General

What does the tier list look like?

Please note: Tiers are HIGHLY debatable so all lists should be taken with a grain of salt. If a character is only a place or two away from where they "should" be, please refrain from wildly editing this section.

Tier-list

A tier list from Arcadia magazine, showing match-ups (Order is the same)

(Formatted from matchup chart, large gaps in points change the tier)

Top Tier:

Yun

Chun-Li

Makoto

Upper Tier:

Ken

Dudley

Yang

Akuma

Urien

Middle Tier:

Ryu

Oro

Ibuki

Elena

Low Tier:

Necro

Alex

Remy

Q

Hugo

Twelve

Bottom Tier:

Sean

Representative Tier-list

When considering a tournament, with a large number of competitors, you find that there is invariably more people playing the higher tier characters. Almost to the point where very few (if any) lower tiers appear.

As such, it is sometimes improper to base a Top level tournament tier list on ALL the match-ups. After taking a flat tier list, and selecting those characters with the highest frequency of appearance (In this case, Yun, Chun-Li, Ken and Makoto). By ranking every character by their match-ups against those four characters, you end up with a more tournament based tier-list.

This list, essentially, ranks characters on their ability to place in a large scale tournament.

Characters who have ranked up are marked by a bold font.
Characters who have ranked down are marked by an italic font.

Top Tier:

Yun

Chun-Li

Upper Tier:

Ken

Dudley

Makoto

Middle Tier:

Akuma

Urien

Yang

Ryu

Ibuki

Oro

Elena

Low Tier:

Necro

Alex

Remy

Hugo

Q

Twelve

Sean

New Arcadia Tier List

S+ - Chun-Li
S - Yun
A+ - Ken, Dudley
A - Makoto, Yang
A- - Urien, Akuma, Ryu, Oro
B+ - Hugo
B - Elena, Ibuki, Alex
C - Necro, Twelve, Remy, Q
D - Sean

2014 Arcadia Tier List

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Tier List
Tier	Character(s)
S+
S
A
B
C
D

What general advice should a beginner follow? What general strategy?

Strategy is a very basic concept. It is the principle of using X to beat Y, where X has some sort of advantage over Y. Be it a flat statistic superiority, or a mind game.

Here are some general tips to help you begin.

Know your options (and your opponent's). Consider how easy a move might be to super counter. If you keep doing a c.HK with Ryu, sooner or later, your opponent will catch on and punish you, and you DON'T want it to be a super that they choose to punish with.

Super after Parry, if you have been parried by someone, hope is not all lost! Try supering. If you are against someone who parry-counters excessively, it can really throw them off, as invariably a super will beat the move they attempt. This is very risky however, as the opponent always has the option to block.

Bait Throws. Particularly basic players will try to throw whenever you are close to them. So get close to them, avoid their throw, then punish it. Justin Wong, to name just one name, does that all the time.

Mix-up can roughly be interpreted as: "Doing something that is different to what you have just done, to force the opponent to change his block zone". If you aren't hitting high, try hitting low! A mix-up is a using a variety of moves that make your strategy unpredictable.