Tier List Speculation

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

What a useful and interesting post. "Here's my opinion, if you don't agree with it you're bad."

I think Sonic's pretty sleeper (not Mewtwo levels of sleeper but pretty good) but I'm not super convinced Pikachu's that good. He's alright, but then we have like 40 characters that are at least alright. How does Pikachu deal with the likes of Peach in PM? How many of the new Brawl characters/buffed Melee mid/low tiers are gonna cause Pikachu huge issues?

I find this odd because I thought it was generally a consensus that mewtwo was definitely top 10 in the game, just behind diddy and the like along with wario

 

[eideeiit]

What a useful and interesting post. "Here's my opinion, if you don't agree with it you're bad."

I think Sonic's pretty sleeper (not Mewtwo levels of sleeper but pretty good) but I'm not super convinced Pikachu's that good. He's alright, but then we have like 40 characters that are at least alright. How does Pikachu deal with the likes of Peach in PM? How many of the new Brawl characters/buffed Melee mid/low tiers are gonna cause Pikachu huge issues?

My post wasn't really meant as a "you're bad because you think Pika and Sonic are bad", but more of a "I from all my heart believe Pika and Sonic are very good and just need someone to show the world and once PM players get good we'll probably see that".

A summary of how I see Sonic is a Falcon that has some grounded frame data in exchange for knee and disjoint. Take that as you will, but IMO Falcon's greatest weakness is his lack of frame data so...

Pika I'm not really sure what to think. I know options make a character and with QAC he has a metric ton of those like all the time on top of a Melee high tier.

Writing short always loses something. Meh.

 

[Life]

I find this odd because I thought it was generally a consensus that mewtwo was definitely top 10 in the game, just behind diddy and the like along with wario

I think he's somewhere in the 4-6 range, where top 3 for me is Fox Wolf Diddy in some order (probably that one, Diddy might be better than Wolf, it's hard to tell). I've always thought MK is kind of overrated, although having played him a bit I don't feel quite as strongly about it as I used to; he's probably also in that 4-6 range. Who might be the third character in that range is a bit less clear. Could be Sheik, could be Falcon, could be Wario, could be ROB, could be a few others. I do think Mewtwo's probably the best floaty?

Keep in mind that I largely judge characters based on how many very bad matchups they have. The goal in a tournament is to lose less than two sets (flexible RR pools notwithstanding). If your character has a matchup that you can't realistically expect to win, and someone who plays that character at a high level is near you in bracket, you can't realistically expect to win the tournament unless they get eliminated by other high-level players and you make a pretty dramatic loser's run. So I put a lot of weight on the likelihood of that happening when I judge characters. The larger the tournament, the more players you have to face, and the higher the chance is that this'll be an issue.

Fox has no particularly bad matchups (which I'm defining as "more than mildly disadvantaged"), and as far as I can tell he's the only character (though I don't think that makes him broken). Diddy's worst is supposedly Samus(?); Wolf's worst IMO is Fox, though that's hardly unwinnable (a lot of Wolf players hate Falco too but I don't really mind that one). Having spoken to Mewtwo players before, I'm under the impression they only have major issues with Toon Link, and even that's not unbearable. Can't speak for the others I mentioned above.

Then compare to Bowser, who gets really badly countered by like half a dozen characters and loses moderately to a whole bunch more. He's by far the most extreme example, though. (And of course you still have to sort of respect him; it's not like Melee Kirby where you can snore through the match unless the opponent is noticeably better than you. I feel like he's around Melee Ganon tier, just in a cast that's all stronger than him.)

There's also a metagame factor, where if (for example) Samus suddenly gets really popular for some reason, Diddy Kong becomes less good, despite the fact that no balance patch or technical advancement has occurred. (I'm using the "trying to counter what's popular" definition of metagame and not the "how good people are at the game" definition there.) Or there's the same effect on a geographical level rather than a temporal one: Diddy Kong is better at a local with no Samus mains than a local with 2-3 of them on the PR.

idk tiers are hard maaaaaaan

My post wasn't really meant as a "you're bad because you think Pika and Sonic are bad", but more of a "I from all my heart believe Pika and Sonic are very good and just need someone to show the world and once PM players get good we'll probably see that".

(snip)

Writing short always loses something. Meh.

kk

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

I think he's somewhere in the 4-6 range, where top 3 for me is Fox Wolf Diddy in some order (probably that one, Diddy might be better than Wolf, it's hard to tell). I've always thought MK is kind of overrated, although having played him a bit I don't feel quite as strongly about it as I used to; he's probably also in that 4-6 range. Who might be the third character in that range is a bit less clear. Could be Sheik, could be Falcon, could be Wario, could be ROB, could be a few others. I do think Mewtwo's probably the best floaty?

Keep in mind that I largely judge characters based on how many very bad matchups they have. The goal in a tournament is to lose less than two sets (flexible RR pools notwithstanding). If your character has a matchup that you can't realistically expect to win, and someone who plays that character at a high level is near you in bracket, you can't realistically expect to win the tournament unless they get eliminated by other high-level players and you make a pretty dramatic loser's run. So I put a lot of weight on the likelihood of that happening when I judge characters. The larger the tournament, the more players you have to face, and the higher the chance is that this'll be an issue.

Fox has no particularly bad matchups (which I'm defining as "more than mildly disadvantaged"), and as far as I can tell he's the only character (though I don't think that makes him broken). Diddy's worst is supposedly Samus(?); Wolf's worst IMO is Fox, though that's hardly unwinnable (a lot of Wolf players hate Falco too but I don't really mind that one). Having spoken to Mewtwo players before, I'm under the impression they only have major issues with Toon Link, and even that's not unbearable. Can't speak for the others I mentioned above.

Then compare to Bowser, who gets really badly countered by like half a dozen characters and loses moderately to a whole bunch more. He's by far the most extreme example, though. (And of course you still have to sort of respect him; it's not like Melee Kirby where you can snore through the match unless the opponent is noticeably better than you. I feel like he's around Melee Ganon tier, just in a cast that's all stronger than him.)

There's also a metagame factor, where if (for example) Samus suddenly gets really popular for some reason, Diddy Kong becomes less good, despite the fact that no balance patch or technical advancement has occurred. (I'm using the "trying to counter what's popular" definition of metagame and not the "how good people are at the game" definition there.) Or there's the same effect on a geographical level rather than a temporal one: Diddy Kong is better at a local with no Samus mains than a local with 2-3 of them on the PR.

idk tiers are hard maaaaaaan



kk

yeah like we basically agree on everything that's also how I see things except I think i have a bit charitable view of "bad matchups" where I largely guage them on "skill efficacy" aka how much the matchup responds to you being more skilled than your opponent (which I guess could be basically seen as matchup numbers but ehh whatever I like this terminology more)

for a "relatively even" or "slightly disadvantaged" matchup, the return on player skill won't be able to be noticed if it's small, and the matchup will largely function on the usual random noise of fighting game rock-paper-scissors. at this range, matchups don't really matter as you being slightly better than your opponent/having a better matchup is still somewhat statistically indistinguishable from noise.
based upon this, matchups only really come into play if one player is consistently playing better than the other (including things such as having a more complete punish game or winning neutral more) but still losing because of inherent flaws on minor mistakes that are made visible in the matchup, and thus render the final win ratio back into statistical noise.

but all of this is almost impossible to quantify without extremely in-depth statistics and an extremely large sample size with players of constant skill (which is impossible) so like idk mang

anyway, you still have to be good to win regardless of character selection and I don't think that any characters are so bad in pm that they aren't viable (bowser is on the edge, but he could conceivably win a large tourney with bracket luck and a player who is certainly the best player in the building at the time, think mango during 2013, just a head and shoulders above everyone else)

the more i talk about tierlists the more I get frustrated and think that while tierlists are very relevant in terms of large-scale results distribution, individual characters and players are helped most by experience and matchup knowledge

akahjakjhalkjd meaningless wall of text in the tierlist thread what else is new

 

[Life]

I agree that it's pretty much too early to worry overly much about character selection. 99% of us just need to get dramatically better at the game if we wanna compete on the level of folks like Junebug and that whole tier of players.

 

[DMG]

Man Falcon vs MK suks

Don't do drugs kids

 

[Deleted member]

to be fair falcon doesnt have many bad matchups

but MK is definitely one of them if not the worst.

 

[DMG]

Nobody as MK main even dominates it , and then Lunchables spends like idk 4 weeks and it's unwinnable

Keep Lunchables away from playing your bad MU's, it hurts

Not like stage picks helped but damn I wanted that out of the way quickest sans a forfeit. Butthole still hurts

 

[Deleted member]

Nobody as MK main even dominates it , and then Lunchables spends like idk 4 weeks and it's unwinnable

Keep Lunchables away from playing your bad MU's, it hurts

Not like stage picks helped but damn I wanted that out of the way quickest sans a forfeit. Butthole still hurts

i played @Lunchables in sheik vs MK last weekend (sheik doesnt like MK either btw) and it was super difficult. its not surprising though, you have a player using the exact same skillset with minor adjustments, and then he goes up two full tiers and from a 4-6 MU to a 7-3 MU. such is MK.

 

[DMG]

Ban Lunchables, CP with Pizza Bribes

Man PM is hard

 

[Deleted member]

real talk, if you want to be a competitive player in PM, i feel like you need to have an answer to fox falco wolf falcon zss diddy mk sheik lucario mewtwo rob. i would say that these characters stand above the rest in a clear way in the long run.

 

[D e l t a]

agreed with most of those except 2:

zss - avoid blaster & grab. She doesn't have quick approach options or many fast normals outside of jab & uptilt, which are fairly short ranged. Beating ZSS is all about the player having a good footsies game.
lucario - CC everything / SDI away when he starts attacking you. Poor approach options don't give much to be afraid of once the MU is figured out since all you have to do is avoid his dash attack and don't do stupid approaches that get CC'd.

IMO Lucas is more of a threat than Lucario and even ZSS. His PKF forces approaches while doubling as an approach tool. He's got superb frame data and touch of death combo game that's much better than Lucario's when comparing side by side. He can mixup what he wants to followup with whereas Lucario has to keep hitting you up and up and up until he gets a Nair / Uair / SideB finisher or can't followup the combo anymore. Both Lucario & ZSS can struggle with reliably taking stocks at higher %'s, whereas Lucas has Dair -> anything and grab -> uthrow kill / Dthrow followup / Bthrow DI mixup. Not to mention PKF -> sweetspot Fair / Fsmash

 

[Deleted member]

**** falcon

 

[Avro-Arrow]

@Umbreon What do you think about Wario, Marth, Roy, and Luigi?

 

[DMG]

Falcon is gmey but now you won't possibly lose. There's no great hope in that aside from maybe long ass stages

edit: it's almost 5 in the morning, main point is pick a good char that beats up the others or pick 2-3 that do it. dont care if u put lucas or wario or whoever in the group. Pick good char and be good, win dollars

 

[Deleted member]

@Umbreon What do you think about Wario, Marth, Roy, and Luigi?

i think wario is solid but doesnt clearly stand out like the other chars i named.

marth is probably best as a CP character, if you're going to invest your time into that sort of play then MK generally does what marth does but better (aside from the MUs that marth is hilariously stupid)

same for roy except roy has less CP value because his winning MUs arent like 8-2 like marths

luigi sucks

 

[redbeanjelly]

So Marth/MK sounds like a good pairing to co-main, plus transitioning between the two in the midst of bracket would be easier.

 

[Cox Box]

So Marth/MK sounds like a good pairing to co-main, plus transitioning between the two in the midst of bracket would be easier.

I think Ike/MK is better, honestly. Ike deals with Samus and Roy better than Marth, and those are MK's worst match ups to my knowledge. Ike is a great character that everyone seems to sleep on lately, no idea why.

 

[MLGF]

Ike:MK is freaking devine.

 

[ThegreatVaporeon1]

I wouldn't say Luigi sucks, he just has some hard af mus, which are usually just swords and melee top tiers (minus puff and peach and ics)

 

[Deleted member]

if your character has losing MUs to some of the best and/or most common MUs in the game with no real redeeming feature, your character sucks

even sucky characters can win because PM is well balanced and the tiers are narrow. but relative goodness still exists and luigi doesnt have it.

 

[Downdraft]

yeah like we basically agree on everything that's also how I see things except I think i have a bit charitable view of "bad matchups" where I largely guage them on "skill efficacy" aka how much the matchup responds to you being more skilled than your opponent (which I guess could be basically seen as matchup numbers but ehh whatever I like this terminology more)

for a "relatively even" or "slightly disadvantaged" matchup, the return on player skill won't be able to be noticed if it's small, and the matchup will largely function on the usual random noise of fighting game rock-paper-scissors. at this range, matchups don't really matter as you being slightly better than your opponent/having a better matchup is still somewhat statistically indistinguishable from noise.
based upon this, matchups only really come into play if one player is consistently playing better than the other (including things such as having a more complete punish game or winning neutral more) but still losing because of inherent flaws on minor mistakes that are made visible in the matchup, and thus render the final win ratio back into statistical noise.

but all of this is almost impossible to quantify without extremely in-depth statistics and an extremely large sample size with players of constant skill (which is impossible) so like idk mang

anyway, you still have to be good to win regardless of character selection and I don't think that any characters are so bad in pm that they aren't viable (bowser is on the edge, but he could conceivably win a large tourney with bracket luck and a player who is certainly the best player in the building at the time, think mango during 2013, just a head and shoulders above everyone else)

the more i talk about tierlists the more I get frustrated and think that while tierlists are very relevant in terms of large-scale results distribution, individual characters and players are helped most by experience and matchup knowledge

akahjakjhalkjd meaningless wall of text in the tierlist thread what else is new

I like your reasoning and particularly want to focus on the bold sections. Each number corresponds to bold text in the order they appear.

1. I kinda agree and am interested in what characters come to your mind when you ponder this.
2. Define viability. The terms good/bad and viable/unviable are unclear unless they are explained. In this game, I think a character can be called good if few of its matchups are worse than 45:55. Additionally, I don't think the term viable should be applied to characters that rely on favorable brackets or the player "getting hot" to succeed. A bracket is favorable if it matches one up against less skilled players, favorable matchups, or opponents that don't overcome matchup inexperience. In short, good characters don't rely on luck or flukes to enjoy success in the long term.
3. Characters can also be hindered by matchup knowledge. Some characters fold if the opponent knows counterplay. Good characters have the ability to switch things up in order to force the opponent to change his/her game plan.

real talk, if you want to be a competitive player in PM, i feel like you need to have an answer to fox falco wolf falcon zss diddy mk sheik lucario mewtwo rob. i would say that these characters stand above the rest in a clear way in the long run.

What do you mean by an answer? Zelda struggles against all these characters and straight up loses if the opponent is of comparable skill and knows how to exploit Zelda's weaknesses. Interestingly enough, some of Zelda's worst matchups like Marth, Game & Watch, and Toon Link aren't on your list. She is not the only one with a bad matchup spread versus meta-defining or popular characters. I mention her due to my experience and observations. She has been my primary character since I began PM 3 years ago, and I've watched footage of many good Zeldas and the one and only Zhime to get a great idea of where the character currently stands and will likely end up in 3.6.

 

[G13_Flux]

agreed with most of those except 2:

zss - avoid blaster & grab. She doesn't have quick approach options or many fast normals outside of jab & uptilt, which are fairly short ranged. Beating ZSS is all about the player having a good footsies game.
lucario - CC everything / SDI away when he starts attacking you. Poor approach options don't give much to be afraid of once the MU is figured out since all you have to do is avoid his dash attack and don't do stupid approaches that get CC'd.

IMO Lucas is more of a threat than Lucario and even ZSS. His PKF forces approaches while doubling as an approach tool. He's got superb frame data and touch of death combo game that's much better than Lucario's when comparing side by side. He can mixup what he wants to followup with whereas Lucario has to keep hitting you up and up and up until he gets a Nair / Uair / SideB finisher or can't followup the combo anymore. Both Lucario & ZSS can struggle with reliably taking stocks at higher %'s, whereas Lucas has Dair -> anything and grab -> uthrow kill / Dthrow followup / Bthrow DI mixup. Not to mention PKF -> sweetspot Fair / Fsmash

I think he was very right to put ZSS up there. Her general placing on tier lists is only going to go up as time goes on imo. I dont think that your description is really accurate in any way about how to deal with her. shes arguably the most mobile character in the game with some of the quickest normals (frame 2 jab, frame 3 uair, frame 5 dtilt, frame 6 ftilt), and a very low commitment projectile (FAF on 36). 'avoid blaster and grab" sounds like the right approach, but it just doesnt work in practice. If your character doesnt have an amazingly safe and threatening neutral option (roy dtilt, wolf blaster, falco blaster, CF nair, spacie aerial > shine approaches, etc.) then the only way to beat her in neutral is to be very intelligent in recognizing movement patterns of the person playing her. ZSS doesnt have a lot of long lasting hitboxes, but she can quickly threaten space from a far reach from a number of different angles. Thus, her neutral game usually involves a lot of movement/bair walling as she carefully contemplates how to sneak in with a grab, dtilt, dsmash, side b, dair, etc. while none of these moves fall under the category of individually strong neutral options, when you throw them onto the most mobile character in the game, they do become very threatening, and most of the cast really just cant compete with them.

my bottom line is that she has some notable bad MUs, but these come from characters that are already pretty solidly placed at/near the top like fox, falco, wolf, falcon, and roy. These are characters with displays of the most busted and threatening neutral options in the game, and they happen to be the only things that are really able to trump ZSS. There might be another MU or two that you could argue tilt against her, but nothing thats really going to overall vaiability. This is why she belongs among the tops imo. I think shes top 10 personally

 

[PlateProp]

inb4 a year from now and everyone is just playing MK

ohey brawl when did you get back

 

[Deleted member]

What do you mean by an answer? Zelda struggles against all these characters and straight up loses if the opponent is of comparable skill and knows how to exploit Zelda's weaknesses. Interestingly enough, some of Zelda's worst matchups like Marth, Game & Watch, and Toon Link aren't on your list. She is not the only one with a bad matchup spread versus meta-defining or popular characters. I mention her due to my experience and observations. She has been my primary character since I began PM 3 years ago, and I've watched footage of many good Zeldas and the one and only Zhime to get a great idea of where the character currently stands and will likely end up in 3.6.

honestly i think zeldas bad MUs are kinda overrated. the only MU in that list i really dislike from zeldas POV is ZSS. you lose neutral vs MK fox falco wolf falcon diddy but if you do anything to them its basically a deathtouch and they have to play hella careful around you for extensive periods of time to avoid it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y26c0DPyLkQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcVlMvJSOeM&t=4m24s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mrl2UQnPiA

 

[DMG]

MK is the future but only if ur really good

 

[JesteRace]

Yeah, so Link sucks. How many secondaries do I need to cover his matchups? Lol

 

[Player -0]

The joke is so easy it's almost not worth doing

 

[JesteRace]

My question is semi-serious, but assume I don't have the desire/skill to play a spacie.

 

[Deleted member]

the link players all seem to do surpriingly well even though i personally dont think link is all that great. you'll def want something to cover the sheik MU since thats probably his worst, and theres a few ways to approach sheik.

 

[JesteRace]

Yeah, Sheik/Falcon/spacies are my main concerns. There are a couple other hard, but doable ones. It seems to me that very few characters cover those 5 characters.

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

inb4 a year from now and everyone is just playing MK

ohey brawl when did you get back

welcome to minnesota

 

[Deleted member]

Yeah... metaknight is kind of ********. As Umbreon said, he has a very similar skill set to marth/roy so I can just kind of naturally pick him up and also improve my MU spreadsheet immensely.

There are some really stupid matchups like Falcon where I'd rather take my 6-4 (or better idk) in MKs favor instead of trying really hard with Roy or Toon Link. The game is revolving around matchups and it's probably a good time to pick up a character like Diddy Kong/Fox/MK/Wolf/ROB/ZSS/Etc.

 

[Soft Serve]

I think the biggest thing holding ZSS back is how hard diddy and spacies **** on her

Otherwise she's crazy good

 

[Deleted member]

Don't really see Diddy ****ting on her + who do spacies not **** on? Have her at 5th/6th atm

will leave thread after another post or two, umbreon tricked me into posting here again by tagging me god damnit

 

[JesteRace]

who do spacies not **** on?

I would also like to know the answer to this question.

...

Yes, I know it was rhetorical.

 

[Deleted member]

Well, I guess if you're looking for a real answer it depends on which spacie we're talking about since Falco has a harder time in PM than Fox does.

Characters that're like -1/+0 vs Fox are like Mewtwo, MK, Marth, Roy, Samus, ROB, Diddy Kong, and maybe some others that I'm forgetting atm (almost all of those being -1). Fox is a lot more manageable in PM than he is in Melee, but having a poor MU vs spacies isn't an auto indicator that you can't be high/top tier since basically everyone struggles.

 

[Deleted member]

yeah like as much as we all say fox is the best, the margin from playing "the best" is relatively low in PM compared to other smash games. i understand why melee fox players think he sucks in PM, you'd say he sucks too coming from a game where like 19/26 MUs are actually 100-0.

 

[Ripple]

Characters that're like -1/+0 vs Fox are like Mewtwo, MK, Marth, Roy, Samus, ROB, Diddy Kong, and maybe some others that I'm forgetting atm (almost all of those being -1).

you somehow manage to forget the one character that beats Fox.

The OOZE

 

[D e l t a]

While @Umbreon is around, curious why Sheik poops on Link so hard outside of needles. She can do the same tech chase / auto combo Ftilt -> Fair stuff on everybody else, so why is it so bad for Link?

Also, what should Lucas be doing vs Sheik? I've tried playing him like Fox & Falco do vs Sheik, but I've only noticed slight improvement by doing so. Any advice?