we all know order is the best symbol. but what other symbols will consistently top 8? what symbol is # 2? chaos, air, evil, water, all, earth?

trane said:

Air is definately a top contender...but so is one you didnt mention.

Void....with a definite splash of something else

Smazzurco said:

Hells yeah, Air is definitely #2 it's got EVERYTHING!!!!

And without it you die (inside)

It depends on what you mean by "best symbols."

If you mean overall (best attacks/kills/foundations/etc etc).. It'd be:

Order

Water

All

Chaos

Air

Earth

Everything else

If you mean best foundation/control base:

Evil

Death

All

Chaos

Eh...Death's foundation base isn't that great =/

And Order's is at the top of the mountain (so glad I can honestly say that after all my waiting).

The best symbol is probably Order. Chaos, though, seems like the closest to second place, though it's only just barely ahead of Air (Red Lotus and Forethought trumps, in my opinion, Feline Spike).

Earth and Water are quickly approaching the others in terms of playability, and seem like they're just behind Evil and All, which are both good symbols...just not as strong as, say, Air. Air is a beast. Evil...Evil and All are both beasts, but they're less savage. Like...um...Hobbes, in comparison to an ACTUAL tiger.

In the middle there's Death, Good, and Void

At the bottom of the ladder, we've Fire, and especially Life.

My picks go like this

1. order

2. evil

3. chaos

4. air

5. all

6. death

7. fire

8. water

9. earth

10. void

11. good

12. life

I disagree with the assertion that any one symbol is "the best" in the game. Some symbols are clearly more cohesive than others and win more events, but there is not abject way to quantify the powerlevel of a symbol. Additonally the fact that order wins alot of events dosent even make it that great buy that fact alone, because order is also over represented on a whole at these events by net deckers and economy deck builders.

I honestly think that order is tops along with chaos, water, and air right now, and that none of thoes are clearly better than one another. Ive seen plenty of order decks lose in a big way to thoes other symbols, and even more order decks that can hardly be called that because they use off symbol stuff to kill.

Protoaddict said:

i was talking about single symbol decks, not duel symbol.

I think the reason order edges air and chaos is because of superior control base, brt, 2 6 check anti olcadon's, and every good comital card in the game. chaos and order might be slightly better than air because of dloop. chaos has momentum, good control, and red lotus. air has feline spike, second best momentum gen, and an insane amount of 6 checks. water is in third place mainly because straight water only has natural leader for momentum gen, it's anti olcadon's options are sub par, and it can fall behind order and chaos in a control war. evil is next, with chesters, brt, and good alround control, evil also has amazing chars, i think it is evils atack pool that makes it fall this low in my list. earth and all are around even for 5th. i think earth edges all slightly but thats personal opinion. all is amazing, it just lacks anti olcadon's. earth has great atacks, great foundations, but outside of leona, it's a little slow. void is next, with it's amazing discard and kill cards. void simply lacks momentum gen and anti olcadon's. good is next with kitty spike and darknese blade, as well as fight or flight and good momentum gen. i realy like death but it just doesn't have enough options to be top tier. fire is next with good dmg pump but just not enough control. life is last place, life gain just isn't a very strong mechanic.

Ya in our podcast we refrain from incorporating dual when we talk about each resource since you cant properly break it down . So I think you should consider what each can do alone to determine what you think is best.

Wellllll... if we leave out talk of multi-symbol decks, doesn't that risk a dangerous disconnect from reality? With the proclivity of infinity in every deck, and the (I dunno if it's official or not, but) stance of FFG to make every character's support cards share all 3 symbols with their character, it seems like multiresource decks should be everywhere. Would you say, "Order doesn't have exceptional defense," even though one popular trick is to splash a bit of Water to Defender loop Rejection? It'd take a lot longer to talk about everything that could be done if you were to walk through every combination of two resources, but you could just limit your discussion to one or two actual decks (that either placed somewhere or were built just for the discussion) and discuss what's in the deck, why, why not something else, etc.

I've seen a lot of talk of things like "All is top-tier except for defense against Mentoring -> All can splash Death/Fire for Oral Dead/Rage/High Noble and it's set!" I kinda doubt if it's that simple . Is the All/Death deck better than Order/Water? Or Earth+anything? It's pretty straightforward to make a value judgement about a set of cards (such as, say, the Chaos symbol), because it's easy to determine what cards are there and which cards should go in a deck. Much more difficult is determining how effective a split-resource deck is going to be, because there is so much more to account for -- playing the cards into the pool that you need, the much larger card pool = more promising cards that must be removed to keep the deck at reasonable size, other problems I'm sure you're all familiar with...

Part of any give resources discussion should be the ease of multing that symbol provides. With orders ability to clear the CP or return cards played to hand it can unclog a pool rather well and allows it to multi better. Has nothing to do with anything outside the symbol either. Same can be said of quite a few symbols for all its worth, but it really should factor in.

Look at Talbain and now promo dhalsim, both have easier times multi symboling than most other characters and thier power lies within that.

I'd have to say:

Order-Just because it is so versitile

Water-One of my favorite symbols right now

Air-Chun Li(GOD SHE'S ANNOYING)

Chaos-Ibuki and Promo Vega, nuf said

All-Terry All The Way

Void-Sogestu is GOD

Death-Good foundations, decent attacks

Fire-Fairly even, but aggro has slowed for fire

Earth-Great Attacks, but it's lacking

Evil-Great Foundations and characters, but no attacks right now

Good-FoF+Spike FTW

Life-I really this symbol would get something, it has some good characters

Protoaddict said:

well if you think about how easy a resource is to multi symbol, here is the top five easiest symbols to multi symbol in my opinion.

1 order

2 chaos

3 water

4 air

5 earth