Tier

Tier is a mechanic in Misery of Magic which can increase both the damage and Charge Speed of combinations of Character and Weapon.

Effects of Tier
For all weapons, tier leads to increased damage. What form this takes depends on the specific weapon under consideration, but for all weapons, the total damage multiplier after all things are considered is given by:

2 - 10/(tier+9)

Which equals 1 at tier 1, and approaches 2 as tier goes to infinity.

For the majority of weapons, this same multiplier is also applied to charge speed. Some weapons have a cooldown timer instead of a charge speed, in which case the cooldown timer is divided by this multiplier. A small number of weapons are granted their maximum charge speed right at tier 1, and thus gain reduced benefit from tiers because their speed does not increase any further. Finally, the Rush is a special case because its cooldown timer is fixed -- instead, its speed is unaffected by tiers but the multiplier on damage is squared instead.

Requirements for Tier
The same formula for number of Exp Orbs needed to reach a given tier is the same as that used for level:

tier2/2 + 81*ln(tier/8 + 1)

However, while all colours of exp orb contribute to levels, only the cyan ones, which form 1/4 of all exp orbs, contribute to tiers. Furthermore, exp orbs collected only contribute to the single tier for the weapon and character currently being used. Thus, especially near the beginning, tiers are typically gained much slower than levels.