Official Character Competitive Impressions - Tourneys, Tiers, Theories, Tactics

[PikachuSSBM]

Y'know, I actually enjoyed the top 8. I always appreciate a good Sheik/Diddy and Void's Sheik was fantastic. I'd have liked to have seen some diversity in the top 8 myself though.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Out of interest, how does 'Dorf land in this matchup? Pit's very good at catching landings with u-smash, it's one of his best options in advantage - on a flat stage, what options does 'Dorf have to safely touch down?

Personally I've never had an issue with this matchup, but I don't think I've played enough especially good Ganondorfs to make an educated judgement beyond "space the ****** and don't get hit". I think Pit has an easy enough time in neutral, he's faster than 'Dorf with better startup data, disjoints and a solid grab game that eats up super-heavies, and 'Dorf's not that difficult to juggle when you get him in the air.

The only thing I'd really be wary of as Pit is trying to press the advantage, since 'Dorf is decent at turning the tables with a good read. You have to be patient and bait the openings. I think Pit's got a firm advantage in neutral and potentially off-stage (though the same can be said for 'Dorf to some extent, he's a fine edgeguarder), and he has no problem putting 'Dorf in a compromising position and capitalising on it for good damage, but converting that to a kill is the real kicker.

USmash is indeed tricky. Dorf doesn't really have anything super safe, so it's a matter of either landing with something like Fair or aerial Wizkick or an empty landing. I feel like Dorf wants Smashville here since you're not likely to get trapped on a platform but you still have the option of landing on the platform when necessary. It's definitely a MU where Pit wants to be conservative, since there's many ways Ganondorf can turn the tables. Rage is big for Ganondorf here, since he can hang around for a while. Really for Pit the MU is just spacing and patience, while Dorf is looking for an opening to capitalize on. Pit might well have an ever so slight edge since he controls the pace of the match, but if he messes up he can lose his lead pretty quickly.

 

[Emblem Lord]

yall mad as **** cuz sheik better then your low tier main AND shes one of the most entertaining chars to watch. I will watch this woman style on fools all day before I watch boring ass Samus or Zelda.

 

[S_B]

It's your own fault if you can't appreciate watching a high-level Sheik ditto

Yeah, why would we ever want to see any of the 55 other characters in the game in grand finals when we could instead watch Sheik fight herself?

Seriously, this attitude needs to DIAF. Variety is the spice of life, and watching MK fight himself nonstop is what killed Brawl.

yall mad as **** cuz sheik better then your low tier main AND shes one of the most entertaining chars to watch. I will watch this woman style on fools all day before I watch boring *** Samus or Zelda.

Sheik is obnoxiously linear.

Low %: Throw > BF
Offstage: BF or Needles to steal the jump
Kill %: Throw > 50/50
Tinder combo for days

 

[Fatmanonice]

Shiek's not entertaining because so much of it boils down to needles, fair, and dthrow 50-50s. Give me a good Metaknight, Wario, or Fox to watch any day instead.

Add in: Villager's super entertaining when matches aren't campfests too. Ryu. Pac-man. Lucas. Megaman. Wii Fit. Greninja. Pikachu. So many more characters are more fun to watch in comparison. The only characters I find more boring to watch than Sheik are Sonic and ZSS.

 

[Y2Kay]

...And nerf .

DIE.

yall mad as **** cuz sheik better then your low tier main AND shes one of the most entertaining chars to watch. I will watch this woman style on fools all day before I watch boring *** Samus or Zelda.

It's not that she's not fun to watch, it's just not fun to play against.

 

[Emblem Lord]

I love fighting sheik. But i play ryu so its like...battle of the monsters lol

 

[S_B]

Shiek's not entertaining because so much of it boils down to needles, fair, and dthrow 50-50s. Give me a good Metaknight, Wario, or Fox to watch any day instead.

Yes, yes, and YES.

I miss watching Aba's insane Wario, setting up fart traps with the bike, or watching Pac-Man do pretty much ANYTHING...

It's not that she's not fun to watch, it's just not fun to play against.

I'd say it's both for most (though I like testing myself against good Sheiks).

 

[Baby_Sneak]

The neutral has and will always be the thing to watch for entertainment and learning purposes out of any state in fighting games. It doesn't change in smash either.

Sheik has the largest and most versatile pool of viable options to choose from. To call her linear is plain wrong, and just looking at her punish game isn't exactly looking in the right direction.

 

[thehard]

If you don't like watching Sheik you shouldn't watch Smash 4 at all. If you don't like ZeRo winning don't watch either.

Although if you want to learn how to enjoy it in "spite" of these things, watch it more. And watch the other Smash games. And watch other fighting games. It's a bit like gaining an appreciation for classical music or jazz music, the more you listen to all types of music thoughtfully the more you start to "get it". I look at Smash so differently now than I did when I started out. But that's something you'd have to work out on your own.

GFs wasn't even boring or samey, I saw plenty new things from both players. I don't get the complaints.

 

[FallofBrawl]

EDIT: question. Outside of sheik, what top tier can actually turtle and force opponents to come to them?

Cloud is pretty good at that

 

[Peppermint1201]

Yeah, why would we ever want to see any of the 55 other characters in the game in grand finals when we could instead watch Sheik fight herself?

Seriously, this attitude needs to DIAF. Variety is the spice of life, and watching MK fight himself nonstop is what killed Brawl.



Sheik is obnoxiously linear.

Low %: Throw > BF
Offstage: BF or Needles to steal the jump
Kill %: Throw > 50/50
Tinder combo for days

You're forgetting about the following:

- Fthrow upair

- Fthrow fair

- Dthrow nair

- Fair fair nair

- Actually going offstage to edgeguard (which does happen obv)

- Grenade

- Ftilt to upair

- Dthrow to bouncing fish at kill percents

- All the downthrow uptilt downtilt downtilt pp ftilt ftilt insanity

- Aerial needle storm to bouncing fish

- Fthrow to upb at kill percents

- Follow ups from ff uair

you can call sheik boring all you want, that's your opinion dude. but calling her linear is objectively wrong

 

[S_B]

If you don't like watching Metaknight you shouldn't watch Brawl at all.

(*Insert something about history repeating itself*)

I look at Smash so differently now than I did when I started out. But that's something you'd have to work out on your own.

Yup, if you don't enjoy watching the same thing over and over again, the problem is clearly on your end.

Maybe now that Sakurai is "amazed" by some of the tournament he saw last night, he might step out from under the rock he lives under and take a look at what's going on with SSB4 in the rest of the world.

Not counting on anything for Wednesday, though...

 

[Vipermoon]

(*Insert something about history repeating itself*)



Yup, if you don't enjoy watching the same thing over and over again, the problem is clearly on your end.

Maybe now that Sakurai is "amazed" by some of the tournament he saw last night, he might step out from under the rock he lives under and take a look at what's going on with SSB4 in the rest of the world.

Not counting on anything for Wednesday, though...

I'm kind of surprised that he wouldn't know everything already. If it were my game I'd spend all of my free time on the internet looking at what other people do with it and think about it.

 

[Sneak Sneaks]

I'm kind of surprised that he wouldn't know everything already. If it were my game I'd spend all of my free time on the internet looking at what other people do with it and think about it.

I dont think Sakurai has a lot of freetime but you are right, it would be ridiculous that your customers knew more than you about your product

 

[S_B]

you can call sheik boring all you want, that's your opinion dude. but calling her linear is objectively wrong

Eh, when Sheik is nearly always trying to steer the opponent toward BF offstage or the 50/50, it's still pretty damn linear.

And all of the options you listed still just aren't much fun for me to watch when I've seen them for the gajillionth time, probably because they're all so safe that Sheik risks next to nothing in using them most of the time.

See, it'd be exciting if we were watching a character making choices that could easily be punished, but it's Sheik, the queen of non-committal moves, and you know that once she's landed ONE move, she's probably going to land 5-6 more right afterwards.

I'm kind of surprised that he wouldn't know everything already. If it were my game I'd spend all of my free time on the internet looking at what other people do with it and think about it.

I'm hoping he'll elaborate on what he meant by "amazed" at some point. Is he amazed at the skill of Nairo and Aba? Is he amazed that MK and ZSS can do these things?

If this was the first time he had seen the kill confirms by these characters, then he must pay no attention to SSB4 when he's outside the office or something.

He even said in an interview that his team gathers opinions on characters from their own playtesting, from watching players play the game, AND from opinions on the internet...but are they just not very thorough?

We'll just have to see what Wed's patch does. If ZSS and Sheik go untouched again, then I'd feel safe in concluding that they don't watch tournaments at all and maybe the one yesterday was a revelation for Sakurai?

Again, wait and see...

 

[Smooth Criminal]

(*Insert something about history repeating itself*)

Except when it's not.

Smooth Criminal

 

[David Viran]

We'll just have to see what Wed's patch does. If ZSS and Sheik go untouched again, then I'd feel safe in concluding that they don't watch tournaments at all and maybe the one yesterday was a revelation for Sakurai?

Or he could just be like the way it is. According to some of the translations he sounded pretty satisfied with the tournament. The patch already looks ready to go so I doubt that tournament is going to change anything even if he did have a revelation.

 

[S_B]

Except when it's not.

At this point in Brawl's history, we were still holding out hope that MK wasn't the end all of the meta. We later learned we were wrong, but I'm confident there were people telling us that we should enjoy watching MK dittos.

Not saying this will necessarily be SSB4's fate (I sure hope not), but the end result of telling people to just enjoy watching dittos in Brawl is pretty clear...

Or he could just be like the way it is. According to some of the translations he sounded pretty satisfied with the tournament. The patch already looks ready to go so I doubt that tournament is going to change anything even if he did have a revelation.

I just said a page or two earlier that patch 1.1.4 will not be impacted by the tournament but that, if Sakurai truly didn't know about this stuff, 1.1.5 might (if it happens at all).

 

[Luco]

I'd be surprised if they didn't have a play-tester or dev team member looking through the western scenes. In fact, I'd wager they've probably come to this very forum and quite possibly peeked inside this very thread (or some iteration of it at least). Our usernames might all be scrawled down in the notebook of some high-profile Namco/Nintendo dev. Who knows where they go to look for their information?

 

[S_B]

I'd be surprised if they didn't have a play-tester or dev team member looking through the western scenes. In fact, I'd wager they've probably come to this very forum and quite possibly peeked inside this very thread (or some iteration of it at least). Who knows where they go to look for their information?

That's my hope, and like I said, they DO look on the internet for opinions about characters but I wonder how much that weighs into their decisions.

Also, it may very well be that they only listen to the opinions of Japanese players. Sakurai didn't really elaborate on where they gather data.

 

[Luco]

That's my hope, and like I said, they DO look on the internet for opinions about characters but I wonder how much that weighs into their decisions.

Also, it may very well be that they only listen to the opinions of Japanese players. Sakurai didn't really elaborate on where they gather data.

It's possible, but for some time (and arguably still) it's been said that the western scene is probably slightly stronger than the japanese scene right now. Should that be the case, I wouldn't be surprised if they thought they couldn't just rely on their own scene to tell them what's going on with their game. And surely as part of good work ethic you'd want to be thorough when it comes to gathering info.

 

[Wintropy]

Fox is not the be-all / end-all of the Melee meta, even though he's clearly the best character. Other top-tiers can hold their own against him and there's still a respectable degree of diversity in high-level tourneys. It's been that way for a decade and a half and shows no signs of slowing down. Granted, the other top-tiers potentially have even or winning matchups with Fox, but it's not as though there's isn't a clear best choice in the roster.

Brawl MK was a broken mess that should never have made it past playtesting. His very existence rendered most of the roster redundant and, if you didn't abuse him right back with Icies wobbling or other easy-cheesy top-tier jank, there was no reason to ever pick another character. He dominated Brawl and abetted the death of the meta because he was a terribly designed character that made 90% of other choices pointless.

Sheik is not Brawl MK, and comparisons to that end are fundamentally flawed because of that. Sheik is objectively the best character in the game because she has the most options, the safest options and often has a way to safely reset when she's in trouble. But she is not the meta-rending plague that MK was. At most, she's a character people gravitate towards because she offers the best advantage if you want to win, and because she gets so much exposure from the top players in the game.

The fact that she's objectively better than everybody is an issue in itself, but it's not something to wail and gnash your teeth over. There will always be other characters to challenge her, even if those characters are themselves top-tiers. Getting to a stage where we can only expect to see the top ten or so characters in bracket would be disappointing, considering there's the bones of sixty characters in the roster, but I don't think there's any reason to suspect we're going to reach a 200X state in the meta where people only pick Sheik. We still have ZSS, MK, Ryu, Fox, Rosalina, Sonic, Diddy...pick your poison. And that's not to speak of the mains of other high or even mid-tier characters that have proven their worth at top-level events and whom have yet to fall sway to Sheik's siren sign of ultimate viability. Yeah, there's a case to be made that they may eventually realise it's the only option and change their tune, but that requires a leap of rational thinking so extensive it's making my eyes water just to think of it.

If you're taking Brawl MK's precedent to be demonstrative of what may happen in Smash 4's meta - don't. Brawl MK was an objectively overpowered character the likes of which has not been seen before or since in Smash. There was nobody that could realistically and consistently expect to beat him, so individual player skill became largely invalid. That has not yet happened in Smash 4, and there's no reason to think it will. The divide in balance is not so extreme that it renders player's choices fundamentally inane, it's just that we have one or two characters that are a bit overtuned and who could stand to be tweaked a bit for the rest of the roster's quality of life.

Nobody needs to be a Cassandra about this. The game is still young and still developing at a rapid pace. We have no idea what to expect from here on in, and for all we know, Sheik could be nerfed into oblivion in the next patch and this will all just be a funny footnote in the history of the meta. Until then, please be reasonable with the hellfire-and-brimstone end-times prophecies and do what you can to advance your own character's meta in your own way. It's a hell of a lot more productive than worrying about how Sheik may or may not dominate the game in the future.

 

[ARISTOS]

Controversial opinion time.

IMO, as a whole is about as dumb than pre-patch , maybe even moreso, because pre-patch Luigi was never actually *that* good.

Everything a swordsman could ever need, on top of incredibly generous auto-cancels, which leads to being incredibly easy to play.

Nair and Dair combined protect him from almost all aerial challenges against most characters apart from a select few.

Limit is free as ****, no reason you shouldn't be getting this at least three times a game.

Recovery is mediocre but unless you get sent at an unfortunate angle you can often just double jump back to the stage/air dodge right into Up-B, which removes most of the risk.

Love and respect to all the Cloud mains in this thread, you all are hard workers and are innovating for an entirely new character. I don't mean to demean your effort. I think this character is legit bonkers.

 

[S_B]

Should that be the case, I wouldn't be surprised if they thought they couldn't just rely on their own scene to tell them what's going on with their game. And surely as part of good work ethic you'd want to be thorough when it comes to gathering info.

I absolutely hope you're right, and maybe G3 turned some heads since Japan's finest were there.

But I've seen Japanese game devs just not give a crap about anything outside of Japan on numerous occasions so who knows. :\

Again, we'll see if he patches it again after 1.1.4, and we'll see what Wed brings for changes. We already noted one Marth buff so I'm sure there are others.

Fox is not the be-all / end-all of the Melee meta, even though he's clearly the best character. Other top-tiers can hold their own against him and there's still a respectable degree of diversity in high-level tourneys. It's been that way for a decade and a half and shows no signs of slowing down. Granted, the other top-tiers potentially have even or winning matchups with Fox, but it's not as though there's isn't a clear best choice in the roster.

The only lingering concern I have about Sheik and ZSS not being toned down is that, yes, Melee has stood the test of time, but Brawl didn't.

If SSB4 winds up with the around the same number of "viable" characters as Melee, it's not a stretch to expect that SSB4 may likewise dwindle in popularity like Brawl did, and I'd rather not see that because this is as close as my favorite characters have EVER been to being viable.

But time will tell and there's no point speculating upon it further for now.

If someone wants to debate it, find the nearest rabid Melee fan and try to explain to them just how superior SSB4 is to Melee and see how far that gets you. They'll probably point out that Melee's G3 stream hit 110k while SSB4's peaked at 90k, and then you should probably duck.

(nothing personal to Melee fans, but some are VERY protective of the game...)

Limit is free as ****, no reason you shouldn't be getting this at least three times a game.

Per game? You seen M2K's Cloud? He basically charges limit right in front of you until you force him to stop somehow. Usually gets ~3 LBs per minute.

 

[Kofu]

I have a question that I've had for a while now: who beats Fox, and why? I figure Sheik does, I hear that Yoshi does, and IIRC I hear that Rosalina does. Just... playing against him, I don't feel a lot of legitimate weaknesses that can regularly. Lasers force a lot of characters to approach where his potent punish and combo games come into effect. At kill percents he can either just wait for an opening to run in and FSmash or try to set it up with DAir or NAir.

In my opinion the characters that beat him either can keep up with his movement and frame data or wall his short range out (Yoshi confuses me a little for this reason). His throws aren't exceptionally strong but that's not the end all.

I dunno, this might be my choice of characters and excessive time playing For Glory talking.

 

[Smog Frog]

i think brawl failed the test of time because it was a legitimately bad competitive game. it had horrendous balance, rng making you scared to mount an offensive, a complete lack of combos that made going on the offensive pointless on top of being risky, characters regularly living to 180+ because of momentum cancelling, and then character specific bull****. smash 4 is thankfully free of those and hopefully it will see a long competitive life.

 

[Charoite]

why you are so fixated in if sheik is in GF? if all you only want to watch in a GF is different characters watch a tournament that hasn't ZeRo, and smash 4 will not die because of sheik, she has overturned options, but she is not a free win, if the sheik player doesn't play the Mu correctly he will lost, if he doesn't practice the character he won't win against other players who use high tiers, mid tiers or even low tiers, she is not Brawl metaknight and never it will.

 

[Radical Larry]

Look guys, it's just going to be 3 days from now; literally, the dev team is extremely fast about making changes to characters (between October and now in developing Bayonetta? That's a short time, and possibly shorter for Corrin and Cloud.), so Sakurai suddenly coming to the development team and telling them to make some quick changes to characters isn't farfetched, it's actually somewhat reasonable given how fast they can change stuff around.

In three days, we can see if Sheik loses quite a lot, just for you guys to quiet down.
I'm at least hoping that her grab game becomes ****, though, or that some of her attacks deal no knockback whatsoever (Needles).

 

[Browny]

Controversial opinion time.

IMO, as a whole is about as dumb than pre-patch , maybe even moreso, because pre-patch Luigi was never actually *that* good.

Everything a swordsman could ever need, on top of incredibly generous auto-cancels, which leads to being incredibly easy to play.

Nair and Dair combined protect him from almost all aerial challenges against most characters apart from a select few.

People will learn eventually that the idea isn't to challenge cloud in the air to juggle him, its to mess up his landing because he has only one option to protect him with fair or blade beam but that is really risky.

Most characters in the game have a series of moves to protect their landings either via;

Throwing a projectile down
b-reversing with a large momentum shift
stall
reflect/absorb
counter
land with a command grab

The only characters who lack any of these (and dont have multiple jumps) are and a special note to since his reflector doesnt really cover his landings too well.

If you simply stand on the ground and wait for cloud to land all he can do to protect himself is fair, he has to throw out dair long in advance if he wants that autocancel.

I personally find that Cloud is extremely susceptible to getting hit by projectiles as he lands. In the case of Mewtwo, it requires some near perfect timing and spacing in order to fair away the shadowball. Sheik can needle him completely for free and if a character is fast enough to run behind cloud before he lands, hes in even more trouble and has to nair on landing which has enough lag to punish.

I expect in the future more and more people will just let cloud land, because challenging him in the air is pointless but he has some of the worst landing options in the game, even bowser has better landing options than cloud.

 

[S_B]

s who lack any of these (and dont have multiple jumps) are and a special note to since his reflector doesnt really cover his landings too well.

I'd add Bowser to that list because landing with his command grab doesn't do as much for him as you would think, sadly.

Landing is easily the hardest thing for Bowser to do (Zero said the same in his last video about him, and I concur).

 

[Halifax?]

If you don't like watching Sheik... don't watch smash 4...at all? Seriously?

Must be cause I'm an uncultured prick who's never watched or played another fighting game right? Cause she's better than my low tier main?

are these discussions seriously ad hominem right now

 

[Browny]

I'd add Bowser to that list because landing with his command grab doesn't do as much for him as you would think, sadly.

Landing is easily the hardest thing for Bowser to do (Zero said the same in his last video about him, and I concur).

I was going to but I feel like with this stall-then-fall moves that auto-snap the edge, firebreath and a fair you cant really challenge and win, he at least has a few options to counter projectiles, shields and attacks that aim to hit his landing.

They aren't reliable, but at least he has something.

 

[Blobface]

I really hope this obnoxious "nerf sheik or the meta dies" spam is just a result of the impending final patch.

 

[Megamang]

Edit: in response to who beats fox post

Shiek, yoshi, rosa, historically zss but some believe otherwise.



Due to his extreme gravity, he is the most susceptible to combos on fastfallers of anyone. He is also light, and lacks range. His kill confirms arent exceptionally safe either. Basically, he is amazing at killing you but mediocre at not dying, and also has a range issue. Kill throws are great on him since he is light, cant meaningfully threaten shield (though a grab and quick pummels refresh his bair, which will eventually kill). So kill him quickly, he's trying to do the same.

Bair is safe, but his kill confirms are nair and dair, and buttcheek hitbox of pivot ftilt, none of which are particularly safe.

Oh, his recovery can be flowcharted pretty well, so make sure to punish him offstage pretty hard. You should have 10+ years experience doing this

 

[Luco]

It's also relevant to mention that whilst Brawl looks like it's almost dead, Melee was once like that as well when Brawl came along. It's possible that a game can revive even after being seemingly dead for a while.

Kofu - Ness is supposed to go even with or have a very slight advantage against Fox. FOW annihilated Larry's Fox at G3, but to be fair I think Larry might have SD-ed or mis-inputted on his first stock (I remember at least one of his games he did that, and he was also switching characters every game which suggests he wasn't feeling very comfortable as any of his chars).

That set is here. Turns out it was just a really unfortunate string against him that lead to the stock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFqGyD0Mch0

Earlier in that tournament, Shaky went up against NAKAT's Fox, and the set ended up quite close. Fox can juggle Ness so hard, but Ness punishes like a boss as well. At one point Shaky just popped off and pretty much erased NAKAT's full stock lead for free.

That set can be found here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV9j_ODXj4U

If Fox needs to recover at or below stage level he's probably dead. Yoyo and Bair / Nair too stronk. Ness is also vulnerable offstage, but in these sets it didn't seem to be as bad. Inversely, Fox has a massive edge on juggling Ness.

EDIT: was actually looking for NAKAT vs Dakpo footage, because I heard that he used Ness for that match and that MU has always fascinated me. For some reason the top Ness and ZSS players never meet in bracket except for that one time at CEO and this. Lawl. I'm probably just not aware of stuff though.

 

[S_B]

I really hope this obnoxious "nerf sheik or the meta dies" spam is just a result of the impending final patch.

We've been saying this is the reason for a while now.

But again, it's three days before everything could change. No sense in discussing matchups at all right now, really...

 

[IsmaR]

We've been saying this is the reason for a while now.

"We've" is a lot different than "You've"

 

[Big-Cat]

So, let's discuss something different. I remember Sakurai mentioning once he was disappointed to not see Side Smash moves be finishing moves, but rather that weak moves do it. Do you think the meta might get to where this is a riskier, but kill earlier method than standard aerial KO's that's actually viable?

 

[Sonicninja115]

So, let's discuss something different. I remember Sakurai mentioning once he was disappointed to not see Side Smash moves be finishing moves, but rather that weak moves do it. Do you think the meta might get to where this is a riskier, but kill earlier method than standard aerial KO's that's actually viable?

I know that is one reason why he changed Wario's Fsmash. Hurtboxes and stuff aswell.