling multiple enemies in on larger maps can be game winning so that will probably be the main place that this see’s use.
Can still be used on smaller maps as a stronger but more expensive Jar Cannon with long range displacement too, but most of the time I’d probably rather just summon In-Oculus or Jar Cannon in that case (since pulls have less value on smaller maps in a lot of cases)
It also works really well with Fire Ant and Baba Yaga’s traps since pulling multiple units into a AOE trap can create huge swing turns. (yes that does actually work, friendly traps can trigger on your turn when enemies are pushed/pulled into them)
Ratings:
General Rating: B+
Small Map Rating: B-
Large Map Rating: A
Puff - Stress level 100:
6 keys, monster, 300 attack damage with 100 fire damage, 2 range attack, 1600 health, 2 movement, flying, ability is a line attack just like what Beauty and Blast-0 Matic have, except it sets tiles with enemies on fire.
Seems good IMO, all of this fire can help with taking out dimensional units without triggering their on-death effect, and the line attack makes it much harder for your opponent to position. (on equal level the line attack actually kills Jar Cannon).
It also has 2 movement and flying which makes it decently mobile - It’s essentially like a mini-Beauty for 2 less keys with a bunch of fire effects instead of AOE damage.
I might be under-rating this guy, but I haven’t played against him yet so it’s hard to say.
Ratings:
General Rating: B
Small Map Rating: B+
Large Map Rating: B
Greylien:
7 keys, dimensional, 420 attack damage, 1 range attack, 1850 health, 2 movement, bypassing/burrowing, ability allows this to swap places with an enemy at 2 range.
This doesn’t seem good to me. It’s ability would be incredibly powerful on a low cost unit (would also be good on a flying unit), but on something this large I don’t really see how you would utilize it in a way that would make it worth using.
It’s stats also aren’t anything special for 7 keys (below average if anything) so it’s ability should have to make up for that.
The only thing this guy can do is swap for a frontline unit to kill the opponents Jar Cannon and bring their front line into your team so that you can kill it - But in order for that to work they have to walk into you and let you do this so that’s unlikely to happen.
Ratings:
General Rating: E-
Small Map Rating: E-
Large Map Rating: E

1.4.1 Balance Changes:
Charon - Slight increase to HP: I still don’t think he’s strong, good buff though.
Minotaur - Slight increase to HP: I’d still rather use Baby Snakey most of the time (since it often ends up being more tanky anyway with it’s undead healing), but this might be worth considering now if you think you can get the AOE off.
Paddles - Slight increase to HP: Doesn’t matter much since you don’t use him for his stats - Makes him a bit harder to kill before he gets to do anything I guess.
Bad Sushi - Slight increase to HP: Doesn’t matter, still garbo.
Beauty - Slight decrease to HP: Has been de-throned as the single best unit in the game (-200 base health is actually a decent bit), but it’s still not a bad unit at all. (its damage output is still crazy, now it’s just a bit easier to punish if your opponent plays like a moron).
Rocketman - Slight decrease to damage: Personally don’t think this was needed at all, but that might just be my opinion. Makes him a bit less good, but you mainly used him for the freeze anyway.
Scritch - Slight decrease to damage: I probably overrated this guy a bit in my first tier list (he’s actually quite squishy for a 6-cost), and now his attack got nerfed a bit too. He’s still good but I moved him down by a good bit.
Alastor - Slight decrease to damage: Reducing Alastors attack is actually a big deal since her ability scales off it (100% heal), but they nerfed it by so little that it doesn’t really impact her all that much.

Other Changes:

• Moved Honey Bear up by several tiers, after facing it some more (and reading your comments) I’ve realized that I were under-valuing it quite a bit (honestly it should probably have been even higher on the previous tier lists, but it’s kind of bad against some of the new stuff (mainly the long ranged trio) so it only makes the middle of C tier this time).
• Moved Gonzo Bonzo up a bit, both because Scritch got nerfed a bit (and I may have over-valued it in the first place) and because it works incredibly well with the new ranged units.
• Added the units which were missing from the tier list (Poison Ivy and Blinky)
• Moved Brony and Hi-Five up a bit, this combination is very good (although it’s not that common that you see it).
• Moved Fowl and Pasgetti a bit down since Blulien is kinda annoying for them and Beauty got nerfed so they’re a bit less needed.
• Moved most 1-cost units a bit up since having them so low felt weird (they technically speaking have a lot of impact in the early game, they just aren’t very flashy).
• Moved several slower units (especially melee ones) a bit down, this is because of In-Oculus, Attractor and Repeller which make it harder to use these units (since you will be gunned down or kited before you get to do much).
• Moved Cassowary and Mr Tramples up a bit since having long reach right now seems really good (and they’re both scary to walk into whilst also being good offensive tools which is great).

[Melki]

That’s a very accurate Tier List, and I mostly agree on all you say.

In the Tier List: I’m still amazed that you put Finnigan so high, since I’m not seeing him that much, but I like the idea of him as a small cost utility unit in some maps.

What I noticed while playing for several months is that some units can be better or worse depending on the playing skills of your opponent, and if you’re playing arena or classical. In arena and against bad to slightly above average players, units that force your opponent to calculate are stronger, since there’s a lot of chances that an error finally occurs and will snowball. I’d almost never play a Spud in Arena, since it’s so vanilla that it wil not elevate the error chances. But against very good players in classical, if you only wait for an error without a more structured plan, you’ll lose, so it’s a different context to evaluate the phobies.

[CUQC13]

7 pages? i see 50 XD apart i add information about sasquatch in the phorum, probably that help you.

[Lukred]

Hey, good tier list! Really appreciate all the time and effort you put into this. This helped me a lot when I started out, used it pretty regularly whilst climbing the ranks and am now i’m usually sitting in the top 50s on the leaderboards, not to toot my horn so much as to reiterate the good job you’re doing. This really helped me to understand why something was strong/weak and how to effectively use them as none of the other tier lists I could find had a comprehensive breakdown of each Phobie. Keep up the good work!

[ManInYellow]

Just thought I’d do a quick updated version of the list since the other ones are looking quite dated.
Probably won’t do a write-up for this one since I think they might have a content patch again fairly soon (1 Year Anniversary is early March and it wouldn’t be weird if they did something for that).

[IMonFiR3z]

Hi MiY, thanks for all your help and effort in making this tier list! May I ask for your opinion on yeti? How would you rank this phobie in general? Does it require massive level gains before becoming viable?

[ManInYellow]

Yeti can be great on large maps but is too expensive for small maps in the majority of cases IMO.
The only real problem Yeti has is that pretty much every fire unit in the game right now is good so the freeze can be countered a good amount of the time - That said the freeze can still be super powerful, especially if you hit a large enemy with it. (you’re often hoping to freeze something far enough away from their vault that they cannot snowball it to free it)
Yeti actually doesn’t require a lot of levels to be useful since it’s mainly used as a high-reach freeze option (that said levels ofc always matter).

[IMonFiR3z]

I see, thanks so much MiY! Don’t see yeti much so that’s why I’m asking. Wonder where it stands

[ManInYellow]

It’s pretty rare to see depending on rank since it’s a fairly high stress level phobie (70), and it also requires a big phobie as a target which not everyone uses.
I’ve actually used Yeti a fair bit since my high-cost options were fairly limited (recently got a lot of very good ones though, so I don’t use it as much now)

[IMonFiR3z]

Understood, thanks for your input. Always nice to read your analysis on things! Esp tier lists ;D