Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Fabulous Falcon]

This is the third time recently that T has taken top 16 at a tournament with a large amount of competitors. This time taking a set off of Ranai. Can we talk about how he's done this with a seemingly lower tier character? What is he doing differently than other Link players? I'm having a hard time finding recorded matches of this guy.

 

[TimidKitsune129]

You thought Trump > Pin was broken?!?! :]]]
nomnomnomnomnom 😈😈😈😈https://t.co/0SHU1EvjFO

— Cosmos (@CosmosZR) August 21, 2016

If you get 17% Bite (the charge point on Bite where it deals the most knockback) this could possibly start killing as early as 60%. Add Rage into the mix and it can kill even earlier.

People are gonna need to be on point with their instant ledge get-up options against Corrin. The ledge is a place you absolutely DO NOT want to be in when facing Corrin.

 

[Rizen]

This is the third time recently that T has taken top 16 at a tournament with a large amount of competitors. This time taking a set off of Ranai. Can we talk about how he's done this with a seemingly lower tier character? What is he doing differently than other Link players? I'm having a hard time finding recorded matches of this guy.

sorry for the punctuation, i'm giving my hands a break from typing and pecking the keys.

to start, other links have placed to 16 at large events like scizor and sova unknown. the big issue link has is the amount of commitment he takes. he has no 'win buttons' and has to have deep understanding of each mu to do well. bowser has his hoo ha thing but link's dthrow is very % specific:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VC-qvEWaQhgqR7MfMMGaTNyMiTQzXWDJGXpR__Uuzks/edit#gid=0

you can't just pick up link. and even with a lot of practice and experience he's still merely a (imo) lower mid tier who doesn't counter anyone and loses to most top tiers. with that said link doesn't get hard countered, 6/4 being his worst mus, and he has a big 'upset factor' of being heavy and hitting hard. especially in 2 stocks, that's important in ssb4. he's a character with tools to deal with anything that can be great with momentum but has a harder time than top tiers. you'll see big upsets but not hoards of links getting results in notable tourneys.

tl;dr link takes practice time that is better invested in a top tier or character who counters bad mus.

 

[Y2Kay]

T beating Ranai is not suprising. Hasn't Villager always been one of Link's best relevant match ups?

 

[Rizen]

T beating Ranai is not suprising. Hasn't Villager always been one of Link's best relevant match ups?

Yes along with who i've heard he goes even with.

 

[TTTTTsd]

You thought Trump > Pin was broken?!?! :]]]
nomnomnomnomnom 😈😈😈😈https://t.co/0SHU1EvjFO

— Cosmos (@CosmosZR) August 21, 2016

If you get 17% Bite (the charge point on Bite where it deals the most knockback) this could possibly start killing as early as 60%. Add Rage into the mix and it can kill even earlier.

People are gonna need to be on point with their instant ledge get-up options against Corrin. The ledge is a place you absolutely DO NOT want to be in when facing Corrin.

Relevant to this is Fox's ledge trump animation. Would this work on anyone else? Fox has by far the most unique ledge trump in the game, he is knocked off noticeably higher and at a more inward angle than any other character when being trumped on the ledge, which means he's susceptible to a lot of the more unique trump punishes as he doesn't go out quite so far.

Just wondering.

 

[ARGHETH]

Relevant to this is Fox's ledge trump animation. Would this work on anyone else? Fox has by far the most unique ledge trump in the game, he is knocked off noticeably higher and at a more inward angle than any other character when being trumped on the ledge, which means he's susceptible to a lot of the more unique trump punishes as he doesn't go out quite so far.

Just wondering.

Cosmos said that you need to fastfall for other characters.

 

[Athrel]

Dragon Lunge tipper also works from a ledge trump if dfs turns out to not connect on some characters. Combined with the fact that forward smash's reverse charging hitbox covers all the bufferable get up options, Corrin running towards the ledge or standing close to it only has to choose between two options in order to punish any get up option an opponent might do. Obviously it's preferable to take 15~17% from the forward smash, but that's still adds up and if they get too complacent with doing buffered get up options, uncharged dfs to a charged bite can cover all of them when spaced a bit back from the ledge.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

I think it's becoming increasingly pointless to look out for a top 5, top 8 or top anything in this game. As soon as we establish that Sheik, Diddy, Mario, Fox and Rosalina are top 5, KEN will win a super major with solo Sonic and show the world that there's a LOT more to Sonic than just abusing spin dash and running away. So then we put Sonic instead of Rosalina in top 5 only to have Pink Fresh win a major with Bayonetta or Nairo winning SSC2 with ZSS, bringing those two character back on the map.

Classifying characters based on whether they are solo viable or not is also no good. ZSS may be more solo-viable than Rosalina but in no way does that make her a better character. In a game where having a good secondary character is good regardless of who you main it doesn't make a lot of sense to make 'solo' viability the key factor of a character's placing.

I think people just have a case of wanting everything neat, well-organized, and predictable.

 

[Nobie]

One thing I've noticed is that while DIddy has his amazing neutral, his recovery is increasingly becoming a weakness that's exploited well at the highest levels. Diddy almost seems like he's in the same category as Cloud or Little Mac at times.

 

[TDK]

One thing I've noticed is that while DIddy has his amazing neutral, his recovery is increasingly becoming a weakness that's exploited well at the highest levels. Diddy almost seems like he's in the same category as Cloud or Little Mac at times.

I wouldn't go that far, the recovery does go a good distance if you charge it up and he has monkey flip to mix it up. I agree with you, though.

 

[LancerStaff]

Umebura SAT (August 20th-21st) (Japan) (300 Entrants) (Category 3)
1st: KEN
2nd: Dabuz
3rd: Nairo
4th: Kamemushi
5th: Taiheita
5th: Mr. R
7th: Kuro
7th: Tsu-
9th: T
9th: Shuton
9th: Nietono ,
9th: Sigma
13th: Abadango
13th: Ranai
13th: Komorikiri
13th: Eim

A lot of good players scored well outside of top 16. This was filled with upsets (Taiheita > Aba, T > Ranai, KEN 9-1ing his way through Top 8, etc.) so it's worth watching/looking into.

Hey look, another major placing for Pit. Hey look, who cares.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

What makes Pikachu worth mentioning, in your opinion?

Generally curious.

He does have a great tool in his Up B, T-Jolt is a serious annoyance to a lot of characters, small mobile target with a hard to gimp recovery, pretty good edgeguarding.

Really I'd say his only problem is consistently KOing at a decent time. Which granted is not exactly an ignorable issue. But he has a pretty great toolbox. Can't help but wonder if Pika mains should stop obsessing with trying to get a throw -> Thunder set up to work and just figure out a more basic but reliable way to get the KOs even if its later than Thunder would be. Or just really up their off stage harassing/gimping of characters to maximize the amount of damage dealt every time the opponent is off stage, so their sometimes later KOing time doesn't matter nearly as much.

What's on paper and what's happening in tournaments ain't lining up well for Pika. Which is really weird to me.

 

[TheGoodGuava]

Hey look, another major placing for Pit. Hey look, who cares.

Hey look another major placing for Link, were not going to mention that either though

 

[EternalFlare]

He does have a great tool in his Up B, T-Jolt is a serious annoyance to a lot of characters, small mobile target with a hard to gimp recovery, pretty good edgeguarding.

Really I'd say his only problem is consistently KOing at a decent time. Which granted is not exactly an ignorable issue. But he has a pretty great toolbox. Can't help but wonder if Pika mains should stop obsessing with trying to get a throw -> Thunder set up to work and just figure out a more basic but reliable way to get the KOs even if its later than Thunder would be. Or just really up their off stage harassing/gimping of characters to maximize the amount of damage dealt every time the opponent is off stage, so their sometimes later KOing time doesn't matter nearly as much.

What's on paper and what's happening in tournaments ain't lining up well for Pika. Which is really weird to me.

Most long lasting moves will easily stuff up B shenanigans. It's not an amazing tool outside of a few stages where he can ledge cancel it.

Lack of reliable kill power isn't his only issue. He range is awful and thus any character with good ranged normals can give him a lot of trouble. And good range happens to describe most high/top tiers in this game for one reason or another.

He has some great edge guarding capabilities as always but this is less meaningful in a game with no ledge hogging and generally buffed recoveries. In previous games he could hit opponents off a few times with weak moves and then grab the ledge to finish them off, in Smash 4 they still usually make it back. Of course there are characters like Cloud that still get gimped all the time but those are the exception rather than the norm. As a result a character that only really shines at edge guarding isn't going to be very consistent.

Esam actually lost to a Falcon in pools at Evo and if you watched the set he was struggling to edge guard him because of this. And this is Falcon, a character that historically should be getting edge guarded hard by nearly everyone. But no ledge hogs makes a massive difference.

At any rate just going off results, Pikachu cannot justifiably be called top 15. Not when so many other characters have consistently put up better results at the highest levels lately (Villager, Megaman, Marth, Bayonetta, Tink, Lucario etc).

 

[blackghost]

I wouldn't go that far, the recovery does go a good distance if you charge it up and he has monkey flip to mix it up. I agree with you, though.

basically just dont be zero on your recovery patterns and diddy is fine.

 

[Yoshister]

I feel a lot of characters (Such as the general consensus for top 8 aka. ) are about equal in viability.

Unordered tiers are better reflective of the meta than ordered tiers imo (For Smash 4 anyway).

 

[Ethan7]

One thing I've noticed is that while DIddy has his amazing neutral, his recovery is increasingly becoming a weakness that's exploited well at the highest levels. Diddy almost seems like he's in the same category as Cloud or Little Mac at times.

I didn't watch Endgame, so what makes you think this? Obviously he gets way more distance than those characters. ZeRo said the character has a good recovery.

 

[Shady Shaymin]

Why is no one talking about endgame

 

[SaltyKracka]

Why is no one talking about endgame

It's amazing, really. Almost like there are other places to discuss it. Places very nearby, even.

 

[Shady Shaymin]

It's amazing, really. Almost like there are other places to discuss it. Places very nearby, even.

No one's discussing it there either

 

[Flamegeyser]

>Corrin

Please learn to love Bullet Climax in that MU. It invalidates his neutral B and shuts down short hop to instapin attempts. We definitely win that match up.

I said possibly, because that one's iffy. It's really just the fact that he disjoints hard and we can have trouble with that sometimes. That being said, BC is an easy way to get punished by a dash attack, he CAN dash under it you know... especially if you're doing it against his neutral B.

 

[Fenny]

I said possibly, because that one's iffy. It's really just the fact that he disjoints hard and we can have trouble with that sometimes. That being said, BC is an easy way to get punished by a dash attack, he CAN dash under it you know... especially if you're doing it against his neutral B.

Well obviously you don't just throw out BC like it's free, but with the right spacing and usage of it it can actually be pretty hard to get punished for it.

 

[blackghost]

Well obviously you don't just throw out BC like it's free, but with the right spacing and usage of it it can actually be pretty hard to get punished for it.

also corrin is one of the very few viable characters with worse base mobility than her keep corrin away is easy.
not to mention that even if corrin stabs the ground he's still not in a good place vs bayo he can kick forward or away and get witch timed if spaced properly and corrin won't want to jump above bayo and canceling has minor lag which gets heel slided on reaction.
don't find corrin to be any harder than 55 45.
every tool she has is easily delta with and her strength (reach) is a liability.

 

[AusJJV]

Hey, I'm new to the smash scene and I'm curious on anyone's thoughts on Lucas in competitive play. I've noticed some reasonable results coming mainly from Taiheita and a tiny bit from Mekos, but does anybody else have any ideas on where he would stand on a tier list nowadays?

Also, what are some of his best and worst matchups? I'm a bit curious and would like to know your guy's thoughts!

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Hey, I'm new to the smash scene and I'm curious on anyone's thoughts on Lucas in competitive play. I've noticed some reasonable results coming mainly from Taiheita and a tiny bit from Mekos, but does anybody else have any ideas on where he would stand on a tier list nowadays?

Also, what are some of his best and worst matchups? I'm a bit curious and would like to know your guy's thoughts!

We can't even settle on a top 3 two years into the game! If you asekd people where they think Lucas should be on the tier list they'd likely answer "somewhere in mid tier" which can be virtually anything between 16th and 40th. That's not gonna help you a whole lot but you probably won't get a better answer than that.

Diddy has been noted as a pretty bad matchup, you can watch Taiheita vs Zero on youtube for that.

 

[L9999]

He does have a great tool in his Up B, T-Jolt is a serious annoyance to a lot of characters, small mobile target with a hard to gimp recovery, pretty good edgeguarding.

Really I'd say his only problem is consistently KOing at a decent time. Which granted is not exactly an ignorable issue. But he has a pretty great toolbox. Can't help but wonder if Pika mains should stop obsessing with trying to get a throw -> Thunder set up to work and just figure out a more basic but reliable way to get the KOs even if its later than Thunder would be. Or just really up their off stage harassing/gimping of characters to maximize the amount of damage dealt every time the opponent is off stage, so their sometimes later KOing time doesn't matter nearly as much.

What's on paper and what's happening in tournaments ain't lining up well for Pika. Which is really weird to me.

The highlight. The local Pikachu in my scene is really good with it. He is really good on pressuring and the moment someone is offstage he goes out and doesn't come back until he makes sure his opponents are deader than death. He will use EVERYTHING at his disposal. Thunder Jolt, Thunder, Bair, Nair, Fair, footstools, Dair. People take for granted they can come back and the guy kills people at 48% by pure gimping. At high % he doesn't bother with Up Throw Thunder, he pummels over and over and throws offstage where he wants the opponent. The guy also is a master of conditioning people and kills with Foward Smash. Mostly at the ledge.

 

[|RK|]

Does anyone else think that the "Smash 4 is inconsistent" is exaggerated to hell and back?

ANTi tweeted something along the lines of "Smash 4, where M2K can lose to a random Luigi player one week, then beat the #1 and #2 another week."

And I'm thinking... he plays Cloud. He got gimped like, three times(?) in that match, and much of it was his own error. Sure, in a two stock game you definitely have less room for errors. But "Smash 4 is so inconsistent" makes it sound like it's the game's fault, rather than player error. And don't get me wrong - to be a top player, you definitely have to cut down mistakes as is. But I don't think people understand exactly to what degree that is.

This is worse when the players getting upset are losing in dittos (Ally vs Zenyou), mess up their execution (ESAM vs Nick C) play characters with gimpable recoveries that can easily get your wrecked for simple mistakes offstage (Diddy, Cloud), cannot seal a stock easily (Sheik), rely heavily on risk and reward (ZSS), or so on and so forth. It's like - your top tiers have very clear weaknesses these days. If you aren't aware of them (say, you fastfall too far with bair against a Luigi), of course you'll buster out one week and play like a god the next.

 

[MachoCheeze]

He was a Meta Knight player in Brawl. It's easy to complain that game is inconsistent when there's no character that busted to fall back on.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Lets talk about Endgame results then, some pretty important results I feel.

1st Zero
2nd Mew2King
3rd Ally
4th Zinoto
5th Ned
5th Mr. E
7th DarkShad
7th Dan

1) Cloud showing up twice in the top 8.

2) Marth showing up in the top 8

3) Ryu showing up in the top 8

So two characters frequently talked about as "good on paper but folding at majors" making it, and Marth continuing to be surpassingly good. And another Mario making top 8 outside of the usual 3. I'm starting to lean towards Mario being third over Rosalina or Sonic. All three are in the same range, but Mario has the most people making it to that range with him.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I don't know if Endgame quite qualifies as a 'major' though, not in my book at least. It was basically a Midwest regional with Zero, M2K, Mr E, Trela and Tweek showing up, two of which didn't make it into the top 8 anyway.

 

[verbatim]

That two "top" players didn't make it because they lost to local players shouldn't count against the "competitiveness" of a tournament. You could make an argument that it's a regional/small major/not a major because it didn't break 300 entrants, but "downgrading" it because some of the top talent underperformed is wrong.

That being said, I think something interesting that people that didn't watch the whole tournament might not know is that the Ohio Ryu DarkShadLegend lost last stock to Ally in winners, then beat Ksev and Tweek in losers to get 7th.

I'm still of the opinion that Ryu is slightly "overrated", but this definitely helps at the very least to solidify his position as a high or top tier character (I tend to lean high, but who knows).

 

[Das Koopa]

definitely not a major considering the majority of the talent present was midwestern, and certain out-of-state talent isn't even top level (Tweek, Trela, and Mr. E are 20-30 material).

Nonetheless, it's very important for one specific reason; It made the Diddy/Cloud matchup look like it's in favor of the former. After the blowouts at GOML and CEO, we saw both Zinoto and ZeRo clean up very good Clouds in-tourney. ZeRo went to game 5 in WFs and otherwise 6-2'd Mew2King in GFs, capping it off with a swift JV3.

a few other notes

-DarkShad is shaping up to be the next big Ryu. He nearly beat Ally.
-Ned is a slept on player with incredible capacity. Took Ally to game 5 again. May be the best U.S. Cloud behind M2K. I have serious doubts about Tweek after the summer.
-Marth has a lot of staying power in the meta.
-ZeRo beat Ally and admitted it's because Vanessa encouraged him not to let Ally's clutch win get in his head. Ally is definitely a mental block for ZeRo, and it crushes him when he gets gimped.

 

[TTTTTsd]

definitely not a major considering the majority of the talent present was midwestern, and certain out-of-state talent isn't even top level (Tweek, Trela, and Mr. E are 20-30 material).

Nonetheless, it's very important for one specific reason; It made the Diddy/Cloud matchup look like it's in favor of the former. After the blowouts at GOML and CEO, we saw both Zinoto and ZeRo clean up very good Clouds in-tourney. ZeRo went to game 5 in WFs and otherwise 6-2'd Mew2King in GFs, capping it off with a swift JV3.

a few other notes

-DarkShad is shaping up to be the next big Ryu. He nearly beat Ally.
-Ned is a slept on player with incredible capacity. Took Ally to game 5 again. May be the best U.S. Cloud behind M2K. I have serious doubts about Tweek after the summer.
-Marth has a lot of staying power in the meta.
-ZeRo beat Ally and admitted it's because Vanessa encouraged him not to let Ally's clutch win get in his head. Ally is definitely a mental block for ZeRo, and it crushes him when he gets gimped.

While I def agree it showed the MU is not "Diddy loses to Cloud" (that's nonsense) I think if you watch how M2K played on Duck Hunt you'll get a better idea of the method behind winning that matchup with Cloud. A lot of it boils down to respecting Diddy's great range that he does indeed have, and willing camp and slow it down. If you do not do this you die.

The JV3 started with a raw dash attack from neutral and right after that happened, as I watched I only predicted it would end poorly. M2K did super good though, pretty impressed with his performance overall especially in comparison to the last two events I saw him play at.

 

[Nobie]

I didn't watch Endgame, so what makes you think this? Obviously he gets way more distance than those characters. ZeRo said the character has a good recovery.

Frequent single reads leading to dead Diddy. His recovery has options but it's like a Melee recovery in a Smash 4 world.

 

[DavemanCozy]

The problem is that you have to mash to get out of Yoshi's egg. So this is punishing you for trying to survive, pretty much.

Or choose the direction before you mash. You can also mash with just the Control stick.

You also do not need to mash out instantly; that is a rare scenario. You suffer no knockback while trapped in an egg, and only half damage (iirc). That's why you see Yoshi players charging U-smash or trying to catch your jump from the egg with an aerial. If you mix up the timing to break out of the egg, at worst you take damage while inside the egg.

 

[Shady Shaymin]

How long before the back rub is banned in tournament?

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Ah I thought Endgame had a more important turnout than it did.

Still, good to have another Ryu on the radar to look out for. Better that way, can try to see if its really Ryu not being as good as we thought at one point, or something to do with Trela in particular.

 

[thehard]

Mario might be the best character in the game and here's why:

In a game where all the top tiers have weaknesses that can't be worked around completely, Mario's are the least pronounced. He's versatile and just SOLID enough and despite some tough matchups (disjoint/kiting characters) I think this could propel him to number 1. He does not have the common issues of closing out stocks, dangerous risk/reward, poor recovery, bad disadvantage, underwhelming advantage, bad neutral, etc. to the extent others do. He really is an all-rounder that bends to the player, not the other way around (the most of any character) However I don't think solo Mario gives you the greatest chance of winning. (Now dual maining Mario/Sonic seems pretty amazing to me). I also still think Sheik and Diddy could claim number 1 as well, because they excel at some things Mario is just great at. Mario is like a 4 star in most categories and they're like anywhere from 2.5-5 stars but some times you need that 5 star attribute.

This is why I think a counterpick meta/dual main meta is STILL the future. No character in this game does everything for you and they've all been designed with specific limitations, including Mario. It would go a ways toward decreasing upsets too- If M2K still had a Rosa would he still have drowned at SSC to that Luigi?

Mario's the best because he's the least likely to be held back by himself. He also has a surprising number of tools available to exploit the other top tiers' shortcomings and, anecdotally, he's the top tier I've seen get exploited the least. (This could easily change in the future if people start abusing Sonic/Cloud/Peach-type characters against him more)

Feel free to tear this post apart because I'm not even sure if I believe it myself but I hope it's offering something new.

Note: I think we have a good group of characters that ARE flexible enough to solo main and succeed with, despite inherent weaknesses, I just think the smartest option, for now, is having a couple of good backup plans. Especially in 2 stock, Bo3.

 

[Joey T.]

Apparently we finally have a new tier list.
In my opinion, everything is pretty much right, the only changes I would do would be within tiers, and (among other things) the fact that the list doesn't go down to J tier makes it far better than the previous one.
Congratulations to the 4br team, it's never easy to make a tier list, even moreso when we have 55 characters.