Character Competitive Impressions

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

That's escapable almost immediately for some characters. It's nothing game breaking and is likely to get patched anyways. I think Links was patched because it was harder to escape and had more damage output. Tbh, I don't see anyone complaining about that. People don't groan when Fox gets a jab the way people would when Diddy got a grab pre-patch, and I don't even see it used too often anyways. It'll probably get patched tho :Sakurai:

We haven't really seen foxes pulling it off consistently. If you watch DEHF vs Jtails you'll see how much of a problem it is. Although he used dsmash as an ender.

 

[Trifroze]

Matchup charts for Smash assume the highest level of play. Some other games assume mid-level.

On another note: I don't understand what is keeping from being a top tier threat. He has great combos at all percents, kill confirms off a great dash attack and awesome grab, above average mobility, fantastic offstage game, and has good OOS options. Does his range make him suffer? Or is there more?

Edit: And also a great (theoretical) matchup spread!

Unsafe aerials for approaching and the lack of a projectile without having Sonic, Falcon, Fox or Mac speed come to mind, although his dash grab is really good at mid range. Mainly though I feel like MK's neutral is a worse version of Falcon; just take the safe and decent-range aerials off and add a moderate amount of landing lag to them while having less movement speed. I think he's a solid character though, been thinking of picking him up from time to time.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Unsafe aerials for approaching and the lack of a projectile without having Sonic, Falcon, Fox or Mac speed come to mind, although his dash grab is really good at mid range. Mainly though I feel like MK's neutral is a worse version of Falcon; just take the safe and decent-range aerials off and add a moderate amount of landing lag to them. His range also isn't the best like you mentioned. I think he's a solid character though, been thinking of picking him up from time to time.

Isn't Dair above shield safe enough?

 

[Cheezin]

Isn't Dair above shield safe enough?

I would argue that it was safe in Brawl but it doesn't seem to be in Sm4sh. You could eat an OOS Upsmash or UpB depending on the character.

Unsafe aerials for approaching and the lack of a projectile without having Sonic, Falcon, Fox or Mac speed come to mind, although his dash grab is really good at mid range. Mainly though I feel like MK's neutral is a worse version of Falcon; just take the safe and decent-range aerials off and add a moderate amount of landing lag to them while having less movement speed. I think he's a solid character though, been thinking of picking him up from time to time.

Very true. Captain Falcon kinda blatantly overshadows him. They are two of my favorite characters in this game for sure.

 

[Ulevo]

Saying that Captain Falcon overshadows Meta Knight is like saying Snake overshadows Ice Climbers. Despite having similar traits, they are very different characters.

 

[Trifroze]

Saying that Captain Falcon overshadows Meta Knight is like saying Snake overshadows Ice Climbers. Despite having similar traits, they are very different characters.

The context was neutral though. Falcon and MK both rely a lot on undeniably similar dash attack and dash grab, with MK having a better dash attack and Falcon a better dash grab because of what they can get out of them.

 

[Cheezin]

Saying that Captain Falcon overshadows Meta Knight is like saying Snake overshadows Ice Climbers. Despite having similar traits, they are very different characters.

I guess I should have clarified about the context. My apologies.
The fact that Captain Falcon has a terrible disadvantage vs. Metaknight's nonexistent one gives them a big difference already. Not to mention Falcon can be edgeguarded easily and MK is ... tough, to say the least.


Also d after 25 minutes. How did I miss that?

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I think a weighting like this only serves its purpose if it is weighted recursively on the tier of the person in question.

Being hard countered by Zelda is a totally different animal than being hard countered by Diddy Kong.



For example, this post was a more significant hard counter because he has a higher tier red name and his sig matches the post.

I actually don't agree. The reason a hard counter is completely awful is because it means people can switch off-main to force you off your main. Usually a soft counter is good enough of a MU that other players who are not already dedicated to the soft counter character won't see a performance gain by switching, but with the hard counter they will. It's just as easy to pick Zelda as it is to pick Diddy Kong on the character select screen. I don't think many hard counters really exist in this game though, and I certainly don't think Zelda is on the winning side of any of them so on some level this is academic.

Now for match-ups that are not a hard counter, I do think recursive tier based weighting is of high value. A small advantage against Sheik is worth way, way more than a small advantage against the Mii Swordfighter. I actually had a friend years back who calculated based on the old phanna chart for Melee who the theoretically viable characters were and then a tier list. First he removed every character whose MU spread was strictly inferior to that of another character, and he repeated recursively until no more could be removed. Of the remaining, he only considered MUs within the group, formed raw sums, and then used the raw sums as weights to calculate weighted sums that formed the ordered tier list (he only tiered non-eliminated characters; he considered the others simply irrelevant). Now the phanna chart wasn't terribly accurate so his result was probably not very good (I remember it boiled down to around 10 characters but that somehow Luigi was one of them), but the method that relied at multiple points on recursion and weighting I thought was clever.

 

[Megamang]

But in a set, you are more likely to hit a more viable hard counter on the blind picking stage than a random low tier counter, so that has to be weighed.

Assuming tier lists rank overall tournament success, there are even more factors at play. If you can not even make it out of pools due to 2 or 3 dumb losses to a hard counter, how does that effect your placement vs a person being able to switch to a random counter in finals (Bo5)?

 

[Luco]

I'm saying that the low tiers and whatever else happened in the MU didn't matter much. Bad characters are bad for a reason a lot of things happens to them. CG aren't the end all I played Wario in brawl so I've been through it all. Yet Wario was still considered a good character despite CG and GR. So at the end of the day your character didn't have the tools to compete.

I've been through it all too, bud.

I have no idea how you can sit there and tell me CGs didn't make a difference. Bad characters have things holding them back. But if you legitimately don't think CGs were the main thing stopping many characters from being a LOT better (in some cases, some characters from being a lot worse), then you're really just leaving me speechless here.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

But in a set, you are more likely to hit a more viable hard counter on the blind picking stage than a random low tier counter, so that has to be weighed.

Assuming tier lists rank overall tournament success, there are even more factors at play. If you can not even make it out of pools due to 2 or 3 dumb losses to a hard counter, how does that effect your placement vs a person being able to switch to a random counter in finals (Bo5)?

In practice in tournament strong players will almost always know ahead of time the main characters of other players who are strong enough to defeat them so the blind pick is not scary in this way. It's obviously worse in the sense that more people will already main the good characters (and have to go a lot less far out of their way for a free win), but I think that's a smaller effect than the weighting effects you'll see for less extreme match-ups. I'd also suggest that if you main any character with a hard counter regardless of who that hard counter is that you had better have significant apprehension about your ability to make it out of pools with any strategy that doesn't involve relying heavily on a second character who doesn't have hard counters. Having a hard counter is being able to lose on the character select screen; it's the worst thing possible for any character, and I really can't stress enough how fundamentally bad of a thing it is regardless of which buttons your opponent has to hit on that screen to just win the game. Luckily this is a well balanced game and such MUs are rare.

 

[Radical Larry]

I plain out don't see why people make others believe Ganondorf is not much of a viable character; can go on and on about Ganondorf being great, and yes, I know he loses to some characters, but I believe he is a strong high tier if you manage to peak him. He's got great potential, but people don't use him in tournaments much thanks to Brawl's stigma put on him.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I thought Gheb was working on a tourney based MU chart,but haven't heard any update about it.

I still have that project in the back of my mind and will talk to @ Jaxas about it because he had some neat ideas. The main problem will be the frequency of balance patches [or rather the uncertainty thereof]. Creating a chart or even a whole program won't be worth it if a balance patch hits the streets every six months or so and renders everything up to that point obsolete. It's the same reason I abandonned the idea of a community patch. I still think that the matchup chart will become a thing in the [hopefully not so distant] future though.

 

[GeneralLedge]

RE: Ganondorf: I think people are more-so overestimating every other character in the roster rather than underestimating Ganon; ie. thinking everyone faster than him can run circles around him. Neglecting to realize they need to actually attack at some point, and in lieu of attacking Ganon, you risk getting counter-attacked depending on character specific frame lag and vulnerabilities.

I mean theoretically, if you threw out nothing but low-frame low-lag moves, yes, you'll beat out Ganon. I don't think there are many that are kill moves, however, especially not many that can be executed at a safe distance. And that's when Ganon makes his counter attack. Fueled by rage mechanics and less-than-hard reads for opponents looking to go in for a kill.

And if they do safely get you off stage and simply opt to edgeguard instead, you just ganoncide them. Oops! All that work for nothing!

It's a very strange simplicity. If you respect Ganon, you take forever to kill him (which is bad); if you disrespect him, he stomps/elbows/kicks/slams you into a blast zone (also bad).

 

[Shaya]

So Marth's have been doing better in tournament as of late (or maybe I'm just predisposed to finding Marths in streams) and all things considered (frame data buffs too), dancing blade being back is the start of something special. I currently think Marth (and even Lucina) are feasibly middle tier now if not better (and bottom-tierish was my feeling before)

The characters needed their bread and butter to get better. Having no options out of dash worth anything bar pivot (rar) back air significantly curtailed their pressure as well as their rewards from trapping.
Dancing Blade is reliably doing 10-15%, and it's working for both characters out of aerials and tilts, and its range when coupled with transcended priority virtually negates most character's abilities to land, at all; Marth had to deal with the risk of a well timed air dodge into shield to wreck him in Brawl, but not anymore :D. Dancing Blade snowballs positional dominance in such a way that he's likely to just keep... punishing your landing with dancing blade or grab over and over again. Sakurai's intentions to make Dancing Blade workable in the air to compensate for the fair/etc nerfs are really starting to show; it's low hitting to the ground and covers his landings well (much better than a landing fair/nair/etc would) and basically being a 50/50 on shield's (can't react to the second strike coming out/rolling in from first hit isn't a guaranteed punish anymore). Cross over potential + b reversing/etc galore.

I also think I'm starting to see the way Marth/Lucina flows in terms of aerial strings and combos. Back air will pick them up from low (good from forward throw even to mid percent) and move straight into forward air (usually two) landing which you then full hop nair from the ground (which will auto cancel with a late-ish fast fall) will win against most things + beats air dodges. And if it's a similar timing for both of you coming into the ground, dancing blade wins, every time.

Lucina's current numbers seem to sit very well with her. Any spacing of her down tilt (Marth tends to need untippered) is comboing into dancing blade, three of these strings and you're suddenly at a percent her forward smash kills near a ledge, but bair -> fair -> db is reliable and you only need two and a bit of those. I think a lot of people agree, her forward smash is ridiculous as a punish and can be ending stocks as low as the 80% range. She may not have the depth of Marth, but she is a scary mother ****** with rage and her damage racking (as they're trap based) isn't hurt like it is most other characters when rage comes along; she (and Marth too) are the characters who in tournament their players aren't going to need to be as stressed about taking opposing hits like the other guy is (Ganon-factor).

Dancing Blade is once again one of the best moves in the game. Fire Emblem Tier is dead :<
Did I mention this thing kills? Maybe another time.

 

[GeneralLedge]

Incidentally, did anyone check if heavy dancing blade is worth a damn post-patch? Or does it still throw people too far away to murder, on the first hit?

 

[Shaya]

Too busy dancing to become heavy and overweight.
I haven't tested it but it probably received adjustments too, but as the speed of transitions wasn't changed with the default I'd guess that it won't be comboing much, ever.

 

[Teshie U]

If Heavy Blade ever gets anything resembling combos or setups into the 3rd or 4th hit, it will immediately become ridiculously overpowered.

Its a 100% FFA move. Or maybe doubles.

 

[Megamang]

In practice in tournament strong players will almost always know ahead of time the main characters of other players who are strong enough to defeat them so the blind pick is not scary in this way. It's obviously worse in the sense that more people will already main the good characters (and have to go a lot less far out of their way for a free win), but I think that's a smaller effect than the weighting effects you'll see for less extreme match-ups. I'd also suggest that if you main any character with a hard counter regardless of who that hard counter is that you had better have significant apprehension about your ability to make it out of pools with any strategy that doesn't involve relying heavily on a second character who doesn't have hard counters. Having a hard counter is being able to lose on the character select screen; it's the worst thing possible for any character, and I really can't stress enough how fundamentally bad of a thing it is regardless of which buttons your opponent has to hit on that screen to just win the game. Luckily this is a well balanced game and such MUs are rare.

But isn't that outside the realm of the tier list, as it is a factor outside the game, reliant on players?

Also you have to consider players like Nairo who could pull out a number of characters. Imagine you are similarly skilled in that you can also pull out a few characters. If one character has a hard counter and is high tier otherwise, and another loses most MUs but somehow hard counters one of your characters, isn't the former way more likely to come out due to safety?

Like you said, fortunately this situation is pretty rare/nonexistant with relatively good characters so far... but what if?

 

[RonNewcomb]

Incidentally, did anyone check if heavy dancing blade is worth a damn post-patch? Or does it still throw people too far away to murder, on the first hit?

The initial strike can be used off-stage for an early stock when the opponent isn't positioned for the dair spike, but the followups are still useless.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Yeah, I think the buffs for Marth/Lucina definitely serve their purpose. I wanna say the same thing about Mii Swordfighter but I don't know enough about the character to be sure. The buffs for Samus on the other hand look pretty underwhelming. I guess she's pretty much the worst character now? I can't think of any character that I can confidently consider worse than Samus right now.

 

[GeneralLedge]

Now, see, you SAY that, but Mii Sword will stay at the bottom of the tier list for at least the next three months, and nobody still will pick him up unless he ranks high at EVO or something (And I'm willing to bet nobody will use Mii Sword at EVO).

Plus honestly Samus isn't that bad? Unless we're talking specific MUs, but off the top of my head charge shot and missiles pressure Luma pretty well, not to mention the lovely stage-spike shenanigans she has available to her. And the crazy good recovery benefits from bomb jumping.

IDK why we need someone in last place.

 

[Asdioh]

I always thought Zelda seemed pretty clearly last place :x she loses pretty badly to shields and not overcommitting

 

[PUK]

Zelda doesn't lose badly to shield what? She has high reward from two of her throw, a good dash grab and some of her tools can break shield if the opponent is stupid. She loses to thing like jab OOS but even that is can be overcomed. There is no way she's last.

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

Now, see, you SAY that, but Mii Sword will stay at the bottom of the tier list for at least the next three months, and nobody still will pick him up unless he ranks high at EVO or something (And I'm willing to bet nobody will use Mii Sword at EVO).

Plus honestly Samus isn't that bad? Unless we're talking specific MUs, but off the top of my head charge shot and missiles pressure Luma pretty well, not to mention the lovely stage-spike shenanigans she has available to her. And the crazy good recovery benefits from bomb jumping.

IDK why we need someone in last place.

Wth does Rosalina have to do with Samus being a bad character?

 

[Jaxas]

I still have that project in the back of my mind and will talk to @ Jaxas about it because he had some neat ideas.

OH **** I KNEW I FORGOT SOMETHING

I'll get back to work on that today; let me know if you want things changed from before.

Zelda doesn't lose badly to shield what? She has high reward from two of her throw, a good dash grab and some of her tools can break shield if the opponent is stupid. She loses to thing like jab OOS but even that is can be overcomed. There is no way she's last.

Who would you consider worse than Zelda?
(Also, just a reminder that being 'last' in this game is no where near as the connotations that have come with 'last' in the past games, from what we know so far)

Wth does Rosalina have to do with Samus being a bad character?

Good matchups are the most important thing for a character to have; having amazing tools means nothing if they can't be applied well, after all. Rosalina's a top-tier character, so having a good MU there is helpful

 

[Emblem Lord]

Played a fox in tourney a few days back. He was at about 70% and I caught him at the edge of battlefield. I was at 10% so no rage. He ate the full combo ending in side B. Dude flew like he had wings and died. DI was perfect too as he was almost vertical

I felt bad.

For like 3 seconds.

 

[Antonykun]

You know I feel like everyone can easily kill luma, if so then it's probably more important ask what happens next. Rosalina is still a semidecent character for the 14+ seconds it takes before you get luma back

 

[andimidna]

You know I feel like everyone can easily kill luma, if so then it's probably more important ask what happens next. Rosalina is still a semidecent character for the 14+ seconds it takes before you get luma back

This. And lol Samus, isn't her ideal MU someone she can stay back and spam? Long range projectiles lose to gravitational pull always... Rip
Although her customs seem to make her more of a trap based character so that should be a better MU
Setting up slow projectiles that she can move with and possibly actually punish a gravitational pull. Much closer to even.
That sort of thing can get annoying when you have hurtboxes everywhere (aka rosa is giant + luma)
Edit: hmm... How does a samus approach? I don't think I've ever seen tournament footage of one. Is there anything reliable?

 

[~ Gheb ~]

The HP nerf for Luma was probably very significant ... she dies quite easily after the patch.

 

[andimidna]

The HP nerf for Luma was probably very significant ... she dies quite easily after the patch.

...She also died quite easily before the patch
Idk why it took a nerf for ppl to realize this

 

[Lavani]

Today while labbing customs I learned that I will apparently die at 3% if I trade with Falcon Kick Fury because the move has multiple silly windboxes.

I haven't seen much of custom Falcon and I don't know what the competitive merit of the Falcon Kick variants is (I'm guessing all three are bleh overall looking at the custom moveset project sets), but this seems like one of those weird things that'll jank someone out of nowhere in a tournament set eventually.

I also feel like I've been sleeping hard on Greninja's Stagnant Shuriken and hope to see it put to use in tournaments at some point. It combos into smashes, dash grab, pp utilt>stuff, even dair for max style points and is useful for stuffing approaches, controlling space, and covering ledge options. It isn't transcendent but doesn't vanish when clanked, so it can eat other projectiles too, though it's placed low enough for things like Samus' missiles to pass over it if used from the ground.

The HP nerf for Luma was probably very significant ... she dies quite easily after the patch.

I honestly wasn't expecting much out of a -5 HP nerf, but I do notice Luma dying a lot more often onstage now. It's pretty noticeable in MUs where he ends up meatshielding projectiles especially.

 

[Firefoxx]

Today while labbing customs I learned that I will apparently die at 3% if I trade with Falcon Kick Fury because the move has multiple silly windboxes.

I haven't seen much of custom Falcon and I don't know what the competitive merit of the Falcon Kick variants is (I'm guessing all three are bleh overall looking at the custom moveset project sets), but this seems like one of those weird things that'll jank someone out of nowhere in a tournament set eventually.
.

I knew Falcon Kick Fury was useful!

To be fair, it might be the best of the bunch without this, but they really are all super meh and Falcon generally has better things to do with his time than commit to Falcon Kick. But I might run FKF exclusively now just because of this nonsense.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

5 HP really doesn't sound like a whole lot but when you think about how much difference a 1 HP change made for Pac-Man's Fire Hydrant it's not actually surprising to see Luma die a whole lot faster and more often now.

 

[Antonykun]

5 HP really doesn't sound like a whole lot but when you think about how much difference a 1 HP change made for Pac-Man's Fire Hydrant it's not actually surprising to see Luma die a whole lot faster and more often now.

playing as devils advocate but the fire hydrant "buff" was there so pac man can't b-air it as an easy and strong projectile

 

[Nu~]

playing as devils advocate but the fire hydrant "buff" was there so pac man can't b-air it as an easy and strong projectile

But yet they gave us a custom melon that can launch it in one z drop,
just like the default melon used to do.

I don't really understand that logic

 

[Antonykun]

But yet they gave us a custom melon that can launch it in one z drop,
just like the default melon used to do.

I don't really understand that logic

well the melon is far harder to use than bair. You lose access to the cherry, strawberry, orange AND apple so you can launch it that's more than half of his bonus fruits

 

[Nu~]

well the melon is far harder to use than bair. You lose access to the cherry, strawberry, orange AND apple so you can launch it that's more than half of his bonus fruits

We could only one shot the hydrant when our bair was completely fresh. First two hits were free hydrant launching, but it took more time after that.

 

[bc1910]

I always thought Zelda seemed pretty clearly last place :x she loses pretty badly to shields and not overcommitting

Zelda can Hoo-Hah vs bad or no DI... trouble is her Dthrow animation is so slow there's no excuse not to DI away.

I also think she's clearly last. Samus has a few positive traits at least, and her projectiles keep getting better. Zelda has what? Elevator? Bleh. Zelda's the closest thing I think this game has to a "bad" character by quite a margin.

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

Zelda can Hoo-Hah vs bad or no DI... trouble is her Dthrow animation is so slow there's no excuse not to DI away.

I also think she's clearly last. Samus has a few positive traits at least, and her projectiles keep getting better. Zelda has what? Elevator? Bleh. Zelda's the closest thing I think this game has to a "bad" character by quite a margin.

But but nairo plays her.....