Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[SaltyKracka]

Speaking of the heavies, who overall has the best match ups against most of the cast

Of the superheavies?

DK. Hands down.

 

[PMMikey]

Of the superheavies?

DK. Hands down.

You think so? I agree just surprised is all, I feel I'll just make a quick list, nothing more, it goes
1.DK
2.Ganon
3.Bowser
4.Charizard
5.D3

 

[Smooth Criminal]

I'll eat my shorts if Ganon has a better overall MU spread than D3.

Smooth Criminal

 

[SaltyKracka]

You think so? I agree just surprised is all, I feel I'll just make a quick list, nothing more, it goes
1.DK
2.Ganon
3.Bowser
4.Charizard
5.D3

After the ding dong and shell shock were added, nobody I know would ever not think to put DK and Bowser in the top two spots.

The last three are muddled because, frankly, they're all crap right now and none of them actually win tournaments, so you'll probably see a lot of argument there.

 

[LancerStaff]

If Levin aerials were given worse frame data, then you might as well let him have a permanent Levin Sword.

The purpose of a temporary Levin Sword is to give Robin enormous and powerful aerials without the expense of a long startup like you'd expect. The jumpsquat just serves as an additional barrier to prevent easy abuse.

The problem is that they do have significant start-up in practice. Taking a frame or two from the jumpsquat and putting it on levin aerials would give him faster bronze aerials and other aerial actions at the expense of the levin aerials being slightly slower when you're already in the air.

Actually it would make checkmate easier because instead of being stuck on the ground he'll be rising during the start-up but it'd probably be negligible.

 

[Routa]

Dorf has really odd MU spread in general. I think adom4 , HeavyLobster and @Blobface can lighten up his MU spread.

Also DDD looses to rather common characters in competitive play and to some more rare (for example Swordspider)

 

[Teshie U]

Pretty sure its DK, Bowser, Charizard, then Ganon/DDD. I'd like to explore what makes DDD better, because I've never seen it in practice aside from him being really really hard to kill.

I don't see anything wrong with lowering Robin's jumpsquat. Its still a slow character, but its not a heavy character. He/she should be controlling the limited space within burst range without that weighing him/her down.

 

[Mr. Johan]

Significant startup, absolutely. As he should.

But the startup isn't so miserably long that they're useless. Optimal reaction time is around 1/6 of a second, but that's only in a vacuum, when looking for something you know is going to happen. In a game of smash, when any equivalent option can be let loose at any point, that optimal reaction time goes up to about 15-17 frames, to accommodate recognition of what's now happening and trying to react accordingly. It's why Sonic's Fsmash is a viable KO move now when it wasn't so much in Brawl, because Sonic has more KO options to select now, that Fsmash thrown raw can catch people off guard that one time too many.

Factoring in jumpsquat, Levin Fair is 19 frames, Uair is 17, Bair is 16. Until people gain the reaction time of a common housefly, those are adequate numbers for the Levin aerials to work, especially with the lasting hitboxes, autocancels, and the range they have.

Would I like to see Robin with a frame 4 jumpsquat? Damn straight. But I suspect that that would ripe for abuse.

 

[Rizen]

Ganon's MUs look doable if the opponent fights him fairly. He only needs to win a few exchanges/reads. When the opponent realizes they can run, cheese, and time-out Ganon, his viability looks much more grim. This is a big mistake I see people making vs Ganon; fighting him on his terms.

 

[PMMikey]

I just feel Ganon has more to offer than d3 because gordo is more than likely going to be shot back and it's suppose to be one of his top used moves I believe and Ganon yet slow still feels stronger through most of the cast .

 

[Deathcarter]

You mean Ganondorf, one of the weakest characters for two games running? Ganondorf, on average the slowest character in the game? Ganondorf, the testament to just how lazy and uninspired the balance of this game has been?

Oh no, we can't buff him. Why, he might actually get to be powerful, and that just can't be allowed.

Forget about the reign of Shiek and ZSS, and pay no nevermind to Bayonetta, Counter Surge, or the Hoo-Ha. 4-frame jumpsquat Ganondorf is the thing we all have to fear, and it's addition to the game would be the result of a balance team gone mad!

Seriously, do you even think about the things you're saying?

Let's be honest, there is no way that the developers would buff the current edition of Ganondorf to the point of singles viability as that would either make him straight up broken in lower level play or require the developers to completely reevaluate how they think Ganon should be designed which they sure as hell won't do post release. I imagine that buffing his jump squats goes a bit too far into challenging his fundamental design for the comfort of the developers.

 

[bc1910]

Significant startup, absolutely. As he should.

But the startup isn't so miserably long that they're useless. Optimal reaction time is around 1/6 of a second, but that's only in a vacuum, when looking for something you know is going to happen. In a game of smash, when any equivalent option can be let loose at any point, that optimal reaction time goes up to about 15-17 frames, to accommodate recognition of what's now happening and trying to react accordingly. It's why Sonic's Fsmash is a viable KO move now when it wasn't so much in Brawl, because Sonic has more KO options to select now, that Fsmash thrown raw can catch people off guard that one time too many.

Factoring in jumpsquat, Levin Fair is 19 frames, Uair is 17, Bair is 16. Until people gain the reaction time of a common housefly, those are adequate numbers for the Levin aerials to work, especially with the lasting hitboxes, autocancels, and the range they have.

Would I like to see Robin with a frame 4 jumpsquat? Damn straight. But I suspect that that would ripe for abuse.

Do you have any data to support what you said about optimal reaction time going up to 15-17 frames or are you assuming? Not to say it doesn't go up, just don't know how you arrived at those numbers.

In any case, S4 has 6 frames of input lag. With human reaction time being ~13f that's a minimum effective 19f reaction time in a vacuum. This goes up more, as you said, because S4 clearly isn't being played in a vacuum. Robin's aerials are perfectly workable as "throw-out" moves that can catch opponents off-guard.

 

[jespoke]

I think Charizard has a more lopsided matchup spread than Ganon. Zoners are parts of the same story, but Zard has more random good matchups where i feel Ganon does more generally decent.

 

[GeneralLedge]

Devil's Advocate: Heavies (and other characters) with longer jumpsquat lengths makes them easier to play. Not necessarily competitively, but I can't for the life of me shorthop consistently with any 4-5 frame character. The muscles in my thumb are outside that realm of power.

And being able to shorthop consistently is way more important (to me) than a few frames of air advantage. I sort of wish the game was more lenient, really.

 

[Eugene Wang]

Let's be honest, there is no way that the developers would buff the current edition of Ganondorf to the point of singles viability as that would either make him straight up broken in lower level play or require the developers to completely reevaluate how they think Ganon should be designed which they sure as hell won't do post release. I imagine that buffing his jump squats goes a bit too far into challenging his fundamental design for the comfort of the developers.

What happened to giving characters better grab games? They've done that before, and Ganon is certainly ripe for such a buff.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

came in to say, making everyone's jump squat, dash-to-shield, landing, and other movement-based factors differ from character to character messes reaction potential and that's bad. Bowser with 7 frames of landing lag, trash dash to shield frames, and trash jump squat frames will find it nigh-impossible to play reactionary in contrast to sheik, which ZeRo's style is heavily reactionary cuz sheik is freaking excellent in all those categories.

 

[ARISTOS]

Figured this would be an interesting project to share. Panda Stats are trying to make a MIOM-type list of the top 50 players; it'll be interesting to see which characters end up represented vs not and how high some of their peaks where,

Plus all your favorites should be here too.

http://panda.gg/articles/news/Unknown/28/pgr-ranks-50-41

Text list:
50. Tearbear
49. Nick Riddle
48. Seagull Joe
47. 8Bitman
46. Cacogen
45. Ryo
44. Megafox
43. Scatt
42. iStudying
41. Fatality

It should be noted that the ranking uses an indicator called an X-Factor, basically saying "this person may be heavily underrated on this list". Scatt and Megafox had the biggest X-Factor listed at +10.

came in to say, making everyone's jump squat, dash-to-shield, landing, and other movement-based factors differ from character to character messes reaction potential and that's bad. Bowser with 7 frames of landing lag, trash dash to shield frames, and trash jump squat frames will find it nigh-impossible to play reactionary in contrast to sheik, which ZeRo's style is heavily reactionary cuz sheik is freaking excellent in all those categories.

You could leave the higher jumpsquat frames, problem is the characters aren't fully compensated for their larger burdens

EDIT: Reflecting on the list above, I'd imagine we've seen the highest placements for

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Figured this would be an interesting project to share. Panda Stats are trying to make a MIOM-type list of the top 50 players; it'll be interesting to see which characters end up represented vs not and how high some of their peaks where,

Plus all your favorites should be here to.

http://panda.gg/articles/news/Unknown/28/pgr-ranks-50-41

Text list:
50. Tearbear
49. Nick Riddle
48. Seagull Joe
47. 8Bitman
46. Cacogen
45. Ryo
44. Megafox
43. Scatt
42. iStudying
41. Fatality

It should be noted that the ranking uses an indicator called an X-Factor, basically saying "this person may be heavily underrated on this list". Scatt and Megafox had the biggest X-Factor listed at +10.



You could leave the higher jumpsquat frames, problem is the characters aren't fully compensated for their larger burdens

Like give bowser his melee up b? The only compensation I can think for characters like those is making their up b moves have invincibility frames and hitboxes (idk how that would end up though).

 

[KamikazePotato]

I'd like to see a list of the Superheavies' results. As far as I know, Ganondorf actually gets comparable results to Bowser/DK, and DDD does better than Charizard. I don't really know though. They tend not to reach Top 16 and that's all anyone posts.

 

[Big-Cat]

I'd like to see a list of the Superheavies' results. As far as I know, Ganondorf actually gets comparable results to Bowser/DK, and DDD does better than Charizard. I don't really know though. They tend not to reach Top 16 and that's all anyone posts.

What. In what universe?

 

[Strong-Arm]

what characters have done the best since patch 1.1.5? Like the top 20 chars as of now with patch 1.1.5 based off of results

 

[jespoke]

Strong-Arm

Hello, Das Koopa/Barnard’s Loop/Zero Destroyer here. In light of the fact that 1.1.6 is in on its way, I’ve decided to go ahead and release the tournament data for the past month and where the characters stand with the added data. I was going to wait until the end of May, but the patch could happen any day, and this will be somewhat obsolete once it releases since balance changes will force me to reset the count, as did 1.1.5’s release.

Here, you’ll find a google doc full of every tourney result documented:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z134y9JCbXApl2X14tMNrm-5-NqY6mzgCo1bHDM3V3s/edit


Naturally, this is not 100% accurate. If you have placed in one of these tournies and your result is wrong, please inform me. I use VODs, wikis, Smashboard rankings, word from attendees, etc. to figure out mains when they aren’t obvious. As a result, there is a margin of error, most apparent in the 9th-13th column.

To make up for this, the iteration I’ve created here will have a Top 8 chart, and I also addressed a request for an unweighted chart. This will allow people to discern what characters most benefit from being secondaried.

Charts:
http://i.imgur.com/ovtcbed.jpg (Top 16, Weighted)
http://i.imgur.com/pnoaeNg.jpg (Top 16, Unweighted)
http://i.imgur.com/nItvDUs.jpg (Top 8, Weighted)

Noteworthy changes from previous results, assuming both are the weighted Top 16 chart:
-"Other" is up 4.7%.
-Diddy Kong is up 1.4%.
-Bayonetta is down 0.8%.
-Toon Link is down 1.1%.
-Ryu is up 0.7%.
-Cloud is down 0.7%.
-Mario is down 0.7%.
-Fox is down 0.4%.
-Sheik is up 0.6%.
-Sonic is up 0.6%.

*Due to time constraints, I was unable to create an unweighted Top 8 chart, but I figure for this iteration that the Top 16 unweighted should suffice, as the biggest beneficiaries from being secondaried seem obvious.


Tier List Maker Format, for all results:

Full results in text, in google doc form:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TYThR70dZlLVBDSEtpsAAkgtpWOrGlp0z3ut1MQJBwQ/edit?usp=sharing

System:
Category 1 = 1-8 Points
Category 2 = 3-10 Points
Category 3 = 5-12 Points
Category 4 = 9-16 Points

All secondaries are at half-value in weighted charts. In the unweighted chart, secondaries and primaries share the same value. For the top 8 chart, Category 1 is 1-6 points, Category 2 3-8, etc.

As of the start of May, I became increasingly careful and more precise in my tournament cataloguing. While I had no official set of standards, now I do:

-I will attempt to avoid weeklies entirely.
-Tournaments need to have around 96 entrants minimum, 100+ preferred, and absolutely no tournaments with sub-80 entrants.

The categorical system works as follows:

Category 1: Regionals or large non-weekly locals.
Category 2: Typically, larger regionals, or regionals with several out-of-region players. 2GGT is a prime example of this.
Category 3: Majors, in which the majority of the Top 16 includes out-of-region players, not including in-region players who are top ranked worldwide.
Category 4: Supermajors, in which the entrant cap is at, above, or near 1,000 entrants and hosts a massive number of PR’d players, top-level players from multiple countries, and so on. EVO is the only slated Supermajor at the moment, but CEO, Apex, The Big House 6, and Smash Con 2 could all qualify.

Credits, many users of Smashboards: MistressRemilia, Gheb, Juddy, Nintenpro, Mario766, ZSaberLink, Yikarur, and Master Raven. There are likely more I’ve missed. I’ve had a lot of help, and users such as Juddy and Yikarur have attended or are in contact with attendees at tournies, allowing for more accurate results.

Bonus credit to reddit user wariosmustache for suggesting locations and entrant numbers to tournies, which I applied to all post-April 11th tournies, and credit to him for the unweighted graph concept. I will attempt to have a top 8 unweighted next iteration.

Assuming no more patches occur, I will post the next iteration on July 1st. I originally wanted a Quarterly system, but the rule is that I will reset after three-ish months or after every new major patch. This isn’t counting potential bugfix patches (e.g. if 1.1.7 is a bugfix that comes in two weeks, I will likely not reset.)

Past lists: https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/4eazzd/a_comprehensive_databased_tier_list_march/ (March 15th-April 11th)

Thank you for reading!

 

[KamikazePotato]

What. In what universe?

Well, the most recent set of statistics I know is the list of character that got Top 16 in last weeken's tournaments, where the stats ended up as:

Bowser: 3 Top 16 Placements
Ganondorf: 1 Top 16 Placement
DK: 1 Top 16 Placement
Charizard: 1 Top 16 Placement
DDD: 1 Top 16 Placement

So...really not much difference, at least last weekend. There was also a big list of character results posted a few weeks ago that had Ganondorf doing well. I'll try and find it.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Superheavies from best to worst are imo:
1. DK
2. Bowser
3. Zard
4. Ganondorf
5. D3
You could argue in favor of D3 over Dorf I suppose, but otherwise I'm fairly confident in this ordering.

 

[Ffamran]

came in to say, making everyone's jump squat, dash-to-shield, landing, and other movement-based factors differ from character to character messes reaction potential and that's bad. Bowser with 7 frames of landing lag, trash dash to shield frames, and trash jump squat frames will find it nigh-impossible to play reactionary in contrast to sheik, which ZeRo's style is heavily reactionary cuz sheik is freaking excellent in all those categories.

Differences are fine to give characters different feels and stats, but for some movement options, the problem is the gap between the ceiling and the floor which Smash has always had a problem with. Smash has had a +4 frame gap since its beginning which becomes a problem when jumping is more free than in other fighting games. In Smash 64, jumps range from frame 3 to frame 7, Link's, with 8 being limited to mini-bosses, Giant DK and Metal Mario; in Melee, it was frame 3 to frame 8, held by Bowser for the rest of the series; in Brawl, jumps were moved up 1 frame from 3 to 4, but Snake was introduced with a frame 9 jump; and in Smash 4, jumps range from frame 4 to frame 8 -- guess who. Has frame 8 jumps existed in other games? Yeah. In recent games, Ultra Street Fighter IV had Hugo whose jump was frame 8. In the current Street Fighter V, the slowest jump is only frame 5, Zangief's, while the fastest is frame 3. Tightened up, Smash with frame 4 jumps to frame 6 jumps would be fine. Or something like frame 4 is for the average characters, frame 5 is for heavier characters like Ganondorf, Ike, and Link or something like maybe Falco, Jigglypuff, and Zelda -- interestingly, they're the lightest characters to have frame 6 jumps --, and frame 6 is Bowser. Why frame 6? I don't know. It's Bowser. He's like the Hugo or Zangief of Smash.

Another thing is walking. In Melee, the fastest walk speed was 1.6. Yeah, that "fast", but average run speed Bayonetta, Mario, and Ryu have in Smash 4? Fox and Marth walked that and the average run speed in Melee was 1.5. They walked faster than the average runner in Melee. Runner-up was 1.4 which is below-average run speed in Melee and Brawl and below below-average run speed in Smash 4. In Brawl, the ceiling was 1.5 which was average run speed. The upper half of walk speeds was always a slow run to an average or even faster run speed while the lower half of walk speeds were more reasonable being walks and not slow runs or jogs. Walks, while under-utilized as most characters don't have that fast of a walk speed and because run speeds cap off at 3.5 which is a bit special since it's Sonic, so let's say 2.32, Captain Falcon, still have a questionable high ceiling. At the same time, run speeds might have too low of a floor when there are walk speeds that are faster. For example, 27 characters are as fast or faster than Robin when walking, 23 for Jigglypuff, 16 for Ganondorf, 10 for Villager, 9 for default Mii Gunner and Zelda, 8 for Dr. Mario -- Little Mac's walk speed is the same as Dr. Mario's run speed --, 7 for Triple D, and 6 for Link, 4 for Bowser Jr. and Peach, 3 for Corrin, and 2 for Falco, Ike, Lucario, Lucas, Luigi, Mega Man, default Mii Swordfighter, Ness, Olimar, and Wario -- sort of Samus too since her run speed is only 0.004 faster than the fastest walk speed. Walk speeds should be capped at 1.2 while run speeds should have a floor of 1.35 to 1.4 and things might be fine.

 

[bc1910]

what characters have done the best since patch 1.1.5? Like the top 20 chars as of now with patch 1.1.5 based off of results

Das Koopa's top 20 rankings are here.

Smashboards rankings can be found here. Top 20 is from Mega Man and up if you click top 16.

Neither system is perfect, though the former is much better because it's a rolling average and the latter I believe includes all-time results of characters. Both have strange anomalies though, like Palutena being weirdly good in the former and Mewtwo/Bayo not being in the latter (while Little Mac and Link are in it...). The former is somewhat limited by the fact that the tourneys that get included are generally up to user discretion.

 

[KamikazePotato]

What. In what universe?

Found it:

http://smashboards.com/threads/4br-...ive-impressions.429826/page-320#post-21141672
Smashboards Top 8 Rankings Data for April. As far as it concerns superheavies:

Ganondorf: 21 Wins, 51.22% win rate
Bowser: 20 wins, 60.61% win rate
King DeDeDe: 19 wins, 47.5% win rate
Donkey Kong: 18 wins, 45% win rate
Charizard: 17 Wins, 70.83% win rate


And if you looking at the Smashboard rankings that were just posted, if you sort by Top 16:
http://smashboards.com/rankings/smash-for-wii-u.8/league/teams

Donkey Kong - 697
King DeDeDe - 675
Ganondorf - 549
Bowser - 523
Charizard - 382

By Top 8:
Donkey Kong - 475
King DeDeDe - 444
Bowser - 338
Ganondorf - 325
Charizard - 283

Top 1:
Donkey Kong - 56
Bowser - 42
Ganondorf - 39
King DeDeDe - 34
Charizard - 12


The Smashboard rankings are obviously affected by overall character usage rate, but yeah...based solely on the different sets of data we have, I don't think you can really call any of the superheavies clearly better than each other.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Let's be honest, there is no way that the developers would buff the current edition of Ganondorf to the point of singles viability as that would either make him straight up broken in lower level play or require the developers to completely reevaluate how they think Ganon should be designed which they sure as hell won't do post release. I imagine that buffing his jump squats goes a bit too far into challenging his fundamental design for the comfort of the developers.

Depends on what level of viability we're talking about. It would be very simple to buff him to being roughly 30th best in the game, capable of getting consistently solid results at the regional level and able to occasionally get top 64 at a national, and wouldn't require breaking him in the least at lower levels of play. Making him top 10 given his current design probably would present those kinds of problems though. Honestly they could buff almost anything of his outside of Wizkick and Flame Choke->Dtilt without seeing a significant change in the FG Dorf meta though.

 

[Teshie U]

Buffing ganondorf's Up B would be nice. Lower the angle more so you can't just tech it. SH Nair autocancel would be great. Reduce the lag on upthrow so maybe it could guarantee Uair (not the front killing part of Uair, but the tippy toes on the top) and set up traps better. Fthrow killing at a decent percent would be nice too (like 130 on the ledge).

 

[Jucchan]

Das Koopa's top 20 rankings are here.

Smashboards rankings can be found here. Top 20 is from Mega Man and up if you click top 16.

Neither system is perfect, though the former is much better because it's a rolling average and the latter I believe includes all-time results of characters. Both have strange anomalies though, like Palutena being weirdly good in the former and Mewtwo/Bayo not being in the latter (while Little Mac and Link are in it...). The former is somewhat limited by the fact that the tourneys that get included are generally up to user discretion.

You should try filtering the Smashboards rankings by both date and points. For example, I used a min value of 128 (equivalent of Top 16 at a regional of 100+ entrants) and time starting from March 15 2016 (1.1.5 patch drop). It gives me something like this:
104
86838077
6762
55
4847
...

 

[Djmarcus44]

Das Koopa's top 20 rankings are here.

Smashboards rankings can be found here. Top 20 is from Mega Man and up if you click top 16.

Neither system is perfect, though the former is much better because it's a rolling average and the latter I believe includes all-time results of characters. Both have strange anomalies though, like Palutena being weirdly good in the former and Mewtwo/Bayo not being in the latter (while Little Mac and Link are in it...). The former is somewhat limited by the fact that the tourneys that get included are generally up to user discretion.

The Smashboards rankings has Mewtwo very low because Mewtwo was not a good character for most of the game. Below the Smashboards rankings page in your link, there is an advanced search bar that allows you to filter results by the date and the value of the the result. Mewtwo is currently around 24th when you filter the results to the date of the latest patch, and he is in the top 15 when you set the minimum value to 200.

Found it:

http://smashboards.com/threads/4br-...ive-impressions.429826/page-320#post-21141672
Smashboards Top 8 Rankings Data for April. As far as it concerns superheavies:

Ganondorf: 21 Wins, 51.22% win rate
Bowser: 20 wins, 60.61% win rate
King DeDeDe: 19 wins, 47.5% win rate
Donkey Kong: 18 wins, 45% win rate
Charizard: 17 Wins, 70.83% win rate


And if you looking at the Smashboard rankings that were just posted, if you sort by Top 16:
http://smashboards.com/rankings/smash-for-wii-u.8/league/teams

Donkey Kong - 697
King DeDeDe - 675
Ganondorf - 549
Bowser - 523
Charizard - 382

By Top 8:
Donkey Kong - 475
King DeDeDe - 444
Bowser - 338
Ganondorf - 325
Charizard - 283

Top 1:
Donkey Kong - 56
Bowser - 42
Ganondorf - 39
King DeDeDe - 34
Charizard - 12


The Smashboard rankings are obviously affected by overall character usage rate, but yeah...based solely on the different sets of data we have, I don't think you can really call any of the superheavies clearly better than each other.

Once you filter out the results before the latest patch, and you set the value minimum to 200, Ganondorf is tied for last in results out of the superheavies. Ganondorf has solid representation at regional and local levels, but he is severely lacking in top level results. The reason why I use the value of 200 is because I heard that 200 is a number that is above the local level. When you use the value of 200, it will give you Superheavy rankings that are closer to the most popular opinions.

These are the rankings for the superheavy characters using the method I discussed above.
1./ 11
3. 4
4./ 1

While this method is not perfect, it will give you more accurate rankings than the ones you listed because it only has the results of the latest patch, and the value of 200 should be high enough to remove any lower level results.

 

[adom4]

Most of the Top Ganons don't really travel that much unfortunately :/.

 

[KamikazePotato]

If we're sorting by +200 entrants only from the last patch, then only 1 Ganondorf player has ever even been at a tournament that large.

 

[bc1910]

You should try filtering the Smashboards rankings by both date and points. For example, I used a min value of 128 (equivalent of Top 16 at a regional of 100+ entrants) and time starting from March 15 2016 (1.1.5 patch drop). It gives me something like this:
104
86838077
6762
55
4847
...

Wow, this is excellent - thanks. And pretty funny after that guff about Greninja's "bad" results.

Well in that case, I would argue the Smashboards rankings give a better picture of the state of the meta due to being made from a more comprehensive database.

In which case, Strong-Arm , the 1.1.5 results-based top 20 would be the above characters plus and .

 

[Megamang]

Is the current stage list a problem for heavies? It feels like they are locked into a CP problem, where Duck Hunt basically has to be striken if its allowed and then you have stuff like SV/TaC Limit camping being really easy and effective. I don't think the stages should change, but ganon is much scarier with less platform to avoid him with. It seems like they have problems when running away doesn't require even a 'soft' prediction, but instead is mathematically guaranteed once they are at a certain spacing.

 

[KamikazePotato]

For fun, here's the most Top 1 placements using +200 entrants, since 1.1.5:

13 - ,
12 -
11 - , ,
10 -
9 -
8 -
7 -
6 -
4 - , ,
3 - , ,
2 - , , ,
1 - , , , , , , ,
0 - Everyone Else


Woah there, Marth...

 

[adom4]

Is the current stage list a problem for heavies? It feels like they are locked into a CP problem, where Duck Hunt basically has to be striken if its allowed and then you have stuff like SV/TaC Limit camping being really easy and effective. I don't think the stages should change, but ganon is much scarier with less platform to avoid him with. It seems like they have problems when running away doesn't require even a 'soft' prediction, but instead is mathematically guaranteed once they are at a certain spacing.

I actually like duck hunt for Dorf if it's not against campers, he lives forever there & the tree helps to escape juggles.

 

[Djmarcus44]

If we're sorting by +200 entrants only from the last patch, then only 1 Ganondorf player has ever even been at a tournament that large.

I am not sorting by 200+ entrant tournaments (Honestly I am not sure how Smashboards assigns their values, but I am pretty sure that it is not just by size). I don't entirely disagree with your opinion, I just disagree with the data you used to support it since it wasn't reliable data.

 

[Deathcarter]

What happened to giving characters better grab games? They've done that before, and Ganon is certainly ripe for such a buff.

Agreed. Ganon should have a longer grab and a kill throw to put him more in line with the other superheavies who all have heavy grappler elements. That's the kind of buff I could see the developers giving G-dorf given the kind of buffs Charizard, Bowser, and DK got previously, much moreso than reduced jump squat frames.

 

[UberMadman]

I'd like to point out that Charizard, among the superheavies, has the least wins across the board but a drastically higher actual win percentage, which suggests that Charizard has by far the lowest playerbase among all the heavies. This is another reason why comparing these characters solely by results is hard: some characters aren't making a dent because not enough people are taking up the reigns, which is why theory is important too. In theory, Charizard has a much more functional kit than Ganondorf and Dedede, mostly due to drastically better mobility, better frame data in certain areas like jab, and stronger reward off of grab, (he has downthrow reward similar to D3 though maybe slightly worse, but also has a strong backthrow that both provides strong positional advantage and can be combo'd off of at low percents despite its knockback due to low FAF and Charizard's high dash speed, and also has a very stong killthrow on top of that which becomes even stronger on Battlefield/Dreamland, requiring two stage strikes to remove the threat, and helps compensate for Charizard's lack of kill confirms off of grab like DK/Bowser have.) Really we'd need to see a lot more players pick up these characters, (especially Charizard,) and play them in tourney before we'd have an accurate understanding of how they play in the metagame and be able rank them accurately amongst each other, but we probably won't have people flocking to these characters anytime in the near future as long as nothing radical happens in 1.1.6.

Oh and by the way, everything I just said doesn't just apply to the superheavies; it applies to a lot of the characters with low playerbases, like Bowser Jr., (who got strong results with Tweek and is STILL getting results with Vicegrip, who has taken sets off of VoiD, K9, and Tyrant with Ludwig and has somehow gone ignored, seriously what the hell guys,) the Miis, Dr. Mario, Lucina, (who has the same hitboxes, mobility, and combo potential as Marth while also doing more average damage per hit yet somehow is considered significantly worse than Marth despite the fact that Pugwest, potentially the best Marth player, has come on the record admitting that Lucina is potentially better than Marth if not on par with him, again what the hell guys,) Shulk, Wii Fit Trainer, and Duck Hunt, (who actually has pretty bad theory yet somehow does well in Japan so we're probably not approaching this character the right way.) Theory is important, and individual wins are important too, and alongside overall wins, are factors that can't be overlooked when talking about the viability of any character.