Character Competitive Impressions

[Sinister Slush]

I'm pretty certain Yoshi is the most used character on Japanese For Glory.
Other than that tons of Greninja.

So basically until wii u when the actual Yoshi mains come out of the woodwork and enter tournaments, the only videos we'll be getting is Yoshidora?
Damn.

Was half hoping Denti was gonna stick with Yoshi when he said he'd pick him up so some people in the next month or so on 3DS shows Yoshi's potential, but like all top players they gotta choose much easier routes with less thinking so Sheik Rosalina etc.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

lol i think samus has alot of potential with some great combo ability zoning and spacing. her roll is massivly buffed to since it has the longest invincibily in the game i beileve. also reliable kill ability charge shot, bair,dair,f smash, somtimes up smash since its better as well.

 

[Shaya]

Also, the Wifi Conquest feature had this "ninja" grouping recently, having greninja, sheik and sonic as the contenders.
Pretty optimal 3 character prong for something, and I wouldn't have brought it up if the results weren't... interesting.
I believe conquest considers use as well as victory, so I believe very very popular characters will skew numbers even if they're losing.

Either way the splits were roughly
45%
25% /

And this was pretty consistent between all regions/world. I don't think you can derive that Greninja is better than Sonic/Sheik because of this, but I never expected such a dominant skew, all three seem pretty potent abusing wifi so I can't help but assume it has a lot to do with popularity than power.

 

[Signia]

I can't really blame anyone for not bothering to progress their character's metagame in their character boards. The competitive community feels really tiny right now, and this 3DS only period feels like just the prelude to WiiU version which will be the real deal.

Or maybe I'm that impression since the community seems so scattered right now? Everyone's spread out onto reddit, where no real discussion takes place, and facebook groups, where isolated discussion occurs. I've never seen the community so disparate.

 

[Kofu]

Also, the Wifi Conquest feature had this "ninja" feature recently, having greninja, sheik and sonic as the contenders.
Pretty optimal 3 character prong for something, and I wouldn't have brought it up if the results weren't... interesting.
I believe conquest considers use as well as victory, so I believe very very popular characters will skew numbers even if they're losing.

Either way the splits were roughly
45%
25% /

And this was pretty consistent between all regions/world. I don't think you can derive that Greninja is better than Sonic/Sheik because of this, but I never expected such a dominant skew, all three seem pretty potent abusing wifi so I can't help but assume it has a lot to do with popularity than power.

Greninja's a pretty popular/potent Pokémon but it's interesting that, if it's purely popularity, that it beat out Sonic so solidly. It's also probably the easiest to use/ abuse on Wi-Fi between USmash, Shadow Sneak, DAir, and Water Shuriken. Being a new character this get probably helps, too.

 

[gameprodigy12]

So basically until wii u when the actual Yoshi mains come out of the woodwork and enter tournaments, the only videos we'll be getting is Yoshidora?
Damn.

Was half hoping Denti was gonna stick with Yoshi when he said he'd pick him up so some people in the next month or so on 3DS shows Yoshi's potential, but like all top players they gotta choose much easier routes with less thinking so Sheik Rosalina etc.

Actually Rosalina requires a lot of thinking when playing as her.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Pretty sure I've read numerous posts in this very thread saying Luma isn't that much of a help nor really "hard" to use.
Hell watching Dabuz vs Nairo today just proved that to me even more. Luma dies like 4 times a minute anyways and only time Dabuz ever used it was for the custom move single star bit.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Zelda sucks, Rob sucks too. Their meta seems to have staled already. Sure they were okay to begin with (just like zelda in brawl) but now that they've already demonstrated most of what they can do they are done for.

A few characters being mediocre =/= stale meta. No one even plays Zelda. Hell, no one even plays ZSS, who is almost certainly a top 10 contender. On top of that we don't even have a real controller yet.

Also a lot of results aren't even being talked about. Dakpo is getting top 3 in his region with ZSS, and it's not a weak region either (Infinity and Denti both live there among others). It's like if you don't live in NJ or Japan your results don't matter right now. For this reason and for other reasons I am taking posted results with a grain of salt. Early Brawl results were really stupid, looking back on them makes me laugh. Melee's early results are less comparable because the game changed dramatically in a way that is unlikely to happen with Smash 4 (realize that a lot of Smash fundamentals in general are a result of a Melee "Renaissance" period), but even Melee results 4-5 years ago looked totally foreign in a lot of ways.

There are so many characters people just aren't playing or bothering to play. That's not to say they're great, but I mean come on, there are like 50 characters in this game.

 

[otter]

lol i think samus has alot of potential with some great combo ability zoning and spacing. her roll is massivly buffed to since it has the longest invincibily in the game i believe. also reliable kill ability charge shot, bair,dair,f smash, somtimes up smash since its better as well.

I agree. Biggest weakness is lack of kill moves. Down and forward smash are weak. Up smash doesn't work on hit and you get punished. it's pretty much just charge shot and bair (which is really slow and pretty much only works offstage)

f tilt is like the best move of all time.

Rosalina CAN be a smart character...but youre kind of just better off spamming dash attack until the meta developes.

 

[Sinister Slush]

To be fair Dallas doesn't have that many top level players at the end of Brawl's lifespan outside of Denti.
That certainly didn't carry over to Smash 4 so far.

For now SFP just wait for a big TX regional/national for Wii U before anything. ZSS still is bonkers kinda.

 

[DanGR]

As far as tier list placement and discussion goes... it's cool and all to talk about character strengths, weaknesses, and specific moves; they help us understand the characters better. But it doesn't matter unless it's further related to tournaments. Competitive viability is ultimately determined by how relevant a character is in a tournament setting, directly influenced by matchups, stages, counterpicks, and other tournament rules- not by applying a generic heuristics template and voila! "X tier list position," or even a more general (and certainly more rampant in this thread, for sure,) "X is pretty good."

Example of heuristics that leads to a poorly constructed tier list:
Rosalina has solid range & disjoints, reliable kill moves, and a solid recovery. Therefore: Rosalina is top tier.

None of that is particularly relevant information. It's not necessary that any of these characteristics lead to a higher tier position unless you directly relate their combined impact to the aforementioned matchups, stages, etc. These traits only make it more likely the character belongs higher on a tier list because we've previously established these traits as tending to belong to characters that do well in tournaments through more direct means like actually winning matchups, functioning as solid counterpicks to relevant characters, and/or being flexible on counterpick stages. It's the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning.

That said, yeah, I suppose you could use heuristics as a means of generating a generalized tier list, but it's going to be so vaguely constructed you may as well have each tier listed in intervals of 10, in no particular order. Anything past that is speculation at best.

Examples of relevant arguments that can lead to well-made tier lists: (Let's fix that poor argument I formed earlier)
Rosalina is extremely flexible in game 1, using the current stage strike system. Depending on the character and stage, the Rosalina player can tailor her custom moves to match the opponent's moveset and the stage layout. FD's flat layout pronounces her strong projectile and spacing game. Battlefield is particular advantageous for juggling from under the platforms with Rosalina's excellent up-air. Rosalina can make great use of her ground game on the short Yoshi's Island stage. Whether you strike first or second, there aren't any neutral stages players can take you to that Rosalina doesn't excel on unlike X and X high-top tier contenders.

Luma provides Rosalina with projectile stuffing properties, a projectile herself, and fast, long ranged disjoints. These properties polarize matchups against the popular, mid-high tier zone denial characters such as Diddy, Villager, and DHD by disallowing their projectile game while simultaneously walling off slow, option-few approaches. These overpowering, positive matchups strengthen Rosalina as a useful counterpick option.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

That said, yeah, I suppose you could use heuristics as a means of generating a generalized tier list, but it's going to be so vaguely constructed you may as well have each tier listed in intervals of 10, in no particular order. Anything past that is speculation at best.

I think this is a pretty good idea, actually. We can't really get pinpoint accuracy without long-term observation anyway.

 

[DanGR]

I think this is a pretty good idea, actually. We can't really get pinpoint accuracy without long-term observation anyway.

And assign point values to each variable? Sounds fun.

 

[Tagxy]

Was half hoping Denti was gonna stick with Yoshi when he said he'd pick him up so some people in the next month or so on 3DS shows Yoshi's potential, but like all top players they gotta choose much easier routes with less thinking so Sheik Rosalina etc.

Wat. Sheik seems super hard to use well, or at least easier than yoshi from what Ive seen. I wouldnt say any of them are easy though.

 

[Yoshi Kirishima]

Holy ****, I thought Charizard sucked but after watching Trela, it seems that even Charizard has some nice tools.

I just love that every character has unique strengths and weaknesses, instead of in previous games where too many characters just had more, bigger strengths and less, smaller weaknesses than others, which resulted in only ~1/4 of the cast being used consistently, with another 1/4 being situational rare, and the last half being almost never seen. This will really help keep every character viable, as some characters will naturally be good at exploiting weaknesses of others and this is exemplified with such a large roster.

I'm so excited this may be the first smash game where not even only one half, but all or nearly all characters will be tournament viable, and the first smash game where it may be the norm for players to have multiple mains, rather than just sticking to one and maybe having a pocket Fox/Metaknight (it's more fun playing multiple characters than being pressured to stick to one to get better. Plus it makes tournaments more interesting because there would be some added strategy via choosing characters during a blind pick).

 

[meleebrawler]

You think Luigi's reward is terrible?

*goes back to Mario boards to cry in a corner*

You think Mario's reward was reduced just because of Doc?

 

[Luco]

I think this is a pretty good idea, actually. We can't really get pinpoint accuracy without long-term observation anyway.

And assign point values to each variable? Sounds fun.

See this is why you two are some of my favourite posters on this thread. =P

In regards to how the discussion in this thread is framed, i'd actually echo the sentiment that characters that aren't being discussed will have a meta game that they're developing. This thread isn't necessarily the source of all info that goes on and where the meta is 'at', I think that's really best at the character boards. And I kinda feel like all we can do is base our opinions and what we discuss on recent results mainly because they give us some kind of indicator. It's all well and good to say 'let's talk about Pac-Man because he hasn't been talked about for a while and variety is nice; but you run up against 2 problems doing this. The first i've already mentioned, and that's that Pac-man may not have many results for us to go off due to the fact the game has only been out for just over a month. The second issue is that some regular people here may not have much to offer on Pac-man, which then decreases activity in the thread.

Don't get me wrong, i'd love to discuss some different characters and I totally think we shouldn't just stick to the 'this is top 10 and these are the characters in it and these are their traits' but I think that subtly, the conversation will shift as these characters continue to demonstrate their strength and people begin to look at characters who have surprised them or characters with unexpected viability. Then from there, people will naturally fill out the roster when more info comes. I just think that forcing discussion in a certain area can (but not always) ruin the flow of discussion and that if you want to shift what people are talking about, sneak it in a little more subtly. So I mean like, instead of saying "guys let's talk about X and Y characters because no-one talks about them", we should say "So I've been rather surprised by X and Y characters. Their tournament placings have been surprisingly stellar of late and I think this may call for a re-evaluation of their viability. Here's what i'm talking about (insert link to tournament with these results)."

That's just one way to get the ball rolling. I'm sure there are plenty of others, too. ^_^

 

[Thinkaman]

I think all tiering needs to be rooted on some numerical measure based on matchup ratios.

Telling me Mario is S-tier, Luigi is A-tier, Peach is B-tier, and Bowser is C-tier doesn't actually tell me any meaningful information. I don't care about the order as much as the magnitude of the gaps. A tier list that tells me nothing except who the best and worst character(s), with no reference frame, is nothing more than trivial.

Do the C-tiers generally have 4-6 matchups against the S-tiers, or 2-8, or what? How big are the gaps here?

What does it mean to be S-tier, or C-tier? You have to provide numbers.

Even preliminary tier lists not based on actual matchup charts should still aim to approximate this structure and presentation. The information and grouping has to mean something. Otherwise you're just playing dress-up.

Currently, it does not look like any character is going to fall outside the 4.0 - 6.0 range, which is a typical range for a modern fighting game.

 

[Mota]

Really liking how closer in balance the Smash4 roster is.

People had Ike pegged as bottom 10 and yet Ryuga goes on a killing spree.
I'm going to be optimistic and say when an official tier list does come out, bottom of mid tier and up will be completely viable for tourney.

I don't believe there'll be a SS tier like MK at least.

Diddy is crazy despite the banana game nerf. His grab game is just too strong. The early 40% combos off a grab, and the uair kill setups. Too strong.

 

[Tagxy]

Relatively speaking, heres how I feel our knowledge of characters stacks up in judging the information we have:


Large and Varied


Moderate and Varied


Moderate but concentrated


Low and concentrated


Virtually nothing


Feel free to state disagreements.

I feel like discussion at the top of this list is in threat of being repetitive and near the bottom is threatened to be more assumption based/misinformed. But it might be worth discussing a wider variety too, in more abstract ways if the information isnt quite there.

 

[Meru.]

I'm pretty certain Yoshi is the most used character on Japanese For Glory.
Other than that tons of Greninja.

Everyone else is honestly quite rare... some obvious gate keeper characters being shown, but when I see the hiragana/katakana, I know I'm either dealing with backwards roll, water shuryken dash upsmash the character, or dash attack and egg throw the character (Yoshi doesn't need no back rolls, he is a strong independent lizard who just presses win buttons, why would he need to press passive buttons?)

Little Mac is SUPER overused and of the hundred good Little Macs I have only encountered one good one. Characters I see very often on For Glory here are Little Mac, Yoshi, Ness and Ike, and then come characters like Greninja, Sheik, Pacman, and Mario.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

And assign point values to each variable? Sounds fun.

Fun? No, but probably the best way to do things? Yeah, sure.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

So basically until wii u when the actual Yoshi mains come out of the woodwork and enter tournaments, the only videos we'll be getting is Yoshidora?
Damn.

I can try to record and upload some of Slice's stuff. He has a handful of gimmicks and janky kill setups that some Yoshi's may not know about or know how to use yet.

Also, Yoshi's placings are fine. 1st / 1XX and 9th / 180 from Yoshidora as well as 4th/256 by Yikarur and 5th/256 by Slice. Americans needs to step up their Yoshi game though :3

 

[Luco]

Little Mac is SUPER overused and of the hundred good Little Macs I have only encountered one good one. Characters I see very often on For Glory here are Little Mac, Yoshi, Ness and Ike, and then come characters like Greninja, Sheik, Pacman, and Mario.

Actually yeah i've seen some really scary Ikes around lately. The other char i've seen a few times is DDD, he seems to pop up quite a lot and spam gordos.

Ironically I haven't seen a lot of other Nesses... *sad*

In regards to @ Tagxy i'd argue that Ike is low and concentrated now considering Ryuga. That was the only one that really stood out to me though. =P

 

[ferioku]

Relatively speaking, heres how I feel our knowledge of characters stacks up in judging the information we have:


Large and Varied


Moderate and Varied


Moderate but concentrated


Low and concentrated


Virtually nothing


Feel free to state disagreements.

I feel like discussion at the top of this list is in threat of being repetitive and near the bottom is threatened to be more assumption based/misinformed. But it might be worth discussing a wider variety too, in more abstract ways if the information isnt quite there.

King d3 and Kirby shouldn't be a t bottom. Robin and Shulk should be higher as well.

 

[Berserker.]

King d3 and Kirby shouldn't be a t bottom. Robin and Shulk should be higher as well.

Our knowledge about those characters are pretty much non-existent/minimal so they deserve to be in their respective groupings. They aren't usually talked about in this thread

 

[Lenus Altair]

I'm just looking forward to the Wii U version. I personally can't commit to serious training/researching with the 3DS with my setup and how uncomfortable/precision lacking the controller is. I rather spend time unlocking things until then.

On a separate note, we are looking at a metagame of underdeveloped characters. Even the characters with the most devoted mains and resources still have untapped potential. Further more, as options for characters are discovered, how other characters handle/adapt to it will always be a factor.
One technique is all a character needs to go from zero to busted arse hero (Hi desync!)

This is also ignoring we don't truly understand the full ramifications of the engine/universal mechanics yet or have a consist ruleset either.

Point being, most any character in the cast is still a potential threat.

I'm not saying don't discuss impressions. I think this thread is one of the most useful on the boards right now. Just try not be dismissive.

 

[Terotrous]

Relatively speaking, heres how I feel our knowledge of characters stacks up in judging the information we have:

Palutena should be at least one tier higher due to Aerolink, there's at least 20 matches of his Palutena on TourneyLocator. I would also put Dr Mario in the lowest tier, unless there's some DrM player I'm not aware of.

Holy ****, I thought Charizard sucked but after watching Trela, it seems that even Charizard has some nice tools.

Trela seems to be the ultimate low tier hero. There's footage of him rocking it up with Shulk too. Though I've always suspected Shulk is somewhat better than people give him credit for.

I'm just looking forward to the Wii U version. I personally can't commit to serious training/researching with the 3DS with my setup and how uncomfortable/precision lacking the controller is. I rather spend time unlocking things until then.

I kind of agree, especially when you add in the lag. I got matched up against some actually decent players on For Glory last night, but there was a fair amount of lag so the matches couldn't really be played out to their fullest potential (also, they dropped after I 2-stocked them a couple times).

 

[mimgrim]

Relatively speaking, heres how I feel our knowledge of characters stacks up in judging the information we have:


Large and Varied


Moderate and Varied


Moderate but concentrated


Low and concentrated


Virtually nothing


Feel free to state disagreements.

I feel like discussion at the top of this list is in threat of being repetitive and near the bottom is threatened to be more assumption based/misinformed. But it might be worth discussing a wider variety too, in more abstract ways if the information isnt quite there.

You haven't seen me talk about Palutena on this thread have you? :L

Plus her character boards are surprisingly active. I'd at least put her at low and concentrated.

 

[Tagxy]

Its a fluid list and things like existing in a previous installment, being a clone, or being new (dr. mario vs Palutena respectively) can have an affect. But I guess I didnt catch the vids or info on Palutena. Im taking notes on stuff, Ill just leave it be for now and change it later. In the meantime it seems worth trying to gather more info on some of these characters, while all discussion is interesting I think anyone in the "moderate but concentrated" category and below definitely deserve further research and discussion.

 

[Terotrous]

Well the thing is, short of some people picking up those characters and winning tournament matches, we're not going to get that much more information about them. I think we've all done a brief analysis on some of those characters, and said things like "Man, Olimar is terrible", but if you want to know exactly how terrible we need some highly skilled sucker to choose that character.

 

[NAKAT]

I'll discuss my earlier top 10 and bottom 5 post later guys

 

[Tagxy]

Thats sort of true Tero but not necessarily its just harder. Time, effort, and research goes a long way. Marth isnt really the best character on 3ds and doesnt have a champion, but I feel like theres a lot being done for that character to create an understanding. Shaya also wrote some cool stuff up on falco earlier. Things like that. Maybe we should have some sort of God post with those sorts of things.

 

[MisterVisceral]

I know I main him and all and have a little bit of a bias, but I'm so surprised at the lack of discussion. Such an interesting character, and a variety of ways to play him:

Koopa kart: Either use it to approach, to set up combos, or to get characters offstage with its stopping hit.
Abandon Ship (up+b): Great kill move on its own, can be used as falling delay, setup for hammer swing, great for spacing
Mechakoopa: Some are using it for stage control, which is great when used unpredictably. Can also be used as a projectile. Use in the air as a slight falling delay, or off the stage for gimping.
Dash attack is solid and has priority, grab game is okay at worst (Dthrow for racking it up), pummel game is entertaining because bop, cannonball is a decent stopper and edgeguarding tool.
Recovery game is ON FLEEEK, and well paired with aerial edgeguarding game.

Speaking of his aerials, Fair stays out forever, as does Dair, which has a great autocancel when it hits on the ground, leading to a nice Dtilt, Bair has decent knockback, and Uair is also a decent kill move.

Ftilt has long range, is quick, and has nice knockback. Dtilt has great range, priority, and stays out for a while. Great for blocking approaches. Utilt can set up into a Usmash combo.

Fsmash is unwieldy but racks up damage and kills at pretty low %, Usmash has nice priority and also kills, Dmash is also unwieldy, but is a killer when it lands.

Think I covered everything. Someone push back now pls.

 

[Terotrous]

Thats sort of true Tero but not necessarily its just harder. Time, effort, and research goes a long way. Marth isnt really the best character on 3ds and doesnt have a champion, but I feel like theres a lot being done for that character to create an understanding. Shaya also wrote some cool stuff up on falco earlier. Things like that. Maybe we should have some sort of God post with those sorts of things.

Well I'm sure you can check any character's boards and there's at least a few people who have been labbing it up with those characters. Might be a good place to look if you specifically want discussion about a particular character.

 

[Mr. Johan]

Greninja's a pretty popular/potent Pokémon but it's interesting that, if it's purely popularity, that it beat out Sonic so solidly. It's also probably the easiest to use/ abuse on Wi-Fi between USmash, Shadow Sneak, DAir, and Water Shuriken. Being a new character this get probably helps, too.

Had Sonic been a newcomer he probably would have come out on top in that Conquest. But Pac and Rock are the new blood, and Sonic's just kinda there, in both Smash representation and in popularity.

Ironic. He gets a tremendous amount of buffs coming into Smash 4, hardly anyone uses him.

 

[mimgrim]

Koopa Kart is a pretty bad approach tbh. Sure it has nice combo potential. But to be anywhere close to a useful approach it needs Sonic's Spin Dash speed. I find it best when recovering from up high after using your DJ, 2nd Koopa Kart (forgot its name) is an even better recovery option from up high since the spin animation will give the Koppalings a ton of momentum. Dash Attack is also pretty bad because it's streamlined and lasts way too long. I think the Koopalings' potential lie in their good tilts and aerials and Big Mecha Koopa.

 

[Terotrous]

Koopa Kart is a pretty bad approach tbh. Sure it has nice combo potential. But to be anywhere close to a useful approach it needs Sonic's Spin Dash speed. I find it best when recovering from up high after using your DJ, 2nd Koopa Kart (forgot its name) is an even better recovery option from up high since the spin animation will give the Koppalings a ton of momentum. Dash Attack is also pretty bad because it's streamlined and lasts way too long. I think the Koopalings' potential lie in their good tilts and aerials and Big Mecha Koopa.

They pointed out something pretty useful at Shockwave, which is that when you start Koopa Kart, Bowser Jr actually moves back about half a character length. As such, it's actually kind of a footsies tool, since you can quickly feint away from a poke and then punish. Of course, it is a commitment to go for it, but it has pretty solid reward if you get it.

 

[rd1023]

What does everyone think about link? Viable? I hear he was buffed a lot.

 

[MisterVisceral]

Had Sonic been a newcomer he probably would have come out on top in that Conquest. But Pac and Rock are the new blood, and Sonic's just kinda there, in both Smash representation and in popularity.

Ironic. He gets a tremendous amount of buffs coming into Smash 4, hardly anyone uses him.

Definitely. I actually mained Sonic for a while in Brawl, then switched to Olimar. Think I just got excited about Greninja and started making him my secondary. Probably gonna start using Sonic secondary.

Also, what Tero just said.