Rank the Masters 8 (Plus 2 trainers)

[Ragnarok4]

1. Ash
2. Leon
3. Cynthia
4. Steven
5. Diantha
6. Lance
7-8. Alain / Iris
9-10. Rahian/ Paul

 

[JustAStatistic]

S+: Leon, Full Power Ash

S-: Full Power Cynthia

A: Cynthia, Ash

B+: Steven, Diantha

B: Lance, Alain, Iris, Paul

B-: Raihan

 

[Ragnarok4]

S+: Full Power Ash, Leon

S-: Full Power Cynthia

A: Cynthia, Ash

B+: Steven, Diantha

B: Lance, Alain, Iris, Paul

B-: Raihan

What is the difference between FP Cynthia vs Cynthia

 

[Pokegirl Fan~]

Lillie
Leon
Cynthia
Steven
Ash
Paul
Iris
Diantha
Lance
Alain
Raihan
Still not acknowedging any of Ash's wins with that team.

 

[JustAStatistic]

What is the difference between FP Cynthia vs Cynthia

Using both Dynamax and Mega Garchomp

 

[Sham]

Lillie
Leon (I said what I said)
Ash(?)
Cynthia
Iris/Steven
Diantha
Lance

big gap

Alain and Paul

 

[PokemonBattleFanatic-]

Leon
Cynthia / Ash
Steven / Diantha
Lance
Alain
Paul / Iris / Raihan

I'd have Paul above both Raihan and Iris and put him either just below or next to Alain if he has a gimmick (Mega Aggron).Since Paul is widely regarded as Ash's greatest rival in the entire series he could potentially be even higher than that if the writers actually decided to place him in the M8 instead of that training battle.Have him be Ash's opponent before facing Cynthia & Leon.

 

[sutellakiara]

Cynthia
Ash
Paul
Leon
Diantha/Steven
Alain
Lance
Tobias
Iris

 

[Ryker101]

I’d say
Ash (with all gimmicks/reserves) > Leon > Cynthia > Steven > Lance (underrated imo) > Diantha > Iris (held back by inexperience and lackluster Dragonite) > Raihan (more strategic than Alain with better side mons, honestly might place him higher but the rankings) > Alain > Paul

 

[Sham]

Quick Lillie is the monarch though

Something that’s bothered me to date is the fact that Iris didn’t have a gimmick. Like I get the narrative reason of Haxorus not having anything to counter mega Garchomp and why that happened but what was she l planning to do if she *did fight Leon*.

Like I’m not upset at all that Haxorus couldn’t destroy literal boulders in time but why didn’t she have a power up?

Again I understand the narrative reason but the off chance she fought Ash and or Leon what was the goal plan?

 

[Ragnarok4]

Mega Aggron

Mega aggron was defeated easily by infernape. why waste a gimmick like that? Why not use it on Garchomp, who in his base form proved to be stronger than Pokémon like Mega-Altaria (Because he defeated Dragonite, who is close to that level considering he's equal to Sirfetch'd)

Garchomp could easily be a Champion Tier Pokémon, and in its Mega form it should be as strong as some close to Ace Pokémon, such as Mega Lucario, Ash-Greninja, Gigamax Rillaboom.

 

[Ragnarok4]

Lillie
Leon (I said what I said)
Ash(?)
Cynthia
Iris/Steven
Diantha
Lance

big gap

Alain and Paul

I've never seen you ponder how strong Iris would hypothetically be with a Gimmick...

 

[Sham]

I've never seen you ponder how strong Iris would hypothetically be with a Gimmick...

It’s more so questioning the logic rather than brute strength. “I always wondered” is just being dramatic. Yes we all know Haxorus vs mega Garchomp fine but what was the game plan if and when she won. It made absolutely no sense.

Of course you can a bit of gloating points that she made it into the Masters Eight without a gimmick the only to do so along with fighting without one but I’m suppose to believe somebody who was experienced with battling in BW was just gonna go balls out and fight GMAX Charizard and mega Lucario?

It made no sense outside of the Cynthia battle and questions was she actually thinking correctly.

 

[PokemonBattleFanatic-]

Mega aggron was defeated easily by infernape. why waste a gimmick like that? Why not use it on Garchomp, who in his base form proved to be stronger than Pokémon like Mega-Altaria (Because he defeated Dragonite, who is close to that level considering he's equal to Sirfetch'd)

Garchomp could easily be a Champion Tier Pokémon, and in its Mega form it should be as strong as some close to Ace Pokémon, such as Mega Lucario, Ash-Greninja, Gigamax Rillaboom.

Because Cynthia was already using one.Besides Paul could just give Aggron extra training and focus like he did with Chimchar.But I already mentioned in the past of a possible Mega Garchomp/Gyarados/Metagross for Paul.

 

[Sham]

Seeing these rankings just makes me sad that we didn't get more full battles among the Masters 8, as well as didn't get to see dark horses like Paul or Tobias come back and show their mettle.

If you want my true opinion, none of these Champions have given any indication who’s certainly stronger than another minus Ash and Leon. First of all none of them were swept and second of all they only had one 3 vs 3 match that was a planned already before the episodes started and not really on what they deemed logical. And none of their aces had bad showing (their is a case that Metagross was taken out fairly quickly but Craidly did well).

Case in point, Lance being a runner up against Leon but Diantha beats him and then gets wrecked by Leon. We weren’t suppose to know how it happened but instead they showed us and it blew power scaling out of the window (not that it wasn’t already before).

 

[Damerdal]

If you want my true opinion, none of these Champions have given any indication who’s certainly stronger than another minus Ash and Leon. First of all none of them were swept and second of all they only had one 3 vs 3 match that was a planned already before the episodes started and not really on what they deemed logical. And none of their aces had bad showing (their is a case that Metagross was taken out fairly quickly but Craidly did well).

Case in point, Lance being a runner up against Leon but Diantha beats him and then gets wrecked by Leon. We weren’t suppose to know how it happened but instead they showed us and it blew power scaling out of the window (not that it wasn’t already before).

This is my previous quote/analogy about it:

Honestly, the more I think about it, a good analogy to the PWC would be to look at the ATP Tour (men's professional tennis).

Leon = Nadal/Djokovic/Federer. Very high floor, very high ceiling, can regularly dismantle everyone else in the top 50.

Ash = Andy Murray. Somebody who has become quite consistent in his skill (if you ignore BW, then Ash has actually been a pretty good battler since BF-DP-XY-SM-JN), and can even make a run to the #1 spot. However, he's much more prone to having close battles or even losing matches against other top trainers, and doesn't dominate as easily/consistently as Leon.

Given that Leon allowed Ash to use multiple gimmicks, I'd actually say Leon is still probably the only S+ trainer, while Ash hovers around in S-tier with Cynthia.

However, continuing this analogy, I think the idea of ranking characters from S+ to B tier makes the actual gap among these trainers seem bigger than it is actually. Besides the tennis Big 3 (= Leon in this example), the rest of the top players regularly lose to one another with close 5 set matches. Likewise the case in the anime. Flint vs Cynthia in DP was a hard-fought battle. Siebold's Mega Blastoise handily won against Alain's Mega Charizard X; obviously, Alain and Charizard improved since then, but I don't think he'd beat Siebold easily in a rematch. In Ash's case, this is true as pretty most of his PWC matches came down to the final Pokemon.

So that's why there's some variability among these top trainers besides Leon (and I guess now Ash).

 

[Sham]

This is my previous quote/analogy about it:



So that's why there's some variability among these top trainers besides Leon (and I guess now Ash).

I'd disagree and only because Ash using three gimmicks on Leon (and even that is still spotty) doesn't mean that a full gimmick Ash is losing to a full gimmick Cynthia (and that's mostly because the whole point of BDSP is being stronger than her and defeating her and so on). Assuming that (which I am because they literally made her scrap Glacen and Kommo-o for her BDSP team), I'd just place them in different tiers all together especially when like everyone else it just went down to ace vs ace without a clean sweep or one of their Pokemon defeating their ace early like Leon.

 

[SerGoldenhandtheJust]

Ash
Leon
Cynthia
Steven
Diantha
Lance
Iris
Alain
Paul
Raihan

Although personally I'd love to place Iris above Lance lol, would be cathartic

 

[Sham]

So that's why there's some variability among these top trainers besides Leon (and I guess now Ash).

Sorry I wanted to add something, while I made a tier list, I really can't argue and compare who's stronger than the other. A part of me wants to keep Lance down below but he was made an idiot on purpose so Leon could've defeated three of the Masters Eight and Ash defeated the other three. I can't find myself invested in Iris not having a gimmick too much because they got games to sell and this is a commercial. Cant fault them for that. Even if I like it or not Ash represents Lucas, Dawn or whoever is the player character. Would I have done something different? Yes, don't have Diantha swept just because they needed to save animation and nobody cares about her.

 

[Ragnarok4]

Raihan (more strategic than Alain with better side mons, honestly might place him higher but the rankings) > Alain

So you think that Duralodon > Charizard? Alain achieved 6th place while rahian was in 8th