User blog comment:B214/General discussion/@comment-64.233.173.196-20160401150438/@comment-27180505-20160410191022

to shed some light here allow me mention something regarding tournament formats determining rank. in a single elimination tournament, the only placings that matter are first and second. third and lower placings dont exist as it's impossible to determine who gets what placing without them facing each other. that's why it's standing are top 4, top 8, top 16 ect. but in each set you can't accurately judge who gets what so they're all in the same tier and get the same winnings

to give you an example, look at competitive halo and COD esports. prior to this year, tourny formats were double elimination; a winners bracket and a losers bracket. winners bracket is self explanatory but in a losers bracket, after losing in the winners bracket you get a chance to compete for a higher placing and if you win the bracket, you get a chance to play the winners bracket champ. the only thing is you have to beat them twice and they only have to beat you once (this depends on continuation rules as you may have already faced each other in the winners bracket). in this format every top team will get a chance to play each other allowing for the top 8-16 teams to be accurately.

but now console esports have switched to single elim. take a look at the Halo world championchip being single elim. CLG(the team who won it) had to face EG in the quarter finals, and EG is arguably a better team then most of the teams who made it past quarters. now compare that to someone like yudai who had to fight ikki in the first round. yudai is clearly better than some of the ones who made it further than him, but his placings doesn't reflect that. the same can be said for kuraudo, he's the only one of the few who can go toe to toe with ikki's zero accel attacks, but he got outplaced by fodders.

in regards to amane, he's an A-rank blazer so he's clearly very strong, but how strong he is compared to ouma, sara ect is unknown. same for current v9 moroboshi, touka, shizuku and kuraudo.