Work In Progress Competitive Neutral, Advantage, and Disadvantage Character Rankings (Outdated)

[DanGR]

Yeah, I don't usually think in terms of "on a scale from one to ten." It'll be more apparent to me where Rosalina stands when more of the high/top tiers are fleshed out. Like how many characters are allowed 5 stars?

 

[ItsRainingGravy]

Yeah, I don't usually think in terms of "on a scale from one to ten." It'll be more apparent to me where Rosalina stands when more of the high/top tiers are fleshed out. Like how many characters are allowed 5 stars?

As of right now, about ~5. However, I might change this in the future depending on other people's opinions (in the future anyways), the addition of new characters, and certain characters that might need to be on the list more than once ( & ). But we'll reach that point eventually. So for right now, I would say five per category.

The only exception to this right now is the single half-star, which would have 10 characters. Though I am planning to branch this off eventually anyways.

Assuming there will be 60 characters total at the end of the game's lifespan (5 additional characters), I will add an additional full star to raise the total to 6 Stars, and then each category will go back to 5 characters per again.


EDIT: Of course, if I make any change to the system we're working with right now, I'll make an announcement of it and then add the new information to the OP. Additionally, I will make fixes/adjustments to the rankings to corespond to the changes as well. Such as regrouping characters into higher or lower categories that would best match their new relativity amongst the rest of the cast.

 

[san.]

I just notice a lot of people rating disadvantage as 1s and 2s.

Anyways, I notice that some aspects such as survivability isn't really accounted for. Is that a part of disadvantage or neutral? You can get killed out of both. Maybe it affects both ratings?

 

[ItsRainingGravy]

I just notice a lot of people rating disadvantage as 1s and 2s.

Anyways, I notice that some aspects such as survivability isn't really accounted for. Is that a part of disadvantage or neutral? You can get killed out of both. Maybe it affects both ratings?

I would treat survivability as a sort of "passive" Disadvantage state. As in, the moment you pick your character on the select screen, that particular Disadvantage is something that you are always going to have to take into account throughout the entirety of the match. As opposed to being forcibly placed into a bad position by your opponent.

I don't think it really affects Neutral too much, since Neutral refers to actively controlling space, and that is determined by the character's moves/frame data/mobility/hitboxes/etc. The only way I can see it affecting the Neutral is through "fear factor"; being afraid of dying due to the passive Disadvantage or your character's survivability. However this is more of a psychological thing as opposed to character stats.

 

[RayNoire]

As of right now, about ~5. However, I might change this in the future depending on other people's opinions (in the future anyways), the addition of new characters, and certain characters that might need to be on the list more than once ( & ). But we'll reach that point eventually. So for right now, I would say five per category.

The only exception to this right now is the single half-star, which would have 10 characters. Though I am planning to branch this off eventually anyways.

Oh. That changes my ratings a lot. More like this:



Neutral: ★ (bottom 15)
Advantage: ★★★★ (top 15)
Disadvantage: ☆ (bottom 10)

 

[Raijinken]

I just notice a lot of people rating disadvantage as 1s and 2s.

Anyways, I notice that some aspects such as survivability isn't really accounted for. Is that a part of disadvantage or neutral? You can get killed out of both. Maybe it affects both ratings?

Survivability is really hard to classify. So many factors go into it (fall speed, weight, size, and so on), that it's hard to classify it as being strictly related to one category. Since much of this is fairly subjective to begin with, it makes sense that players can factor survivability into their own analysis of characters. For instance, Bowser is massive and takes a lot of percent tacked on to kill (generally), but his rather low-end-of-average-or-worse recovery, plus his jugglability, mean that many of the factors contributing to his survivability also directly cause the need for such survivability. On the opposite end, Jigglypuff is a feather but is consequently hard to juggle. Yet one solid blow, forget anything about combos, will end her.

I feel like the three state system simply doesn't account well for that sort of survival polarity that exists in Smash. A dimension that could indicate that volatility may be nice in order to essentially factor in things like weight and floatiness (though those also affect survivability in different ways, affecting horizontal vs vertical kill feasibility).

 

[ぱみゅ]

My rating on Lucina's advantage were low because I compared hers to Marth's. Probably weighed wrong some aspects, like Marth's combos and Lucina's SB, but thank you guys on the feedback.

Now, I'll going to say that Macchi's values on Zelda are waaaaaaaaay too inflated.
There's no way her Advantage stage is THAT much above average (if it is even average at all), when she gets nothing out of it. She has combos, sure, but she can't reliably do anything from them, she can't reliably setup into killmoves (because lolLKs) and her Dtilt is not THAT godlike.
Also, her floatiness is not a positive aspect on disadvantage, nor is her Nayru's Love whose intangibility isn't nearly as reliable as before, nor are the LKs when this game has this silly tendency to shrink hurtboxes when at cooldown.

I'd rank her pretty much like this:

Neutral: ★★☆ (+½ because Fsmash is a powerful neutral tool, too).
Advantage: ★★☆ (Dins is nice pressure at Adv, at least forcing a reaction, and so is Phantom. Everything else is meh)
Disadvantage: ★☆ (Given how she's juggled for days and is light enough to die early, her only positive aspect here is her air mobility and her nice recovery.

 

[ItsRainingGravy]

Survivability is really hard to classify. So many factors go into it (fall speed, weight, size, and so on), that it's hard to classify it as being strictly related to one category. Since much of this is fairly subjective to begin with, it makes sense that players can factor survivability into their own analysis of characters. For instance, Bowser is massive and takes a lot of percent tacked on to kill (generally), but his rather low-end-of-average-or-worse recovery, plus his jugglability, mean that many of the factors contributing to his survivability also directly cause the need for such survivability. On the opposite end, Jigglypuff is a feather but is consequently hard to juggle. Yet one solid blow, forget anything about combos, will end her.

I feel like the three state system simply doesn't account well for that sort of survival polarity that exists in Smash. A dimension that could indicate that volatility may be nice in order to essentially factor in things like weight and floatiness (though those also affect survivability in different ways, affecting horizontal vs vertical kill feasibility).

In my eyes, here is how I view the three states (in regards to this topic):


Neutral: The character's ability to control the pace of the match when neither character is in the Advantage or Disadvantage state. This includes stage control via projectiles, footsies for both offensive and defensive purposes, and overall mobility options.

Advantage: The character's ability to capitalize on the opponent's Disadvantage to help win the match. This includes combos, strong KO options, KO confirm setups, edgeguarding options, frame traps, and the ability to continue to apply pressure on your opponent to keep them in the Disadvantage state for as long as possible...or make them lose.

Disadvantage: The character's ability to recover from a bad situation, either by active or passive means. Actively, it includes a character's OoS Options, quick aerials (such as Nairs to break combos), how good their dodging abilities are (both on the ground and in the air), or other special moves such as counters or moves with super armor. Passively, it includes a character's natural attributes to escape bad situations without direct player input. This includes a character's weight, size, "floatiness", and other factors to help prolong their ability to survive until high damages, or help escape combos. Either way, actively or passively, a character's Disadvantage state is the character's ability to recover from a bad situation in order to not lose, so that they can hopefully reset back to Neutral and change the pace of a match.


So while Neutral and Advantage are simple to understand, Disadvantage is more broad than the other two states.


However, in short: It is the character's ability to not lose when they are in a bad situation. Either through active or passive means.

 

[Shaya]

Okay, maybe right now we should avoid stars completely. I'm sure others could follow along with this.


COMPARE THE PAIR.
Doc Neutral > Dedede
Doc Advantage <= Dedede
Doc Disadvantage << Dedede

.....

And/or
Doc's Neutral > Advantage > Disadvantage by far.
Wii Fit's Disadvantage > Neutral > Advantage: although her neutral and disadvantage overlap a lot; my thoughts on advantage are how much she can trap or bait, or get huge damage off of nair/uair... hmm... [my issue is that I tend to think WiiFit is a pretty solid character, at least comparatively to more 'low tier' standards)



I will avoid Miis.

Well who sits out in neutral out of these characters?
***

Worst neutral:

Best disadvantage? Wii Fit > dedede (weight) > Jigglypuff > noticeable difference?
Worst... well ... Doctor Mario. Lucina/Zelda are next up I'd say.

In terms of disadvantage though, we're likely to see closer values in comparison to the rest of the cast than neutral/advantage. Is Lucina's disadvantage that much worse than Mario proper? Probably not when you think about it.

Advantage: I would say Ganondorf/Zelda are best of these characters. Samus and Jiggs are underwhelming a bit but likely not too far behind others nearby. Dedede is also pretty good in advantage (juggling and edge guarding are very potent for him).

It's interesting to see the 3 characters with the worst neutral in this group likely also have the best advantage.. BALANCE


* WiiFit may not have much of a neutral at all tbqh. It's just her near complete lack of disadvantaged state (that allows her to charge two potent specials) kinda skews thoughts. She has charge moves with amazingly fast cancels. Alright mobility specs, average to above average mid range, not the best CQC but she does have forward tilt.
** When is jigglypuff in advantage and when is she in disadvantage? Her advantage state is practically only off stage as almost anywhere else there are a lot of options available to the opponent (roll away, shield [you can handle 1 pound easily then run away]), her disadvantaged state is minimal as well seeing she's still going to be trying to achieve the same thing with it, hitting you with an aerial as she floats around to try to maintain safety. I think in my mind Jigg's stats are Neutral >= Disadvantage (as they're almost the same in my mind) >>>> Advantage (which is abysmal).

Weight I suppose is an impact to disadvantage. It means that being in disadvantage is that much more dangerous. Mewtwo is floaty, large jump, an air stall and up-b, he definitely has more options in disadvantage than the average, but he's still super light.
I'm not sure how well to rate M2's neutral either. Has a charge special and a reflector, that's pretty big. But averageish grab specs, pokes and mobility... not sure.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

If Jigglypuff pops you up, she wants to hurt you as you move to the ground. I'd say she's pretty alright at that as long as there aren't a bunch of platforms around or you don't get out of disadvantage for free (which, to be fair, is the case for a decent number of characters).

 

[ぱみゅ]

I'm okay with not using star rates.
-I may not find Zelda's advantage that good, I mean she has a combo game, but it stops at a point, doesn't really get a kill setup and can't apply pressure. Din's Fire just doesn't cut it.
-I'd say WFT might have the best Advantage of this batch, with a strong combo game, kill setups (now at reasonable percentages) and the fact that any space allows her to charge her moves.
-Jigglypuff is pretty good at not allowing the opponent to breathe when she gets in, but any successful flail hurts her a lot.
-Ganondorf forces reactions and punishes HARD for any misplay.
-DDD has range, power, and Gordos to keep up, if it weren't for his terrible speed, these traits could platform him to viable tiers.
-Lucina might not have combos, but her jugglings and shield pressure are pretty good.

The rest I'm not mentioning I don't really know how to measure.

 

[nebulark]

I really like this idea, but I think that only 3 categories might not be sufficient. For me "Advantage" decribes two things at once: Comboabilty and Edgeguardability. "Disvadvangtage" is about the opposite of that, while "Neutral" is about the ability to get into advantage, just dealing damage, getting kills/killsetups and surviveablitiy.

Here are two examples to why this could be problem.
Roy's combo and kill potential might be extremly good, due to his speed. However he can't really edguard that well, because of this fallspeed and medicore recovery.
On the one hand, Sheik get can get comboed and killed somewhat easier than other characters, due to her weight and fallspeed. On the other hand, it's very difficult to edguard her. She can mix it up with bouncing fish, while vanish is an extremly potent and hard to stop recovery.

So here is the important question for the OP.
Would rather have this ranking simple and easy to understand, or more detailed and expressive? (Kinda like the comparision between a tierlist and a matchup chart)
I'm okay with both, but I think it's important to answer such a question in the early.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

imo
Best/Worst Disadvantage: /

So does Shulk though. And while Shulk's frame data is horrendously bad, at least he can take more of a beating than an angry piñata with boxing gloves.

There's nothing wrong with Shulk's disadvantage. He's not particularly easy to edgeguard, juggle or ledgetrap, he has really good survival parameters and Vision can be pretty nasty as it can kill opponents from a disadvantaged position at stupid percent. I'd say his disadvantage is average and his advantaged state is pretty good. It's his subpar neutral game that holds Shulk back.

I'd give Shulk the following ratings:
adv: ★★★★☆
neutral: ★★☆
dis: adv: ★★★☆

Seems pretty accurate to me? Overall pretty average stats but due to the importance of neutral he's kinda doomed to stay in the nowhere land of low-midtier.
@ ItsRainingGravy [in case you wanna add Shulk in the OP]

adv: ★★★★☆
neutral: ★★★★☆
dis: ☆

once he gets an advantage, mac is deadly. his dtilt/jab are fast moves which lead to big strings, and he can kill at obnoxiously early percents with his fast, high knockback, armored smashes, and KO punch, which is ridiculously easy to set up. i'm preventing myself from 5-starring his advantage due to his lack of a good throw game (excluding dthrow>up-b which only works for so long) and edgeguarding capacity (d-smash hits far below the edge, but isn't that reliable).

Most of the stuff you're attributing to Mac's advantage state is actually his neutral game.

His advantaged state might as well not exist as apart from single powerful blows in neutral he has nothing that dishes out massive damage once the opponent is in an unfavorable position. He has no juggle traps and no way to kill opponents above hin in midair except the risky upB option. He's not good at edgeguarding and his ledgetraps aren't better than that of many other characters. Mac outpowers his opponents in neutral and neutral only. Once the opponent has been knocked off the ground Mac doesn't have much [read: anything] to keep going on. No direct follow-ups or traps.

But he can repeat the whole process of being better in neutral over and over until he wins [or gets knocked into a disadvantaged position and dies]. So I'd bump down the amount of stars for his advantaged state down to ** at the absolute best tbh.

I just notice a lot of people rating disadvantage as 1s and 2s.

Anyways, I notice that some aspects such as survivability isn't really accounted for. Is that a part of disadvantage or neutral? You can get killed out of both. Maybe it affects both ratings?

Yeah a lot of people tend to give low numbers for disadvantage. I think that's because most people naturally view the disadvantaged state as something negative and thus tend to assume that ratings automatically have to be low for it.

Survivability is a factor that I'd say affects both ratings to different degrees, the disadvantaged state moreso. There aren't many characters that can actually kill reliably out of the neutral position - most kills are still scored in advantaged positions and therefore being particularly strong at resisting kills should mostly [but not entirely] be attributed to a character's capabilities in the disdvantaged state.

Yeah, I don't usually think in terms of "on a scale from one to ten." It'll be more apparent to me where Rosalina stands when more of the high/top tiers are fleshed out. Like how many characters are allowed 5 stars?

I can't speak for any others but I personally just use Sheik's obvious ★★★★★ neutral game as my cornerstone and kinda work from there. I think that's more or less the absolute cornerstone of the smash 4 metagame as a lot of characters viability [or the lack thereof] is a direct consequence of how they perform against Sheik in neutral [or against the characters that can compete with Sheik's neutral].

The characters that have shown themselves to be able to keep up with Sheik's neutral game on various occasions are Diddy Kong, Pikachu and Fox [plus possibly other characters as we may or may not see as this project rolls along] so I think they should have the same 5-star rating. I don't think that should be limited to a fixed amount of characters ... just use stuff that we can safely assume to be accurate and work from there. I mean we all now that ZSS advantaged state is ridiculous and we all know that the likes of Samus, Jigglypuff or Zelda don't really have any such thing as a "neutral" game. We all know that Little Mac might as well be dead once he's knocked out of neutral.

COMPARE THE PAIR.
Doc Neutral > Dedede
Doc Advantage <= Dedede
Doc Disadvantage << Dedede

Is this actually your opinion? Because Doc TOTALLY isn't > DDD in neutral and DDD's advantage is in no way better than Doc's.

If it's just an example ... well. I still think the star rating system is good enough.

 

[DanGR]

Most of the stuff you're attributing to Mac's advantage state is actually his neutral game.

His advantaged state might as well not exist as apart from single powerful blows in neutral he has nothing that dishes out massive damage once the opponent is in an unfavorable position. He has no juggle traps and no way to kill opponents above hin in midair except the risky upB option. He's not good at edgeguarding and his ledgetraps aren't better than that of many other characters. Mac outpowers his opponents in neutral and neutral only. Once the opponent has been knocked off the ground Mac doesn't have much [read: anything] to keep going on. No direct follow-ups or traps.

But he can repeat the whole process of being better in neutral over and over until he wins [or gets knocked into a disadvantaged position and dies]. So I'd bump down the amount of stars for his neutral game down to ** at the absolute best tbh.

I think you meant "advantaged state" here. I normally wouldn't comment on a typo, but it's your whole conclusion.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

This whole thing might work better if you gave people kinda a chart to work with for the rating system and had it in the OP.

Like for the three states, beyond the definition of advantage/neutral/disadvantage and emphasizing the fact that for this topic everyone has to be using those versions of the definitions and not their personal definitions, having an example at least for 5 stars, 3 stars, and 1 star. Ideally examples for 2 and 4 star as well, assuming you can get people to agree to the examples in the first place. It at least gives people something to work with. You would also have to emphasize you don't have to be exactly at the same level as one of the example characters to receive that rating. Being slightly better or worse could still be in that range because there's only 10 ratings and like 50 characters so there is a range within each star rating.

Basically, if you want to cut down on the wide range of what people feel qualifies for various things, you have to give them defined examples to work with, that have detailed explanations as to why they are X rating for that category and not Y or Z.

 

[Unknownkid]

*See Ganon/Samus/Jigglypuff rated as one of worst Neutrals*

I wonder where Based Kirby, a Useful "Copied-Power" Kirby, and Monado Kirby fit in this?

 

[TheHypnotoad]

Stuff

Don't forget that Rosalina's up B has no hitbox, so she is vulnerable if she has used up her double jump and is offstage.

 

[PK Gaming]

I'll give it a shot



Neutral: Average (★★★)

He can harass from afar with projectiles or space up close with FF Fair/jab. Characters who are able to bypass that (ie Mario, Sheik, etc) give him a hard time, while bigger characters (DK, DDD, etc) have a hard time themselves. It can vary wildly depending on the matchup, but I personally feel that it ends up being average overall.

Advantage: Great (★★★★)

Robin can convert into a ton of damage off arcfire/arcthunder. He can string Fair's at lower % and has down throw follow ups. All of the aforementioned setups double as kill setups at higher %. Uair/Fair/Bair are solid finishers. Nosferatu is a high risk, high reward option that can potentially swing the momentum back in your favor after user.

Disadvantage: Abysmal (★)

Robin is a character with bottom class survivability. He practically has no get off me moves (with his best being Elwind, which should speak for itself), making him vulnerable to juggles. His recovery is linear and abusable and his ledge options are poor. Once your opponent gets the momentum it can be difficult for him to mount a comeback.

 

[ItsRainingGravy]

Okay! Now that we've had a little bit of discussion going, we have gotten our fair share of opinions on the current characters in the discussion.

So what I am going to do now is post an analysis of the current debate, and give my own opinions on the rankings

Spoiler: Neutral Rankings

★★★★★ :
★★★★☆ :
★★★★ :
★★★☆ :
★★★ : ()
★★☆ :
★★ :
★☆ :
★ :
☆ : ()

Spoiler: Advantage Rankings

★★★★★ :
★★★★☆ :
★★★★ :
★★★☆ :
★★★ :
★★☆ :
★★ :
★☆ :
★ :
☆ :

Spoiler: Disadvantage Rankings

★★★★★ :
★★★★☆ :
★★★★ :
★★★☆ :
★★★ :
★★☆ :
★★ :
★☆ :
★ :
☆ :

Neutral: +1/-1
Advantage: +1/-1
Disadvantage: +1/-1

Other than Shaya and Gheb discussing D3's Advantage in comparison to the Doc, not much was said about the king. People seem a little torn on his placements atm. I think it would be fair to raise his Disadvantage just a little bit, considering how much punishmend that he can take. But not by too much, since his mobility will always keep him in an unfavourable position.


Neutral: +1/-1
Advantage: +1/-1
Disadvantage: +0/-1

Somewhat similar for the Doc, but even less discussion is going on here. However, Shaya mentioned that he has the worst Disadvantage state, so there's that. While I do think that Doc has tools such as his Nair to break combos, there's no denying that he has the worst recovery in the game baring Little Mac.


Neutral: +2/-0
Advantage: +5/-0
Disadvantage: +0/-0

People seem to have a unanimous opinion that her Advantage should be higher. So we're most likely going to see her bump up in the rankings very soon. Some feel as though her Neutral should be a bit better, too. Her Disadvantage is still pretty bad, though.


Neutral: +0/-0
Advantage: +1/-0
Disadvantage: +2/-0

Not much discussion here either. Though there is agreeance on her having the best Disadvantage out of the currently discused characters. I am not well-versed in the ways of yoga, so I have no real opinion on her~


Neutral: +0/-1
Advantage: +4/-0
Disadvantage: +0/-0

People feel as though his Advantage state is really good. Considering who it is, I don't really blame them for it, lol


Neutral: +0/-0
Advantage: +0/-2
Disadvantage: +0/-2

Couple of mentions on how her Advantage state seems pretty inflated as of right now. And so far, I am inclined to agree with them. She can hit hard and combo ever-so-slightly, but she doesn't really shut down character options like some other characters would.


Neutral: -2/+1
Advantage: +1/-4
Disadvantage: +0/-0

In particular, people think that her Advantage is too high, while @DungeonMaster disagrees. For me personally, I do think that her Advantage should drop a little. After seeing the video that was posted about her, she does have a good Advantage state and deals good damage, but it seems as though she relies too much on her Charge Shot to make the most out of it. And this will hold her back from being in the higher rankings, imo.


Neutral: +0/-5
Advantage: +0/-6
Disadvantage: +5/-2

This is where most of the discussion has been focused on so far. TONS of negative opinions about her, barring her Disadvantage. But even then, there were some negative comments about that, too. Particularly on her ability to land safely back onto the stage. And I think that a lot of good analyses were proposed about the character. So we are going to see her drop in all three categories, though slightly less in regards to her Disadvantage ranking.



Neutral:
Advantage:
Disadvantage:

Probably the lest discussed characters right now. Nothing really super positive or negative said about them yet~

 

[Infinite901]

Guys, you gotte be a bit realistic with your numbers. Megaman having ***** in neutral would essentially mean that his neutral is on par with Sheik. That's not in the cards. Not by a long shot.

If Megaman actually had a ***** neutral he'd be pretty much undisputed top tier. No way, guys.

Well I wouldn't say an amazing neutral automatically makes a top tier. Mega Man has an amazing neutral, but his advantage is meh and his disadvantage is... below average. Meanwhile Sheik has amazing neutral, advantage, and disadvantage together. Heck, pretty much all the top/high tiers have really good all of these. Of course not necessarily - Ness's disadvantage, Villager's neutral and Meta Knights neutral are all relatively sub-par, Mario and Luigi both have about average disadvantage.

Meanwhile the likes of Link, Toon Link, and even Mii Gunner have somewhat above-average neutrals, and yet none of them are even considered high mid-tier.

Regardless, I did edit my post to be a bit more reasonable.

 

[Sykkamorre]

Gunner - Small & thin. I'll be assuming what seems to be the optimal build, at least in my opinion. (i'll be assuming the use of two separate side specials for this, due to the extreme changes that happen and rate separately for them.)

Neutral (missile side B): 3.5/4 - Gunner's neutral is rather good. Primarily due to fair, nades and the newly buffed missiles.
Fair and 'nades are fantastic at keeping the opponent at the distances gunner wants them at for neutral, with a good usmash to catch jump-ins as people attempt to avoid the barrage of projectiles. The missiles are good for forcing shield or jumps, each of which allows more zoning or grabs. Great mobility with B-reverses and momentum shenanigans using fair, like the pseudo-wavedash for fast approach with moves like utilt. Bomb drop is also handy for stopping grounded approaches. Good OoS with cannon uppercut that kills well as well as a useful spike with a decent hitbox.

(with flame pillar): 3.5 - similar to above, but sacrificing shield forcing for an anti rushdown tool.

Advantage (missiles): 2/2.5 - unfortunately for gunner, while he's good at zoning, his options on a successful hit are rather limited to punishing landings or attempting strings with fair. Using the missiles, you can create mixup's but the main problems are still there. Overall low damage output and lack of combo's really hurts gunner in this aspect.

(Flame pillar): 2 - same as above, but switch the missile's mixup, for flame pillar's ability to mess with getup options like rolls and attack.

Disadvantage(missiles): 2 - gunner isn't the best while in disadvantage either, with a slowish Nair and a laggy upB with cannon uppercut. Primarily, only Gunner's great mobility get's him out of juggles and strings. Bomb Drop helps, but only so much.

(flame pillar): 2.5/3 - the ability to drop a long lasting tall hitbox relatively quickly helps gunner quite a lot in this department.


I'm no expert but since I use gunner as one of my secondaries, I thought i'd pop in and assist.
I feel gunner is rather underrated and underused quite severely, but I tried not to let my opinion cloud my ratings.

 

[Trifroze]

I'd like to point out that whenever you rank someone's advantage as 5★, you're claiming they're on the level of ZSS and MK who reliable juggle stocks off out of a single hit that's easy to land, starting from around 30% and resulting in a kill literally half the time. Hurricane Kick Mii Brawler I think deserves to be in the same category but lol Miis - Smash 4 community 2015

But yeah generally no one else should get 5★ advantage, even Ganondorf is pushing it because he's slow and it's hard to trap opponents with him. Every hit counts as 1.5-3 hits depending on who you compare to so that's a boon, but someone like Ryu does the same thing with far better frame data, combos and mobility with reduced kill power in comparison to Ganondorf.

How many people knew that after the buff to Ganondorf's fair and the hitlag reductions to >1 hitlag moves in general, no move in the game can punish Ganondorf's fair or bair on shield if you use them just before landing? Even if you use them several frames before landing, something that's an easy and common timing, ~95% of the game's dash attacks are too slow to punish it with only Sheik and maybe Wario standing a chance. Common 7 frame dash attacks can punish them if perfect shielded though because pushback is a major reason the moves have so much safety, but very few moves in the game have safety on perfect shields. Up smash is also safe. Ganondorf's neutral perhaps higher than ☆? His dash attack is also a decently fast high reward punish move to demand respect in neutral, being 10 frames but actually briefly travelling faster than Falcon's dash speed for example. He still has terrible OoS options and mobility of course.

Disadvantage is a nightmare for Ganondorf but it's probably not the worst in the game. For the sake of comparison, I believe Falcon has the worst disadvantage in the game because of his deadzone in the air, massively spread frame while flying around, weight, fall speed and bad recovery. He gets true comboed harder than Dedede who is heavier than Falcon and has a higher fall speed than him. Mac's disadvantage doesn't even contend although his recovery is by far the worst in the game. Ganondorf is better off than Falcon in basically every regard aside from his recovery unless we're talking customs in which case he wins that one by far. Down b is also not something you want to overextend yourself into, and nair breaks some combos relatively well.

Assuming default meta, I'd say Ganondorf sits at:

Neutral: ★(☆)
Advantage: ★★★★(☆)
Disadvantage: ★(☆)

(this sort of ranking is really hard without extensive character knowledge across the cast because it should all be relative, so the half stars are my way of giving benefit of the doubt)

Now give Ganondorf back his Brawl flame choke and stomp and make jab 5-6 frames or powerful enough to justify its slow speed of 8 frames.

 

[FullMoon]

Robin with 5 stars in Advantage is kinda ridiculous. His bad mobility doesn't allow him to keep himself in advantage for too long and makes him have a hard time juggling opponents, his offstage game is also pretty meh.

★★★☆ or ★★★★ seems to better fit Robin imo.

 

[HeavyLobster]

I'd like to point out that whenever you rank someone's advantage as 5★, you're claiming they're on the level of ZSS and MK who reliable juggle stocks off out of a single hit that's easy to land, starting from around 30% and resulting in a kill literally half the time. Hurricane Kick Mii Brawler I think deserves to be in the same category but lol Miis - Smash 4 community 2015

But yeah generally no one else should get 5★ advantage, even Ganondorf is pushing it because he's slow and it's hard to trap opponents with him. Every hit counts as 1.5-3 hits depending on who you compare to so that's a boon, but someone like Ryu does the same thing with far better frame data, combos and mobility with reduced kill power in comparison to Ganondorf.

How many people knew that after the buff to Ganondorf's fair and the hitlag reductions to >1 hitlag moves in general, no move in the game can punish Ganondorf's fair or bair on shield if you use them just before landing? Even if you use them several frames before landing, something that's an easy and common timing, ~95% of the game's dash attacks are too slow to punish it with only Sheik and maybe Wario standing a chance. Common 7 frame dash attacks can punish them if perfect shielded though because pushback is a major reason the moves have so much safety, but very few moves in the game have safety on perfect shields. Up smash is also safe. Ganondorf's neutral perhaps higher than ☆? His dash attack is also a decently fast high reward punish move to demand respect in neutral, being 10 frames but actually briefly travelling faster than Falcon's dash speed for example. He still has terrible OoS options and mobility of course.

Disadvantage is a nightmare for Ganondorf but it's probably not the worst in the game. For the sake of comparison, I believe Falcon has the worst disadvantage in the game because of his deadzone in the air, massively spread frame while flying around, weight, fall speed and bad recovery. He gets true comboed harder than Dedede who is heavier than Falcon and has a higher fall speed than him. Mac's disadvantage doesn't even contend although his recovery is by far the worst in the game. Ganondorf is better off than Falcon in basically every regard aside from his recovery unless we're talking customs in which case he wins that one by far. Down b is also not something you want to overextend yourself into, and nair breaks some combos relatively well.

Assuming default meta, I'd say Ganondorf sits at:

Neutral: ★(☆)
Advantage: ★★★★(☆)
Disadvantage: ★(☆)

(this sort of ranking is really hard without extensive character knowledge across the cast because it should all be relative, so the half stars are my way of giving benefit of the doubt)

Now give Ganondorf back his Brawl flame choke and stomp and make jab 5-6 frames or powerful enough to justify its slow speed of 8 frames.

You basically said everything I wanted to about Ganondorf. His neutral and disadvantage are clearly subpar but they're not the absolute worst, especially thanks to the 1.1.0 hitlag changes. Bowser would kill for Ganon's Nair, or really any sort of semi-useful combo breaker. Really Ganondorf's two main problems that need fixing are poor CQC options, especially OOS ones, and his issues killing characters he can neither techchase nor edgeguard effectively(Sheik).

 

[Pazx]

To put what the Trifroze and FullMoon have stated very bluntly: this thread, whilst cool in theory, is going to suck for as long as people continue to rate characters like Samus, Robin, Jigglypuff and Shulk as 4.5+ stars in any category. Tone it down, guys.

Related: D3 and Lucina's ratings of ~3 stars in advantage are both okay but compared to the rest of the already rated characters they look far too low.

 

[Trifroze]

Maybe we should've done characters like Sheik, ZSS and Pikachu first so we have an idea of how high the bar is when speaking of 5/5 neutral, advantage and disadvantage respectively. Disadvantage is the one I'm not sure about but I think Pikachu is a contender for the least bad one because he falls neither fast or slow, is pretty small and recovers and lands for as free as free can practically get. On the other hand Pikachu's tail extends his hurtbox while experiencing knockback and tumble quite a lot and I'm not sure if moderate fall speed is any better than either extreme, plus he's very light.

Yoshi is another contender for top disadvantage with floatiness being the only downside. Sheik and ZSS themselves aren't bad in that regard either though. Ryu and Villager probably have the best survivability overall, although mobility is a thing that also contributes to it which they both lack, but Ryu has frame 1 superarmor available to him that halves his damage and doesn't really commit him to anything so yeah.

I like the fact that less popular characters got the spotlight first for once, but top tiers would've set a nice cornerstone for comparing other characters to.

 

[Macchiato]

I'm okay with not using star rates.
-I may not find Zelda's advantage that good, I mean she has a combo game, but it stops at a point, doesn't really get a kill setup and can't apply pressure. Din's Fire just doesn't cut it.
-I'd say WFT might have the best Advantage of this batch, with a strong combo game, kill setups (now at reasonable percentages) and the fact that any space allows her to charge her moves.
-Jigglypuff is pretty good at not allowing the opponent to breathe when she gets in, but any successful flail hurts her a lot.
-Ganondorf forces reactions and punishes HARD for any misplay.
-DDD has range, power, and Gordos to keep up, if it weren't for his terrible speed, these traits could platform him to viable tiers.
-Lucina might not have combos, but her jugglings and shield pressure are pretty good.

The rest I'm not mentioning I don't really know how to measure.

Zelda has kill set-ups

Dtilt - Uair
Falling Nair - Elevator
Falling Nair - Usmash
are guaranteed

Dthrow - Uair
is guaranteed IF they don't DI

 

[HeavyLobster]

There's nothing wrong with Shulk's disadvantage. He's not particularly easy to edgeguard, juggle or ledgetrap, he has really good survival parameters and Vision can be pretty nasty as it can kill opponents from a disadvantaged position at stupid percent. I'd say his disadvantage is average and his advantaged state is pretty good. It's his subpar neutral game that holds Shulk back.

I'd give Shulk the following ratings:
adv: ★★★★☆
neutral: ★★☆
dis: adv: ★★★☆

Seems pretty accurate to me? Overall pretty average stats but due to the importance of neutral he's kinda doomed to stay in the nowhere land of low-midtier.

Shulk's disadvantage isn't the worst because you do have to respect his huge disjoints and Counter, but it isn't good because everything has slow startup and most of it has endlag. All of my experience vs. him indicates that his disadvantaged state is indeed subpar, though I concede he might have advanced stuff I'm not familiar with. His neutral I think is around 2 stars and his disadvantage is between 1 1/2 and 2 stars. His advantage is legitimately amazing and I think is at least 4 stars, maybe 4 1/2, though the better characters in the game rarely give him the chance to get it going.

 

[PK Gaming]

I'd like to point out that whenever you rank someone's advantage as 5★, you're claiming they're on the level of ZSS and MK who reliable juggle stocks off out of a single hit that's easy to land, starting from around 30% and resulting in a kill literally half the time. Hurricane Kick Mii Brawler I think deserves to be in the same category but lol Miis - Smash 4 community 2015

Robin with 5 stars in Advantage is kinda ridiculous. His bad mobility doesn't allow him to keep himself in advantage for too long and makes him have a hard time juggling opponents, his offstage game is also pretty meh.

★★★☆ or ★★★★ seems to better fit Robin imo.

Good point, allow me to redact my post.

 

[Shaya]

Who has the best neutral out of those 11?
Who has the worst neutral out of those 11?
How big is the difference between those two? <fill in the gaps>

*repeat for disadvantage + advantage; create boundaries and scale within, argue within the context of 11 characters and not the entire cast*

If this means that the best neutral is around 1.5 stars and the worst is 1 star, then that's fine, that's bounded, and it's likely within reason that others can understand.

 

[RayNoire]

I don't think any fall speed is necessarily worse in disadvantage.

Mewtwo can combo fast-fallers and land kill confirms on floaties, but against average fallers he can do both easier.

 

[san.]

Might not touch on a lot of things. Random ramblings of thoughts.

Advantage: ★★★★☆. I think he's around #6 area or so. Is that 4.5 stars or 5 stars? He definitely can't really juggle to death at 30, but he has very threatening rage and power and can rack up damage at low %s quickly with the correct knowledge and has opportunities for early kills. If he misses, he has good autocancels on fair and bair. His max movement speed is notable enough with a good initial dash and 1.08 air speed. His juggling and trap tools are his best combo tools. He is capable of killing from a throw and has good edgeguarding from onstage with eruption or a quick aerial and return. Lots of straight up kill options and some setups.

Disadvantage: ★★★
This one is weird to say. I believe his options to escape are a little below average at 2.5 stars, but his top 5 survivability allows him to take a lot of punishment. Recovery is average with some decent options with platforms. Escape options outside of globals like jump/air dodge are 7 frame bair, retreating nair as you land, 15 frame quick draw, and just general movement which is decent for aerial and fast falling. If Ike lands, he has quick jabs and tilts to cover himself. Overall, just meh to decent options, nothing special. Give him some room and he can cover himself adequately, but he will have some trouble against strings and heavy pressure as long as you maneuver around any possible bairs.

Neutral: ★★★☆. As an aside, I think weight slightly affects risk:reward with decision making in neutral. I think this is important and helps shift it up a bit.
Fastest moves:

4 frame jab- FAF at 24, but can use jab2 starting at frame 10/11, making it a nice reactive tool. Does decent damage and can tech chase near 0. Jab can convert into dtilt or grab depending on the circumstances (opponent physics, if jabbed on the ground or in the air). Some floaties are susceptible to jab->utilt mixup.
7 frame dtilt- FAF ~29. It has good range and it's a combo starter. It's good enough to use often but not to spam, since a lot of the fastest characters can punish whiffs. Ideally, you'd want to space it at max range where it would hit them.
15-19 frame dash attack, used when you predict that the opponent will dash, attack, jump, or start a projectile. It wins clanks and Ike can punish them. It can also kill. It's -25 on shield, but as a 14% move can be difficult to punish hard when spaced.
Grabs: Dash grab has good reach (not range, but the lunge movement). Standing grab has poor horizontal range but good vertical range. Pivot grab has good distance and range. They all have a few frames higher end lag than they should. Dash grab is also a little slow, but it makes sense because he lunges a bit far.

And that's pretty much it for the ground. He doesn't need to do much more than move around with aerials and the occasional jab, dtilt, or grab. Ftilt can be used occasionally since it's a good anti dash and air and the -17 disadvantage is difficult to punish when spaced. Utilt can be used rarely at kill % since it can stuff out attacks..

Ike has huge aerials that he wants to use a lot with average landing lag, good landing lag for the hitboxes. Bair is 7 frames, fair is 12 frames, nair is 12-13 frames (lasts around 16), uair is 13 frames (lasts ~16) and dair is 16 frames. Ike doesn't want to land with aerials blindly. They are safe when spaced on shield (mostly bair, sometimes fair, sometimes nair with slightly less frequency), but punishable on whiff. Ike's fair matches the hitbox animation. Ike's bair is slightly longer than the sword tip surprisingly. Ike's nair matches the animation with only a slightly disjoint beyond the sword animation.

Ike wants to move around a lot and attack sometimes. He doesn't need to commit too hard since his sphere of influence is pretty large. Ike wants to attack if he can force a defensive option with his bnbs where his max reach will hit. Ike can play the spacing aerials game against the non-speedster characters, though. His spacing moves are his combo starters so that's very nice for him. Unfortunately, he can be a large target and he has a blind area near his feet. He also has to rely on the traditional global options for some projectiles. He can still dash attack if he sees it coming, though.

 

[DunnoBro]

Thought I'd make some placeholders for people:

On advantage states, ZSS, Luigi, and Ness are clearly a tier above most characters. Even sheik. Sheik goes into advantage state A LOT but it isn't as potent as those characters at all. Her neutral just lends itself to letting her actually condition people.

Have advantage rates of: ★★★★★

Characters that actually need to condition but have good conditioning tools like simply do not compare to the advantage rate vs the other characters. You go into SLIGHT disadvantage via whiff against these characters, and you MIGHT get punished super hard. Against the others, you WILL die or take ridiculous damage.

For neutral, I think it's kind of hard to contest sheik's dominance as absolute best but I think others are close enough to be considered 5-star.

Definitely have the strongest neutral games with an neutral rating of: ★★★★★


Also have stellar neutral games, but the fact their disadvantage states are so abusable makes them have to rely on neutral more than they can afford to at times, making a 5-star rating unbecoming.

Disadvantage is a tricky one. Everyone has flaws and openings, so a 5-star rating should strictly be considered "As good as it gets" because we have nothing like brawl mk in sm4sh.

Is the only one I'd give a disadvantage rating of ★★★★★ to.

While fast falling, she has great escape, combo break, and recovery tools, not to mention can easily flip situations on opponents while being so hard to pin down.



Are probably the next tier down. I'd say pika is the closest one to sheik, but his landings are still somewhat suspect in certain MUs.

Rosalina with luma to negate combo throws, Pika with a ungimpable recovery and superb return to neutral, and Ness with the best combination of air dodge + out of air dodge options make him very difficult and risky to attempt pressuring.

Each have a fatal flaw though, pikachu's landings are still somewhat suspect with projectiles/meaty hitboxes/shield grabs, rosalina's abiity to lose luma, and ness's actual recovery.

*Rosalina and Ness are probably 4-stars due to ability to lose luma and their recoveries being very susceptible to edgeguards.

 

[Trifroze]

Can't believe I forgot about Luigi when trying to come up with the best advantaged states, and I suppose DK gets a pass too with his edgeguarding and his newfound grab game. Ness though? Not quite on the same level in my opinion.

I'd throw Diddy in the best neutrals department as well. Villager is also strong, all he really lacks is OoS options but it only really seems to matter versus rushdown and nair seems to work well enough in most situations. Same things probably largely apply to Pac-Man, except instead of pellets he throws items at you and sets up fire hydrants and trampolines instead of saplings and trees.

Rosalina's disadvantage with Luma available is decent, but it doesn't really hold a candle versus characters who start things up from aerials or other things which can't be punished (tying this to neutral somewhat) and which also knock Luma away, and once that's done her disadvantage is bad. Some characters get rid of Luma for essentially free while some don't, so her disadvantage should be something of an average of those unless she gets two different ratings for Luma and no Luma states.

EDIT: Forgot to say that Sheik should possibly be the only character with 5/5 neutral unless banana-Diddy is a separate entity. Needles beat out basically any camping while bouncing fish punishes the little things the opponent thinks they have the time to do. Also all her spammable aerials (fair, bair, nair) possess absolute safety, meaning nobody can punish them even after perfect shielding if Sheik spaces even halfway decently. She also has pretty insane mobility stats while being able to shield just 8 frames after starting a dash. Literally nothing she does is committing. Great OoS options as well.

 

[ぱみゅ]

So yeah, I was thinking a bit about this, and I think that we might need a different approach to the whole thing.

I could be done by rating how characters stand on each attribute, instead of one-by-one character analysis.

For example, we begin rating Neutrals, and then discuss from there.

Spoiler

★★★★★
★★★★☆
★★★★
★★★☆
★★★
★★☆
★★
★☆
★
☆


NOTE: Obviously this list was made up, I didn't even double check my own ratings.

And then people would have a base to upvote/downvote and help shape the list as accurately as possible


---------------

Alternatively, they all could begin at 3 stars (average) and upvote/downvote from there.

----------------

It all could continue to be done with groups of characters for the sake of simplifying the process, and do it one step at a time.

 

[DunnoBro]

Can't believe I forgot about Luigi when trying to come up with the best advantaged states, and I suppose DK gets a pass too with his edgeguarding and his newfound grab game. Ness though? Not quite on the same level in my opinion.

I'd only include ness's advantage state that high due to the "just lost neutral" punish game, and super safe edgeguarding/pressure with pk thunder he has. He's definitely not quite on their level, though. Not sure if it's beyond half a star difference, though.

I'd throw Diddy in the best neutrals department as well. Villager is also strong, all he really lacks is OoS options but it only really seems to matter versus rushdown and nair seems to work well enough in most situations. Same things probably largely apply to Pac-Man, except instead of pellets he throws items at you and sets up fire hydrants and trampolines instead of saplings and trees.

These were candidates too but I just wanted a small sample of safe examples.

Rosalina's disadvantage with Luma available is decent, but it doesn't really hold a candle versus characters who start things up from aerials or other things which can't be punished (tying this to neutral somewhat) and which also knock Luma away, and once that's done her disadvantage is bad. Some characters get rid of Luma for essentially free while some don't, so her disadvantage should be something of an average of those unless she gets two different ratings for Luma and no Luma states.

Her disadvantage is inconsistent, but it's overall high tier. I can't think of many other characters with such a good disadvantage state, even if inconsistent. The average disadvantage state isn't nearly so forgiving.

EDIT: Forgot to say that Sheik should possibly be the only character with 5/5 neutral unless banana-Diddy is a separate entity. Needles beat out basically any camping while bouncing fish punishes the little things the opponent thinks they have the time to do. Also all her spammable aerials (fair, bair, nair) possess absolute safety, meaning nobody can punish them even after perfect shielding if Sheik spaces even halfway decently. She also has pretty insane mobility stats while being able to shield just 8 frames after starting a dash. Literally nothing she does is committing. Great OoS options as well.

That's likely, though I'm getting kind of depressed looking at the spread of sheik lol

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I think it'd be a good idea to move on to top and high tier characters. It'll help establish some important cornerstones that allow us to work from there. So I guess I'll just post my opinions now and see what people have to say about it?

Neutral: ★★★★★, Advantage: ★★★★, Disadvantage: ★★★★
Neutral: ★★★★, Advantage: ★★★★★, Disadvantage: ★★★★

Note that both characters have the same overall amount of ★ but since neutral is more important than advantaged state it turns out that Sheik is the stronger character overall.


Neutral: ★★★★★, Advantage: ★★★★, Disadvantage: ★★★ [side B is a good escape tool but his recovery can be a problem]
Neutral: ★★★★, Advantage: ★★★★, Disadvantage: ★★★★★ [best disadvantage in the game? I think so]
Neutral: ★★★★★, Advantage: ★★★★, Disadvantage: ★★ [should probably have 4.5 in advantage if that's a thing]

I'd like to point out that whenever you rank someone's advantage as 5★, you're claiming they're on the level of ZSS and MK who reliable juggle stocks off out of a single hit that's easy to land, starting from around 30% and resulting in a kill literally half the time. Hurricane Kick Mii Brawler I think deserves to be in the same category but lol Miis - Smash 4 community 2015

Mii Brawler's advantaged state really depends on percent though. He actually needs the opponent to be BELOW a certain amount of damage to unleash the full potential of his advantaged state. I think that's a strong counter-argument to giving him a full ★★★★★ rating. Once the opponent is at high enough percent he can't combo into helicopter kick anymore ... and that kind of becomes an issue.

Have advantage rates of: ★★★★★

Does Ness really have *that* powerful an advantaged state? I think ★★★★ is enough for DK, I don't think he deserves to be on the same level as ZSS. MK, Rosaluma and idk maybe Ryu could have ★★★★★.

 

[Shaya]

We have half stars correct?
I would put Fox' neutral at 4.5 stars ☆; it isn't universally potent like diddy and sheiks are in my mind. Sheik's advantage is likely a tad bit better than just about everyone bar a few IMO (MK, ZSS, probably Ryu, maybe Luigi, probably half star down Ness), you don't really ever stop being in a disadvantaged state to sheik once the game is flowing in her favour. So much edge and off stage potency, guaranteed kos with dthrow uair at the right staling/rage, ability to combo and heavily rely on her grab game to control the match.

I could maybe see pikachu having the best disadvantaged state, but it isn't really infallible; frame 3 invincibility on flip jump is saving ZSS from things that pikachu gets hit by/dies from. The start up of QA is 15 frames. Not sure how to really contrast the ratings, perhaps we should look at all the best disadvantaged "states" as a whole?

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Yeah, if .5 stars are actually a thing then Fox should have 4.5 in both neutral and advantage.

 

[NegaNixx]

What's the order of importance between the three stats? Judging by @ ~ Gheb ~ 's list of top 5 (is it top 5 or just general top and high?) it looks like the order goes
#1: Neutral (Based on Shiek/ZSS comparison)
#2: Advantage
#3: Disadvantage (Based on Fox being a threa despite sub par disadvantage)

If this is correct then to what extent does having a good neutral carry having a bad disadvantage? Or Disadvantage related to advantage? Or neutral and advantage?

Could we implement a point system? Example:
1.5 Points for each half star in neutral
1 Point for each half star in advantage
0.5 points for each half star in disadvantage.
Assuming my tiering of the stats is correct.*

I think it would help determine viability when all is said and done.

Based on Gheb's list
Shiek would score: 27/30
ZSS would score: 26/30
Pikachu: 25/30
Diddy: 26/30
Fox: 26/30

Which seems reasonable I think.