Double Jump, Super Jump, 1 Airdash, Dash Type: Run
Play-style
Balanced, Rushdown, Sacrifice
Team Role
Anchor
Overview
"There's a certain degree of luck involved in battle. But I can't rely on that. I need to train more."
Tien (AKA Tenshinhan or Tianjinfan) is a student of the Crane School (the enemy of Roshi's own Turtle Style) and was one of Goku's greatest childhood rivals. Accompanied by his doll-like companion, Chiaotzu, Tien has continued to pursue strength as a martial artist throughout the series and is considered the series' strongest full-blooded human fighter. During the Saiyan and Android sagas, Tien played secondary though important roles in the final outcomes. (Name trivia: Name is a pun based on the food of the same name.)
In Dragon Ball FighterZ, Tien is a well-rounded fighter who can break through his opponents' defenses with the help of Chiaotzu. With the best-scaling supers in the game, Tien is especially useful as an anchor to switch in and finish stubborn opponents.
TienTien is a balanced, stalwart character that with resources, has insane damage potential with Super Moves.
Pros
Cons
Solid mixup game; multiple lows, an overhead, and a command grab.
Extremely high damage output with meter. All his supers boast some of the highest damage in the game scaled and unscaled, allowing him to finish off opponents easily. This is raised tenfold with the new Limit Break mechanic, making Tien's damage transcend into colossal levels.
The king of dumping meter. Has the best meterburn options for 1-Super and 3-Super since both do substantial additional damage. This, along with multipliers like Limit Break and Sparking!, enable Tien to potentially down a healthy opponent off nothing but meter and a conversion.
Very formidable with Sparking!; The HP loss from Tri-beam and Neo Tri-beam is halved, allowing subsequent Tri-Beams to be more affordable. Also unlocks access to Heavy Air Volleyball Fist in a blockstring through jump cancel, resulting in Tien gaining a slight vortex.
Telekinesis can be used at the corner for Okizeme.
Medium Volleyball Fist has a guard point that goes fullscreen, which is unique only to Tien.
Dodon Ray Assist is handy, as it pops the opponent directly up, straight and simple.
Telekinesis Assist holds opponent in place like Gotenks's A assist, allowing for amazing utility which can be used to expand certain combos, help get meterless snapbacks and meterless sliding knockdowns, and also fortify block pressure with it's high blockstun.
Tri-beam and Neo Tri-beam consume unrecoverable health with every use.
Due to the nature of his super moves which spend unrecoverable HP, the more Tien gets hurt, the less utility you get out of him. The level of harm he sustains puts a cap on the amount of damage he can dish out, due to needing health to sacrifice for his supers.
Unremarkable damage without meter or additional assist usage. Since he has to use resources to get crazy damage, he ends up as a meter hog, and becomes unreasonable to place in a position other than Anchor.
Below average neutral game; His normals are a bit on the stubby side, while not having any that lunge him forward enough. Dodon Ray also has a small hitbox, which gets stuffed by a lot of moves a regular beam would not.
Tien's Telekinesis move, while good, fails every 3rd time it is used. You have to keep track of how many times you have used it, as if you miscount he leaves himself wide open due to Chiaotzu messing up the move.
Farewell, Tien... can only be used once and Tien also can't do Telekinesis after since Chiaotzu is gone. This applies to Assist B as well.
Assist B has pitiful tracking in neutral.
When Farewell, Tien... is used on an opponent in Sparking!, the grieving animation doesn't stop the Sparking! time, leaving most of their health recovered by the time of their wakeup.
If blocked, can be cancelled into 236H for a surprise overhead with sliding knockdown.
Lunges him slightly forward and only hits in front of him. Not great against sharp vertically angled superdashes as the forward lunge puts the opponent behind Tien for easy punishing.
Press additional buttons on hit-confirm to extend the special.
The quick version of the Volleyball Fist. Useful for catching opponents off guard or spamming high attacks.
M
Tien strikes a pose, gaining guard point before doing a sliding low attack.
Press additional buttons on hit-confirm to extend the special.
Guard point does not activate on frame 1, but it’s very early.
Blocks projectiles, mid and low attacks.
Loses to throws, supers, and overheads, ironic since it's a volleyball bump.
Due to having guard point, this version will scale your combos and followups more than L version.
Reaches fullscreen
Even though only the pose has autoguard, successfully blocking incoming attack will make the slide invulnerable to strikes and projectiles that aren't Supers. If timed correctly, Tien can go right through beams.
H
A short ranged command grab that costs half a bar.
Follow-up hits are automatic and cannot be vanished out of.
Stays same side.
Causes a sliding knockdown.
Scales like 236M.
An useful tool to confuse someone who's blocking too much in a corner.
Volleyball Fist Follow-up 1
Volleyball Fist Follow-up 1 Volleyball Fist L/M > L/M/H on hit
Using L will keep you on the same side of the opponent you are currently on. Good if you don't want to steal the corner away.
M
Switches side.
An important tool if you want to reposition yourself behind the enemy. Usually most useful if the "wall" behind you is closer than the one in front of you.
H
Leaves Tien enough time to land j.M.
By delaying button press so that Tien doesn't do Follow-up 2, you can start air combos with this.
Damage depends on what the starter is. Starts with 236L will do more damage than 236M.
All version launches the enemy vertically and follows them into the air.
Pressing an additional button will cause Tien to slam the enemy to the ground.
Volleyball Fist Follow-up 2
Volleyball Fist Follow-up 2 Volleyball Fist Follow-up 1 > L/M/H on hit
Knocks the opponent a little further away than the L version.
H
Knocks the opponent even further away into a sliding knockdown.
Using this after the H version of Follow-up 1 will keep Tien grounded for additional combos. Given that the cost for an EX special is now half of a bar instead of a full bar, and the damage done by this alone is considerable, it's probably worth going for this now.
Damage depends on what the starter is. Starts with 236L will do more damage than 236M.
If you time it perfectly on any version, it does extra damage and has Smash property.
Brings Tien higher in the air to hit, whiffs if opponent is directly in front of Tien.
Can link from j.2H if smash has already been used.
H
Causes a sliding knockdown.
Nearly unreactable overhead during sparking if you TK the move, but you can only continue pressure or use a super if it lands since this immediately puts the opponent in sliding knockdown.
3 bar super. Holding down the buttons allows him to tack on additional damage at the cost of one meter per extension. Deals unrecoverable damage to Tien on use.
First hit does XXXX damage to Tien, then XXX, XXXX, XXXX, XXXX. (exact values to be listed here later)
Tien cannot die from self damage, and can do the first beam even at 1 HP.
Will only take half self damage during Sparking (XXX at 3 bars, XXXX at 7)
If Tien doesn’t have enough health to continue, the Super will stop regardless of remaining meter.
Travels in a straight horizontal line, level with the enemy when the move as initiated.
Cannot be cancelled into but can be comboed into.
Can hit aerial opponents, but whiffs on crouching ones.
Won't come out if Chiaotzu is still doing Telekinesis.
On hit, both this super and the Telekinesis special can no longer be performed for the rest of the match.
Minimum damage is 2160. This is the highest damaging Lv3 Super at max scaling, not counting Supers that you can spend more bars on.
While the maximum output of this super is lower than Neo Tri-beam, the damage scaling on this move makes it an absurd combo finisher. It's also handy to catch people unawares toward the end of a match, especially if they've got a health disadvantage and are prone to blocking.
To edit frame data, edit values in DBFZ/Tien/Data. Be sure to update both the move and the move Full sections. One is shown on the character page, while the other is shown on the frame data page.