Trigger Tier List

After playtesting every combination of triggers possible, I've decided to make a new trigger tier list (Heals were moved down to tier 2, Stands up to tier 2, Draws down to tier 3):

Previous Tier List:

Tier 1 - Critical Trigger, Heal Trigger
Tier 2 - Draw Trigger
Tier 3 - Stand Trigger

Current Tier List:

Tier 1 - Critical Trigger
Tier 2 - Stand Trigger, Heal Trigger
Tier 3 - Draw Trigger

Disclaimer:  This assesses the general value of triggers as if they were always 5k vanilla triggers.  Gatling Claw, Margal, and Shirley are still great cards.

Criticals don't need to be explained.  In a game with such an incredibly small damage pool, dealing extra damage automatically is already going to be the best option.  It forces opponents into late game sooner than they would otherwise be comfortable.  Also, there aren't any real clans, decks, playstyles, or builds that wouldn't see some benefit from running critical triggers.

Now, for the remaining three:

Stands - Stands started off being underpowering, and in a large section of the English meta, they are still pretty weak.  However, that does not dismiss their potential.  They are the best offensive trigger at 5 damage (and a good section of the game takes place at this amount of damage), but unlike criticals, which fall off at 5 damage, stands are still useful for the rest of the game before hitting their peak at 5, so long as you have a rear-guard out.  As heals are proving to be less and less consistent with stronger styles of gameplay, I feel like with the increase in high-powered rear guards being introduced to the game and the strengthening of on-hit skills like Constance and units to increase their power like Sephirot and Master of Fifth, along with RG empowering break rides like Mordred, Gancelot, and Dantalian, stands have been slowly but surely gaining that early game pressure and late game killing power to get them up a notch above heals in overall effectiveness.  There are still some decks that don't synergize well with stands (Pale Moon is a prime example, as even though they have on-hit skills, most of their front row base power is too low to merit stands).  Link Joker will make stands significantly weaker when they land their breakride.  I won't count one deck that counters stands against them, though.  They have been proving their worth.

Heals - You might be thinking, "ZOMG Tim, WTF, HEELZ ARE BEST!"  And if heals didn't have that, "You must have equal or greater damage to your opponent to heal.", I would agree.  My playtesting has shown me a lot of insightful things.  One of these things is that there are a lot of games where I will drop a 10k to no pass an opponent's first swing to my Vanguard.  Of these games, about 20% of them ended up with me cockblocking a critical trigger.  If you think about it, most decks run 8 criticals.  More decks run 12 crit than 6 crit, and very few decks run only 4 crit.  There are some decks running more/less, but they are outside of the norm.  If you assume an average of 9-10 criticals per deck, then by no passing that first swing, you end up with about a 20% chance to stop a critical trigger.  Now, what does this have to do with heal triggers?  I think it's a smart idea to stop that first swing if you have the 10k shield for it and your vanguard is strong enough to no-pass it with just a 10k shield.  If you stop that first swing, it will be a few turns before the option of healing even presents itself.  I've seen people take easily guarded 5k to-guard attacks to enable themselves to reach the same damage as their opponent to not hit into dead heals.  There are a wide array of situations where easily guarded attacks can be guarded for 5k or 10k shields early and save you shield in the long run.  Guarding early is going to save you shield in the long run.  It's a wise thing to do when the situation presents itself and your hand has those excess grade 0's.  The simple fact is, you either have to play unintelligibly, you have to be losing legitimately, or you are going to have to eat some dead heal triggers.  While healing is one of the most powerful effects that can occur in the game, if you have to play around your trigger in such incredibly inefficient ways, I can't give them the A+ rating that I would otherwise give them.  As the other 3 triggers don't need anything special save one RG at rest (stand) and one RG not at rest (crit), it makes heals feel incredibly situational and difficult to manage.  This isn't to say that heals are bad, they just aren't as great as they're hyped up to be.

Draws - Now, since I made so much of a fuss about consistency with Heals, you're probably like, "Wtf are you smoking Tim?  Draws are the only cards that ALWAYS trigger."  Yes, but of the 4 types of triggers, they have the weakest effect.  Where a stand gives you an extra attack, potentially with an on-hit RG, where a crit will potentially end the game or rush it closer to ending, where a heal can save you or put you in a position to not have to guard with any extra cards from hand, all draws do is let you draw one random card off the top of your deck.  That's not bad at all, but they come with four drawbacks.

1.  They have less shield than other triggers.
2.  The card they draw into most likely has 5k shield as well, so you net no gain in shields when this card is drive checked.  If you twin-drive this card and draw into a trigger to get more shield, you either cockblocked your second trigger, or cockblocked your 1st damage trigger on the next turn.  On your turn, there aren't really any benefits for a draw trigger over any other trigger unless you draw into the EXACT card you need for the after-battle persona blast/following turn (and that's if you have enough guard to survive the next turn without dropping that card to save yourself), a null guard, or you are crossridden and need more 5k shields to stop weak rear guard swings (not really applicable against 18k+ rows).
3.  Damage checking draws is the most effective way to check them.  You get the +1 on your opponent's turn, don't suffer the weaknesses that you get when you drive check them, and you don't care about their shield value being less than other triggers in the damage zone.  The problem, you only get 5 damage checks to hit a draw on.  Draws are only run at 4-6 per deck, so hitting a draw on a damage check isn't super consistent.  This means that you are required to run heals with draws to potentially get extra damage checks, and that greatly reduces your options for trigger lineups when running draws.
4.  Drawing into a draw trigger sucks.  You get only 5k shield for it, and drawing into any other trigger is better.

So, despite draws being the only trigger unit to always get its effect, I'm seeing more and more that they simply have too many weaknesses and are too restrictive with trigger line-ups.